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Articles by Eric Ethier
Imbroglio at Brolo
By Eric Ethier Fresh off a tense telephone conversation with Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., climbed into a jeep and rumbled over to Truscott’s 3rd Infantry Division headquarters east of Terranova, on Sicily’s northeastern coast. Dusk had fallen on August 10, 1943, and the gung-ho general with the ivory-handled pistols on his hips wanted action.
Patton's 'Win' at Messina Cost Him Dearly
Inside Seventh Army headquarters on the southern coast of Sicily, a scowling Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., greeted Lieutenant General Omar Bradley with bad news. ‘We’ve received a directive from Army Group, Brad,’ Patton said between puffs on a cigar. ‘Monty’s to get the Vizzini-Caltagirone road in his drive to flank Catania and Mount Etna by going up through Enna.
Lifelines for Civil War Soldiers
As if dodging bullets and eluding killer germs wasn’t enough to occupy the minds of Civil War soldiers, men in blue and gray had to deal with less tangible enemies: fear, hunger, loneliness and concern for loved ones back home. For young volunteers away from home for the first time, this was especially hard; they had to find a way to keep their frustrations at bay and keep on fighting.
School of the Soldier: Getting Fleeced
Depressed and restless after two weeks of idleness in their regiment’s ice- and mud-encrusted camp outside Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania cavalrymen Tom Smith and Sam Boyer rode into town in January 1862. in their regiment’s Smith stopped for a haircut and a shave, and nearly fell over when the barber charged him $1.25.
War Outside the Lines: Sharpshooters
It was a perfect shot —the kind that on May 9, 1864, Union Major General John Sedgwick spent the last moments of his life scorning.
War Outside the Lines: Quartermasters
As Christmas 1865 neared, newspaper editors across the country received a gift from the U.S. Quartermaster’s Department— Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs’ fiscal report for the year ending June 30. After printing the massive missive, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune commented: “So we find ourselves in a state of bewilderment wandering down these long columns of Gen.
War Outside the Lines: Recruiters
A week after rebel gunners fired on Fort Sumter unsavory New York City residents gathered in protest.
The War Outside the Lines: Engineers
For the ability to produce terror by its mere presence piece of artillery outdid the “Swamp Angel”—the massive Parrott rifle that threatened the city of Charleston, S.C., in August 1863. From its , no single base on Morris Island, the 8-inch, 200-pounder Yankee leviathan lobbed shells nearly five miles over Charleston Harbor and into the city, scattering terrified residents. After just three dozen shots the Swamp Angel exploded, its breech shattered by the massive charge within.
Civil War Signal Men
Long after the end of the Civil War, Henry S. Tafft tried to enlighten some fellow veterans about his service in the fledgling Union Signal Corps.
The Telegraph Operators
From Somerset, Kentucky, on July 22, 1862, Confederate Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan telegraphed Union Brigadier General J.T. Boyle at Louisville: “Good morning, Jerry! This telegraph is a great institution. You should destroy it, as it keeps me too well posted. My friend Elsworth has all of your dispatches since July 10 on file. Do you wish copies?” Morgan’s “friend” was George A. Elsworth, his telegraph operator.
Behind the Horsepower of Civil War Armies
Despite the available technology of roads and steamships, Civil War armies were supplied much like the Roman armies had been. North and South still relied on the simple strength of wagons, the brawn of mules, horses and oxen, and the skill of unheralded wagon masters and teamsters to drive them. Wagon masters and teamsters generally worked under the thumb of a quartermaster, whose duties included making sure food and supplies reached the men on the front lines when they needed it.
Behind the Steam Power of Civil War Armies
I am willing to do all that I can do,” Confederate railroad man F. W. Sims wrote in February 1862, “but to improve transportation without men and materials is the requisition of the Egyptian taskmaster. Give me the men and you shall see advantages from them. Refuse and I can promise nothing.” Military transportation problems dogged President Jefferson Davis’ Rebel armies throughout the Civil War.
CWT Book Review: War’s Relentless Hand
Some 40 years ago Mark Dunkelman set out to follow the sparse paper trail left by his great-grandfather, who had once served with the 154th New York Volunteers. His labor of love grew into half a lifetime of deepening inquiry, fostered a unique bond between the researcher and the men of the “Hardtack Regiment” and spawned three books.
The Wild World of Jim Lane
A slippery opportunist with a violent temper, the senator-soldier from Indiana played a big role in the early history of Kansas. With his small family and their belongings in tow, former U.S. Congressman James H. Lane slipped quietly into Kansas Territory in April 1855—leaving behind the shattered remnants of a once-promising political career. A year earlier the Indiana representative had cost himself the backing of his stunned constituents by supporting the unpopular Kansas-Nebraska Act.
How Congress Split 2 for 1
By the time the 36th United States Congress convened in Washington, D.C., on December 5, 1859, events were moving the nation quickly towards war. Tension in the capital was as thick as the mud in its streets. Amid the clatter of boots on sidewalks,pro-Southern chatter mixed with stout Union sentiment. In the packed, smoke-filled halls of Willard’s Hotel, edgy congressmen downed drinks, exchanged predictions, and flashed pistols and Bowie knives stuffed into their belts.
Gotham’s Newspapers Go to War
A long with the war news of October 8, 1861, the New York Herald readers got an industry update from the newspaper’s founder and editor, James Gordon Bennett.
‘I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule’
If anyone looked like he was handpicked by central casting to play the part of a firebrand, it was Edmund Ruffin. Thin and lean, with long white hair and a hot temper, this Virginia planter became the very symbol of Southern “fire-eaters”—a grim-faced warrior willing to back up his beliefs with a musket. If not for the sectional crisis, however, Ruffin might have been remembered as a progressive agriculturist.
ACW Book Review: Civil War Goats and Scapegoats
Books with titles like Civil War Goats and Scapegoats are usually shallow Civil War fare better suited to the bathroom shelf than the library. Author H. Donald Winkler’s new collection isn’t exactly groundbreaking scholarship. But it is more provocative than most of the books with which it will likely be lumped. Winkler’s list begins with Robert E. Lee in the Battle of Cheat Mountain, the September 1861 skirmish in western Virginia that garnered the future legend some ugly headlines.
The Union’s savage politician who fought with sarcasm and wit
Thaddeus Stevens was still just a state representative in 1840 when popular New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley declared him “a leetle too savage a politician.” Indeed, the hard-boiled Stevens was happy to shove his unbending principles in the faces of opponents, and a generation later he proved more than a match for the unscrupulous power brokers, pitiless sectionalists and hard-drinking orators of Capitol Hill.
ACW Book Review: Hunter’s Fiery Raid
In a press release trumpeting Gary C.
USS Galena: De-evolution of a Warship
USS Galena failed as an ironclad, but a tight-fisted U.S. Navy returned the ship to the age of sail, stripping the technological lemon of its armor and sending it back into the fray. On a chilly February 14, 1862, Valentine’s Day, at the Mystic, Connecticut, shipyard of Maxson, Fish & Co., a sleek-looking iron- clad splashed into the water. USS Galena’s launch was eagerly anticipated in that tight-knit shipping community, for it was reputed to be on the cutting edge of warship technology.
CWT Book Review: Trench Warfare Under Grant and Lee
Trench Warfare Under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign Civil War battle tactics have received renewed attention in recent years, most notably from Paddy Griffith and Brent Nosworthy. With his 2005 effort Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861- 1864, Earl J. Hess began carving out his own niche in the related, though understudied, area of Civil War fortifications.
CWT Book Review: The Horrid Pit
The Horrid Pit: The Battle of the Crater, the Civil War’s Cruelest Mission In a war marked by exceptional suffering and brutality, few scenes matched the destruction wrought in the infamous Petersburg Crater, which Union gunpowder carved in the middle of the Confederate lines on July 30, 1864. The Federals’ badly bungled effort to exploit the massive breach wasted hundreds of lives and left Yankee officers blaming each other.
CWT Book Review: Mark Twain’s Civil War
During 1877, in his first public remarks about his Civil War career, Mark Twain described his early days as a raw second lieutenant from Missouri. His decidedly unmilitary recruits were peppering him with demands for umbrellas and Worcestershire sauce, he claimed, when “of course at such a time as this the invader must come around pestering us again—as much as two hours before breakfast, too, when nobody wanted to turn out, of course. This was carrying the thing too far.
ACW Book Review: Mutiny at Fort Jackson
Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans After shattering a rickety Confederate fleet on April 24, 1862, Union Admiral David G. Farragut’s warships slipped up the Mississippi River past the booming guns of Forts Jackson and St. Philip and closed on New Orleans, one of the keys to controlling the mighty river. Three nights later, Rebel mutineers at Fort Jackson did what the Federal shells had not— silenced the two forts.
A bulldog whose bite matched his bark
Born in the abolitionist hotbed of Massachusetts and raised on the plains of the Midwest, Benjamin Franklin Wade farmed, drove cattle and even labored on the Erie Canal before passing the Ohio bar and jumping head-first into hot-stove American politics. For a man born with a debilitating stammering problem, which he eventually overcame, he had little trouble expressing himself, and he made no bones about what drove him: the death of slavery.
ACW Book Review: Thomas Ewing, Jr.
The name of Ohioan Thomas Ewing Jr. crops up in many Civil War books, mostly in reference to events in Civil War Kansas and to his more famous adopted brother William T. Sherman. Now, from first-time author Ronald Smith, comes a welcome and complete look at the man: Thomas Ewing Jr.: Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General. Ewing’s career began in the post-Mexican War White House of Zachary Taylor, where his father was serving as Secretary of the Interior.
Tipping Point | HistoryNet
AMONG THE INNUMERABLE PAMPHLETS LITTERING LONDON COFFEE HOUSES in late 1776 was the provocative Letter to Lord George Germain.
What We Learned: from the Battle of Veracruz | HistoryNet
Entering the White House in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson had one eye on the simmering turmoil in Europe and the other on a problem closer to home—in Mexico, where a chaotic civil war threatened American lives and business interests. In February 1913 General Victoriano Huerta imprisoned Mexican President Francisco Madero and assumed power. Madero faced a firing squad, but with the Constitutionalist forces of Venustiano Carranza and Francisco “Pancho” Villa (see P.
Battle of Wilson's Creek
Eric Ethier December 2005 Washington, D.C., buzzed with war fever. Each day eager young would-be soldiers stepped off trains in the U.S. capital, around which a massive Federal army was being organized and trained. Technically, war on the ground had already begun: On June 10, 1861, a 2,500-man Federal force had clashed with 1,200 Confederates at Big Bethel, Virginia.
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