Today Union troops, having landed the previous day on Morris Island in Charleston harbor, begin a campaign to capture the island’s Fort Wagner (also known as Battery Wagner), a well-guarded Confederate fortress built upon beach sands south of Charleston. Controlling the fort would put a little more pressure on the nearby South Carolina coastal city.…
On this fourth of July, the outlook for the Confederacy plunges. A heavy rain blankets the blood-soaked, body-strewn battlefield following the three day Battle of Gettysburg. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia stares across the carnage to the lines of Union Gen. George G. Meade‘s Army of the Potomac. Lee anticipates another…
At dawn the Battle of Gettysburg resumes on the third day. The morning silence is broken by the Union XII Corps, as from atop Culp’s Hill they begin an artillery bombardment on Confederate forces embedded downhill and nearby. Within hours, Confederate Gen. Richard S. Ewell attacks the federals in an attempt to seize Culp’s Hill,…