A Civil War Love Poem Finds Its Voice, 160 Years Later
Albert Carter left behind a love poem. It holds three verses and a chorus. More than 160 years later, I set his words to music. Now I want your help. Which version carries their fe
The 384 Battles Index: Follow the Civil War One Battlefield at a Time
If one of your ancestors served in the Civil War, that person experienced it through a particular regiment, particular roads and towns, and particular fields on particular days. Fi
How Two Apps and a Battle Index Are Bringing Civil War Ancestors Back to Life
A reader once typed her own last name into a search box on my website. Thirty seconds later she read six words that changed how she saw her family. Her great-great-grandfather earn
Antietam: Secession to the Bloodiest Day
By nightfall on September 17, 1862, the guns fell silent along a Maryland creek. Nearly 23,000 men lay dead, wounded, or missing. No day in American history cost more. Anyone who w
Beyond the Muster Roll: Every Battle, Every Soldier
Readers write to me the same way, again and again. They find an ancestor in the Muster Roll search. A private in a Pennsylvania regiment. A cavalryman from Mississippi. Once they s
Find Your Family in the Civil War. Free.
By Tom O’Connor | Steel and Honor Series A name on a muster roll is not just ink on paper. It is a man who marched, fought, and came home, or did not. For years, that name sa
Weapons Revolution Coming. It Chose to look away.
He aimed perfectly. The man still stood. The soldier raised his rifle and trusted his training. He lifted the barrel for the old arc. He squeezed the trigger. Smoke swallowed
The Man Who Ran the Union’s Lifeline
By Tom O’Connor | Steel and Honor Series Lincoln stood on the bank of Potomac Creek in late May 1862 and looked up. Above him, four hundred feet of railroad trestle crossed o
When West Point Broke in Two
By Tom O’Connor | Steel and Honor SeriesRobert E. Lee sat alone upstairs at Arlington House on April 20, 1861.Outside, spring had come to Virginia. Inside, the old Union was
The Man Who Armed the South
On a cold April afternoon in 1865, a bearded Confederate colonel walked to a tall flagpole outside his mill. He looked up at the garrison banner. It snapped in the wind above the A