Ulysses S Grant

Horses and Cavalry from Xenophon in Ancient Greece to the American Civil War, and in New York City
Greek and Roman History

Horses and Cavalry from Xenophon in Ancient Greece to the American Civil War, and in New York City

Bruce Strom 0

From antiquity, in combat, horses had three roles: hauling supplies, fighting in highly mobile cavalry regiments, sometimes pulling chariots in ancient times, and enabling generals to quickly survey the battlefield. From ancient times, in both war and peace time, technological improvements meant horses could be used more effectively. Improved harnesses made chariot warfare common throughout the Ancient Near East, quite often several archers would ride in the chariot. In the Old Testament, we read that King Ahab died when an arrow struck him in his chariot, likely he was standing next to an archer. […]

Siege of Vicksburg: Ordinary Union Soldiers and Generals Grant and Sherman Recount the Struggle
Civil War Memories

Siege of Vicksburg: Ordinary Union Soldiers and Generals Grant and Sherman Recount the Struggle

Bruce Strom 1

General Grant remembers: “The North had become very much discouraged. Many strong Union men believed that the war must prove a failure. The elections of 1862 had gone against the party which was for the prosecution of the war to save the Union if it took the last man and the last dollar. Voluntary enlistments had ceased through the greater part of the North, and the draft had been adopted to fill up the ranks. It was my judgment at the time that to make a backward movement from Vicksburg to Memphis, would be interpreted, by many of those yet full of hope for preservation of the Union, as a defeat, and that the draft would be resisted, desertions ensue, and the power to capture and punish deserters lost. There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory.” […]

General Longstreet and Reconstruction
Civil Rights

Terror During Reconstruction, White League Confronts General Longstreet and Union Army

Bruce Strom 2

We will tell the stories of General Longstreet and the Union Major Merrill. General James Longstreet, a former Confederate general who had become a pariah in the South when he changed his party affiliation to Lincoln’s Republican Party, tried to prevent the insurrection in New Orleans. For his second posting during Reconstruction, Major Merrill attempted to reverse the insurrection of parishes on the outskirts of New Orleans. […]

Civil Rights

Chaos of Reconstruction, Terror After the Civil War

Bruce Strom 1

Major Merrill says that he knew that the “Ku Klux Klan is much greater in numbers than is commonly supposed, and that a large number of the most respectable people in the county are more or less intimately connected with it. The debauched sentiment of the old slave-holding communities sees no great offense in whipping a negro for being a radical. The old sentiment is rife, where differences of opinion are settled by killing the man who dares to disagree with them.” […]