Irvin McDowell was a prominent figure during the early months of the Civil War. With so much at stake, he was called upon to lead the Union’s largest Eastern

Irvin McDowell was a major actor in the Civil War for a short, but critical time, and his life history deserves to be told and remembered. Like so many others,

Wild Bill’s ever-evolving legend When it came to the Wild West, the nineteenth-century press rarely let truth get in the way of a good story. James Butler “

Born into a distinguished military family, Fitz John Porter (1822-1901) was educated at West Point and breveted for bravery in the war with Mexico. Already a we

Two great, untested armies were readying for the first—and what many believed would be the last—major conflict between North and South. On the eve of July 2