On August 7, 1861, General Magruder took 500 Confederates with him sometime around midnight, “entered [Hampton], and immediately fired the buildings with torches.' The town was estimated to have somewhere around 500 buildings. By the morning of August 8, “seven or eight buildings were left standing.' The town was located close to Fort Monroe, an important base of operations for Union...
On July 20, 1861, Union General Butler wrote a letter to Secretary of War Simon Cameron asking what to do with fugitive slaves. In May, 1861, three slaves had run away from their master and sought refuge within Union lines at Fort Monroe. When their master, Colonel Charles Mallory attempted to claim them, General Butler refused. Butler drew on his legal training for his answer. He called the...
The Civil War was raging on a day in early April in 1862 when Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan and his Union troops marched south from Fort Monroe. On his way south he and his army ran into a small group of Confederate troops led by Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder in Yorktown Virginia. Magruder put on a show and made McClellan think that he had a very large army behind him therefore encouraging McClellan...
During the American Civil War, Union Colonel Hiram Berdan formed the 1st and 2nd Sharpshooters Regiments and changed the face of military history forever. Although noticeably different from the modern sniper, Berdan's Sharpshooters were the unmistakable forefathers of what is today roundly considered the most feared specialization on the battlefield. In fact, some theorize that the modern term "sharpshooter"...