toe the mark

General Winfield Scott Hancock

The unit continues to grow. General Hancock joined up as payment for an old debt. Free-lance work isn’t always for dollars. It can be for die-cast diversions, too.

The Passion of Lew Wallace
The incredible story of how a disgraced Civil War general became one of the best-selling novelists in American history.

In Ben-Hur, Wallace had written a novel that would help America forget the Civil War. But its author never could.

Civil War Soldiering
Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

And Down Scamander Two Silent Ghosts
Harper’s Weekly, Jan. 26, 1861.

Officers of 114th Pennsylvania Infantry in Front of Petersburg, August, 1864.
Library of Congress

The Peacemakers

The title is the only clue to the import of this solemn painting, a prelude to the end of the Civil War. Seated in the after cabin of the Union steamer River Queen are Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, President Abraham Lincoln, and Rear Adm. David D. Porter. Less than a week before the fall of Petersburg, Virginia, the four men met to discuss the nature of the peace terms to follow. Read more here.

The unit is growing.

On the capture of Savannah:

To His Excellency President Lincoln, Washington, D.C.:

I beg to present you as a Christmas-gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.

W.T. Sherman
Major-General

Civil War Beer Returns to Market.

Now on tap, some suds for modern day Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks.

Brandy Station, Va. Clerks at Army of the Potomac headquarters — February 1864.
Library of Congress.