- Civil War Series - The Twin Forts Loop Trail in Virginia’s Newport News explores the site of the Battle of Dam No. 1, a failed Union attack on a Confederate fortification on April 16, 1862. Part of the three-month Peninsula Campaign, the Union defeat was the second of the month (a similar effort failed …
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- Civil War Series - The Battle of Lee’s Mill on April 5, 1862 was, by all accounts, a minor engagement in the Civil War: it produced only 10 Confederate and 12 Union casualties. In the narrative of Union Maj. Gen. George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, however, it was very consequential; a fierce Confederate resistance forced …
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- Civil War Series - Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton, Virginia boasts the largest stone fort ever built in the United States, and its storied history spans the colonial period to the Civil War to the World Wars to the present. Its location at Old Point Comfort—the southeast tip of the Virginia Peninsula and …
- Civil War Series - Following the capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Civil War’s first land battle took place on June 10, 1861 at Big Bethel on the Virginia Peninsula. Despite Virginia’s secession in May, crusty Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler retained a garrison at Fort Monroe at the tip of the …
The United States Marine Corps War Memorial, dedicated in 1954, recreates the iconic scene of a 1945 photograph of six U.S. Marines raising an American flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima. Today the beautiful memorial (also known as the Iwo Jima Memorial) sits just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, a short walk …
- Civil War Series - Northern Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery occupies a prized piece of real estate, just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. At 624 acres, the sloping hillsides contain the graves of thousands of American military veterans, dating back to the Civil War, as well as a handful of notable civilians, including …
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- Civil War Series - On July 21, 1861, Union troops crossed northern Virginia’s Bull Run in pursuit of what was supposed to be the nascent Civil War’s first and only decisive battle. Spirits were high; Gen. Irvin McDowell, tasked by President Lincoln to oversee the offensive, led a hodgepodge of Northern volunteers, enlisted for …
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