General Ulysses S. Grant arrived at Milliken’s Bend on 15 January 1863 and embarked upon a restless series of ‘Bayou Operations’, all proving futile, to weave a path through Vicksburg’s formidable natural defences. Eventually, having exhausted every other option, he elected to forge a route through New Carthage to Hard... More
The Battle of Mine Run on 27 November was an inconclusive Union offensive. Union soldiers were to cross the Rapidan River and strike the Confederate’s right flank. This strategy began to fail when a Union corps became bogged down in the river, delaying further Union forces from crossing. General Robert... More
Archaeologists speculate that the Minoan civilization that thrived on the island of Crete from the 16th to 13th centuries BCE was an autonomous development by descendants of Neolithic island-dwellers, rather than an imported civilization. There is evidence that Cretans had extensive trade links, with Africa, Turkey, Cyprus, the Levant and... More
The island of Crete was first settled, probably from Asia Minor, in about 3000 BCE. The distinctive and highly advanced civilization that evolved there by the end of the third millennium, was palace-based, with each palace administering a substantial farming hinterland and trading network. Sir Arthur Evans, the archaeologist who... More
In 1980 the US and USSR both had submersible ships which carried nuclear-powered ballistic missiles. The Cold War showed no signs of thawing and both the US and USSR were engaged in a proxy war in Afghanistan. Although there was no eruption into a ‘hot war’ (direct conflict) both the... More
Vicksburg was the ‘nail that holds the South’s two halves together’, according to the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In early 1863, Ulysses S. Grant attempted lateral thinking to pry the nail loose. He commissioned a series of attempts to build canals over the De Soto peninsula, north of Vicksburg: each... More
In April 1798 Congress created the Mississippi Territory, which lay to the east of the Mississippi River. It was established on the 31st parallel and created a boundary line between Spanish Florida and the United States. In 1804, its northern boundary was extended to the Tennessee River and in 1812,... More
The mound-building cultures of North America appear to have suffered a ‘Dark Age’ roughly contemporaneous with the European version, with the revival beginning in the lower Mississippi valley in the last quarter of the first millennium. This segued into the Plaquemine culture, but was soon be eclipsed by the middle... More
In 1820, slave-holding states still held a majority in the US Senate. The majority in part derived from the ‘three-fifths’ rule, whereby slaves counted for 60 per cent of free persons in determining representation per state. This precarious advantage was now threatened by the ‘free’ District of Maine’s application for... More
On 3 August 1864, Union forces laid siege to Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island to help Union Admiral David Farragut and his 18-strong fleet seal the last major southern port from Confederate blockade runners. The runners were moving cotton, weapons and supplies for the Confederate forces through the Gulf of... More
Admiral David Farragut had urged an assault on Mobile Bay since the fall of Port Hudson in July 1863, but it was not until the following summer that troops were provided for an amphibious operation. The soldiers under General Gordon Granger were landed at Dauphin Island, training a gun on... More
Pope Eugene III called the Second Crusade in 1144, when England was in the throes of a 20-year civil war. Nevertheless, a powerful force was raised, some 13,000 sailing from Dartmouth in territory held by the Angevin opposition to King Stephen. This force achieved the only substantive success of a... More