Stepping Up Our Game with Medford

For more than 20 years, the BGES and the Medford Historical Society (MHS) have collaborated to digitize the priceless Gen. Samuel Crocker Lawrence Photographic Collection owned by MHS. Recently the digitization was completed, and now one of the nation’s premiere 19th-century photographic collections is available to review 24/7 from the privacy of your own home. While … Read more

Time Travel: Pamplin Historical Park

This lesser known private park, celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2019, occupies the spot where the battle that ended the nine-month-long Petersburg Campaign took place on April 2, 1865, resulting in the Confederate’s evacuation of their capital at Richmond. Here you’ll find four antebellum homes, four museums, daily living-history demonstrations, hiking trails winding past important … Read more

Five Questions: The Virginia Campaign of 1781, with Richard Britton

The Revolutionary War wrapped up in Virginia, with the French assisting the Colonists in defeating the British at Yorktown. The final steps leading up to this final American/French victory—including why British Gen. Charles, Lord Cornwallis was there in the first place—are explored on an upcoming BGES tour, The Virginia Campaign of 1781, slated for November … Read more

BGES Members Making a Difference: Parker Hills

Perhaps no one has done more to interpret and preserve Mississippi’s complicated Civil War past than Magnolia State native Parker Hills. A military veteran, Hills served for more than three decades in active and reserve roles, retiring as a brigadier general, Mississippi Army National Guard. Fittingly, it was during a military staff ride more than thirty … Read more

BGES Announces Its 2020 Tour Schedule!

BGES’ tour schedule for 2020 has been released! Next year we have some twenty-five different tours to look forward to, as well as several new historians. Of particular interest is the long-awaited Gordon Rhea “Overland Campaign” series, in which the acclaimed historian begins a two-year, ten-day presentation of the famous 1864 Campaign between Grant and … Read more

A Test of Loyalties Field Report

Most of the time, BGES Executive Director Len Riedel is tirelessly working to plan and execute BGES’ large and diverse organization and programs. This time, he took the back seat—literally—on a recent Field University program—A Test of Loyalties: East Tennessee Raids, Railroads, and Rebellion, which took place July 24–27, 2019, with military historian Jim Ogden … Read more

Four Questions: Stuart’s Ride, with Len Riedel

When Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, he wasn’t sure what was going on behind the lines of the Federal Army of the Potomac, under command of George McClellan. So he sent his 29-year-old cavalry chief, J.E.B. Stuart, to study McClellan’s vulnerabilities—a tour that Lee used to crush … Read more

BGES Members Making a Difference: Kimble Johnson

  The Battle of Shiloh raged on April 6 and 7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. It remains the seventh bloodiest battle of the Civil War, and the nineteenth bloodiest battle in all of American history. Monuments to the battle began being erected in 1902, with fifteen total soon honoring the service and sacrifice of different … Read more

Time Travel: A Tour of Richmond’s Civil War Sites

It’s not exactly breaking news to say Richmond is a Civil War lover’s dream. Obviously, as the capital of the Confederacy, the city’s place in American history is unquestioned. And the amount of Civil War history that has been preserved is impressive, to say the least. Much of that can be found at Richmond National Battlefield Park, which … Read more

Time Travel: Overlooked Civil War Sites in St. Louis and Southeastern Missouri

Missouri’s role in the Civil War is well documented. Given its central location and geographic features, notably the Mississippi River, the state was crucial to the fortunes of both sides of the conflict. More than 100,000 Missourians fought in the war, the large majority for the Union, despite the fact that Missouri was a slave … Read more