Some called it a murdering machine. But the question was: Who faced the greatest risk from this machine—the enemy or the men operating it? Eight men were jammed side by side in this cramped Civil War submarine, with walls 3½ feet apart and the ceiling about 4 feet...
"If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate," businessman Thomas J.Watson once said. James R. McClintock, Baxter Watson, and Horace Hunley certainly had their share of failures as they pioneered the creation of submarines during the Civil War....
On a misty night in October of 1863, the aptly named David, a small Confederate torpedo boat, set out to slay the much larger Union vessel, the New Ironsides. The David was the first important steam-powered torpedo boat developed by the Confederacy--a forty-eight and...
Abraham Lincoln had two "life masks"Â created--one in 1860 before the Civil War began and the other in 1865, when the war was ending. The masks were made to preserve what he really looked like in life, but the difference between the two masks was shocking. The 1860...
Sojourner Truth was once told that if she dared to preach, the building where she spoke would be burned. The famous abolitionist responded, "Then I will speak to the ashes." You gotta love it. This past weekend, actress Jennifer Goran and I encountered Sojourner Truth...
In the very early hours of May 13, 1862, a slave named Robert Smalls decided to make his move. Smalls had worked his way up to becoming a wheelman--a pilot--and the Confederates used him to steer the CSS Planter, an armed Rebel military transport during the Civil War....
One hundred and fifty years ago this week, on February 17, 1864, a Confederate submarine made the first successful attack in history, sinking the USS Housatonic while trying to break the Federal blockade during the Civil War. Like a bee inserting its stinger and then...
Whenever I came off the field after a day playing vintage baseball, my hands were often stinging something fierce. That's because we played by 1860 rules, which meant NO GLOVES. And since I played third base for the Danville Voles, I sometimes had to field a sharp...
Edna Greene Medford became a historian at a time when the legacy of Abraham Lincoln had lost some of its luster in the African American community. So she said she never had any plans to specialize on Lincoln. But Professor Medford can credit C-SPAN for changing those...
My two worlds converged recently. In my world as a writer for the University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I recently did a story about the "Myth of Black Confederates"--a subject that directly applied to my other world as a writer of historical...