Roosevelt’s Navy Day address
In the autumn before formal American entry into the Second World War, United States warships were already escorting convoys and trading shots with German submarines in the North Atlantic.
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621 results for “Wars & Historical Eras”
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Sadr City operations
A story of exposed convoys, hidden fighters, and the soldiers and medics who kept moving through an urban kill zone.
San Francisco Peace Treaty
When the peace treaty with Japan came into force on this day, it formally ended the Allied occupation that had begun after World War II. United States forces remained in Japan under a separate security agreement, but the legal relationship changed from occupier to ally. American bases now operated with the consent of a sovereign Japanese government, and the two nations began to frame their cooperation in terms of sha
Sand Creek Massacre
On the High Plains of the Colorado Territory, a column of Colorado volunteer cavalry descended on a Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment along Sand Creek.
Secession of Alabama
Just two days after the Star of the West was fired upon, delegates in Montgomery voted on Alabama’s future in the Union. On January 11th, 1861, the state convention adopted an ordinance of secession, aligning Alabama with the already departed South Carolina and Mississippi. The decision brought another of the Deep South states into the emerging Confederate camp, tightening the ring of seceded territory along the Gulf
Second assault on Vicksburg
Undeterred by the first setback, Grant prepared a larger, more coordinated assault for May 22nd, 1863. Union artillery pounded the Confederate lines through the morning, and attacking columns moved out with specially chosen volunteers—the so-called “forlorn hope”—carrying ladders and planks to cross obstacles. Across the front, Union regiments advanced against steep slopes, dense abatis, and well-sited rifle pits, en
Second Battle of Fallujah
A story of block-by-block urban fighting and the hard decision to take back a city at any cost.
Second Bull Run, heavy Union assaults
On August 29th, 1862, Union forces under Major General John Pope hurled repeated attacks against Confederate positions near an unfinished railroad grade outside Manassas, Virginia.
Selective Service Act signed into law
On May 18th, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signs the Selective Service Act, creating a national mechanism to draft men into military service. The law requires eligible males to register for possible induction, and it lays out how local boards will classify and call individuals. For the United States, whose small prewar Army cannot sustain large operations in Europe, the act is essential to raising a mass citizen for
Selective Training and Service Act signed into law
As war raged overseas but before the United States formally entered the Second World War, political leaders grappled with how to prepare a peacetime democracy for potential conflict.
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill) signed into law
Even as battles raged in Normandy and the Pacific, policymakers were looking ahead to the millions of service members who would one day come home. On June 22nd, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, soon known simply as the GI Bill. The law offered a package of benefits including education assistance, home loan guarantees, and support for finding work, all intended to ease th
Seventh United States Army captures Palermo
In the middle of the Sicily campaign of the Second World War, Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s Seventh United States Army drove into Palermo and seized one of the island’s most important ports. The advance came after a rapid push along Sicily’s northern coast, with American armored and infantry columns racing over mountain roads and through towns battered by previous fighting.
Seymour W. Terry
The hill had a simple name on the map—Zebra Hill—but nothing about it was simple up close. Ahead of the assault troops the ground rose in a broken, rocky slope, pocked with shell holes and scraps of shattered brush. Hidden in that terrain were Japanese pillboxes and trenches positioned to command every approach. As the American infantrymen pushed forward, the hillside erupted with machine-gun bursts and grenades, tur
Sherman Begins the March to the Sea
On November 15th, 1864, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman led his Union army columns out of a largely destroyed Atlanta and turned them toward the Georgia coast.
Sherman’s army captures Columbia, South Carolina
On February 17th, 1865, Union forces under Major General William Tecumseh Sherman entered Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, as part of the Carolinas campaign that followed the March to the Sea. Confederate defenses had crumbled, and the city’s fall carried heavy symbolic weight because South Carolina had led secession. That night, fires swept across large sections of Columbia.
Sherman’s “Christmas gift” telegram from Savannah
After cutting a swath across Georgia in the famous March to the Sea, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman captured the port city of Savannah in December 1864.
Shuri Line abandoned on Okinawa
As the Pacific war neared its climax, the Battle of Okinawa became one of the bloodiest and most complex operations ever undertaken by American forces. By late May of 1945, United States Army and Marine units had fought their way against layered Japanese defenses centered on the Shuri Line, a fortified belt anchored by Shuri Castle. On May 29th, 1945, Japanese commanders began abandoning this vital position under rel
Siege lines open at Yorktown, Virginia
As autumn settled over Virginia in 1781, combined American and French armies under George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau began the methodical work of besieging Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.