BATTLES & CAMPAIGNS

Three years later to the day, August 16th, 1780, the Continental Army suffered one of its worst defeats at Camden, South Carolina. Major General Horatio Gates led a hastily assembled army of Continentals and militia against a seasoned British force under Lord Cornwallis. Marching through swampy country on poor rations, many of Gates’s men were already in bad condition before the battle even began.

When the United States entered the First World War, many allies wondered how quickly American units could adapt to the brutal demands of the Western Front. On May 28th, 1918, the Army’s 1st Division attacked the German-held village of Cantigny in France, supported by tanks, artillery, and aircraft. The assault seized the shattered village and, more importantly, held it against persistent counterattacks and heavy shelling.

Two decades later, another critical October engagement unfolded at night near Cape Esperance, off the embattled island of Guadalcanal.

During the Punitive Expedition sent into Mexico after Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico, American and Mexican forces found themselves in an increasingly tense standoff. On June 21st, 1916, a detachment of the 10th U.S. Cavalry, composed largely of African American “Buffalo Soldiers,” encountered Mexican federal troops loyal to President Carranza near the town of Carrizal. Orders, warnings, and counterorders led to confusion and escalation, and a firefight erupted in the desert.

As the war in Europe neared its end, one of its strangest engagements unfolded at a medieval fortress in the Austrian Tyrol. Castle Itter held prominent French prisoners, including former prime ministers and generals, guarded by German troops who themselves faced collapse as American forces drew near. In early May, a Wehrmacht officer and Austrian resistance members decided to switch sides, seeking help from an American tank crew and bringing a small armored detachment back to the castle.

In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Union forces under General Philip Sheridan awoke on October 19th, 1864 to a surprise Confederate attack that drove many units from their camps and seemed to threaten a major defeat.

Hooker’s spring offensive crossed the Rappahannock with an ambitious plan but ended in withdrawal. The main battle, Jackson’s flank march, and Sedgwick’s separate advance formed one campaign whose local actions cannot be reduced to a single surprise attack.

During the Mexican–American War, United States forces under Major General Winfield Scott advanced on Mexico City, meeting fierce resistance at fortified positions west of the capital.

A story of a frozen fighting withdrawal and how it reshaped the war in Korea.

On December 5th, 1862, Union cavalry probing south in Mississippi ran into a determined Confederate ambush near Coffeeville during Ulysses S.

In the winter of the southern campaign, Brigadier General Daniel Morgan led a mixed American force against Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s hard–driving British Legion near the Cowpens in South Carolina. Morgan carefully chose ground that favored his outnumbered Continentals and militia, laying out successive lines so that each could fall back in an orderly way rather than dissolve in panic.

The November 1967 fighting around Dak To involved several hills, formations and successive actions. Hill 875 became its best-known episode, but the wider battle also depended on reinforcement, medical evacuation and support from outside the immediate battlefield.

During the First Barbary War, the United States turned a small expedition into an enduring symbol of Marine Corps identity. An overland force of United States Marines and local allies, led by Marine Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and naval agent William Eaton, marched across harsh desert terrain to attack the port city of Derna on the North African coast. On April 27th, 1805, they assaulted the defenses and captured the town, raising the American flag above the works.

On Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, United States Marines were fighting to hold Henderson Field, an airstrip whose control would decide who could dominate the skies over the surrounding seas.

A story of hard lessons, desert tank duels, and a young armor force learning fast enough to change a campaign.

The landings at Cape Torokina invited a swift Japanese response at sea.

Near the end of the Revolutionary War’s brutal southern campaign, American forces under Nathanael Greene clashed with a British column commanded by Alexander Stewart near Eutaw Springs in South Carolina.

Fast-forward to the summer of the Civil War, and the terrain shifts to the outskirts of Atlanta. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman had pushed his three Union armies close to the rail lines that kept the Confederate stronghold supplied. Newly appointed Confederate commander John Bell Hood tried to break that grip with a series of aggressive counterattacks. At Ezra Church, west of the city, Union troops under Oliver O.

By the spring of 1865, Confederate forces defending Petersburg and Richmond were stretched thin, facing a larger Union army and dwindling supplies. In a last attempt to break the siege, General Robert E. Lee approved a daring pre-dawn attack against Fort Stedman, a strong point in the Union lines east of Petersburg. On March 25th, Confederate troops under General John B. Gordon initially surged through the fog, capturing guns and trenches and creating a dangerous gap.

Only a day after the horror at Sand Creek, another grim chapter unfolded in Tennessee when Confederate General John Bell Hood hurled his Army of Tennessee against fortified Union lines near Franklin.

On December 13th, 1862, the Army of the Potomac under Major General Ambrose Burnside hurled wave after wave of Union soldiers against Confederate positions at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

In the autumn of the Philadelphia campaign, George Washington gambled on a complex, pre-dawn attack against British forces encamped at Germantown, northwest of the occupied capital.

Gettysburg brought the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac into a three-day battle shaped by terrain, reinforcement, and local decisions. This overview connects the opening encounter, both flanks, Cemetery Ridge, the cavalry actions, and the human aftermath.

As the Peninsula Campaign turned sour for the Union in the summer of 1862, the Army of the Potomac tried to slip away toward the James River, its supply line and safety. On June 30th, 1862, near the crossroads at Glendale and the woods around Frayser’s Farm, Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee launched a complex attack meant to cut the retreating Union column in two.