PEOPLE & COMMANDERS

In the early months of the Second World War, American and Filipino defenders fought a desperate holding action in the Philippines as Japanese forces pressed south across the Pacific. While Bataan fell in April, the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay continued to resist under constant bombardment, its tunnels crowded with wounded, staff, and the last reserves of ammunition.

On August 16th, 1812, early in the War of 1812, Brigadier General William Hull surrendered the American post at Detroit to a smaller British force under Major General Isaac Brock. Hull had crossed into Canada weeks earlier with an army of regulars and militia but retreated after supply problems, poor coordination, and concerns about Native American allies fighting alongside the British.

In the closing weeks of the Civil War, most Confederate field armies had already stacked their arms when Brigadier General Stand Watie, a Cherokee leader, finally agreed to terms in Indian Territory. Watie had commanded Confederate Indian units in the Trans-Mississippi theater, where fighting mixed conventional campaigns with raids, guerrilla strikes, and bitter internal divisions among Native nations.

While history often remembers the April surrender at Appomattox Court House as the Civil War’s end, organized Confederate resistance lingered west of the Mississippi River. On May 26th, 1865, officials representing General Edmund Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Department agreed to terms that effectively surrendered the last large Confederate field command.

While the guns still cooled at Gettysburg, another decisive event unfolded on the Mississippi River. On July 4th, 1863, after weeks of siege, Confederate Lieutenant General John Pemberton surrendered the fortress city of Vicksburg and its garrison to Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant. The fall of Vicksburg gave the Union complete control of the Mississippi River, severing the Confederacy’s trans-Mississippi region from the rest of its territory.

A Medal of Honor story of courage under fire and stubborn defense in the Pacific war.

It is the early hours of 10 March 1945 on Luzon in the Philippine Islands. The jungle around the Villa Verde Trail is black and close, broken only by a thin ridge that juts out from a larger hill. On that ridge, just ahead of the main American perimeter, three foxholes scrape a shallow line in the earth. In one of them lies Private First Class Thomas Eugene “Gene” Atkins of Company A, 127th Infantry. His job is simple and deadly: watch the trail and buy time if the enemy comes.

On January 31st, 1950, President Harry Truman announced that the United States would move ahead with development of a thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb. The decision followed the Soviet Union’s first atomic test and intense debate among scientists, soldiers, and policymakers about the future of nuclear weapons. A hydrogen bomb promised yields far beyond earlier fission devices, raising questions about strategy, morality, and the very possibility of controlled war.

Two days after the invasion began, President Harry Truman announced that he had ordered American air and naval forces to support South Korea and directed the Seventh Fleet to the waters near Taiwan. The decision, made without a formal congressional declaration of war, marked one of the earliest and most consequential uses of presidential authority to commit U.S. forces in the emerging Cold War.

Five days after North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, President Harry Truman took a decisive step. On June 30th, 1950, he authorized the deployment of United States ground combat units to support South Korean forces already reeling under the assault. Air and naval power had been committed earlier, but this order meant American soldiers would again fight on the ground in Asia.

During the Korean War, President Harry Truman made a decision that highlighted the core American principle of civilian control over the military. General Douglas MacArthur, widely respected for his leadership in the Pacific during the Second World War and early operations in Korea, had increasingly clashed with Truman and other civilian leaders over war aims and public statements.

After months of siege warfare around Petersburg, Virginia, General Grant ordered a major assault on the overstretched Confederate lines protecting both Petersburg and the capital at Richmond. Union forces, including troops from several corps that had been steadily probing and extending the siege lines, attacked at multiple points along the defensive works. The Confederate positions, manned by weary soldiers of General Robert E.

During the American Civil War, control of rivers was as important as control of railroads, and Union commanders in the Western Theater understood that geography could be a weapon. On February 6th, 1862, combined Union army and navy forces under Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew Foote attacked Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, a Confederate strongpoint guarding access into the Deep South.

Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and months after the main Confederate armies had surrendered, Union military authority was still spreading across the far corners of the former Confederacy. On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, at the head of Union troops and read General Order No. 3, announcing that enslaved people in Texas were free under federal law.

On February 22nd, 1865, Union forces completed the capture of Wilmington, North Carolina, after earlier seizing nearby Fort Fisher and fighting their way up the Cape Fear River. Wilmington had been the Confederacy’s last major Atlantic port, a vital outlet for blockade runners bringing in weapons, cloth, and other supplies from overseas. Once the harbor’s ring of forts fell and Union gunboats controlled the approaches, Confederate logistics took a severe blow.

Two years after the Civil War, Americans still debated how far their nation should extend and where strategic interests lay. On March 30th, 1867, Secretary of State William Seward signed a treaty with Russia to purchase Alaska, a vast, sparsely populated territory stretching from the Pacific into the Arctic. Critics mocked the deal as “Seward’s Folly,” seeing only ice and distance in exchange for seven point two million dollars in gold.

On January 28th, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation merging the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service into a single organization: the United States Coast Guard. The revenue cutters had long chased smugglers, enforced customs laws, and supported naval operations, while life-saving crews manned small stations along dangerous coasts, ready to pull shipwrecked sailors from the surf.

Four days after Wilson’s address, Congress approved the declaration of war, formally bringing the United States into World War I on the side of the Allies. The decision triggered a sweeping mobilization effort at home, including the enactment of the Selective Service system to raise a large national army. The American Expeditionary Forces, under General John J.

Nearly four decades after independence, the United States again found itself in conflict with its old imperial rival. On June 18th, 1812, after months of debate over British interference with American trade, the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy, and tensions along the frontier, Congress passed and President James Madison signed a declaration of war.

During the Spanish–American War, American forces stepped ashore on the southern coast of Puerto Rico and opened a new front in the conflict with Spain. Troops under Major General Nelson Miles landed near the small harbor of Guánica, taking advantage of surprise and local currents to avoid heavier defenses elsewhere. Initial resistance was limited, but skirmishes soon broke out as Spanish and Puerto Rican troops probed the landings and tried to rally a defense.

Just days after Fort George fell, another drama played out at sea off the American coast. On June 1st, 1813, the American frigate USS Chesapeake sailed from Boston to challenge the British blockading ship HMS Shannon. In a furious, close-range engagement that lasted only minutes, British gunnery and boarding tactics shattered the Chesapeake’s crew, leaving Captain James Lawrence mortally wounded.

A story of nuclear propulsion, undersea endurance, and how one boat reshaped the Cold War at sea.

On a winter day on the Potomac River in 1844, the brand-new steam warship USS Princeton hosted Washington dignitaries for a demonstration cruise. The pride of the ship was a massive naval gun nicknamed “Peacemaker,” intended to showcase the Navy’s technical skill and the promise of long-range, heavy artillery at sea.

During the Mexican-American War, General Winfield Scott led one of the earliest large-scale amphibious campaigns in United States history, landing an expeditionary force near the port city of Veracruz. After a carefully planned bombardment involving both the Army and Navy, the city’s defenses began to crumble under heavy fire. On March 29th, 1847, Veracruz surrendered, giving Scott a secure deep-water port and a base of operations on Mexico’s Gulf coast.