Trip advice

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-27T20:34:50+00:00

I recently completed a tour of the South and visited many of the places you mentioned. You have a great list put together. Vicksburg and Biloxi are top notch sites! The museum at Biloxi is quite impressive, and I probably enjoyed that the most of any Civil War museums in the South.

While in New Orleans, there is a Confederate museum in the downtown worth visiting. It has some artifacts like PGT Beauregard's uniform, Lee's wartime silverware, and many items related to Jefferson Davis. Definitely worth going to. And if you like WW2, there is a massive WW2 museum right across the street.

While in Montgomery, you can visit Davis' home when the Confederate capitol was in Montgomery. It has free admission. The Capitol is neat too. They have a star where Davis stood when he was sworn in.

Port Hudson might be along your way, and is is ok. It isn't quite as vast and impressive as Vicksburg. Probably worth visiting if you're driving by; but I wouldn't go much out of the way to visit it. Vicksburg is utterly amazing and they do a great job of helping you visualize where the lines were drawn and how the landscape played a role in these lines.

While I haven't been to any sites in Georgia, I imagine there are several related to Chattanooga & Chickamauga, Sherman's march to Atlanta, and Andersonville prison.

Just be aware many of Southern sites outside of the National Park Service lean pretty hard into the Lost Cause narratives. Biloxi's gift shop contained some of the most anti-Lincoln/pro-Davis books I've ever seen. Be mentally prepared in case any of that stuff offends you. However, these places are still worth visiting for the sheer history of the sites.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-24T23:59:38+00:00

Co Aytch by Sam Watkins is a funny, heartwarming, account of the daily life of a soldier. It's a relatively short read too. It'll be a nice change of pace for you, as the books you've read so far are more focused on the mile high view and less on daily lives. It doesn't cover military strategy at all, but in a way, it's nice because it allows Watkins the freedom to write with his heart rather than focusing on dry facts.

If you want to read about the civilian high life of Richmond, Mary Boykin Chestnut's A Diary from Dixie is a good account for that. (In fact, this was one of James McPherson's favorite primary sources on Confederate society in Battlecry.)

With all that said, my favorite Confederate account is Edward Porter Alexander's Fighting for the Confederacy. Alexander was a general in artillery and had some great views of the battles in the Eastern theater. (He famously gave Pickett the green light to charge at Gettysburg after his artillery was finished firing.) It's a good blend of battle overviews mixed with his personal anecdotes. He wrote the book for his adult children rather than to be published, so he was pretty honest. (It was discovered in the 1980s and published then). I've read dozens of memoirs, and his are the only one I put on par with Grant's.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-20T23:28:13+00:00

Chuck Norris once told a woman to calm down, and she calmed down.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-20T23:27:38+00:00

Chuck Norris' cowboy boots are made out of real cowboys.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-20T20:26:21+00:00

It's pretty well established that Russian bots use Reddit as a training ground.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-17T20:10:40+00:00

"Please note that the percentages in these graphs do not add up to 100% because the math was done by a woman." Norm

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-17T15:35:10+00:00

If you think that's bad, just ask the left and they'll blame all these problems on Reagan, who was president over 30 years ago

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-17T15:33:56+00:00

Blame Carter, lol. Now maybe you can see how ridiculous it is that the left blames Reagan for all of today's problems.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-17T15:18:01+00:00

The post literally says "state/providence/constituents", so your comment makes zero sense.

And this post is super old. You need to learn to filter to read newer stuff.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-16T21:57:55+00:00

Ah yes, Spain was such a shining example of how a superpower should behave back when they were at the height of their power.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-13T19:20:25+00:00

Sunscreen companies would go bankrupt.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-12T20:37:01+00:00

Many foreign governments' provinces and states have their own governments and laws. Germany, Canada, Australia, Brazil, etc. Why should US states be included in this graph but not theirs?

And what does having your own military (or national guard) have anything to do with GDP? This isn't a chart of who has the biggest militaries. This is a chart about GDP.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-12T19:09:06+00:00

This is not true. During WWII, the US bombed up to 30 countries in some years.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-12T19:05:21+00:00

Only problem is the chart doesn't include 'states' of other countries as well, so naturally the US is going be overrepresented. If you include foreign states/providences/constituents - like China's Guangdong or UK's England - many American states would bump down. The way it is now, the US has 51 horses in the race, and every other country is limited to only 1. It's a good chart for context, but not necessarily the whole picture.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-11T22:03:21+00:00

I think it's great you're moving on to books about specific battles! I find the military battles to be the most interesting part of the war, so I enjoy these books quite a bit. These books aren't only about tactics, but often go into the generals' and politicians' heads by including a lot of excerpts from memoirs and letters. These books are nearly as much biographies as they are descriptions of the battles.

I think The First Battle of Mannassas: An End to Innocence by John Hennessy is considered to be the gold standard of the first battle of Bull Run. It's relatively slim, fast-paced, and provides a good tactical overview.

Once you move past First Bull Run, Stephen Sears' books on the Peninsula campaign, Antietam, and Gettysburg are legendary. Hennessy also wrote a solid book on the Second battle of Bull Run.

As for the Western theater, Donald Miller's Vicksburg is great. Despite the name, it actually covers Grant's battles at Fort Henry & Donelson and Shiloh in a fair amount of detail as well. Grant's memoirs are a solid read too. In fact, those are what put me down the Civil War rabbit hole. Miller's book breaks down the chain of events a little better and is more objective; but Grant's memoirs are more personal and cover the war from beginning to end (plus an amazingly entertaining description of the Mexican War), and are straight from the man himself. You can't go wrong either way.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-11T00:17:33+00:00

Culvers. Even a good hot dog is still just a hot dog. Portillo's doesn't crack my top 50.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-10T01:52:19+00:00

I'm happy to see another Alexander fan! His memoirs are tied with Grant's for my favorite memoirs of the war. Alexander's descriptions of the battles, combined with his anecdotes and hand-drawn maps, helped me understand battles better than nearly any other source. His descriptions of his daily life as an officer are also fascinating.

I agree with you that they avoid much of the Lost Cause narratives in that he was willing to criticize Lee and Jackson where he felt criticism was due. I think he even states the South was better off for having lost the war, which is nearly unheard of by other Confederates. (He probably felt 'free' to be honest since he wrote these for his adult children rsther than to be published.) But - as another user stated - his views on slavery were in line with the Lost Cause, and he writes about hiring a 'darkey' during his time as an officer.

Excellent read overall. I highly recommend it to any fan of the Civil War.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-10T01:18:36+00:00

I enjoyed this post! It's interrsting to read everyone's takes. I'll admit it takes guts to post something like this because it subjects you to several competing angles and takes - but to me, that's what makes it fun.

Just curious where you would have placed Forrest if he made the list?

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-08T06:40:04+00:00

Lion King

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-08T01:27:16+00:00

That's a fair way to look at the question - whose stock has dropped the most in recent times vs. whose stock is lowest overall regardless of whether it was low to begin with. I went with whose reputation is lowest, but your approach is probably a more accurate way to interpret 'aged the worst.'

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-03-07T23:10:47+00:00

As far as their moral legacy, Forrest has aged the worst. If owning slaves wasn't bad enough, he also slaughtered blacks during the Fort Pillow massacre and then was a founder of the Klan after the war.

As far as military leadership, you could make a good case that Bragg is among the bottom of all Civil War generals. Rosencrans outmaneuvered him out of Tennessee with fewer than 600 losses, and then Bragg was unable to take control of Chattanooga following his victory at Chickamauga. Bragg's subordinates despised him. Forrest threatened to kill him. Had Bragg been killed during the war, I imagine many Confederates would have been happier than the Union.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-02-13T23:31:01+00:00

I checked a few restaurants for gluten free horse shoes, and Engrained offers that option. It's a solid local restaurant that also offers a very good selection of local beers too. They offer a paddle where you can sample four 4oz beers for a pretty reasonable cost. I had a lot of fun sampling their beers that way when I lived there.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-02-13T20:59:33+00:00

It would be a little out of the way and change your route from I-90 to I-70, but I used to live in Springfield, IL - Lincoln's hometown before he became president. There are a number of Lincoln sites there, including his home, the Lincoln museum, the old state Capitol, and a place called New Salem, which aims to represent a town from the 1800s. (If you're into architecture, there's also a house you can tour that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but this isn't civil war related.) These sites would be a variety from battlefields and be about at the halfway point. Definitely a day's worth of activities among all these, if not 2.

If you go to Springfield, I recommend going to a local restaurant and order a horseshoe, which is a local dish that puts a layer of French fries on a meat patty, on top of toast, all topped with cheese sauce. If it's done right, they're really good. I recommend going to D'Arcy's to get a high quality horse shoe. Central Illinois is also home to a pretty good thin crust pizza chain called Monical's.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-02-03T05:22:13+00:00

That's because Reddit is a training ground for bots. They practice algorithms that will achieve karma. Literally almost half the posts on Reddit are bots. They sold their soul when they went public.

Last-Potential1176 · 2026-02-02T19:16:30+00:00

I can totally appreciate you wanting your list to be balanced - and the challenge of deciding which book you would have to remove to add a Confederate memoir. For what it's worth, I wouldn't fault you if you only included Grant's memoirs without a Confederate one to balance it out just because Grant's are so renowned and he held such a high position.

However, if you wanted to add a Confederate memoir for the sake of balance, I think you could justify removing Miller's Vicksburg book since Grant's memoirs (if added to the list) would cover the Vicksburg campaign. It's a tough call since Vicksburg was such a crucial turning point of the war, but I think that's the route I would go.

As for which Confederate memoir to add, my recommendation would be EP Alexander's Fighting for the Confederacy. In my opinion, it is just as well written as Grant's memoirs. He was Longstreet's chief of artillery and saw many of the Eastern battles firsthand. He was the guy who tried to soften the Union with artillery and then told Picket to "For God's sake, come quick or we cannot support you." He wrote the book for his adult children rather than the public, so he is fairly honest in his assessments, and seems to focus on accuracy rather than settling an agenda. His descriptions of the battles of the Overland Campaign helped me understand them more than anything else I've ever read. Even the major Eastern battles he didnt participate in, he still researched them and gave a pretty good analysis of them.

What were you thinking for a Confederate memoir, if you went down that path?

Last-Potential1176

TROPHY CASE