Just as the city was establishing itself as the financial capital of the United States, a combination of the results of rapid population growth and terrible weather resulted in a fire that laid waste to the wealthiest part of America’s wealthiest city. As the New York Mercantile Advisor wrote, “there is a terrible calamity in New York.”
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.