Portal:American Civil War

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The American Civil War Portal

African-American soldiers near Dutch Gap, Virginia

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a sectional rebellion against the United States of America by the Confederate States, formed of eleven southern states' governments which moved to secede from the Union after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. The Union's victory was eventually achieved by leveraging advantages in population, manufacturing and logistics and through a strategic naval blockade denying the Confederacy access to the world's markets.

In many ways, the conflict's central issues – the enslavement of African Americans, the role of constitutional federal government, and the rights of states – are still not completely resolved. Not surprisingly, the Confederate army's surrender at Appomattox on April 9,1865 did little to change many Americans' attitudes toward the potential powers of central government. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution in the years immediately following the war did not change the racial prejudice prevalent among Americans of the day; and the process of Reconstruction did not heal the deeply personal wounds inflicted by four brutal years of war and more than 970,000 casualties – 3 percent of the population, including approximately 560,000 deaths. As a result, controversies affected by the war's unresolved social, political, economic and racial tensions continue to shape contemporary American thought. The causes of the war, the reasons for the outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of much discussion even today. (Full article)

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The 21st Massachusetts Infantry was part of Ferrero's Brigade, which captured the infamous Burnside's Bridge during the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862

The 21st Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was organized in Worcester, Massachusetts and mustered into service on August 23, 1861.

After garrison duty at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the regiment served with the Coast Division commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. The Coast Division was deployed in January 1862 for operations on the coast of North Carolina, and participated in the Battle of Roanoke Island and the Battle of New Bern among other engagements. Burnside's division was recalled to Virginia in July 1862. The 21st Massachusetts Infantry was then attached to the Army of the Potomac and participated in several of the largest battles of the Civil War, including the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Antietam, and the Battle of Fredericksburg. The most devastating engagement of the war for the 21st was the Battle of Chantilly, fought on September 1, 1862, during which the unit suffered 35 percent casualties. From March 1863 to January 1864, the 21st served with Burnside in the Department of the Ohio, seeing action in Kentucky and eastern Tennessee. In May 1864, the regiment rejoined the Army of the Potomac, participating in Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant's Overland campaign and the siege of Petersburg. The regiment was a favorite of Clara Barton, the famed battlefield nurse, who was also from Worcester County, Massachusetts. (Full article...)

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Grand Parade of the States

Alabama was central to the Civil War, with the secession convention at Montgomery, the birthplace of the Confederacy, inviting other slaveholding states to form a southern republic, during January–March 1861, and to develop new state constitutions. The 1861 Alabaman constitution granted citizenship to current U.S. residents, but prohibited import duties (tariffs) on foreign goods, limited a standing military, and as a final issue, opposed emancipation by any nation, but urged protection of African-American slaves with trials by jury, and reserved the power to regulate or prohibit the African slave trade. The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede, but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama, while the majority of slave states were in the Union. Congress had voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4, 1861, but it was never ratified.

Even before secession, the governor of Alabama Andrew B. Moore defied the United States government by seizing the two federal forts at the Gulf Coast (forts Morgan and Gaines) and the arsenal at Mount Vernon in January 1861 to distribute weapons to Alabama towns. The peaceful seizure of Alabama forts preceded by three months the bombing and capture of the Union's Fort Sumter (SC) on April 12, 1861. (Full article...)

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Anderson c. 1864

William T. Anderson (c. 1840 – October 26, 1864), known by the nickname "Bloody Bill" Anderson, was a soldier who was one of the deadliest and most notorious Confederate guerrilla leaders in the American Civil War. Anderson led a band of volunteer partisan raiders who targeted Union loyalists and federal soldiers in the states of Missouri and Kansas.

Raised by a family of Southerners in Kansas, Anderson began to support himself by stealing and selling horses in 1862. After a former friend and secessionist turned Union loyalist judge killed his father, Anderson killed the judge and fled to Missouri. There he robbed travelers and killed several Union soldiers. In early 1863 he joined Quantrill's Raiders, a group of Confederate guerrillas which operated along the Kansas–Missouri border. He became a skilled bushwhacker, earning the trust of the group's leaders, William Quantrill and George M. Todd. Anderson's bushwhacking marked him as a dangerous man and eventually led the Union to imprison his sisters. After a building collapse in the makeshift jail in Kansas City, Missouri, left one of them dead in custody and the other permanently maimed, Anderson devoted himself to revenge. He took a leading role in the Lawrence Massacre and later took part in the Battle of Baxter Springs, both in 1863. (Full article...)

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Image 1Atlanta roundhouse ruin at History of Atlanta, by George Barnard
Image 2William H. Seward, United States Secretary of State during the American Civil War
Image 3United States President (and former Brigadier-General) Benjamin Harrison
Image 4John A. Dahlgren, by Mathew Brady
Image 5Ulysses S. Grant, by Thure de Thulstrup
Image 6John Lorimer Worden, by Mathew Brady
Image 7Lithographic facsimile of the Bixby letter, by Huber's Museum
Image 8David Dixon Porter, by Mathew Brady
Image 9Battle of Fort Sanders, by Kurz and Allison
Image 10The print version of Sherman in South Carolina: The burning of McPhersonville at McPhersonville, South Carolina, by William Waud
Image 11First Battle of Bull Run map
Image 12Quaker guns, by George Barnard and James F. Gibson
Image 13Confederate casualties at Chancellorsville during the American Civil War, by the National Archives and Records Administration
Image 14Siege of Yorktown, by James F. Gibson
Image 15Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, by Alfred Waud
Image 16Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Image 17Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, by Thure de Thulstrup
Image 18Andersonville Prison at Andersonville National Historic Site, by John L. Ransom
Image 19Daniel McCallum, by the Brady National Photographic Art Gallery
Image 20The Chickahominy – Sumner's Upper Bridge at Peninsula campaign, by William McIlvaine
Image 21The original sketch of Sherman in South Carolina: The burning of McPhersonville, at and by William Waud
Image 22President Rutherford B. Hayes was the 19th President of the USA
Image 23Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and John A. McClernand in 1862 by Alexander Gardner
Image 24George Atzerodt, by Alexander Gardner
Image 25Military execution of the conspirators in the Abraham Lincoln assassination
Image 26Battle of Harpers Ferry, by Robert Knox Sneden
Image 27Abner Doubleday
Image 28Abraham Lincoln's private secretary and biographer John Hay
Image 29Charles Pomeroy Stone
Image 30Pickett's Charge, by Thure de Thulstrup
Image 31Harriet Tubman
Image 32Francis B. Spinola, Brigadier General for the Union in the American Civil War, and Congressman from New York
Image 33The burning of Columbia at Columbia, South Carolina in the American Civil War, by William Waud
Image 34Charles Griffin
Image 35George Armstrong Custer, by George L. Andrews
Image 36William Birney
Image 37Richmond, Virginia after the American Civil War
Image 38African-American Civil War soldiers
Image 39Christian Fleetwood
Image 40Braxton Bragg
Image 41Andersonville survivor
Image 42John F. Reynolds, by Alfred Rudolph Waud
Image 43Robert E. Lee, by Levin Corbin Handy
Image 44Ambrose Burnside, by Matthew Brady
Image 45Battle of Franklin, by Kurz and Allison
Image 46Christopher Raymond Perry Rodgers

Did you know...

... that Colonel Bradley Winslow was brevetted by US president Abraham Lincoln for "brave and gallant conduct" during the siege of Petersburg in the American Civil War?
... that some historians believe that Steele's Greenville expedition marked a shift in the Union's war policy?
... that Dubuque, Arkansas, was destroyed in the American Civil War and is now covered by the waters of Bull Shoals Lake?
... that the only functioning secondary school in Mississippi during the American Civil War was founded by Thomas S. Gathright?
... that Enoch Marvin Banks resigned from the University of Florida because of public outrage over his belief that the American Civil War was caused by slavery?
... that Romeo and Juliet both served in the Union Navy?