Portal:American Civil War

Military Portals:
Military history of: Australia
Europe
Germany
War (American Civil War
American Revolutionary War
World War I
World War II)
Battleships
Tanks

The American Civil War Portal

Battle of Fort Donelson by Kurz and Allison

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.

More about the American Civil War...

Featured article

The Marietta-class monitors were a pair of ironclad river monitors laid down in the summer of 1862 for the United States Navy during the American Civil War. Construction was slow, partially for lack of labor, and the ships were not completed until December 1865, after the war was over. However the navy did not accept them until 1866 and immediately laid them up. They were sold in 1873 without ever having been commissioned. (Full article...)

Grand Parade of the States

During the American Civil War, the State of Vermont continued the military tradition started by the Green Mountain Boys of American Revolutionary War fame, contributing a significant portion of its eligible men to the war effort. (Full article...)

Featured biography

Portrait by Mathew Brady of Sherman as a major general in May 1865. The black ribbon of mourning on his left arm is for President Lincoln.

William Tecumseh Sherman (/tɛˈkʌmsə/ te-KUM-sə; February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), receiving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched earth policies he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the first modern general".

Born in Ohio to a politically prominent family, Sherman graduated in 1840 from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He interrupted his military career in 1853 to pursue private business ventures, and at the outbreak of the Civil War he was superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy (now Louisiana State University). Sherman commanded a brigade of volunteers at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 before being transferred to the Western Theater. Stationed in Kentucky, his pessimism about the outlook of the war led to a nervous breakdown that required him to be briefly put on leave. He recovered by forging a close partnership with General Ulysses S. Grant. Sherman served under Grant in 1862 and 1863 during the battles of forts Henry and Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, as well as the Chattanooga campaign that culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of Tennessee. (Full article...)

WikiProjects

Featured picture

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

Did you know...

... that during the American Civil War, Charles B. Norton offered to hide Peter Force's large library for fear of a Confederate attack on Washington, D.C.?
... that at the Battle of Grand Gulf, men of the Confederate 3rd Missouri Infantry Regiment fired into the portholes of Union Navy ships?
... that information provided by the Confederate draftsman Anton R. Roessler was used by the Union Army to determine the ordnance potential of Texas?
... that writer James Kendall Hosmer chose to fight on the front lines in the American Civil War instead of serving on the staff of General Nathaniel P. Banks?
... that only three Confederate soldiers were killed at the Battle of Grand Gulf, but one of them was the commander of Fort Wade?
... that The Minute Man was cast from the metal of ten cannons captured from the Confederate Army during the American Civil War?