Portal:American Civil War

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The American Civil War Portal

Union troops build pontoon bridges

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 28th Virginia battle flag is a Confederate battle flag that belonged to the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment. Captured by the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg, the flag was brought to Minnesota and exhibited at the state's capitol for several years before passing into the permanent collection of the Minnesota Historical Society after 1896 where it has remained since. Although various groups in Virginia have requested that the flag be returned, beginning as early as 1960, Minnesota has repeatedly declined to return it, with Governor Jesse Ventura (serving 1999–2003) asking "Why? I mean, we won."

The battle flag was captured at the Battle of Gettysburg by Private Marshall Sherman of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment, and remained in Sherman's possession in Minnesota after being inventoried by the United States War Department in 1867. A 1905 congressional resolution that flags from the American Civil War should be returned to their places of origin did not lead to the return of the flag to Virginia, nor did requests by Virginia or groups therein for its return in 1961, 1998, 2000, and 2003; a request by the governor of Virginia to borrow the flag in 2013 was also declined. (Full article...)

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Grand Parade of the States

Arizona Territory, colloquially referred to as Confederate Arizona, was an organized incorporated territory of the Confederate States of America that existed from August 1, 1861, to May 26, 1865, when the Confederate States Army Trans-Mississippi Department, commanded by General Edmund Kirby Smith, surrendered at Shreveport, Louisiana. However, after the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the Confederates had to retreat from the territory, and by July 1862, effective Confederate control of the territory had ended. Delegates to the secession convention had voted in March 1861 to secede from the New Mexico Territory and the Union, and seek to join the Confederacy. It consisted of the portion of the New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel, including parts of the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona. The capital was Mesilla, along the southern border. The breakaway region overlapped Arizona Territory, established by the Union government in February 1863.

Arizona was proclaimed a Confederate territory on August 1, 1861, after Colonel John R. Baylor's victory at the Battle of Mesilla. His hold on the area was broken after Glorieta Pass (March 26–28, 1862), the defining battle of the New Mexico Campaign. In July 1862, the Confederate territorial government withdrew to El Paso, Texas. With the approach of Union troops, it relocated to San Antonio, where it remained for the duration of the civil war. The territory continued to be represented in the Confederate States Congress, and Confederate troops continued to fight under the Arizona banner until the war ended. (Full article...)

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Portrait by Abraham Bogardus, c. 1880

Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was the 21st president of the United States, serving from 1881 to 1885. He was a Republican lawyer from New York who previously served as the 20th vice president under President James A. Garfield. Assuming the presidency after Garfield's assassination, Arthur's presidency saw the largest expansion of the U.S. Navy, the end of the so-called "spoils system", and the implementation of harsher restrictions for migrants entering from abroad.

Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, grew up in upstate New York and practiced law in New York City. He served as quartermaster general of the New York Militia during the American Civil War. Following the war, he devoted more time to New York Republican politics and quickly rose in Senator Roscoe Conkling's political organization. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him as Collector of the Port of New York in 1871, and he was an important supporter of Conkling and the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878, following bitter disputes between Conkling and President Rutherford B. Hayes over control of patronage in New York, Hayes fired Arthur as part of a plan to reform the federal patronage system. In June 1880, the extended contest between Grant, identified with the Stalwarts, and James G. Blaine, the candidate of the Half-Breed faction, led to the compromise selection of Ohio's Garfield for president. Republicans then nominated Arthur for vice president to balance the ticket geographically and to placate Stalwarts disappointed by Grant's defeat. Garfield and Arthur won the 1880 presidential election and took office in March 1881. Four months into his term, Garfield was shot by an assassin; he died 11 weeks later, and Arthur assumed the presidency. (Full article...)

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

Did you know...

... that Justus H. Rathbone, founder of the Knights of Pythias, served as a hospital steward during the American Civil War?
... that Dubuque, Arkansas, was destroyed in the American Civil War and is now covered by the waters of Bull Shoals Lake?
... 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 after the Little Rock campaign, Union forces held three-quarters of Arkansas?
... that singer Frank Croxton performed a duet with his father for the unveiling of a monument to a Confederate States Army general?
... that the only functioning secondary school in Mississippi during the American Civil War was founded by Thomas S. Gathright?