# data[].attributes.body
Woman started moving to the west of the United States because they were able to have the same freedom as man had also because of the gold rush. Such as farming and ranching without men. Here is a movie explaining more about Woman of the Wild West.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Could You Survive Womanhood in the Wild West?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hydropower is energy in moving water

People have a long history of using the force of water flowing in streams and rivers to produce mechanical energy. Hydropower was one of the first sources of energy used for electricity generation, and until 2019, hydropower was the leading source of total annual U.S. renewable electricity generation.

In 2022, hydroelectricity accounted for about 6.2% of total U.S. utility-scale ¹ electricity generation and 28.7% of total utility-scale renewable electricity generation. Hydroelectricity generation varies annually, and it's share of total U.S. electricity generation generally decreased from the 1950's through 2020, mainly because of increases in electricity generation from other sources. Hydroelectricity's percentage share of total annual U.S. electricity generation in 2001 through 2022 averaged about 6.7%.

Hydropower relies on the water cycle

Solar energy heats water on the surface of rivers, lakes, and oceans, which causes the water to evaporate.

Water vapor condenses into clouds and falls as precipitation-rain and snow.

Precipitation collects in streams and rivers, which empty into oceans and lakes, where it evaporates and begins the cycle again.

The amount of precipitation that drains into rivers and streams in a geographic area determines the amount of water available for producing hydropower. Seasonal variations in precipitation and long-term changes in precipitation patterns, such as droughts, can have significant effects on the availability of hydropower production.

Hydroelectric power is produced with moving water

Because the source of hydroelectric power is water, hydroelectric power plants are usually located on or near a water source. The volume of the water flow and the change in elevation-or fall, and often referred to as head -from one point to another determine the amount of available energy in moving water. In general, the greater the water flow and the higher the head, the more electricity a hydropower plant can produce.

At hydropower plants water flows through a pipe, or penstock, then pushes against and turns blades in a turbine that spin to power a generator to produce electricity.

Conventional hydroelectric facilities include:

Run-of-the-river systems, where the force of the river's current applies pressure on a turbine. The facilities may have a in the water course to divert water flow to hydro turbines.

Storage systems, where water accumulates in reservoirs created by dams on streams and rivers and is released through hydro turbines as needed to generate electricity. Most U.S. hydropower facilities have dams and storage reservoirs.

Pumped-storage hydropower facilities are a type of hydroelectric storage system where water is pumped from a water source up to a storage reservoir at a higher elevation. The water is released from the upper reservoir to power hydro turbines located below the upper reservoir. They usually pump water to storage when electricity demand and generation costs, or when wholesale electricity prices are relatively low, and release the stored water to generate electricity during peak electricity demand periods when wholesale electricity prices are relatively high. Pumped-storage hydroelectric systems generally use more electricity to pump water to the upper water storage reservoirs than they produce with the stored water. Therefore, pumped-storage facilities have net negative electricity generation balances.

Hydropower has a long history

Hydropower is one of the oldest sources of energy for producing mechanical and electrical energy, and up until 2019, it was the largest source of total annual U.S. renewable electricity generation. Thousands of years ago, people used hydropower to turn paddle wheels on rivers to grind grain. Before steam power and electricity were available in the United States, grain and lumber mills were powered directly with hydropower. The first industrial use of hydropower to generate electricity in the United States was in 1880 to power 16 brush-arc lamps at the Wolverine Chair Factory in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The first U.S. hydroelectric power plant to sell electricity opened on the Fox River near Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882.

There are about 1,450 conventional and 40 pumped-storage hydropower plants operating in the United States. The oldest operating U.S. hydropower facility is the Whiting plant in Whiting, Wisconsin, which started operating in 1891 and has a total generation capacity of about 4 megawatts (MW). Most U.S. hydroelectricity is produced at large dams on major rivers, and most of these hydroelectric dams were built before the mid-1970s by federal government agencies. The largest U.S. hydropower facility, and the largest U.S. electric power plant in electric generation capacity, is the Grand Coulee hydro dam on the Columbia River in Washington State, with 6,765 MW total generation capacity.
Last updated: April 20, 2023, with most recent data available.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The water cycle and its importance to understanding hydropower and how hydroelectricity is generated.

# data[].attributes.body
What did fur trappers do? Fur trappers would hunt the wild for food and wore clothing made of animal skins. Some trappers did work alone. However, most worked for fur companies that sent trappers out in small groups. Few had to face the dangers of the wilderness by themselves. The website below is where I got the information and more on fur trappers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Camp By Moonlight

Alfred Miller titled this sketch "moonlight camp scene" and the trapper standing is "spinning a yarn." One of the chief entertainments of the mountain men was yarn-spinning or telling stories around the night camp fire. The talk around the evening camp fire was a way for trappers to amuse themselves. It also was a way to pass on important "lessons" of the trappers' life. Perhaps this was because most mountain men were young and uneducated. Many were illiterate. Unfortunately, they did not write down or preserve many of these stories.
Photo: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (37.1940.135)

More About This Topic

In his book Across the Wide Missouri, Bernard De Voto wrote that spinning yarns was one way that the mountain men passed on important craft wisdom to the "greenhorns," that is, those new to the business.
"It was shop talk, trapping, hunting, trailing, fighting Indians, escaping from Indians, the lore of animals and plants, and always the lay of the land and old friends revisited and new fields to be found, water and starvation and trickery and feasts. . . . "

Source: Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947): 51.

Their Own Words

"An old trapper is up on his feet spinning a yarn wherein he is giving an account of an adventure of Markhead's with a grizzly bear. According to his account, Markhead was afraid of nothing on or under this eart, and 'was bound to shine [stand out] in the biggest sort of crowd' . . . During the recital there was a running commentary from the Trappers.--'Wagh' ' he was some'--'had old grit in him'--'could take the grissle off a darned panther's tail.' &c."

Source: Alfred Jacob Miller, The West of Alfred Jacob Miller (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951): text for plate 135.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trappers' Daily Lives | Trappers and Traders | Doing History Keeping the Past

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alfred Miller titled this sketch "moonlight camp scene" and the trapper standing is "spinning a yarn." One of the chief entertainments of the mountain men was yarn-spinning or telling stories around the night camp fire. The talk around the evening camp fire was a way for trappers to amuse themselves.

# data[].attributes.body
If was alive during this time I would get involved with the woman rights reform because I am a woman and I would want to be able to vote or go to college and do things that men can do. I can't think how it used to be where you couldn't even vote for what president you want, since you were a woman you couldn't really have a valid opinion. The woman probably couldn't get more education either like going to college normally college gets you a job like being in the medical field or anything that needs further learning. Overall the women's rights reform had a good cause and ended up getting some things solved.

# data[].attributes.body
The Mexican American War started by Mexico claiming the Nueces River and the United States claiming Rio Grande River, the day that they met up together the Mexican army set fire at the United States on April 25, 1846. Some facts about the Mexican American war is that Santa Anna used he war to reclaim Mexico, and the effects that this war had was Mexico was loss of life, economic ruin, and huge damage to the property. For the US, they gained huge new pieces of land. However the fight over what to do with it took center stage.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fighting in the Mexican-American War lasted only two years; from 1846 to 1848. The battles ranged from the Rio Grande, down to Mexico City; from New Mexico to California.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a trailer of Harriet Tubman's movie.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
HARRIET | Official Trailer | Now Playing

# data[].attributes.body
The slave trade is a transporting and selling humans as a slave. The slave trade started in the 16th century and in 1562 the first transatlantic happened in Brazil and then Europeans started to do the same. The slave trade lasted since the 16th century all the way to the 19th century. How did the slave trade finally stop? A law passed in 1807 for it to be illegal to import captive people from Africa to bring them to the united states.

# data[].attributes.body
The spinning jenny is a thread machine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Intro

The spinning of cotton into threads for weaving into cloth had traditionally taken place in the homes of textile workers - known as 'cottage industries'. But the 18th century saw the emergence of the 'Industrial Revolution', the great age of steam, canals and factories that changed the face of the British economy forever. James Hargreaves' 'Spinning Jenny', the patent for which is shown here, would revolutionise the process of cotton spinning. The machine used eight spindles onto which the thread was spun, so by turning a single wheel, the operator could now spin eight threads at once. This increased to eighty with improvements in the technology.

New 'manufactories' (an early word for 'factory') were a the result of new technologies such as this one. Large industrial buildings usually employed one central source of power to drive a whole network of machines. Richard Arkwright's cotton factories in Nottingham and Cromford, for example, employed nearly 600 people by the 1770s, including many small children, whose nimble hands made light-work of spinning.

Shelfmark: 37/840m.28

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The spinning of cotton into threads for weaving into cloth had traditionally taken place in the homes of textile workers - known as 'cottage industries'. But the 18th century saw the emergence of the 'Industrial Revolution', the great age of steam, canals and factories that changed the face of the British economy forever.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"The Stars and Bars"

Use

Proportion

5:9

Adopted

March 4, 1861 (first 7-star version)
December 10, 1861 (final 13-star version)

Design

Three horizontal stripes of equal height, alternating red and white, with a blue square two-thirds the height of the flag as the canton. Inside the canton are seven, eleven, or thirteen white five-pointed stars of equal size, arranged in a circle and pointing outward.

Designed by
Nicola Marschall

"The Stainless Banner"[a]

Use

Proportion

1:2[b]

Adopted

May 1, 1863

Design

A white rectangle two times as wide as it is tall, a red quadrilateral in the canton, inside the canton is a blue saltire with white outlining, with thirteen white five-pointed stars of equal size inside the saltire.

"The Blood-Stained Banner"

Use

Proportion

2:3

Adopted

March 4, 1865

Design

A white rectangle, one-and-a-half times as wide as it is tall, a red vertical stripe on the far right of the rectangle, a red quadrilateral in the canton, inside the canton is a blue saltire with white outlining, with thirteen white five-pointed stars of equal size inside the saltire.[c]

Designed by

Maj. Arthur L. Rogers[13]

The flags of the Confederate States of America have a history of three successive designs during the American Civil War. The flags were known as the "Stars and Bars", used from 1861 to 1863; the "Stainless Banner", used from 1863 to 1865; and the "Blood-Stained Banner", used in 1865 shortly before the Confederacy's dissolution. A rejected national flag design was also used as a battle flag by the Confederate Army and featured in the "Stainless Banner" and "Blood-Stained Banner" designs. Although this design was never a national flag, it is the most commonly recognized symbol of the Confederacy.

Since the end of the Civil War, private and official use of the Confederate flags, particularly the battle flag, has continued amid philosophical, political, cultural, and racial controversy in the United States. These include flags displayed in states; cities, towns and counties; schools, colleges and universities; private organizations and associations; and individuals. The battle flag was also featured in the state flags of Georgia and Mississippi, although it was removed by the former in 2003 and the latter in 2020. After the former was changed in 2001, the city of Trenton, Georgia, has used a flag design nearly identical to the previous version with the battle flag.

First flag: the "Stars and Bars" (1861-1863)

The Confederacy's first official national flag, often called the Stars and Bars, flew from March 4, 1861, to May 1, 1863. It was designed by Prussian-American artist Nicola Marschall in Marion, Alabama, and is said to resemble the Flag of Austria, with which Marschall would have been familiar. The original version of the flag featured a circle of seven white stars in the navy-blue canton, representing the seven states of the South that originally composed the Confederacy: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The "Stars and Bars" flag was adopted on March 4, 1861, in the first temporary national capital of Montgomery, Alabama, and raised over the dome of that first Confederate capitol. Marschall also designed the Confederate army uniform.

A monument in Louisburg, North Carolina, claims the "Stars and Bars" "was designed by a son of North Carolina / Orren Randolph Smith / and made under his direction by / Catherine Rebecca (Murphy) Winborne. / Forwarded to Montgomery, Ala. Feb 12, 1861, / Adopted by the Provisional Congress March 4, 1861".

One of the first acts of the Provisional Confederate Congress was to create the Committee on the Flag and Seal, chaired by William Porcher Miles, a Democratic congressman, and Fire-Eater from South Carolina. The committee asked the public to submit thoughts and ideas on the topic and was, as historian John M. Coski puts it, "overwhelmed by requests not to abandon the 'old flag' of the United States." Miles had already designed a flag that later became known as the Confederate Battle Flag, and he favored his flag over the "Stars and Bars" proposal. But given the popular support for a flag similar to the U.S. flag ("the Stars and Stripes" - originally established and designed in June 1777 during the Revolutionary War), the "Stars and Bars" design was approved by the committee.

As the Confederacy grew, so did the numbers of stars: two were added for Virginia and Arkansas in May 1861, followed by two more representing Tennessee and North Carolina in July, and finally two more for Missouri and Kentucky (while the legality of Missouri's secession is contested, the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky and the southern portion of Missouri early in the war, neither states partisan governments achieved substantive territory or population after 1862).

When the American Civil War broke out, the "Stars and Bars" confused the battlefield at the First Battle of Bull Run because of its similarity to the U.S. (or Union) flag, especially when it was hanging limp on its flagstaff. The "Stars and Bars" was also criticized on ideological grounds for its resemblance to the U.S. flag. Many Confederates disliked the Stars and Bars, seeing it as symbolic of a centralized federal power against which the Confederate states claimed to be seceding. As early as April 1861, a month after the flag's adoption, some were already criticizing the flag, calling it a "servile imitation" and a "detested parody" of the U.S. flag. In January 1862, George William Bagby, writing for the Southern Literary Messenger, wrote that many Confederates disliked the flag. "Everybody wants a new Confederate flag," Bagby wrote. "The present one is universally hated. It resembles the Yankee flag, and that is enough to make it unutterably detestable." The editor of the Charleston Mercury expressed a similar view: "It seems to be generally agreed that the 'Stars and Bars' will never do for us. They resemble too closely the dishonored 'Flag of Yankee Doodle' ... we imagine that the ' Battle Flag' will become the Southern Flag by popular acclaim." William T. Thompson, the editor of the Savannah-based Daily Morning News also objected to the flag, due to its aesthetic similarity to the U.S. flag, which for some Confederates had negative associations with emancipation and abolitionism. Thompson stated in April 1863 that he disliked the adopted flag "on account of its resemblance to that of the abolition despotism against which we are fighting."

Over the course of the flag's use by the CSA, additional stars were added to the canton, eventually bringing the total number to thirteen-a reflection of the Confederacy's claims of having admitted the border states of Kentucky and Missouri, where slavery was still widely practiced. The first showing of the 13-star flag was outside the Ben Johnson House in Bardstown, Kentucky; the 13-star design was also in use as the Confederate navy's battle ensign[citation needed ].

Second flag: the "Stainless Banner" (1863-1865)

Second national flag (May 1, 1863 - March 4, 1865), 2:1 ratio

Second national flag (May 1, 1863 - March 4, 1865), also used as the Confederate navy's ensign, 3:2 ratio

A 12-star variant of the Stainless Banner produced in Mobile, Alabama

Variant captured following the Battle of Painesville, 1865

Garrison Flag of Fort Fisher, the " Southern Gibraltar"

Many different designs were proposed during the solicitation for a second Confederate national flag, nearly all based on the Battle Flag. By 1863, it had become well-known and popular among those living in the Confederacy. The Confederate Congress specified that the new design be a white field "...with the union (now used as the battle flag) to be a square of two-thirds the width of the flag, having the ground red; thereupon a broad saltire of blue, bordered with white, and emblazoned with mullets or five-pointed stars, corresponding in number to that of the Confederate States."

The flag is also known as the Stainless Banner, and the matter of the person behind its design remains a point of contention. On April 23, 1863, the Savannah Morning News editor William Tappan Thompson, with assistance from William Ross Postell, a Confederate blockade runner, published an editorial championing a design featuring the battle flag on a white background he referred to later as "The White Man's Flag", a name which never caught on. In explaining the white background of his design, Thompson wrote, "As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause." Most contemporary interpretations of the white area on the flag hold that it represented the purity of the secessionist cause. In a letter to Confederate Congressman C. J. Villeré, dated April 24, 1863, a design similar to the flag which was eventually created was proposed by General P. G. T. Beauregard, "whose earlier penchant for practicality had established the precedent for visual distinctiveness on the battlefield, proposed that 'a good design for the national flag would be the present battle-flag as Union Jack, and the rest all white or all blue'... The final version of the second national flag, adopted May 1, 1863, did just this: it set the St. Andrew's Cross of stars in the Union Jack with the rest of the civilian banner entirely white."

The Confederate Congress debated whether the white field should have a blue stripe and whether it should be bordered in red. William Miles delivered a speech supporting the simple white design that was eventually approved. He argued that the battle flag must be used, but it was necessary to emblazon it for a national flag, but as simply as possible, with a plain white field. When Thompson received word the Congress had adopted the design with a blue stripe, he published an editorial on April 28 in opposition, writing that "the blue bar running up the center of the white field and joining with the right lower arm of the blue cross, is in bad taste, and utterly destructive of the symmetry and harmony of the design." Confederate Congressman Peter W. Gray proposed the amendment that gave the flag its white field. Gray stated that the white field represented "purity, truth, and freedom."

Regardless of who truly originated the Stainless Banner's design, whether by heeding Thompson's editorials or Beauregard's letter, the Confederate Congress officially adopted the Stainless Banner on May 1, 1863. The flags that were actually produced by the Richmond Clothing Depot used the 1.5:1 ratio adopted for the Confederate navy's battle ensign, rather than the official 2:1 ratio.

Initial reaction to the second national flag was favorable, but over time it became criticized for being "too white." Military officers also voiced complaints about the flag being too white, for various reasons, such as the danger of being mistaken for a flag of truce, especially on naval ships where it was too easily soiled. The Columbia-based Daily South Carolinian observed that it was essentially a battle flag upon a flag of truce and might send a mixed message. Due to the flag's resemblance to one of truce, some Confederate soldiers cut off the flag's white portion, leaving only the canton.

The first official use of the "Stainless Banner" was to drape the coffin of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson as it lay in state in the Virginia capitol, May 12, 1863. As a result of this first usage, the flag received the alternate nickname of the "Jackson Flag".

Third flag: the "Blood-Stained Banner" (1865)

Third national flag (after March 4, 1865)

Third national flag as commonly manufactured, with a square canton

Rogers lobbied successfully to have this alteration introduced in the Confederate Senate. Rogers defended his redesign as symbolizing the primary origins of the people of the Confederacy, with the saltire of the Scottish flag and the red bar from the flag of France, and having "as little as possible of the Yankee blue" - the Union Army wore blue, the Confederates gray.

The Flag Act of 1865, passed by the Confederate congress near the very end of the War, describes the flag in the following language:

The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That the flag of the Confederate States shall be as follows: The width two-thirds of its length, with the union (now used as the battle flag) to be in width three-fifths of the width of the flag, and so proportioned as to leave the length of the field on the side of the union twice the width of the field below it; to have the ground red and a broad blue saltire thereon, bordered with white and emblazoned with mullets or five pointed stars, corresponding in number to that of the Confederate States; the field to be white, except the outer half from the union to be a red bar extending the width of the flag.

Due to the timing, very few of these third national flags were actually manufactured and put into use in the field, with many Confederates never seeing the flag. Moreover, the ones made by the Richmond Clothing Depot used the square canton of the second national flag rather than the slightly rectangular one that was specified by the law.

Three versions of the flag of the Confederate States of America and the Confederate Battle Flag are shown on this printed poster from 1896. The "Stars and Bars" can be seen in the upper left. Standing at the center are Stonewall Jackson, P. G. T. Beauregard, and Robert E. Lee, surrounded by bust portraits of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and various Confederate army officers, such as James Longstreet and A. P. Hill.

Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, 1903

At the First Battle of Manassas, near Manassas, Virginia, the similarity between the "Stars and Bars" and the "Stars and Stripes" caused confusion and military problems. Regiments carried flags to help commanders observe and assess battles in the warfare of the era. At a distance, the two national flags were hard to tell apart. Also, Confederate regiments carried many other flags, which added to the possibility of confusion.

After the battle, General P. G. T. Beauregard wrote that he was "resolved then to have [our flag] changed if possible, or to adopt for my command a 'Battle flag', which would be Entirely different from any State or Federal flag". He turned to his aide, who happened to be William Porcher Miles, the former chairman of the Confederate Congress's Committee on the Flag and Seal. Miles described his rejected national flag design to Beauregard. Miles also told the Committee on the Flag and Seal about the general's complaints and request that the national flag be changed. The committee rejected the idea by a four-to-one vote, after which Beauregard proposed the idea of having two flags. He described the idea in a letter to his commanding General Joseph E. Johnston:

I wrote to [Miles] that we should have 'two' flags - a 'peace' or parade flag, and a 'war' flag to be used only on the field of battle - but congress having adjourned no action will be taken on the matter - How would it do us to address the War Dept. on the subject of Regimental or badge flags made of red with two blue bars crossing each other diagonally on which shall be introduced the stars, ... We would then on the field of battle know our friends from our Enemies.

The flag that Miles had favored when he was chairman of the "Committee on the Flag and Seal" eventually became the battle flag and, ultimately, the Confederacy's most popular flag.

The South Carolina sovereignty/secession flag is said to have inspired the battle flag.

According to Museum of the Confederacy Director John Coski, Miles' design was inspired by one of the many "secessionist flags" flown at the South Carolina secession convention in Charleston of December 1860. That flag was a blue St George's Cross (an upright or Latin cross) on a red field, with 15 white stars on the cross, representing the slave-holding states, and, on the red field, palmetto and crescent symbols. Miles received various feedback on this design, including a critique from Charles Moise, a self-described "Southerner of Jewish persuasion." Moise liked the design but asked that "... the symbol of a particular religion not be made the symbol of the nation." Taking this into account, Miles changed his flag, removing the palmetto and crescent, and substituting a heraldic saltire ("X") for the upright cross. The number of stars was changed several times as well. He described these changes and his reasons for making them in early 1861. The diagonal cross was preferable, he wrote, because "it avoided the religious objection about the cross (from the Jews and many Protestant sects), because it did not stand out so conspicuously as if the cross had been placed upright thus." He also argued that the diagonal cross was "more Heraldric [] than Ecclesiastical, it being the 'saltire' of Heraldry, and significant of strength and progress."

According to Coski, the Saint Andrew's Cross (also used on the flag of Scotland as a white saltire on a blue field) had no special place in Southern iconography at the time. If Miles had not been eager to conciliate the Southern Jews, his flag would have used the traditional upright " Saint George's Cross" (as used on the flag of England, a red cross on a white field). James B. Walton submitted a battle flag design essentially identical to Miles' except with an upright Saint George's cross, but Beauregard chose the diagonal cross design.

Miles' flag and all the flag designs up to that point were rectangular ("oblong") in shape. General Johnston suggested making it square to conserve material. Johnston also specified the various sizes to be used by different types of military units. Generals Beauregard and Johnston and Quartermaster General Cabell approved the 12-star Confederate Battle Flag's design at the Ratcliffe home, which served briefly as Beauregard's headquarters, near Fairfax Court House in September 1861. The 12th star represented Missouri. President Jefferson Davis arrived by train at Fairfax Station soon after and was shown the design for the new battle flag at the Ratcliffe House. Hetty Cary and her sister and cousin made prototypes. One such 12-star flag resides in the collection of Richmond's Museum of the Confederacy and the other is in the Confederate Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans.

On November 28, 1861, Confederate soldiers in General Robert E. Lee's newly reorganized Army of Northern Virginia received the new battle flags in ceremonies at Centreville and Manassas, Virginia, and carried them throughout the Civil War. Beauregard gave a speech encouraging the soldiers to treat the new flag with honor and that it must never be surrendered. Many soldiers wrote home about the ceremony and the impression the flag had upon them, the "fighting colors" boosting morale after the confusion at the Battle of First Manassas. From then on, the battle flag grew in its identification with the Confederacy and the South in general. The flag's stars represented the number of states in the Confederacy. The distance between the stars decreased as the number of states increased, reaching thirteen when the secessionist factions of Kentucky and Missouri joined in late 1861.

The Army of Northern Virginia battle flag assumed a prominent place post-war when it was adopted as the copyrighted emblem of the United Confederate Veterans. Its continued use by the Southern Army's post-war veteran's groups, the United Confederate Veterans (U.C.V.) and the later Sons of Confederate Veterans, (S.C.V.), and elements of the design by related similar female descendants organizations of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, (U.D.C.), led to the assumption that it was, as it has been termed, "the soldier's flag" or "the Confederate battle flag."

The square "battle flag" is also properly known as "the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia". It was sometimes called "Beauregard's flag" or "the Virginia battle flag". A Virginia Department of Historic Resources marker declaring Fairfax, Virginia, as the birthplace of the Confederate battle flag was dedicated on April 12, 2008, near the intersection of Main and Oak Streets, in Fairfax, Virginia.

The fledgling Confederate States Navy adopted and used several types of flags, banners, and pennants aboard all CSN ships: jacks, battle ensigns, and small boat ensigns, as well as commissioning pennants, designating flags, and signal flags.[citation needed ]

The First Confederate Navy jacks, in use from 1861 to 1863, consisted of a circle of seven to fifteen five-pointed white stars against a field of "medium blue." It was flown forward aboard all Confederate warships while they were anchored in port. One seven-star jack still exists today (found aboard the captured ironclad CSS Atlanta) that is actually "dark blue" in color (see illustration below, left).

The Second Confederate Navy Jack was a rectangular cousin of the Confederate Army's battle flag and was in use from 1863 until 1865. It existed in a variety of dimensions and sizes, despite the CSN's detailed naval regulations. The blue color of the diagonal saltire's "Southern Cross" was much lighter than the battle flag's dark blue.

The 9-star First Naval Ensign of the paddle steamer CSS Curlew

A 12-star First Confederate Navy Ensign of the gunboat CSS Ellis, 1861-1862

Admiral's Rank flag of Franklin Buchanan, flown from CSS Virginia during the first day of the Battle of Hampton Roads and also flown from the CSS Tennessee during the Battle of Mobile Bay

The first national flag, also known as the Stars and Bars (see above), served from 1861 to 1863 as the Confederate Navy's first battle ensign. It was generally made with a 2:3 aspect ratio, but a few very wide 1:2 ratio ensigns still survive today in museums and private collections. As the Confederacy grew, so did the numbers of white stars on the ensign's dark blue canton: seven-, nine-, eleven-, and thirteen-star groupings were typical. Even a few fourteen- and fifteen-starred ensigns were made to include states expected to secede but never completely joined the Confederacy.[citation needed ]

The second national flag was later adapted as a naval ensign, using a shorter 2:3 aspect ratio than the 1:2 ratio adopted by the Confederate Congress for the national flag. This particular battle ensign was the only example taken around the world, finally becoming the last Confederate flag lowered in the Civil War; this happened aboard the commerce raider CSS Shenandoah in Liverpool, England, on November 7, 1865.

Hundreds of proposed national flag designs were submitted to the Confederate Congress during competitions to find a First National flag (February-May 1861) and Second National flag (April 1862; April 1863).

First National flag proposals

When the Confederate States of America was founded during the Montgomery Convention that took place on February 4, 1861, a national flag was not selected by the Convention due to not having any proposals. President Jefferson Davis' inauguration took place under the 1861 state flag of Alabama, and the celebratory parade was led by a unit carrying the 1861 state flag of Georgia.

Realizing that they quickly needed a national banner to represent their sovereignty, the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States set up the Committee on Flag and Seal. The chairman was William Porcher Miles, who was also the Representative of South Carolina in the Confederate House of Representatives.

The Committee began a competition to find a new national flag, with an unwritten deadline being that a national flag had to be adopted by March 4, 1861, the date of President Lincoln's inauguration. This would serve to show the world the South was truly sovereign. Hundreds of examples were submitted from across the Confederate States and from states that were not yet part of Confederacy (e.g. Kentucky), and even from Union states (such as New York). Many of the proposed designs paid homage to the Stars and Stripes, due to a nostalgia in early 1861 that many of the new Confederate citizens felt towards the Union. Some of the homages were outright mimicry, while others were less obviously inspired by the Stars and Stripes, yet were still intended to pay homage to that flag.

Those inspired by the Stars and Stripes were discounted almost immediately by the Committee due to mirroring the Union's flag too closely. While others were wildly different, many of which were very complex and extravagant, these were largely discounted due to the being too complicated and expensive to produce.

The winner of the competition was Nicola Marschall's "Stars and Bars" flag. The "Stars and Bars" flag was only selected by the Congress of March 4, 1861, the day of the deadline. The first flag was produced in rush, due to the date having already been selected to host an official flag-raising ceremony, W. P. Miles credited the speedy completion of the first "Stars and Bars" flag to "Fair and nimble fingers". This flag, made of Merino, was raised by Letitia Tyler over the Alabama state capitol. The Congress inspected two other finalist designs on March 4: One was a "Blue ring or circle on a field of red", while the other consisted of alternating red and blue stripes with a blue canton containing stars. These two designs were lost, and we only know of them thanks to an 1872 letter sent by William Porcher Miles to P. G. T. Beauregard.

William Porcher Miles, however, was not really happy with any of the proposals. He did not share in the nostalgia for the Union that many of his fellows Southerners felt, believing that the South's flag should be completely different from that of the North. To this end, he proposed his own flag design featuring a blue saltire on white Fimbriation with a field of red. (Miles had originally planned to use a blue St. George's Cross like that of the South Carolina Sovereignty Flag, but was dissuaded from doing so.) Within the blue saltire were seven white stars, representing the current seven states of the Confederacy, two on each of the left arms, one of each of the right arms, and one in the middle.

However, Miles' flag was not well received by the rest of the Congress. One Congressman even mocked it as looking "like a pair of Suspenders". Miles' flag lost out to the "Stars and Bars".

In addition to the Confederacy's national flags, a wide variety of flags and banners were flown by Southerners during the Civil War. Most famously, the " Bonnie Blue Flag" was used as an unofficial flag during the early months of 1861. It was flying above the Confederate batteries that first opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, in South Carolina beginning the Civil War. The " Van Dorn battle flag" was also carried by Confederate troops fighting in the Trans-Mississippi and Western theaters of war. Besides, many military units had their own regimental flags they would carry into battle.

An elongated version of the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee, and similar to The Second Confederate Navy Jack, in use from 1863 until 1865, although with the darker blue field of the Army's battle flag.

A square version of the Confederate Battle flag, similar to the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, but without the white fringe.

Though never having historically represented the Confederate States of America as a country, nor having been officially recognized as one of its national flags, the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia and its variants are now flag types commonly referred to as the Confederate Flag. This design has become commonly regarded as a symbol of racism and white supremacy or white nationalism, especially in the Southern United States. It is also known as the rebel flag, , and Southern cross (not to be confused with another use of the term Southern Cross, referring to Crux, a constellation of the southern sky used on the coats of arms and flags of various countries and sub-national entities). It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Stars and Bars, the name of the first national Confederate flag. The "rebel flag" is considered by some to be a highly divisive and polarizing symbol in the United States. A 2020 Quinnipiac poll showed that 55% of Southerners saw the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism, with a similar percentage for Americans as a whole. A YouGov poll in 2020 of more than 34,000 Americans reported that 41% viewed the flag as representing racism, and 34% viewed it as symbolizing southern heritage. A July 2021 Politico-Morning Consult poll of 1,996 registered voters reported that 47% viewed it as a symbol of Southern pride while 36% viewed it as a symbol of racism.

Cannon, Devereaux D. Jr. (2005) [1st pub. St. Luke's Press:1988]. The Flags of the Confederacy: An Illustrated History. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-565-54109-2.

Coski, John M. (2005). The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01722-1.

Coski, John M. (2009). The Confederate Battle Flag. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02986-6.

Coski, John M. (May 13, 2013). "The Birth of the 'Stainless Banner'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 7, 2019.

Madaus, H. Michael. Rebel Flags Afloat: A Survey of the Surviving Flags of the Confederate States Navy, Revenue Service, and Merchant Marine. Flag Research Center, 1986, Winchester, MA. ISSN 0015-3370. (Eighty-page, all Confederate naval flags issue of "The Flag Bulletin," magazine #115.)

Marcovitz, Hal. The Confederate Flag, American Symbols and Their Meanings. Mason Crest Publishers, 2002. ISBN 1-59084-035-6.

Preble, George Henry (1872). Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States of America, with an Introductory Account of the Symbols, Standards, Banners and Flags of Ancient and Modern Nations. Albany: Joel Munsell. p. 414. OCLC 612597989. as a people we are fighting to.

Preble, George Henry (1880). History of the Flag of the United States of America: And of the Naval and Yacht-Club Signals, Seals, and Arms, and Principal National Songs of the United States, with a Chronicle of the Symbols, Standards, Banners, and Flags of Ancient and Modern Nations (2nd revised ed.). Boston: A. Williams and Company. p. 523. OCLC 645323981. William Ross Postell Flag.

Silkenat, David. Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-4696-4972-6.

"Southern Confederacy" (Atlanta, Georgia), 5 Feb 1865, pg 2. Congressional, Richmond, 4 Feb: A bill to establish the flag of the Confederate States was adopted without opposition, and the flag was displayed in the Capitol today. The only change was a substitution of a red bar for one-half of the white field of the former flag, composing the flag's outer end.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Flags of the Confederate States of America - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"The Stars and Bars" Use Proportion 5:9 Adopted March 4, 1861 (first 7-star version)December 10, 1861 (final 13-star version) Design Three horizontal stripes of equal height, alternating red and white, with a blue square two-thirds the height of the flag as the canton.

# data[].attributes.body
Santa Anna died on June 21 1835 in Mexico City in a battle that lasted just 18 minutes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón ( Spanish pronunciation: [anˈtonjo ˈlopez ðe ˌsan'taːna]; 21 February 1794 - 21 June 1876), usually known as Santa Anna or López de Santa Anna, was a Mexican politician and general. His influence on post-independence Mexican politics and government in the first half of the nineteenth century is such that historians of Mexico often refer to it as the "Age of Santa Anna".

Santa Anna agreed with important points in the Monroe Doctrine whereby European powers would not use Dons, Lords, and Governors as absentee landlords of their conquered lands in the Americas. He disagreed with the U.S on slavery; but he did not agree to allow Africans into his territory as freed slaves. He carried out vicious attacks against Native Mexican American tribes. He was called[by whom? ] "the Man of Destiny" who "loomed over his time like a melodramatic colossus, the uncrowned monarch".

Santa Anna's military and political career featured a series of reversals. He at first opposed Mexican independence from Spain, but then fought in support of it. He backed the monarchy of First Mexican Empire, then revolted against the emperor. He "represents the stereotypical caudillo in Mexican history".[need quotation to verify ][need quotation to verify ] Lucas Alamán writes that "the history of Mexico since 1822 might accurately be called the history of Santa Anna's revolutions. His name plays a major role in all the political events of the country and its destiny has become intertwined with his."

Santa Anna, an enigmatic, patriotic, and controversial figure, wielded great power in Mexico during the turbulent 40 years of his political career. He led as general at crucial points and served 11 non-consecutive presidential terms over a period of 22 years. In the periods when he was not serving as president, he continued to pursue his military career. He was a wealthy landowner who built a political base in the port city of Veracruz.

Perceived as a hero by his troops, Santa Anna sought glory for himself and for his army and independence for Mexico. He repeatedly rebuilt his reputation after major losses. Yet historians and many[quantify ] Mexicans rank him as one of "those who failed the nation". His centralist rhetoric and military failures resulted in Mexico losing half its territory, beginning with the Texas Revolution of 1836 and continuing with the Mexican Cession of 1848 following Mexico's loss to the United States in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. His leadership in the Mexican-American War and his willingness to fight to the bitter end prolonged the war: "[...] more than any other single person it was Santa Anna who denied Polk's dream of a short war." After the debacle of the war, he returned to the Mexican presidency and in 1853 sold Mexican territory to the U.S. Overthrown by the liberal Revolution of Ayutla in 1855, he lived most of his later years in exile.

Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón was born in Xalapa, Veracruz, Nueva España (New Spain), on 21 February 1794. He was from a respected Spanish family. He was named for his father, Licenciado Antonio López de Santa Anna (b. 1761), a university graduate and a lawyer; his mother was Manuela Pérez de Lebrón (d. 1814). The family belonged to the racially elite group of American-born Spaniards, although the family was not wealthy but rather middle-class. The men held second-rank royal and clerical positions.

The family prospered in Veracruz, where the merchant class dominated politics. Santa Anna's paternal uncle Ángel López de Santa Anna was a public clerk ( escribano) in Veracruz and became aggrieved when the town council of Veracruz prevented him from moving to Mexico City to advance his career. Since the late 18th-century Bourbon Reforms, the crown had favored peninsular-born Spaniards over American-born, so that young Santa Anna's family was affected by the growing disgruntlement of creoles whose upward mobility was thwarted. Santa Anna's other paternal uncle, José, was a priest, notorious for his corrupt practices and sexual appetite, who fell afoul of the Mexican Inquisition.

His mother favored her son's choice of a military career over his father's choice for him, supporting his desire to join the royal army, rather than be a shopkeeper. His mother's friendly relationship with the intendant (governor) of Veracruz secured Santa Anna's military appointment although he was underage. His parents' marriage produced seven children, four sisters and two brothers, and Santa Anna was close to his sister Francisca and brother Manuel, who also joined the royal army.

Santa Anna's origins on the East Coast of Mexico had important ramifications for his military career, since he had immunity from yellow fever, endemic to the region. The port of Veracruz and environs were known to be unhealthy for those not native to the region so that Santa Anna had a personal strategic advantage against military forces from elsewhere. Being a military officer in a time of war was a way that a provincial, middle-class man could vault from obscurity to a position of leadership. Santa Anna distinguished himself in battle, a path that led him to a national political career.

His provincial origins made him uncomfortable in the halls of power in Mexico City dominated by cliques of elite men, so his aversion to the capital and frequent retreats to his base in Veracruz are understandable. He cultivated contact with ordinary Mexican men and pursued entertainments such as cockfighting. Over his career, he was a populist caudillo, a strongman wielding both military and political power, similar to others who emerged in the wake of Spanish American wars of independence.

Santa Anna's early military career fighting the insurgency for independence and then joining the insurgency against the Spanish crown presaged his many changes of position in his lifetime. In June 1810, the 16-year-old Santa Anna joined the Fijo de Veracruz infantry regiment In September, secular cleric Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla denounced bad government, sparking a spontaneous mass uprising in Mexico's rich agricultural area, the Bajío. Although some creole elites had chafed as their upward mobility had been thwarted by crown policies favoring peninsular-born Spaniards, the Hidalgo Revolt saw most creoles favoring continued crown rule. In particular, the Santa Anna family "saw themselves as aligned to the peninsular elite, whom they served, and were in turn recognized as belonging,"

The Mexican War of Independence lasted until 1821, and Santa Anna, like most creole military officers, fought for the crown against the mixed-raced insurgents for independence. Santa Anna's commanding officer was José Joaquín de Arredondo, who taught him much about dealing with Mexican rebels. In 1811, Santa Anna was wounded in the left hand by an arrow during the campaign under Colonel Arredondo in the town of Amoladeras, in the intendancy (administrative district) of San Luis Potosí. In 1813, Santa Anna served in Texas against the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition and at the Battle of Medina, in which he was cited for bravery. He was promoted quickly; he became a second lieutenant in February 1812 and first lieutenant before the end of that year. During the initial rebellion, the young officer witnessed Arredondo's fierce counter-insurgency policy of mass executions. The early fighting against the insurgent massed forces gave way to guerrilla warfare and a military stalemate.

When royalist officer Agustín de Iturbide changed sides in 1821 and allied with insurgent Vicente Guerrero, fighting for independence under the Plan of Iguala, Santa Anna also joined the fight for independence. The changed circumstances in Spain, where liberals had ousted Ferdinand VII and began implementing the Spanish liberal constitution of 1812, made many elites in Mexico reconsider their options.

Iturbide rewarded Santa Anna with the command of the vital port of Veracruz, the gateway from the Gulf of Mexico to the rest of the nation and site of the customs house. However, Iturbide subsequently removed Santa Anna from the post, prompting Santa Anna to rise in rebellion in December 1822 against Iturbide. Santa Anna already had significant power in his home region of Veracruz, and "he was well along the path to becoming the regional caudillo." Santa Anna claimed in his Plan of Veracruz that he rebelled because Iturbide had dissolved the Constituent Congress. He also promised to support free trade with Spain, an important principle for his home region of Veracruz.

Santa Anna was no longer the main player in the movement against Iturbide and the creation of new political arrangements. He sought to regain his position as a leader and marched forces from Veracruz to Tampico, then to San Luis Potosí, proclaiming his role as the "protector of the federation." San Luis Potosí, and other north-central regions, Michoacán, Querétaro, and Guanajuato met to decide their own position about the federation. Santa Anna pledged his military forces to the protection of these key areas. "He attempted, in other words, to co-opt the movement, the first of many examples in his long career where he placed himself as the head of a generalized movement so it would become an instrument of his advancement."

Santa Anna and the early Mexican Republic

Former insurgent general Guadalupe Victoria, a liberal federalist, became the first president of the Mexican republic in 1824, following the creation of the Federalist Mexican Constitution of 1824. He came to the presidency with little factional conflict, and he served out his entire four-year term. However, the election of 1828 was quite different, with considerable political conflict in which Santa Anna became involved. Even before the election, there was unrest in Mexico, with some conservatives affiliated with the Scottish Rite Masons plotting rebellion. The so-called Montaño rebellion in December 1827 called for the prohibition of secret societies, implicitly meaning liberal York Rite Masons, and the expulsion of the U.S. minister in Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, a promoter of federal republicanism in Mexico. Although Santa Anna was believed to be a supporter of the Scottish Rite conservatives, in the Montaño rebellion he eventually threw his support to the liberals. In his home state of Veracruz, the governor had thrown his support to the rebels, and in the aftermath of the rebellion's failure, Santa Anna as vice-governor stepped into the governorship.

In 1828, Santa Anna supported the hero of the insurgency, Vicente Guerrero, who was a candidate for the presidency. Another important liberal, Lorenzo de Zavala, also supported Guerrero. Manuel Gómez Pedraza won the indirect elections for the presidency, with Guerrero coming in second.

Even before all the votes had been counted in September 1828, Santa Anna rebelled against the election results in support of Guerrero. Santa Anna issued a plan at Perote that called for the nullification of the election results, as well for a new law expelling Spanish nationals from Mexico, believed to be in league with Mexican conservatives.

Santa Anna's rebellion initially had few supporters, although southern Mexican leader Juan Álvarez joined Santa Anna's rebellion, and Lorenzo de Zavala, governor of the state of Mexico, under threat of arrest by the conservative Senate, fled to the mountains and organized his own rebellion against the federal government. Zavala brought the fighting into the capital, with his supporters seizing an armory, the Acordada.

In these circumstances, president-elect Gómez Pedraza resigned and soon after left the country. This cleared the way for Guerrero to become president of Mexico. Santa Anna gained prominence as a national leader in his role to oust Gómez Pedraza and as a defender of federalism and democracy. An explanation for Santa Anna's support of Guerrero is that Gómez Pedraza had been in favor of Santa Anna's proposed invasion of Cuba, if successful, and if not, "Mexico might rid himself of an undesirable pest, namely Santa Anna."

In 1829, Santa Anna made his mark in the early republic by leading forces that defeated a Spanish invasion to reconquer Mexico. Spain made a final attempt to retake Mexico, invading Tampico with a force of 2,600 soldiers. Santa Anna marched against the Barradas Expedition with a much smaller force and defeated the Spaniards, many of whom were suffering from yellow fever. The defeat of the Spanish army not only increased Santa Anna's popularity but also consolidated the independence of the new Mexican republic. Santa Anna was declared a hero. From then on, he styled himself "The Victor of Tampico" and "The Savior of the Patria." His main act of self-promotion was to call himself "The Napoleon of the West."

In a December 1829 coup, Vice-President Anastasio Bustamante, a conservative, rebelled against President Guerrero, who left the capital to lead a rebellion in southern Mexico. The capture of Guerrero and his summary trial and execution in 1831 was a shocking event to the nation. The conservatives in power were tainted by the execution of a hero of independence and former president.

On 1 January 1830, Bustamante took over the presidency. Bustamante had promised an effective administration, and customs revenues (import and export taxes) increased spectacularly, but the revenues were spent on administrative expenses and the military, to win its support with preferential payments, new equipment, and increased recruitment. On top of customs revenues, Bustamante's government borrowed funds from moneylenders. His government jailed dissenters.

In 1832, Santa Anna seized the customs revenues from Veracruz and declared himself in rebellion against Bustamante. The bloody conflict ended with Santa Anna forcing the resignation of Bustamante's cabinet, and an agreement was brokered for new elections in 1833. Santa Anna won handily.

Santa Anna was elected president on 1 April 1833, but while he desired the title, he was not interested in governing. According to Mexican historian Enrique Krauze, "It annoyed him and bored him, and perhaps frightened him." A biographer of Santa Anna describes him in this period as the "absentee president." Vice President Valentín Gómez Farías took over the responsibility of governing the nation while Santa Anna retired to his Veracruz hacienda, Manga de Clavo. Gómez Farías was a moderate, but he had a radical liberal congress with which to contend, perhaps a reason that Santa Anna left executive power to his vice president.

The nation was faced with an empty treasury and an 11 million peso debt incurred by the Bustamante government. He could not cut back on the bloated expenditures on the army and sought other revenues. Taking a chapter out of the late colonial Spanish reforms, the government targeted the Roman Catholic Church. Anticlericalism was a tenet of Mexican liberalism, and the church had supported Bustamante's government, so targeting that institution was a logical move. Tithing (a 10% tax on agricultural production) was abolished as a legal obligation, and church property and finances were seized. The church's role in education was reduced and the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico closed. All this caused concern among Mexican conservatives.

Gómez Farías sought to extend these reforms to the frontier province of Alta California, promoting legislation to secularize the Franciscan missions there. In 1833 he organized the Híjar-Padrés colony to bolster non-mission civilian settlement. A secondary goal of the colony was to help defend Alta California against perceived Russian colonial ambitions from the trading post at Fort Ross. However, for liberal intellectual and Catholic priest José María Luis Mora, selling church property was the key to "transforming Mexico into a liberal, progressive nation of small landowners." Sale of nonessential church property would bring in much-needed revenue to the treasury. The army was also targeted for reform, since it was the largest single expenditure in the national budget. On Santa Anna's suggestion, the number of battalions was to be reduced as well as the number of generals and brigadiers.

A law was issued, the Ley del Caso, that called for the arrest of 51 politicians, including Bustamante, for holding "unpatriotic" beliefs and ordered them expelled from the republic. Gómez Farías claimed that Santa Anna was the driving force for the law, which evidence seems to support. With increasing resistance from the church as well as the army, the Plan of Cuernavaca was issued, likely orchestrated by former general and governor of the Federal District, José María Tornel. The plan called for repeal of the Ley del Caso and discouraged tolerance of the influence of Masonic lodges, where politics was pursued in secrecy; declared void the laws passed by Congress and the local legislatures in favor of the reforms; requested the protection of President Santa Anna to fulfill the plan and recognize him as the only authority; removal from office the deputies and officials who carried out enforcement of the reform laws and decrees; and provided military force to support the president in implementing the plan.

As opinion turned against the radical reforms, Santa Anna was persuaded to return to the presidency, and Gómez Farías resigned. This set the stage for conservatives to reshape Mexico's government from a federalist republic to a unitary central republic.

For conservatives, the liberal reform of Gómez Farías was radical and threatened elites' power. Santa Anna's actions in allowing this first reform (followed by a more sweeping one in 1855) might have been a test case for liberalism. At this point, Santa Anna was a liberal. By giving the moderate liberal Gómez Farías responsibility for the reforms, Santa Anna could have plausible deniability. He could be watchful and wait to see the reaction to a comprehensive attack on the special privileges of the army and the Roman Catholic Church, as well as confiscation of church wealth, enacted by the radical liberal congress.

Santa Anna was pushed into action. In May 1834, he ordered the disarmament of the civic militia. He urged Congress to abolish the controversial Ley del Caso, under which the liberals' opponents had been sent into exile. The Plan of Cuernavaca, published on 25 May 1834, called for repeal of the liberal reforms. On 12 June, Santa Anna dissolved Congress and announced his decision to adopt the plan. Santa Anna formed a new Catholic, centralist, conservative government. During this period, Santa Anna brokered an agreement with the Catholic Church, which had signed on to the plan. In exchange for preserving the Church's and the army's privileges, and the Church promised a monthly donation to the government of 30,000-40,000 pesos. "The santanistas [supporters of Santa Anna] succeeded in achieving what the radicals had failed to do: forcing the Church to assist the republic's daily fiscal needs with its funds and properties." On 4 January 1835, Santa Anna returned to his hacienda, placing Miguel Barragán as acting president. In 1835, Santa Anna replaced the 1824 constitution with the new constitutional document known as the " Siete Leyes" ("The Seven Laws"). Santa Anna did not involve himself with the conservative centralists as they moved to replace the federal constitution that dispersed power to the states with a unitary power in the hands of the central government, seemingly uneasy with their political path. "Although he has been blamed for the change to centralism, he was not actually present during any of the deliberations that led to the abolition of the federalist charter or the elaboration of the 1836 Constitution."

Several states openly rebelled against the changes including Alta California, Nuevo México, Tabasco, Sonora, Coahuila y Tejas, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Durango, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Yucatán, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas. Several of these states formed their own governments: the Republic of the Rio Grande, the Republic of Yucatán, and the Republic of Texas. Their fierce resistance was possibly fueled by reprisals Santa Anna committed against his defeated enemies. The New York Post editorialized that "had [Santa Anna] treated the vanquished with moderation and generosity, it would have been difficult if not impossible to awaken that general sympathy for the people of Texas which now impels so many adventurous and ardent spirits to throng to the aid of their brethren."

The Zacatecas militia, the largest and best supplied of the Mexican states, led by Francisco García Salinas, was well armed with .753 caliber British ' Brown Bess' muskets and Baker .61 rifles. But, after two hours of combat on 12 May 1835, Santa Anna's "Army of Operations" defeated the Zacatecan militia and took almost 3,000 prisoners. Santa Anna allowed his army to loot Zacatecas for forty-eight hours. After defeating Zacatecas, he planned to move on to Coahuila y Tejas to quell the rebellion there, which was being supported by settlers from the United States.

In 1835, Santa Anna repealed the Mexican Constitution, which ultimately led to the beginning of the Texas Revolution. Santa Anna's reasoning for the repeal was that American settlers in Texas were not paying taxes or tariffs, claiming they were not recipients of any services provided by the Mexican Government. As a result, new settlers were not allowed there. The new policy was a response to the U.S. attempts to purchase Texas from Mexico. Like other states discontented with the central Mexican government, the Texas Department of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas rebelled in late 1835 and declared itself independent on 2 March 1836. The northeastern part of the state had been settled by numerous Anglo-American immigrants. Stephen Austin and his party had been welcomed by earlier Mexican governments.

Santa Anna marched north to bring Texas back under Mexican control by a show of brute merciless force. His expedition posed challenges of manpower, logistics, supply, and strategy far beyond what he was prepared for, and it ended in disaster. To fund, organize, and equip his army, he relied, as he often did, on forcing wealthy men to provide loans. He recruited hastily, sweeping up many derelicts and ex-convicts, as well as Indians who could not understand Spanish commands.

His army expected tropical weather and suffered from the cold as well as shortages of traditional foods. Stretching a supply line far longer than ever before, he lacked horses, mules, cattle, and wagons, and thus had too little food and feed. The medical facilities were minimal. Morale sank as soldiers realized there were not enough chaplains to properly bury their bodies. Regional Indians attacked military stragglers; water sources were polluted, and many men were sick. Because of his weak staff system, Santa Anna was oblivious to the challenges and was totally confident that a show of force and a few massacres would have the rebels begging for mercy.

At the Battle of the Alamo, Santa Anna's forces killed 189 Texan insurgents on 6 March 1836 and executed more than 342 Texan prisoners at the Goliad Massacre on 27 March 1836. These executions were conducted in a manner similar to the executions he witnessed of Mexican rebels in the 1810s as a young soldier.

However, Santa Anna's forces suffered unexpectedly heavy casualties in the battle. In 1874, Santa Anna asserted in a letter that killing the Alamo insurgents was his only option. The letter stressed that Alamo garrison commander William B. Travis was to blame for the degree of violence at the Alamo. Santa Anna believed that Travis was rude and disrespectful towards him, and had that not happened, he would have allowed Sam Houston to establish a dominant presence there. In his letter, he stated that the disrespect of Travis led to the demise of all of his followers, which he claimed only took a couple of hours.

The Mexican army victory at the Alamo bought time for General Houston and his Texas forces. During the siege of the Alamo, the Texas Navy had more time to plunder ports along the Gulf of Mexico, and the Texian Army gained more weapons and ammunition. Despite Houston's lack of ability to maintain strict control of the Texian Army, they completely routed Santa Anna's much larger army at the Battle of San Jacinto on 21 April 1836. The Texans shouted, "Remember Goliad, Remember the Alamo!" The day after the battle, a small Texan force led by James Austin Sylvester captured Santa Anna. They found the general dressed in a dragoon private's uniform and hiding in a marsh.

After some time in exile in the U.S., and after meeting U.S. President Andrew Jackson in 1837, Santa Anna was allowed to return to Mexico. He was transported aboard the USS Pioneer to retire to his hacienda in Veracruz. While in Veracruz, Santa Anna wrote a manifesto in which he reflected on his Texas experiences as well as his surrender. His great impact on Mexico was that by age 35, he had built such a strong reputation as a military leader that he obtained high ranking. He acknowledged that by 1835, he considered Texas to be the biggest threat to Mexico, and he acted upon those threats.[full citation needed ]

In 1838, Santa Anna had a chance for redemption from the loss of Texas. After Mexico rejected French demands for financial compensation for losses suffered by French citizens, France sent forces that landed in Veracruz in the Pastry War. The Mexican government gave Santa Anna control of the army and ordered him to defend the nation by any means necessary. He engaged the French at Veracruz. During the Mexican retreat after a failed assault, Santa Anna was hit in the left leg and hand by cannon fire. His shattered ankle required amputation of much of his leg, which he ordered buried with full military honors. Despite Mexico's final capitulation to French demands, Santa Anna used his war service and visible sacrifice to the nation to re-enter Mexican politics.

Soon after, as Anastasio Bustamante's presidency turned chaotic, supporters asked Santa Anna to take control of the provisional government. Santa Anna was made president for the fifth time, taking over a nation with an empty treasury. The war with France had weakened Mexico, and the people were discontented. Also, a rebel army led by Generals José de Urrea and José Antonio Mexía, was marching towards the capital in opposition to Santa Anna. Commanding the army, Santa Anna crushed the rebellion in Puebla.

Santa Anna ruled in a more dictatorial way than during his first administration. His government banned anti-Santanista newspapers and jailed dissidents to suppress opposition. In 1842, he directed a military expedition into Texas. It inflicted numerous casualties with no political gain, but Texans began to be persuaded of the potential benefits of annexation by the more powerful United States.

Santa Anna was unable to control the Mexican congressional elections of 1842. The new Congress was composed of men of principles who vigorously opposed the autocratic leader.

Trying to restore the treasury, Santa Anna raised taxes, but this aroused resistance. Several Mexican states stopped dealing with the central government, and Yucatán and Laredo declared themselves independent republics. With resentment growing, Santa Anna stepped down from power and fled in December 1844. The buried leg he left behind in the capital was dug up by a mob and dragged through the streets until nothing was left of it. Fearing for his life, he tried to elude capture, but in January 1845 he was apprehended by a group of Native Americans near Xico, Veracruz. They turned him over to authorities, and Santa Anna was imprisoned. His life was spared, but he was exiled to Cuba.

In 1846, when Mexican and American troops moved towards the Rio Grande into the disputed Nueces Strip, Santa Anna was in exile in Cuba. The Mexican army rapidly lost two major battles at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma.

At that point the return of Santa Anna became more palatable. A coalition including Juan Alvarez forced out President Mariano Paredes and sought a return to a federal republic under the Constitution of 1824 with Santa Anna as president. Paredes was overthrown on 4 August 1846, and Santa Anna returned to Mexico from exile two days later. Santa Anna wrote to the government in Mexico City saying he had no aspirations to the presidency but would eagerly use his military experience in the new conflict.

U.S. President James K. Polk had hoped to acquire territory in the north by purchase or force, but the Mexican government was not willing to yield. In a gambit to change the dynamic, Polk sent agents to secretly meet with the exiled Santa Anna. They thought they had extracted a promise from him that they would lift the blockade of the Mexican coast to allow him to return and that he would broker a deal. Once back in Mexico at the head of an army, Santa Anna reneged on the deal, which had been a ruse to return to Mexico and lead the fight against the U.S. invasion.

It had only been a year since he was forced out of the republic, and Santa Anna was still popular among the Mexican people. Although he had a history of double-dealing and corruption, many Mexicans acknowledged that Santa Anna was the most reliable person to help Mexico get through the many obstacles and threats that the country would often face. Santa Anna had no intention of getting involved in politics again, intending to solely focus on aiding the military in its war against the United States.

With no path now for a quick resolution to the conflict in the north, Polk authorized an invasion of central Mexico to take the capital and force Mexico to the negotiating table, redirecting the bulk of General Zachary Taylor's troops to General Winfield Scott's army. Santa Anna mobilized troops and artillery and rapidly marched north. Santa Anna's forces outnumbered Taylor's, but his troops were exhausted, ill-clothed, hungry, and equipped with inferior weapons when the two armies met at La Angostura in the Battle of Buena Vista on 22-23 February 1847. Hard fighting over two days brought an inconclusive result, with Santa Anna withdrawing from the field of battle overnight just as complete victory was at hand, taking war trophies such as cannons and battle flags as evidence of his victory. With Scott's army landing at Veracruz, Santa Anna's home ground, he rapidly moved southward to engage with the invaders and protect the capital. For the Mexicans it would have been better if Scott could have been prevented from leaving the Gulf Coast, but they could not prevent Scott's march on Xalapa. Santa Anna set defenses at Cerro Gordo. U.S. forces outflanked him and against strong odds defeated Santa Anna's army.

With that battle, the way was clear for Scott's forces to advance further onto the capital. Santa Anna's aim was to protect it at all costs and waged defensive warfare, placing strong defenses on the most direct road to the capital at El Peñon, which Scott then avoided. Battles at Contreras, Churubusco, and Molino del Rey were lost. At Contreras, Mexican General Gabriel Valencia, an old political and military rival of Santa Anna's, did not recognize Santa Anna's authority as supreme commander and disobeyed his orders as to where his troops should be placed. Valencia's Army of the North was routed.

The Battle for Mexico City and the Battle of Chapultepec, like the others, were hard fought losses, and the U.S. forces took the capital. "Despite his many faults as a tactician and his overbearing political ambition, Santa Anna was committed to fighting to the bitter end. His actions would prolong the war for at least a year, and more than any other single person it was Santa Anna who denied Polk's dream of a short war."

Perhaps Santa Anna's most personal and ignominious incident in the war was the capture of his prosthetic cork leg during the Battle of Cerro Gordo, which remains as a war trophy in the U.S. held by the Illinois State Military Museum but no longer on display. Images of it remain accessible on the web. A second leg, a peg, was also captured by the 4th Illinois and was reportedly used by the soldiers as a baseball bat; it is displayed at the home of Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby (who served in the regiment) in Decatur. Santa Anna had a replacement leg made which is displayed at the Museo Nacional de Historia in Mexico City.

The prosthetic played a role in international politics. As relations between the U.S. and Mexico warmed during the run-up to World War II, Illinois was rumored to be ready to return it to Mexico and, in 1942, a bill was introduced in the state legislature. The Association of Limb Manufacturers wanted to be part of the repatriation ceremonies. The state passed a non-binding resolution to return it, but the National Guard denied the transfer.

Following defeat in the Mexican-American War in 1848, Santa Anna went into exile in Kingston, Jamaica. Two years later, he moved to Turbaco, Colombia. In April 1853, he was invited back by conservatives who had overthrown a weak liberal government, initiated under the Plan de Hospicio in 1852, drawn up by the clerics in the cathedral chapter of Guadalajara. Usually, revolts were fomented by military officers; this one was created by churchmen. Santa Anna was elected president on 17 March 1853. Santa Anna honored his promises to the Church, revoking a decree denying protection for the fulfillment of monastic vows, a reform promulgated twenty years earlier during the era of Valentín Gómez Farías. The Jesuits, who had been expelled from Spanish realms by the crown in 1767, were allowed to return to Mexico ostensibly to educate poorer classes, and much of their property, which the crown had confiscated and sold, was restored to them.

Although he gave himself exalted titles, Santa Anna's situation was quite vulnerable. He declared himself dictator-for-life with the title "Most Serene Highness". His full title in this final period of power was "Hero [ benemérito] of the nation, General of Division, Grand Master of the National and Distinguished Order of Guadalupe, Grand Cross of the Royal and Distinguished Spanish Order of Carlos III, and President of the Mexican Republic." The reality was that this administration was no more successful than his earlier ones, dependent on loans from moneylenders and support from conservative elites, the church, and the army.

A group of Liberals including Juan Alvarez, Benito Juárez, and Ignacio Comonfort overthrew Santa Anna under the Plan of Ayutla, which called for his removal from office. He went into exile yet again in 1855.

Santa Anna married twice, both times to wealthy young women. At neither wedding ceremony did he appear, legally empowering his future father-in-law to serve as a proxy at his first wedding and a friend at his second. One assessment of the two marriages is that they were arranged marriages of convenience, bringing considerable wealth to Santa Anna and that his lack of attendance at the wedding ceremonies "appears to confirm that he was purely interested in the financial aspect on the alliance."

In 1825, he married Inés García, the daughter of wealthy Spanish parents in Veracruz, and the couple had four children: María de Guadalupe, María del Carmen, Manuel, and Antonio López de Santa Anna y García. By 1825, Santa Anna had distinguished himself as a military man, joining the movement for independence when other criollos were also seeing Mexican autonomy as the way forward under royalist turned insurgent Agustín de Iturbide and the Army of Three Guarantees. When Iturbide as Mexican emperor lost support, Santa Anna had been in the forefront of leaders seeking to oust him. Although Santa Anna's family was of modest means, he was of good criollo lineage; the García family may well have seen a match between their young daughter and the up-and-coming Santa Anna as advantageous. María Inés's dowry allowed Santa Anna to purchase the first of his haciendas, Manga de Clavo, in Veracruz state.

The wife of the first Spanish ambassador to Mexico, Fanny Calderón de la Barca and her husband visited with Santa Anna's first wife Inés at Manga de Clavo, where they were well-received with a breakfast banquet. Calderón de la Barca observed that "After breakfast, the Señora having dispatched an officer for her cigar-case, which was gold with a diamond latch, offered me a cigar, which I having declined, she lighted her own, a little paper 'cigarette', and the gentlemen followed her good example."

Two months after the death of his wife Inés García in 1844, the 50-year-old Santa Anna married 16-year-old María de Los Dolores de Tosta. The couple rarely lived together; de Tosta resided primarily in Mexico City, and Santa Anna's political and military activities took him around the country. They had no children, leading biographer Will Fowler to speculate that the marriage was either primarily platonic or that de Tosta was infertile.

Several women claimed to have borne Santa Anna natural children. In his will, Santa Anna acknowledged and made provisions for four: Paula, María de la Merced, Petra, and José López de Santa Anna. Biographers have identified three more: Pedro López de Santa Anna, and Ángel and Augustina Rosa López de Santa Anna.

From 1855 to 1874, Santa Anna lived in exile in Cuba, the United States, Colombia, and Saint Thomas. He had left Mexico because of his unpopularity with the Mexican people after his defeat in 1848 and traveled to and from Cuba, the United States, and Europe. He participated in gambling and businesses with the hopes that he would become rich. During his many years in exile, Santa Anna was a passionate fan of the sport of cockfighting. He had many roosters that he entered into competitions and would have his roosters compete with cocks from all over the world.

In the 1850s, he traveled to New York with a shipment of chicle, which he intended to sell for use in buggy tires. He attempted but was unsuccessful in convincing U.S. wheel manufacturers that this substance could be more useful in tires than the materials they were originally using. Although he introduced chewing gum to the United States, he did not make any money from the product. Thomas Adams, the American assigned to aid Santa Anna while he was in the U.S., experimented with chicle in an attempt to use it as a substitute for rubber. He bought one ton of the substance from Santa Anna, but his experiments proved unsuccessful. Instead, Adams helped to found the chewing gum industry with a product that he called " chiclets."

In 1874, he took advantage of a general amnesty issued by President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada and returned to Mexico, by then crippled and almost blind from cataracts. Santa Anna died at his home in Mexico City on 21 June 1876 at age 82. He was buried with full military honors in a glass coffin in Panteón del Tepeyac Cemetery.

Camnitzer, Luis (2009). Weiss, Rachel (ed.). On Art, Artists, Latin America, and Other Utopias. University of Texas Press. p. 199. ISBN 9780292783492.

Fowler, Will (2000). Tornel and Santa Anna: the writer and the caudillo, Mexico, 1795-1853. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-313-30914-4.

Fowler, Will (2009). Santa Anna of Mexico. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-2638-8.

Olavarría y Ferrari, Enrique de (1880). Vicente Riva Palacio (ed.). México a través de los siglos (in Spanish). México: Ballescá y Cía. pp. 210-226.

Mead, Teresa (2016). A History of Modern Latin America (2 ed.). UK: John Wiley & Sons Inc. pp. 126-127. ISBN 978-1405120517.

Alemán, Jesse. "The Ethnic in the Canon; or, on Finding Santa Anna's" Wooden Leg"." MELUS 29.3/4 (2004): 165-182.

Anna, Timothy E. Forging Mexico, 1821-1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1998

Calcott, Wilfred H. Santa Anna: The Story of the Enigma Who Once Was Mexico. Hamden CT: Anchon, 1964.

Camnitzer, L. "The two versions of Santa Anna's leg and the ethics of public art." On art, artists, Latin America and other utopias (1995): 199-207. ISBN 9780292783492

Chartrand, Rene, and Younghusband, Bill. Santa Anna's Mexican Army 1821-48 (2004) excerpt and text search

Cole, David A. "The Early Career of Antonio López de Santa Anna," PhD dissertation. Christ Church, University of Oxford 1977.

Costeloe, Michael P. The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835-1846: Hombres de Bien in the Age of Santa Anna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993.

Crawford, Ann F.; The Eagle: The Autobiography of Santa Anna; State House Press;

Díaz Díaz, Fernando. Caudillos y caciques: Antonio López de Santa Anna y Juan Álvarez. Mexico City: El Colegio de México 1972.

Flores Mena, Carmen. El general don Antonio López de Santa Anna (1810-1833). Mexico City: UNAM 1950.

Fowler, Will (2007), Santa Anna of Mexico, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press; a standard scholarly biography; online

Fowler, Will. Mexico in the Age of Proposals, 1821-1853 (1998)

Fowler, Will. Tornel and Santa Anna: The Writer and the Caudillo, Mexico, 1795-1853 (2000) excerpt and text search

Fowler, Will. "All the President's Women: The Wives of General Antonio López de Santa Anna in 19th century Mexico", Feminist Review, No. 79, Latin America: History, war, and independence (2005),

Fuentes Mares, José. Santa Anna: Aurora y ocaso de un comediante. Mexico City: Jus 1956.

González Pedrero, Enrique. País de un solo hombre: el México de Santa Anna. Volumen II. La sociedad de fuego cruzado 1829-1836. Fondo de Cultura Económica: Mexico City 2004. ISBN 968-16-6377-2

Green, Stanley C. The Mexican Republic: The First Decade 1823-1832. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1987

Hardin, Stephen L., and McBride, Angus. The Alamo 1836: Santa Anna's Texas Campaign (2001) excerpt and text search

Jackson, Jack. "Santa Anna's 1836 Campaign: Was It Directed Toward Ethnic Cleansing?" Journal of South Texas (March 2002) 15#1 pp. 10-37; argues that it was

Jackson, Jack, and Wheat, John. 'Almonte's Texas, Texas State Historical Assoc.

Jones, Oakah L., Jr. Santa Anna. New York: Twayne Publishers 1968.

Knight, Alan. "The Several Legs of Santa Anna: A Saga of Secular Relics." Past & Present, Volume 206, Issue suppl_5, 2010, Pages 227-255, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtq019

Krauze, Enrique, Mexico: Biography of Power. New York: HarperCollins 1997. ISBN 0-06-016325-9

Lord, Walter (1961), A Time to Stand, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0-8032-7902-7 , popular history

Mabry, Donald J., "Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna", 2 November 2008; essay by scholar

Muñoz, Rafael F. Santa Anna: El dictador resplandeciente. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1983.

Paquel, Leonardo. Antonio López de Santa Anna. Mexico City: Instituto de Mexicología 1990.

Roberts, Randy & Olson, James S., A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory (2002)

Santoni, Pedro; Mexicans at Arms-Puro Federalist and the Politics of War TCU Press;[ISBN missing ]

Scheina, Robert L. Santa Anna: A Curse Upon Mexico Washington, D.C.: Brassey's 2003. excerpt and text search

Trueba, Alfonso. Santa Anna. Mexico City: Jus 1958.

Valadés, José C. México, Santa Anna, y la guerra de Texas. Mexico City: Editorial Diana 1979.

Vázquez, Josefina Zoraida. Don Antonio López de Santa Anna: Mito y enigma. Mexico City: Condumex 1987.

Yañez, Agustín. Santa Anna: Espectro de una sociedad. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1993.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón ( Spanish pronunciation: [anˈtonjo ˈlopez ðe ˌsan'taːna]; 21 February 1794 - 21 June 1876), usually known as Santa Anna or López de Santa Anna, was a Mexican politician and general.

# data[].attributes.body
Rifles with Minié bullets were more accurate, and therefore deadlier, than muskets were, which forced infantries to change the way they fought: Even troops who were far from the line of fire had to protect themselves by building elaborate trenches and other fortifications.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Civil War was a time of great social and political upheaval. It was also a time of great technological change. Inventors and military men devised new types of weapons, such as the repeating rifle and the submarine, that forever changed the way that wars were fought. Even more important were the technologies that did not specifically have to do with the war, like the railroad and the telegraph. Innovations like these did not just change the way people fought wars-they also changed the way people lived.

New Kinds of Weapons

Before the Civil War, infantry soldiers typically carried muskets that held just one bullet at a time. The range of these muskets was about 250 yards. However, a soldier trying to aim and shoot with any accuracy would have to stand much closer to his target, since the weapon's "effective range" was only about 80 yards. Therefore, armies typically fought battles at a relatively close range.

Did you know? The rifle-musket and the Minié bullet are thought to account for around 90 percent ofCivil Warcasualties.

Rifles, by contrast, had a much greater range than muskets did-a rifle could shoot a bullet up to 1,000 yards-and were more accurate. However, until the 1850s it was nearly impossible to use these guns in battle because, since a rifle's bullet had roughly the same diameter as its barrel, they took too long to load. (Soldiers sometimes had to pound the bullet into the barrel with a mallet.)

In 1848, a French army officer named Claude Minié invented a cone-shaped lead bullet with a diameter smaller than that of the rifle barrel. Soldiers could load these "Minié balls" quickly, without the aid of ramrods or mallets. Rifles with Minié bullets were more accurate, and therefore deadlier, than muskets were, which forced infantries to change the way they fought: Even troops who were far from the line of fire had to protect themselves by building elaborate trenches and other fortifications.

"Repeaters"

Rifles with Minié bullets were easy and quick to load, but soldiers still had to pause and reload after each shot. This was inefficient and dangerous. By 1863, however, there was another option: so-called repeating rifles, or weapons that could fire more than one bullet before needing a reload. The most famous of these guns, the Spencer carbine, could fire seven shots in 30 seconds.

Like many other Civil War technologies, these weapons were available to Northern troops but not Southern ones: Southern factories had neither the equipment nor the know-how to produce them. "I think the Johnnys [Confederate soldiers] are getting rattled; they are afraid of our repeating rifles," one Union soldier wrote. "They say we are not fair, that we have guns that we load up on Sunday and shoot all the rest of the week."

Balloons and Submarines

Other newfangled weapons took to the air-for example, Union spies floated above Confederate encampments and battle lines in hydrogen-filled passenger balloons, sending reconnaissance information back to their commanders via telegraph-and to the sea. "Iron-clad" warships prowled up and down the coast, maintaining a Union blockade of Confederate ports.

For their part, Confederate sailors tried to sink these ironclads with submarines. The first of these, the Confederate C.S.S. Hunley, was a metal tube that was 40 feet long, 4 feet across, and held an 8-man crew. In 1864, the Hunley sank the Union blockade ship Housatonic off the coast of Charleston but was itself wrecked in the process.

The Railroad

More important than these advanced weapons were larger-scale technological innovations such as the railroad. Once again, the Union had the advantage. When the war began, there were 22,000 miles of railroad track in the North and just 9,000 in the South, and the North had almost all of the nation's track and locomotive factories. Furthermore, Northern tracks tended to be "standard gauge," which meant that any train car could ride on any track. Southern tracks, by contrast, were not standardized, so people and goods frequently had to switch cars as they traveled-an expensive and inefficient system.

Union officials used railroads to move troops and supplies from one place to another. They also used thousands of soldiers to keep tracks and trains safe from Confederate attack.

The Telegraph

Abraham Lincoln was the first president who was able to communicate on the spot with his officers on the battlefield. The White House telegraph office enabled him to monitor battlefield reports, lead real-time strategy meetings and deliver orders to his men. Here, as well, the Confederate army was at a disadvantage: They lacked the technological and industrial ability to conduct such a large-scale communication campaign.

In 1861, the Union Army established the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps, led by a young railroad man named Andrew Carnegie. The next year alone, the U.S.M.T.C. trained 1,200 operators, strung 4,000 miles of telegraph wire and sent more than a million messages to and from the battlefield.

Civil War Photography

The Civil War was the first war to be documented through the lens of a camera. However, the era's photographic process was far too elaborate for candid pictures. Taking and developing photos using the so-called "wet-plate" process was a meticulous, multi-step procedure that required more than one "camera operator" and lots of chemicals and equipment. As a result, the images of the Civil War are not action snapshots: They are portraits and landscapes. It was not until the 20th century that photographers were able to take non-posed pictures on the battlefield.

Technological innovation had an enormous impact on the way people fought the Civil War and on the way they remember it. Many of these inventions have played important roles in military and civilian life ever since.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Civil War was a time of great social and political upheaval. It was also a time of great technological change. Inventors and military men devised new types of weapons, such as the repeating rifle and the submarine, that forever changed the way that wars were fought.

# data[].attributes.body
If I had a choice of being in the civil war I would not join it because of how much danger that can happen and sense there wasn't many health care worker and there wasn't technology at all. It would also be very hard to be in contact with loved ones and just people in general. While being in the civil war they had to deal with bad weather, sometimes no food, and poor clothing. Since it was so long ago there wasn't any transportation and they all had to fight the war on foot. With all of the weapons I know that it  probably weighed them down and made them get tired quicker. Overall if i had a decision I would definitely say no because of the risk of losing my life and the stress being in a war.

# data[].attributes.body
What is the Emancipation proclamation? Emancipation proclamation is the day that Abraham Lincoln made a executive order on September 22 1862 this was a part of the civil war. In the order Abraham Lincoln declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." on January 1st 1863.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Select Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

# data[].attributes.body
Almost half of a million woman disguised as men to join the Civil War. Women also was in charge of many farms and jobs so men can   attended to the war. Also thousands of women in the North and South joined volunteer brigades and signed up to work as nurses.

# data[].attributes.body
The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to escaped enslaved people from the south. It developed as a convergence of several different clandestine efforts. The exact dates of its existence are not known, but it operated from the late 18th centenary to the Civil War, at which point its efforts continued to undermine the Confederacy in a less-secretive fashion.

# data[].attributes.body
The battle of the Alamo War started on February 23 1836. It was a pivotal event in the Texas revolution. Following a 13 day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna reclaimed the Alamo  Mission near San Antonio de Béxar, killing most of the Texians and Tejanos inside. Santa Annas cruelty during the battle inspired many Texians defeated the Mexican Army a the battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ending the rebellion.

# data[].attributes.body
Charles Grandison Finney, (born Aug. 29, 1792, Warren, Conn., U.S.—died Aug. 16, 1875, Oberlin, Ohio), American lawyer, president of Oberlin College, and a central figure in the religious revival movement of the early 19th century; he is sometimes called the first of the professional evangelists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Charles Grandison Finney, (born Aug. 29, 1792, Warren, Conn., U.S.-died Aug. 16, 1875, Oberlin, Ohio), American lawyer, president of Oberlin College, and a central figure in the religious revival movement of the early 19th century; he is sometimes called the first of the professional evangelists.

Courtesy of Oberlin College, Ohio

After teaching school briefly, Finney studied law privately and entered the law office of Benjamin Wright at Adams, N.Y. References in his law studies to Mosaic institutions drew him to Bible study, and in 1821 he underwent a religious conversion. Finney dropped his law practice to become an evangelist and was licensed by the Presbyterians. Addressing congregations in the manner he had used earlier in pleading with juries, he fomented spirited revivals in the villages of upstate New York. His methods, carried into the Congregational and Presbyterian churches of larger towns, were soon dubbed "new measures" and aroused intense criticism from men such as Lyman Beecher who had been educated in the sterner traditions of eastern schools. Such opposition lessened as Finney's methods became more polished.

His revivals achieved spectacular success in large cities, and in 1832 he began an almost continuous revival in New York City as minister of the Second Free Presbyterian Church. His disaffection with Presbyterian theology and discipline, however, led his supporters to build for him the Broadway Tabernacle in 1834. The following year he became a professor of theology in a newly formed theological school in Oberlin, Ohio, dividing his time between that post and the tabernacle. He left New York in 1837 to become minister of Oberlin's First Congregational Church, closely related to Oberlin College, where he was president from 1851 to 1866.

Finney's theological views, typically revivalist in their emphasis on common sense and humanity's innate ability to reform itself, were given expression in his Lectures on Revivals (1835) and Lectures on Systematic Theology (1847).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Charles Grandison Finney | American evangelist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Charles Grandison Finney, American lawyer, president of Oberlin College, and a central figure in the religious revival movement of the early 19th century; he is sometimes called the first of the professional evangelists. After teaching school briefly, Finney studied law privately and entered the