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https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2014/january/confederate-ironclad-navy

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During the Civil War, the agricultural South faced a daunting opponent in the industrialized North, and nowhere was that more apparent than on water. The Confederacy began the war without a single warship to its name.

The Confederate ironclads were neither the first commissioned, the first in battle, nor the most advanced. The concept of iron-armored ships was well known by naval officials. French ironclad floating batteries had engaged Russian shore batteries during the Crimean War. And both Great Britain and France had commissioned powerful armored warships by the time the American Civil War broke out.

Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, aware of the South's deficiencies in warship construction, attempted to obtain armored vessels in Europe. Despite efforts by various naval agents, only one-the Stonewall -reached Confederate hands, but the war ended before she saw any action.

Mallory had considerably more success in building ironclad warships within the Confederacy. In the summer of 1861 he accepted plans to convert the sunken Union warship Merrimack into an ironclad and contracted for an additional four Mississippi River armored ships to be constructed by private builders.

The First Five

The Merrimack, a wooden screw frigate scuttled just before Confederates seized the Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia, was raised and converted into an armored ship under the direction of John Porter, future chief naval constructor, and Lieutenant John M. Brooke, future head of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography. Commissioned the CSS Virginia, the 262-foot vessel was constructed with an armored casemate inclined on the sides and whose ends were horizontally rounded. The rounded ends along with the bow and stern of the hull being submerged were unique; no other Confederate ironclad would incorporate these features. Sallying forth into Hampton Roads on 8 March 1862 to attack the blockading Union squadron, she destroyed the wooden frigate Congress and sloop-of-war Cumberland.

The Mississippi River ironclads were contracted for and constructed by individuals inexperienced in building warships. The Memphis armored vessels' casemates had perpendicular sides rather than slanted, in contrast to the majority of Confederate ironclads. The New Orleans armored ships were both failures. The Louisiana 's center-board paddle wheels, one abaft the other, were unworkable. The Mississippi was built along straight lines-no curved hull frames, as the two brothers who designed her believed their concept was simple enough that construction would not require skilled ship carpenters. She was to be quite large, approximately 250 feet in length; to carry some 20 guns; and to be propelled by 3 engines, 16 boilers, and 3 screws.

A Quartet of Conversions

Before any of the five initial Confederate ironclads had seen action, other such vessels were being constructed by private builders and even state governments. The ironclad ram Manassas was converted from a tug, her masts and superstructure replaced with a lightly armored convex shield, or casemate. Armed with a single gun, she participated in the battle with Farragut's squadron below New Orleans, where she ran aground and was destroyed.

Armored Harbor-Defense Vessels

In 1862 the Confederate Navy changed its shipbuilding policy from one that stressed offensive warships to one that emphasized defensive ones. Various factors contributed to this change: the failure of the five initial ironclads, the belief that powerful armored vessels could be obtained in Europe, and most important, the growing threat of invasion. Until the end of the war the Confederate naval construction program would generally concentrate on small, shallow-draft, harbor-defense armored ships.

Chief Naval Constructor Porter developed basic designs for these ironclads, and in doing so probably took into account that Southern shipwrights had considerable experience building steamboats. Like those paddle-wheelers that plied the shallow waters of the Southern states, his armored gunboats were flat or nearly flat bottomed (little or no keel). However, the ironclads, unlike steamboats, carried their machinery within their hulls.

The length of the casemate varied depending on the size of the vessel, but Porter designed the shields on all of them to be smaller than the initial ironclads'. A shortage of iron and the problem of draft were at least partially responsible for this. The ironclads were to carry a battery of two to six heavy guns, but again the number varied depending on what was available as well as the size of the casemate. Some of these ironclads were even armed with spar torpedoes.

The Virginia's success in ramming the Cumberland persuaded Porter to include rams on a majority of the ironclads. The remaining vessels were self-propelled floating batteries. The ironclads' power trains also depended on what was available. The majority were single or double screw, but a few were designed to carry paddle wheels. The Nashville, built at Montgomery, Alabama, was the only side-wheeler that became operational. The Missouri, constructed at Shreveport, Louisiana, incorporated a wheel recessed in the after end of the casemate.

The marine engineering industry was by far the most backward aspect of the Confederate shipbuilding program. Rebel ironclad machinery, particularly engines, was primitive. Only a few of the armored ships had steam engines designed and built specifically for them; the majority were adapted from other vessels, such as steamboats and towboats. At least one, the Neuse, possibly was powered by a sawmill engine.

Virginia and North Carolina Ironclads

Of the approximately 50 ironclads laid down in the Confederacy, 20 of them incorporated Porter's harbor-defense designs. The 150-foot Richmond was the first of these placed under construction, at the navy yard in Norfolk. Advancing Union forces led to the vessel being hastily launched and towed up the James River to Richmond, where she was completed. The Richmond became the nucleus of the James River Squadron, which cooperated with the batteries at Drewry's Bluff to defend the river approach to the Confederate capital. In 1864 two additional ironclads, the Virginia II and Fredericksburg, were commissioned and joined the squadron. They had been built at the Richmond shipyards, where a fourth ironclad, the Texas, was under construction when the war ended.

The James River Squadron, with its ironclads and wooden gunboats, contributed significantly to the capital's defense and was one of the Confederate Navy's most powerful squadrons. Beginning in 1864, it often exchanged fire with enemy warships below obstructions Union forces had placed in the river. In January 1865 the squadron attempted but failed to pass through the obstructions and attack the Union naval force below. When Richmond was abandoned in early April, the squadron's vessels were destroyed.

Four ironclads were built in North Carolina: two in Wilmington, one on the Neuse River, and one on the Roanoke River. The North Carolina and Raleigh were both of the 150-foot class, built in shipyards on opposite sides of the Cape Fear River, and commissioned in the spring of 1864. The North Carolina, which was employed primarily as a floating battery close to the river's mouth, sank at her moorings on 27 September as a result of a worm-eaten bottom. In May 1864, the Raleigh, accompanied by two wooden gunboats, crossed the bar at the river's mouth and, after exchanging fire with Union blockaders, fatally ran aground while attempting to re-enter the river.

Considering Wilmington's importance as a major blockade-running port, it is surprising that these two ships were the most defective and decrepit of the harbor-defense ironclads. The master builders of both vessels had extensive experience in constructing vessels. The ironclad Wilmington was still under construction when her builders destroyed her in January 1865 shortly before Union forces captured the port. Approximately 240 feet long and with two small octagonal-shaped casemates, this vessel was one of Porter's most impressive and evolved designs.

The Neuse and Albemarle, built on the Neuse and Roanoke Rivers, respectively, were smaller versions of the 150-foot ironclads. They, along with a third vessel of this class that was never completed, were designed to operate jointly in regaining control of the North Carolina coastal region's shoal sounds and rivers. Along with other interior naval construction sites throughout the South, their shipyards were established because Federal forces had either gained control of coastal areas or were blockading outlets to the sea. They were temporary, primitive facilities on waterways considered deep enough to launch a vessel.

The Neuse was constructed at White Hall (present-day Seven Springs) about halfway between Kinston and Goldsboro. The site was selected because Union forces had seized New Bern, the most important shipbuilding center on the Neuse River. Also, it was considered safe from enemy threats, timber was available there, and perhaps most important, the location had access to a railroad with links to machinery and iron-plate facilities. Because of the shallowness of the river at White Hall, after she was launched, the uncompleted gunboat had to be towed downstream to Kinston, where she was completed and commissioned. Unfortunately, the ironclad ran aground about a half mile from her anchorage in April 1864 while attempting to steam downriver and join in an attack on New Bern. Nearly a year later, she was destroyed to prevent her capture.

The Neuse's sister ship, meanwhile, was one of the more successful Confederate armored vessels in combat with Union naval forces. The Albemarle was placed under construction in 1863 at Edward's Ferry. Fear of an attack from Union forces in the Roanoke Valley prompted authorities to move her farther up the Roanoke River to Halifax. There the unfinished gunboat was close to the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad.

In the spring of 1864, the ironclad's captain, Commander James W. Cooke, received orders to cooperate with Brigadier General Robert Hoke's attack against Union forces at Plymouth, North Carolina. Workers were still on board the ship when she set off down the Roanoke on 17 April. In the subsequent battle the Confederate ironclad rammed and sank one Union gunboat, the Southfield, and forced three others to retreat to Albemarle Sound. The next month, the Albemarle attacked a Union flotilla on the sound, mauling the double-ender gunboat Sassacus. Damaged herself, the ironclad retired to Plymouth for repairs. The Albemarle was at her berth when in the early hours of 28 October a steam launch under the command of Lieutenant William B. Cushing torpedoed and sank her (see "Firebrand of the Union Navy," October 2012).

Defending South Carolina and Savannah

Charleston, South Carolina, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired, witnessed a coordinated attack by Confederate ironclads against Union blockaders. The 150-foot Chicora and Palmetto State were commissioned in the fall of 1862. In the early hours of 31 January 1863, at the urging of local commander General P. G. T. Beauregard, the two armored vessels crossed the bar at Charleston Harbor's entrance and in a night action attacked nearby enemy warships.

The blockade was temporarily broken. But with the arrival off Charleston of the armored ship New Ironsides and several monitors, it was quickly back in stronger force than before, and the Confederate ironclads reverted to their more realistic role of harbor defense.

Other Deep-South Ironclads

After the capture of New Orleans, Confederate defenses along the Gulf Coast included one ironclad built at Columbus, Georgia, and several others to protect the important port of Mobile, Alabama. Columbus, on the Chattahoochee River, was the location of both a naval yard and the Columbus Naval Works, which became one of the most important industrial facilities in the Confederacy. Machinery for a number of the Southern naval vessels, including ironclads, was manufactured there.

Several others ironclads of the Jackson's original design were planned, but only one, the Missouri, was actually constructed. Commissioned in 1863, she was 183 feet in length but with an unusually long casemate, more than likely because of her 22-foot recessed wheel. Built far up the Red River at Shreveport, Louisiana, she never saw action and surrendered on 3 June 1865.

In 1864 Buchanan on paper had an impressive squadron of four ironclads in addition to wooden gunboats. But the Nashville was weak because of her slow speed, exposed paddle wheels, and inadequate armor, and the floating batteries Tuscaloosa and Huntsville were unseaworthy. In reality the admiral considered only the 213-foot Tennessee, one of the Selma ironclads, capable of challenging Rear Admiral David Farragut's monitors and wooden gunboats. But she proved no match for the Union squadron when it passed the forts and entered the bay on 5 August 1864. The Confederate ironclad was battered into surrendering. Mobile's three remaining armored vessels would intermittently engage Union warships and ground forces until the city surrendered on 10 April 1865. They were then scuttled.

Flawed But Significant Warships

Confederate ironclads, perhaps with the exception of the European-built Stonewall, were not things of beauty. In many ways they were rather primitive men-of-war with serious defects in design and construction. Most of them, however, were serviceable and contributed significantly to the Confederate war effort. Moreover, they had some notable successes in defending Southern rivers and harbors.

Of the five Confederate seaports captured during the last six months of the war-Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Mobile, and Galveston-two were taken by Union land forces from the rear and two others indirectly as a result of pressure from the rear. Ironclads figured prominently in the defenses of all of the ports but one, Galveston. In the end, innovation, ingenuity, and hard work enabled the Confederacy to put into service the strongest ironclad navy possible given the South's limitations.

Fate of the Confederacy's Ironclads

1. Albemarle Sunk, 28 October 1864

2. Arkansas Destroyed, 6 August 1862

3. Atlanta Captured, 17 June 1863

4. Baltic Dismantled, 1864

5. Charleston Destroyed, 18 February 1865

6. Chicora Destroyed, 18 February 1865

7. Columbia Ran aground, 12 January 1865

8. Fredericksburg Destroyed, 4 April 1865

9. Georgia Scuttled, 21 December 1864

10. Huntsville Scuttled, 12 April 1865

11. Manassas Sunk, 24 April 1862

12. Missouri Surrendered, 3 June 1865

13. Nashville Surrendered, 10 May 1865

14. Neuse Destroyed, 14 March 1865

15. North Carolina Foundered, 27 September 1864

16. Palmetto State Destroyed, 18 February 1865

17. Raleigh Wrecked, 7 May 1864

18. Richmond Scuttled, 3 April 1865

19. Savannah Burned, 21 December 1864

20. Tennessee Captured, 5 August 1864

21. Tuscaloosa Scuttled, 12 April 1865

22. Virginia Destroyed, 11 May 1862

23. Virginia II Destroyed, 3 April 1865

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During the Civil War, the agricultural South faced a daunting opponent in the industrialized North, and nowhere was that more apparent than on water. The Confederacy began the war without a single warship to its name. The Confederate ironclads were neither the first commissioned, the first in battle, nor the most advanced.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/13/black-confederates-civil-war-myth-kevin-levin

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rlington National Cemetery is the hallowed resting place of America's war dead. It is also home to a Confederate memorial with a frieze depicting a "mammy" - the stereotype of a black woman loyal to a white family - and an African American man wearing Confederate uniform.

"For many people, that is evidence of black Confederate soldiers," Kevin Levin told an audience at the National Archives in Washington last month. "But it's not. In fact, no one was confused during the dedication that this was in fact a body servant."

In other words, an enslaved man.

The American civil war has never been in short supply of myths, but Levin describes black Confederates as the "most persistent". Hundreds of articles, organisations and websites rewrite history by asserting that between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans volunteered as soldiers in an army fighting to preserve slavery.

Just because it is counterintuitive does not make it true. In the wake of Donald Trump's election and the white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee still stands, the issue resonates beyond the halls of academia.

Levin, a historian, educator and author of the blog civil war memory, has been writing on the subject since 2008.

Americans still struggle over coming to terms with the core issues of the civil war and reconstruction

"One of the things that I'm fascinated by is the extent to which Americans still struggle over coming to terms with the core issues of the civil war and reconstruction, and that is slavery and the issue of race," he says by phone from Boston.

"This is, it seems to me, the perfect case study through which to track that memory of the war, whether it's a matter of erasing slavery from the landscape of memory or mythologising, which I think the black Confederate narrative, at least in the last few decades, is really just a perfect example of."

Levin's new book, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth, argues that slavery was central to the south's war effort. Drawing on research including letters, diary entries and newspaper editorials, it demolishes the notion thatthe Confederacy embraced black men as soldiers from the beginning of the war.

After war broke out in 1861, thousands of enslaved men were forced to accompany their masters into the army as body servants or camp slaves.

"It's absolutely important to think of these enslaved men as the cornerstone or foundation of any Confederate army because it's their presence, it's the roles that they're playing, that make camping, marching and conducting battles even possible," Levin says.

Life in the camps could be harsh. Levin "found a couple of cases where the punishments are brutal. One Confederate officer wrote home to his wife in vivid detail about stretching out his camp slave and laying on 400 lashes. The kinds of punishments that you would have found back home on the plantation, you would have found all of that present in the army.

"It may have even been heightened because you have to remember most of these men who bring camp slaves are officers, so they have to constantly demonstrate their rank."

When the war ended, enslaved African Americans serving the Confederate army were liberated. But by the end of the 19th century, they began to play a central role in the lost cause, a narrative white southerners developed as a way to rationalise and romanticise defeat.

The Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery. Photograph: Rachel Larue/Arlington National Cemetery

Levin explains:"They argue that the war was never about slavery, that their cause remained just even though they were defeated. What was central to the lost cause was that they believed and maintained that their enslaved people remain loyal to them and the Confederacy until the very end.

"So when it came time, for example, for Confederate veterans to start meeting in large reunion gatherings, it wasn't uncommon for these former camp slaves to attend as well. They have any number of reasons for attending: I suspect some of them are able to make a little money by entertaining these large white crowds. Some of them, perhaps, wanted to maintain old ties with their owners or the people in their respective units who are now leaders in their respective communities and so it's a way to maintain their own status back home.

"But for white southerners and former Confederates these former camp slaves are hugely important symbolically because they symbolise the racial status quo of the antebellum period.

"These are men who now can be pointed to as the models of proper behaviour for African Americans during the Jim Crow era, so at a time when there's a great deal of racial unrest throughout the south and there's a new generation of African Americans who are pushing for equal rights, white southerners can point to these elderly men and say, 'This is how you should behave.'"

Photographs helped fuel the false narrative. The most important, taken in 1861, shows Sgt Andrew Chandler of the 44th Mississippi Infantry Regiment sitting beside Silas Chandler, a family slave. Both are in uniform, clutching pistols, knives and a shotgun. It has been interpreted as an image of comradeship. Levin, however, sees the master-slave relationship.

Marchers pass the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015, three days after a mass shooting left nine dead. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

The spread of the myth also went hand in hand with the raising of Confederate monuments and statues, some of which have been torn down. Levin, who taught in Charlottesville for 11 years, says: "It provides the narrative for those monuments, especially the monuments that explicitly or specifically address the role of African Americans during the war. There were a number of monuments that honoured the former camp slaves."

William Faulkner's oft-quoted observation, "The past is never dead. It's not even past", could have been written in the blood of the civil war, which continues to stain America. Last month Trump, who has been cheered by white supremacists, tweeted a warning about a "civil war-like fracture" if he is impeached and removed from office.

Among the stars of what Levin calls the Confederate heritage movement is HK Edgerton, an African American who marches in Confederate uniform and waves the Confederate flag at gatherings of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. According to Levin, Edgerton has expressed a desire to remember a time when race relations were less divisive.

He is living proof that the black Confederate myth persists, especially among white conservatives.

Levin reflects: "I think they embrace this myth because it's an easy way of pushing aside or minimising the racial divide today. So, if you don't want to deal with racism today and white supremacy today, what you do is you embrace a historical narrative that minimises it in the past. What that does is sort of gives you cover and reinforces your own view of the present."

Those looking for further reinforcement will find it at Arlington cemetery, beneath Lee's mansion, in the depiction of a "mammy" taking a child from a southern soldier on the memorial dedicated in 1914 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

"I bring teachers there every summer and they're all horrified," Levin says. "Anyone who goes there is just like, 'What is this doing here?!'"

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Black Confederates: exploding America's most persistent myth

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rlington National Cemetery is the hallowed resting place of America's war dead. It is also home to a Confederate memorial with a frieze depicting a "mammy" - the stereotype of a black woman loyal to a white family - and an African American man wearing Confederate uniform.

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https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/black-confederates-truth-and-legend

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The lives of Southern black people changed immeasurably during the war years. In the midst of a see-saw struggle that promised freedom as well as desolation, these men, women, and children made difficult and highly personal decisions in extraordinary circumstances.

Many Southern slaves took advantage of the fog of war to escape towards freedom. Before the Emancipation Proclamation was officially adopted, these escapes usually meant congregating around the Union armies that were operating in Southern territory. Vast columns of escaped slaves followed almost every major Union army at one point or another. These people, sometimes called "contrabands," as in "confiscated enemy property," frequently served as scouts and spies for the Union soldiers.

When the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, Union forces had regained control of large swaths of the South. Although many now claim that the Proclamation was effectively useless because it established policy for a foreign nation, the practical reality is that the Union, by force of arms, had every necessary power to establish policy in its occupied territories, just as Confederate armies exercised their power to capture and enslave free black people during their brief occupations of Northern territories.

After the Proclamation, the refugees in the contraband camps, along with free black people throughout the North, began to enlist in the Union Army in even greater proportion than Northern white men. After some time in legal limbo, many Southern black men took up arms against their former masters and distinguished themselves on campaign and on the battlefield. By the time the war was over, black soldiers made up 10% of the Union Army and had suffered more than 10,000 combat casualties.

Some black Southerners aided the Confederacy. Most of these were forced to accompany their masters or were forced to toil behind the lines. Black men were not legally allowed to serve as combat soldiers in the Confederate Army--they were cooks, teamsters, and manual laborers. There were no black Confederate combat units in service during the war and no documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate soldier, although some did receive pensions for their work as laborers. Nevertheless, the black servants and the Confederate soldiers formed bonds in the shared crucible of conflict, and many servants later attended regimental reunions with their wartime comrades.

This is not to say that no black man ever fired a gun for the Confederacy. To be specific, in the "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion," a collection of military records from both sides which spans more than 50 volumes and more than 50,000 pages, there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of black Confederates. Three of these reports mention black men shooting at Union soldiers, one report mentions capturing a handful of armed black men along with some soldiers, and the other three reports mention seeing unarmed black laborers. There is no record of Union soldiers encountering an all-black line of battle or anything close to it.

In those same Official Records, no Confederate ever references having black soldiers under his command or in his unit, although references to black laborers are common. The non-existence of black combat units is further indicated by the records of debates in the Confederate Congress over the issue of black enlistment. The idea was repeatedly rejected until, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law to allow black men to serve in combat roles, although with the provision "that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners," i.e. that black soldiers would still be slaves.

Active fighting ended less than three weeks after the law was passed, and there is no evidence that any black units were accepted into the Confederate Army as a result of the law. Whatever black combat service might have occurred during the war, it was not sanctioned by the Confederate government. Even beyond the Official Records, there is no known letter, diary entry, or any other primary source in which a Confederate mentions serving with black soldiers.

In the years shortly after the war, hundreds of prominent Southerners wrote and spoke about "the Lost Cause," a vision of the war in which the South was fighting to secure state rights and in which slavery was a secondary concern. None of these Southerners ever mentioned black soldiers fighting for the South, although it would have been a good time to present such evidence if there was any truth behind it. The notion of widespread black combat service has only arisen within the past 25 years or so, long past the life-span of real veterans from either side, who would have immediately denied its legitimacy.

The modern myth of black Confederate soldiers is akin to a conspiracy theory-shoddy analysis has been presented, repeated, amplified, and twisted to such an extent that utterly baseless claims of as many as 80,000 black soldiers fighting for the Confederacy (which would roughly equal the size of Lee's army at Gettysburg) have even made their way into classroom textbooks. It is right to study, discover, and share facts about the complex lives of 19th century black Americans. It is wrong to exaggerate, obfuscate, and ignore those facts in order to suit 21st century opinions.

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The lives of Southern black people changed immeasurably during the war years. In the midst of a see-saw struggle that promised freedom as well as desolation, these men, women, and children made difficult and highly personal decisions in extraordinary circumstances. Many Southern slaves took advantage of the fog of war to escape towards freedom.

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https://www.havefunwithhistory.com/confederate-generals/

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During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Confederate States Army (CSA), also known as the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, fought on the side of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) in an effort to secure the region's independence from the Union and preserve slavery in the South.

On April 9 (officially April 12), and April 18, 1865, respectively, the principal Confederate armies, the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee, and the remnants of the Army of Tennessee and several minor divisions under General Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered to the United States (officially April 26).

Between April 16 and June 28, 1865, other Confederate armies surrendered. More than 100,000 Confederate soldiers had deserted by the end of the war, and this number could have risen as high as a third of all Confederate soldiers.

Although there were four distinct ranks of general officers:

All wore the same insignia. This choice was made at the outset of the war.

At first, the position of brigadier general was the highest in the Confederacy, as established by the Congress. The remaining general-officer levels were swiftly added as the conflict progressed, but no insignia were made for them.

Famous Confederate Generals

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 - October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general who commanded the whole Confederate States Army in its last days of the American Civil War.

He led the Confederacy's most powerful army, the Force of Northern Virginia, from 1862 to 1865 and was hailed as a skilled tactician for his efforts.

Lee was a brilliant leader and military engineer for the United States Army for a full three decades. At the United States Military Academy, he finished first in his graduating class. The patriarch of the Lee family was a veteran of the Revolutionary War named Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III.

He rose to fame during the Mexican-American War and later served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. Irrelevantly, Lee wed Mary Anna Custis Lee, a descendant of George and Martha Washington. Despite his moral misgivings, Lee supported the law of slavery and owned hundreds of slaves.

Also Read: Famous Union Generals

Even though he wanted to keep the country together and was offered a high command position in the Union, Lee followed the lead of his home state of Virginia and joined the Confederacy in 1861. A key military advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, he also participated in a handful of skirmishes during the first year of the Civil War.

After Joseph E. Johnston was wounded during the Peninsula Campaign in June 1862, Lee seized command of the Army of Northern Virginia. During the Seven Days Battles, he was able to force George B. McClellan's Union Army of the Potomac out of Richmond, the Confederate capital.

Lee defeated Union soldiers led by John Pope in the Second Battle of Bull Run in August. Although he initially attacked Maryland in September, the deadly but ultimately pointless Battle of Antietam compelled him to retire to Virginia.

Lee won decisive victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before attempting his second invasion of the North in the summer of 1863, during which he was soundly defeated by the Army of the Potomac under George Meade at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Before taking command of the Union forces the next spring, General Ulysses S. Grant led his army in the brief and ultimately fruitless Bristoe Campaign that same October.

Before the long Siege of Petersburg, there were the bloody but ultimately useless battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania; in April 1865, Grant took Richmond and decimated much of Lee's force, leading to Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House.

Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (January 21, 1824-May 10, 1863) was the second most famous Confederate general behind Robert E. Lee.

He took part in practically every military operation in the Eastern Theater of the war up until the day he died, and his efforts helped swing the balance of several critical Civil War engagements.

Many military historians consider him to be among the best tacticians in American history. Research into his techniques is still under progress.

Jackson graduated from West Point, the United States Military Academy, in 1846. On the territory that is now Virginia, he was born (now West Virginia).

His service in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), particularly during the Battle of Chapultepec, garnered him high honors. He taught at the Virginia Military Institute from 1851 to 1861, and his pupils hated him the entire time.

Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (May 28, 1818 - February 20, 1893) was a Confederate military officer of Louisiana Creole ancestry who led the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, thus sparking the American Civil War.

P. G. T. Beauregard was a name he rarely used, but it is the one by which he is most known today. G. T. Beauregard was the only name he ever signed his correspondence with.

A West Point graduate, Beauregard put his knowledge of military and civil engineering to good use as an engineer officer during the Mexican-American War.

After serving as the superintendent of the United States Military Academy for a year in 1861, he resigned from the Union Army to become the first brigadier general of the Confederate States Army after Louisiana seceded.

On April 12, 1861, he was in charge of manning the defenses of Charleston, South Carolina as the Civil War broke out. In Manassas, Virginia, three months later, he won the First Battle of Bull Run.

Following his military service, Beauregard returned to his home state of Louisiana, where he amassed a fortune as a railroad executive and promoter of the Louisiana Lottery while simultaneously fighting for civil rights for African Americans, including the ability to vote.

James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart, a general in the Confederate States Army, was born in Virginia on February 6, 1833, and died there on May 12, 1864. His first and middle names formed the abbreviation "Jeb," which he and his friends and family used almost exclusively.

Stuart was a well-known cavalry commander who was an expert at using horses in offensive operations and in reconnaissance.

Despite his carefree reputation, his service as Robert E. Lee's trusted eyes and ears boosted Southern morale and helped turn the tide of the war (red-lined gray cape, the yellow waist sash of a regular cavalry officer, hat cocked to the side with an ostrich plume, red flower in his lapel, often sporting cologne).

In 1854, Stuart graduated from West Point and went on to serve in the United States Army in Texas and Kansas. Stuart had fought Native Americans on the frontier and witnessed the carnage of Bleeding Kansas prior to his involvement in the capture of John Brown at Harpers Ferry.

He resigned his commission and joined the Confederate Army after his home state of Virginia seceded, first serving in the Shenandoah Valley under Stonewall Jackson and then rising through the ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia to become a key figure in every major battle until his death.

American military officer Joseph Eggleston Johnston (February 3, 1807 - March 21, 1891) distinguished himself throughout the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the Seminole Wars.

He joined the Confederate States Army not long after Virginia seceded from the Union and quickly advanced through the ranks to become a major general.

Johnston and Robert E. Lee both attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and both graduated as civil engineers. The Sunshine State, the Lone Star State, and the Wheat State all saw his service to our country. In 1860, he held the rank of brigadier general as Quartermaster General of the United States Army.

Johnston's efficacy during the American Civil War was diminished due to his disagreements with Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. He lost almost all of the battles he led personally.

At the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, he was the senior Confederate commander despite P.G.T. Beauregard being his subordinate.

Upon returning to civilian life, Johnston quickly rose through the ranks to executive positions in the railroad and insurance businesses. He was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives, but he served for only one term.

His career in government began when Grover Cleveland appointed him commissioner of the railroad department. Johnston died of pneumonia ten days after attending Sherman's burial in the pouring rain.

6. James Longstreet

In the American Civil War, James Longstreet (January 8, 1821 - January 2, 1904) was a prominent Confederate officer and General Robert E. Lee's primary subordinate, whom Lee affectionately referred to as his "Old War Horse."

He was a corps commander in Lee's Eastern Theater Army of Northern Virginia and worked briefly with Braxton Bragg's Western Theater Army of Tennessee.

A veteran of the Mexican-American War, Longstreet served in the United States Army after graduating from West Point. He married his first wife, Louise Garland, while recovering from a thigh wound sustained at the Battle of Chapultepec.

He was stationed in the American Southwest frontier for the entirety of the 1850s. Longstreet joined the Confederate cause after resigning his commission from the United States Army in June 1861.

At the First Battle of Bull Run, he had a relatively modest part, but he did lead the Confederate forces to an early victory at Blackburn's Ford in July.

After World War II, Longstreet had a fruitful career in government service, serving in many diplomatic and administrative capacities for the United States.

Slowly but surely, Longstreet's legacy has been reevaluated since the late 20th century. Several researchers have concluded that he was one of the best Civil War generals in terms of strategy and tactics.

7. William (Bloody Bill) Anderson

William T. Anderson, often known as "Bloody Bill" Anderson, was an American soldier who became one of the deadliest and most infamous guerilla leaders for the Confederacy during the American Civil War (c. 1840-October 26, 1864).

Missouri and Kansas were the targets of Anderson's gang of volunteer partisan raiders, who went after Union sympathizers and federal soldiers.

Anderson's father was murdered by a judge who had formerly been a friend but had since switched loyalties to the Union.

There he murdered many Union soldiers and robbed passing passengers. During the first months of 1863, he joined the Confederate guerrilla outfit Quantrill's Raiders, which mostly operated in the area straddling Kansas and Missouri.

The enmity between Anderson and Quantrill began to fester in late 1863, while Quantrill's Raiders spent the winter in Sherman, Texas. Anderson may have falsely accused Quantrill of murder, leading to his capture by Confederate officials.

Since then, Anderson has led his own band of raiders back to Missouri, where he has become the most feared guerilla in the state, plundering and killing a considerable number of Union soldiers and civilian sympathizers. Missouri's Confederate sympathizers, in contrast to their Union counterparts, justified his brutality.

Historians have disagreed on how to characterize Anderson, with some viewing him as a sadistic, psychotic killer and others placing his acts in the context of the prevailing lawlessness and despair of the era and the brutalizing influence of war.

8. George Pickett

During the American Civil War, veteran United States Army officer George Edward Pickett (January 16,[1] 1825 - July 30, 1875) switched sides and became a major general in the Confederate States Army.

Pickett's Charge, a fruitless and brutal Confederate offensive on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, carries his name, and he is best remembered as one of its commanders.

To Pickett's chagrin, his division was the last to reach the battlefield during the Gettysburg Campaign. But on the last day of the fight, July 3, it joined two other Longstreet divisions in an unsuccessful assault on Union fortifications.

Pickett ordered the execution of 22 Union soldiers from North Carolina in February 1864 for desertion after an unsuccessful attack on New Bern. His division was completely annihilated and lost at the Battle of Five Forks, bringing an unceremonious end to his military career.

Confederate general Ambrose Powell Hill Jr. died on April 2, 1865; he was born on November 9, 1825. To avoid confusion with another Confederate general named Daniel Harvey Hill, he is commonly referred to by his initials, A. P. Hill.

Hill, a lifelong Virgilian, was a veteran United States Army officer who had participated in the Mexican-American War and the Seminole Wars.

He rose to prominence early in the American Civil War as the leader of the "Light Division" in the Seven Days Battles and eventually became one of Stonewall Jackson's most capable lieutenants, making his mark at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg in 1862.

After Jackson was killed in action at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Hill was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of the Third Corps of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Hill would go on to lead the corps during the Gettysburg Campaign and the fall operations of 1863.

Throughout 1864 and 1865, he was sick and unable to lead the corps until the very end of the war, when he was slain leading the Union Army's advance at the Third Battle of Petersburg.

10. Nathan Bedford Forrest

During the American Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 - October 29, 1877) was a renowned Confederate Army general. From 1867 to 1869, he also served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Prior to the war, Forrest built a large fortune as a cotton plantation owner, horse and cattle trader, real estate broker, and slave trader.

He joined the Confederate Army in June 1861 as a private and rose through the ranks to become a general despite having no prior experience in the military.

Forrest, a skilled cavalry commander, was put in charge of an entire corps and tasked with developing innovative strategies for mobile armies.

To this day, Forrest remains a divisive character in Southern racial history due to his central participation in the slaughter of several hundred Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, the bulk of whom were black, and his role after the war as a leader of the Klan.

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10 Most Famous Confederate Generals - Have Fun With History

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During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Confederate States Army (CSA), also known as the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, fought on the side of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) in an effort to secure the region's independence from the Union and preserve slavery in the South.

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Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, was a Southern planter, Democratic politician and hero of the Mexican-American War who represented Mississippi in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. He also served as U.S. secretary of war (1853-57). Davis was chosen to serve as president of the Confederacy in 1861 and held the post until the Civil War ended in 1865.
WATCH: Civil War Documentaries on HISTORY Vault
Early Life

Born Jefferson Finis Davis in Kentucky in 1808 and raised in Mississippi, he was the 10th and youngest child in his family. His parents gave him the middle name Finis, meaning "final" in Latin.

Davis was greatly influenced by his oldest brother, Joseph, a wealthy lawyer and planter who served as a father figure, particularly after their father's death in 1824. Davis left his studies at Transylvania University in Kentucky that year to enter the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where Joseph's connection had secured him an appointment.

Davis graduated four years later, finishing in the bottom third of his class; he was posted to an infantry regiment in Wisconsin. After serving only briefly in the Black Hawk War in 1832, he fell in love with Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of Colonel Zachary Taylor.

The couple contracted malaria just months after their wedding in 1835, and Sarah died. Having resigned his army commission, Davis retreated to his cotton plantation, Brierfield, built on land provided by his brother Joseph at Davis Bend, Mississippi.

After eight years immersed in plantation life, Davis emerged to begin a career in politics. A steadfast supporter of state's rights and slavery, he served as a delegate to the Democratic state convention in 1840 and 1842 and ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature in 1843.

Children

In 1845, Davis married his second wife, Varina Howell, the young daughter of a prominent local family. The couple would have six children-four sons and two daughters-though only their daughters lived until adulthood.

That same year, Davis won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi. It was the only electoral success of his career; all of his later posts would be appointed.

Did you know? An 18-year-old Jefferson Davis was placed under house arrest while at West Point for his role in the 1826 Eggnog Riot, which started after cadets were caught smuggling whiskey into their barracks.

Mexican-American War Service

When the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, Davis resigned his congressional seat to serve as colonel of the First Mississippi Rifle regiment. As part of a force commanded by his former father-in-law, Davis distinguished himself in battle at Monterrey and Buena Vista.

General Taylor's praise of his heroism earned Davis national acclaim, and in August 1847 the Mississippi governor chose him to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate.

Davis as Senator and Secretary of War

As a senator, Davis fiercely defended the interests of the South in the growing sectional battle over slavery that would put the nation on the path to division and civil war. He led a generation of southern Democrats who joined the proslavery crusade launched by John C. Calhoun, and continued it after Calhoun's death in 1850.

A strong supporter of Manifest Destiny, Davis advocated for the extension of slavery into the new Western territories and the protection of slaveholders' property rights. He opposed letting the Oregon territory bar slavery, and battled against the Compromise of 1850, especially the admission of California to the Union as a free state.

In 1851, Davis resigned from the Senate to run unsuccessfully for governor of Mississippi. Two years later, President Franklin Pierce appointed Davis as secretary of war. During his tenure, Davis focused on increasing the army's size and improving national defenses and weapons technology, as well as providing protection for settlers in the Western territories.
WATCH: Jefferson Davis
From the Senate to the Confederacy

Davis returned to the Senate in 1857. He frequently clashed with fellow Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, arguing that Douglas' doctrine of popular sovereignty didn't do enough to protect the rights of slaveholders.

With the Democratic Party split between North and South, Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860. Davis resigned from the Senate in January 1861, after Mississippi seceded from the Union. When the Confederate Congress met in Montgomery, Alabama the following month, it unanimously chose Davis-the Southern leader with the most impressive political and military record-as president of the Confederacy.

Over the next four years, Davis struggled to balance his leadership role in the Civil War with the difficult domestic tasks involved with running a country. Like Lincoln, he faced epic clashes with his generals, state lawmakers and Congress, but he lacked the economic and military resources of his Northern counterpart.

Davis' critics charged him with neglecting state's rights in his efforts to form a more effective central government, favoring certain military leaders (like Braxton Bragg) despite their shortcomings, and sidelining those who disagreed with him, including Joseph E. Johnston.

Post-War Imprisonment and Later Life

On April 2, 1865, Davis and the rest of the Confederate government fled Richmond as the Union Army advanced on the Confederate capital. Union soldiers captured Davis near Irwinville, Georgia, on May 10, and he was imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe in Virginia. Indicted but never tried for treason, Davis was released on bond in May 1867.

Davis' emotional and physical health had deteriorated during his time in prison. After two years traveling in Europe, he and his family returned to Memphis, Tennessee, where he worked for a life insurance company.

In 1876, they returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where an admirer named Sarah Dorsey let them use a cottage on her seaside plantation near Biloxi. When Dorsey died, she willed the estate, Beauvoir, to Davis and his family. He would live there for the rest of his life, publishing his account of the war in a two-volume memoir titled The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in 1881.

In December 1889, Davis died of acute bronchitis in New Orleans. Some 200,000 people lined that city's streets for his funeral, held in Metairie Cemetery. In 1893, Davis' body was relocated and reinterred in Hollywood Cemetery, located in the former Confederate capital of Richmond.

Sources

Civil War: Biography: Jefferson Davis. American Battlefield Trust.
Michael E. Woods, Arguing until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis and the Struggle for American Democracy (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Jefferson Davis (1808-1889). Encyclopedia Virginia.

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Jefferson Finis Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, was a Southern planter, Democratic politician and hero of the Mexican War who had represented Mississippi in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and served as U.S. secretary of war.

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https://www.ducksters.com/biography/world_leaders/jefferson_davis.php

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https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/music/music-of-the-civil-war/

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Exploring the conflict’s varied soundtrack, from patriotic marches to haunting ballads, offers a window to the spirit, story, and emotion of a traumatic time in American history.

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https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/pastimes-1860s

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To fill the long hours between marches and battles, soldiers on both sides of the conflict found ways to amuse themselves. Reading was a popular way to pass the time. Soldiers read letters, newspapers, novels, the Bible, and any other printed material they could find. In fact, when stationed not far from enemy lines, they would occasionally trade newspapers with their opponents. Milton Barrett, a soldier in the 18th Georgia Volunteers, wrote in 1863:

Soldiers who had not brought their own Bible could obtain a free copy from the U.S. Christian Commission. When they had no reading matter they wrote it themselves, sometimes even publishing their own camp or hospital newspapers. These newspapers often contained accounts of battles, poetry and essays, or propagandistic messages for the enemy. Some enterprising soldiers established literary or debating societies. Music was a popular diversion, as well-from informal singing around the fire to staged balls.

Gambling prevailed in every conceivable form-from horse races to louse races. Games like cards, chess, checkers, and dominoes could be played for money or simply for fun, were quiet, and easily carried in a knapsack. Card games such as poker, twenty-one, keno, and euchre were played on both sides of the line, but by the last years of battle decks of cards were hard to come by in the Southern ranks. Confederate soldiers obtained more from Union prisoners, fallen soldiers, or by trade with their Federal counterparts.

More athletic activities included wrestling, boxing, leapfrog, racing on foot or horseback, cricket, and-in at least one instance-bowling using cannon balls to knock down rough wooden pins. Baseball, played differently than it is today, was another popular sport. (The ball was soft and the field could contain either two or four bases. Runners were only considered "out" when the pitcher hit them with the ball.)

Semi-permanent winter quarters meant that soldiers had time to develop more ambitious ways to pass the time. Occasionally, they would establish their own theater companies, such as the "Essayons" of the Union's 50th New York Engineers or the drama club of the Confederacy's 9th Kentucky Infantry. Winter, with its attendant cold weather, also brought a new range of activities such as ice skating, sledding, and building "snow effigies."

One of the more violent winter games was the snowball battle. Whole brigades would form up in lines, develop plans of attack, and set out to pummel the other side with hard missiles of snow and ice. Even officers joined in the battles, which often resulted in black eyes, bruises, and an occasional broken limb.

- Sources include The Life of Billy Yank and The Life of Johnny Reb by Bell Irvin Wiley (Louisiana State University Press, 1943 and 1952), The Fighting Men of the Civil War by William C. Davis (SMITHMARK Publishers, Inc., 1991) and The Confederacy is on Her Way Up the Spout: Letters to South Carolina, 1861-1864 by J. Roderick Heller, III and Carolynn Ayres Heller (The University of Georgia Press, 1992).

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To fill the long hours between marches and battles, soldiers on both sides of the conflict found ways to amuse themselves. Reading was a popular way to pass the time. Soldiers read letters, newspapers, novels, the Bible, and any other printed material they could find.

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https://tnmuseum.org/junior-curators/posts/what-does-a-soldier-eat?locale=en_us

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Do you get tired of eating the same thing over and over? I am sure you've had to eat leftovers that weren't too exciting. During the Civil War, Union and Confederate Soldiers didn't have a lot of options. They had to make do with the food they were given, called rations. Food was not always easy to get because of the war. Most soldiers were just happy to get food, even if it was the same thing, again and again.

The most common food given to soldiers was bread, coffee, and salt pork. The typical ration for every Union soldier was about a pound of meat and a pound of bread or flour. The Confederacy started out following the same rules. As the war went on, they weren't able to keep up. Before trucks and highways, it was very hard to get food to other places. The war made it harder, especially for the south. The Union blocked southern ports and railroads, which made getting food to Confederate soldiers difficult.
Tintype of soldiers posed eating hardtack and coffee rations,Tennessee State Library and Archives.
Confederate soldiers were more likely to get cornbread or cornmeal than flour or bread. Corn was a local crop and easier to get. The main bread for most Union troops was hardtack. It is made of only flour and water and looks much like a cracker. It does not spoil easily. It was said that some of the hardtack used during the Civil War was left over from the Mexican American War. Sometimes the hardtack might have worms or weevils in it. Does that sound like a good meal? Do you think the soldiers threw their food away? No way! The soldiers made do by boiling it in coffee. The weevils floated to the top and the soldiers scraped them off. This made hardtack tastier and solved the bug problem.
Hardtack from the Civil War, Tennessee State Museum Collection.
Do your parents drink coffee in the morning? Coffee was very important to troops. It gave the soldiers energy after long days of working or marching. It was also the safest thing to drink. Bad drinking water made many people sick. More soldiers actually died from disease than battle. Boiling the water to make coffee killed the bacteria that made them sick. Most soldiers didn't know about germs and bacteria, but they did see that drinking coffee was both delicious and safe. Because the Union blocked imports to the Confederacy, they didn't always have coffee. Confederate soldiers made do by boiling a flower root called chicory and other plants they could find to make a warm drink.
Coffee Beans issued to a Confederate Soldier. This was one of the last rations issued to the Army of the Tennessee, Tennessee Historical Society Collection at the Tennessee State Museum.
Salt pork was the most common meat ration. It was similar to bacon and preserved by using a lot of salt. It was not very tasty. Have you ever had country ham? Salt pork was even saltier. They had to scrape the salt off and soak it in water or partially boil it first to make it edible. The leftover salt could be saved for later to season another meal. Troops sometimes received other additional rations like beans, rice, sugar, and dried vegetables or fruit. Troops on both sides foraged for fresh food from homes and farms. Some officers also bought food for their company if they were able. But mostly living on hardtack, coffee, and pork was not very nutritious. Many soldiers got scurvy, an illness caused by not getting enough vitamins.
List of Rations sold to an Officer to be given to troops, Tennessee State Library and Archives.
Despite this, soldiers got pretty creative. They came up with different recipes that used the same ingredients. A number of recipes were published in military handbooks to help soldiers find variety. They made stews with hardtack, which would thicken the soup. If they had it, flour was used to make a number of things. They made gravy with leftover grease from cooking meat. One drummer boy wrote about wrapping dough made of flour and water around his bayonet and cooking it over the fire!

It is interesting to think about how a few ingredients can make many different things. Civil War soldiers didn't have access to the best food. But, there were many things the soldiers did to spice up what they had. Next time I have leftovers, I am going to think about how I can use them in a new way. What are some things you can do to experiment with leftovers at your home?

Union -Another name for the United States, the states that did not separate during the Civil War.

Confederacy - The states in the American South that separated from the United States during the Civil War.

Forage - To hunt or search for things and take them

Imports - Items brought in from another country or place

Scurvy - An illness caused by not getting enough vitamin C

Salt Pork - A cut pork preserved using salt

What were three common rations?

What foods did Confederate soldiers not have often? Why?

Why was drinking coffee the safest drink?

What were some of the things soldiers made with their rations?

Why do you think food was important during the Civil War?

How do you think food impacted soldiers during the war?

Follow the link and read about John Billing's memories of hardtack. Then follow the recipe and make your own hardtack at home.
https://www.americantable.org/2013/06/civil-war-recipe-hardtack-1861/
Watch this video about Civil War Rations
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/videos/civil-war-rations Further Reading: http://www.lincolnlogcabin.org/education-kits/Civil-War-Soldier-Lesson-Plans/Lesson-2.pdf https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/civil-war-cooking-what-the-union-soldiers-ate/
Primary Source Reading: John Billing's Memoire Hardtack and Coffee
https://archive.org/details/hardtackcoffee00bill/page/108/mode/2up
Primary Source Reading: Camp Fires and Camp Cooking by James Sanderson Printed by U.S. Government
https://books.google.com/books?id=QiBXAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Videos: Grace Allen is an Educator at the Tennessee State Museum.

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Do you get tired of eating the same thing over and over? I am sure you've had to eat leftovers that weren't too exciting. During the Civil War, Union and Confederate Soldiers didn't have a lot of options. They had to make do with the food they were given, called rations.

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https://www.middlecreek.org/civil-war-weapons/

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When the Civil War started in 1861, there wasn't a huge selection of weapons used other than canons, rifles, and swords (mainly for command). This was before airplanes, tanks, and advanced boats, so the weapons produced were those created for on the ground soldiers.

Springfield Model 1861 Rifle

This was the most popular gun during the Civil War. The Springfield was a .58 caliber with a 40-inch long barrel. It was loaded through the tip of the barrel with gun powder to shoot a Minié ball. An experienced soldier could shoot up to 3 rounds per minute at an aimed distance of 500 yards. In 1861, it cost about $20 to produce one (that's about $570.70 in today's equivalent).

Because Confederate and Union soldiers were not highly trained on this rifle nor in proper marksmanship, they fired and reloaded in a line at the same time to maintain accuracy and focused firing. Roughly a million of these were produced during the Civil War.
RELATED: The 13 Civil War battles fought in Kentucky [a short overview of each]
Henry Repeating Rifle

Similar to the rifle above, the Henry Repeating Rifle can shoot 2-4 shots per minute and has 16 shots in one magazine. Rather than manually filling the rifle with gun powder and bullets, it used a single bullet and black powder encased in a single metallic cylinder, like bullets today. It uses a lever-action system to fire bullets repeatedly.

It later became the gun that "won the west." Click to see the more advances gun in action:

Model 1840 Cavalry Saber

Swords like these were more of a status symbol than a weapon. Sure, it could be used if needed, but soldiers died more often from rifle shots and cannon blasts than from swords.

Bayonet

The bayonet wasn't used very often during the Civil War. In fact, it was used to kill only about 1 percent of soldiers. With the advancement of weapons such as the rifle and cannon, it didn't prove itself effective in most battles.

LeMat Pistol

This is the most lethal handgun of the Civil war. It was a .42 caliber and could hold 9 bullets at once. The LeMat was actually two guns in one because it could fire a single shotgun round with a flip of the switch on the side. It was a heavy gun and not the best for carrying, but it still was a deadly weapon during the Civil War.

Model 1857 12-Pounder "Napoleon" Gun

Named after Napoleon III of France, this gun - more like a cannon - was a muzzle-loaded smoothbore gun that fired 12-pound rounds. It could shoot up to 4 shots per minute. It was used by both sides during the war and could shoot solid metal shots, explosive shells, and grape and canister rounds with a range of 1,619 yards (or 16 football fields). The barrel was 66 inches long and the entire cannon (wheels included) weighed 2,350 pounds - that's the weight of a small car.

Gatling Gun

Although it wasn't used much, it's considered to be the most lethal gun in the Civil War. It was a .58 caliber, six-barrel gun that worked by turning the hand crank that rotated the barrels. It could be used by one soldier, but it was at its best when used by two - one to crank and aim while the other loaded more bullets at the top. It could shoot up to 600 rounds a minute.

The Battle of Middle Creek was a tragic example of the fratricidal, neighbor-against-neighbor warfare that characterized the struggle for Kentucky. Read about the history of this battle, see reenactments, and the preservation of this site.

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Weapons used during the Civil War [with photos] - Middle Creek

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When the Civil War started in 1861 , there wasn't a huge selection of weapons used other than canons, rifles, and swords (mainly for command). This was before airplanes, tanks, and advanced boats, so the weapons produced were those created for on the ground soldiers. This was the most popular gun during the Civil War.

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https://www.ducksters.com/history/civil_war/weapons_and_technology.php

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https://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/digexhibits/wore/

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New Technology: Make sure you do it from a Confederate perspective

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New Technology: Make sure you do it from a Confederate perspective

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https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/

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New Technology: Make sure you do it from a Confederate perspective

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New Technology: Make sure you do it from a Confederate perspective

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https://www.thoughtco.com/innovations-in-technology-during-the-civil-war-1773744#:~:text=The%20Civil%20War%20was%20fought,telegraphic%20communication%2C%20changed%20warfare%20forever.

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The Civil War was fought at a time of great technological innovation and new inventions, including the telegraph, the railroad, and even balloons, became part of the conflict. Some of these new inventions, such as ironclads and telegraphic communication, changed warfare forever. Others, like the use of reconnaissance balloons, were unappreciated at the time but would inspire military innovations in later conflicts.

The first battle between ironclad warships occurred during the Civil War when USS Monitor met CSS Virginia at the Battle of Hampton Roads, in Virginia.

The USS Monitor, which had been built in Brooklyn, New York in an amazingly short time, was one of the most magnificent machines of its time. Made of iron plates riveted together, it had a revolving turret and represented the future of naval warfare.

The Confederate ironclad had been built on the hull of an abandoned and captured Union warship, USS Merrimac. It lacked the Monitor's revolving turret, but its heavy iron plating made it nearly impervious to cannonballs.

A self-taught scientist and showman, Prof. Thaddeus Lowe, had been experimenting by ascending in balloons just before the Civil War broke out. He offered his services to the government and impressed President Lincoln by going up in a balloon tethered to the White House lawn.

Lowe was directed to set up the U.S. Army Balloon Corps, which accompanied the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia in the late spring and summer of 1862. Observers in balloons relayed information to officers on the ground via telegraph, which marked the first time aerial reconnaissance was used in warfare.

The balloons were an object of fascination, but the information they yielded was never used to its potential. By the fall of 1862, the government decided that the balloon project would be discontinued. It's interesting to think how later battles in the war, such as Antietam or Gettysburg, might have proceeded differently if the Union Army had the benefit of balloon reconnaissance.

The Minié Ball

The Minié ball was a newly designed bullet which came into widespread use during the Civil War. The bullet was much more efficient than earlier musket balls, and it was feared for its awesome destructive power.

The Minié ball, which gave off a terrifying whistling sound as it moved through the air, struck soldiers with tremendous force. It was known to shatter bones, and it is the primary reason why the amputation of limbs became so common in Civil War field hospitals.

The Telegraph

The telegraph had been revolutionizing society for nearly two decades when the Civil War began. News of the attack on Fort Sumter moved quickly via telegraph, and the ability to communicate over great distances nearly instantly was quickly adapted for military purposes.

The press made extensive use of the telegraph system during the war. Correspondents traveling with the Union armies quickly sent dispatches to the New York Tribune, New York Times, New York Herald, and other major newspapers.

President Abraham Lincoln, who was very interested in new technology, recognized the utility of the telegraph. He would often walk from the White House to a telegraph office in the War Department, where he would spend hours communicating by telegraph with his generals.

The news of Lincoln's assassination in April 1865 also moved quickly via the telegraph. The first word that he was wounded at Ford's Theatre reached New York City late on the night of April 14, 1865. The following morning the city's newspapers were publishing special editions announcing his death.

The Railroad

Railroads had been spreading throughout the nation since the 1830s, and its value to the military was obvious during the first major battle of the Civil War, Bull Run. Confederate reinforcements traveled by train to get to the battlefield and engage Union troops who had marched in the hot summer sun.

While most Civil War armies would move as soldiers had for centuries, by marching countless miles between battles, there were times when the railroad proved important. Supplies were often moved hundreds of miles to troops in the field. And when Union troops invaded the South during the final year of the war, destruction of railroad tracks became a high priority.

At the end of the war, Abraham Lincoln's funeral traveled to major cities in the North by rail. A special train carried Lincoln's body home to Illinois, a trip that took nearly two weeks with many stops along the way.

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Inventions Which Changed the Course of the Civil War

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The Civil War was fought at a time of great technological innovation and new inventions, including the telegraph, the railroad, and even balloons, became part of the conflict. Some of these new inventions, such as ironclads and telegraphic communication, changed warfare forever.

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https://www.pbs.org/mercy-street/blogs/mercy-street-revealed/i-wanted-to-do-my-part-women-as-soldiers-in-civil-war-america/

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'I Wanted to Do My Part': Women as Soldiers in Civil War America | Mercy Street Revealed

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Last Updated by Anya Jabour on
Anya Jabour, Ph.D., has been teaching and researching the history of women, families and children in the 19th-century South for more than 20 years. She is Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana, where she is affiliated with Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African-American Studies and has received several awards for teaching and research. In this blog post, Jabour explores the multitude of women who dressed as men to fight-and die-in all the major battles of the Civil War.
After discovering that Private Ames is a woman, Dr. Foster demands, "Why did you join the army?" Ames responds: "I wanted to do my part, same as you."

The case of Private Ames featured in Episode 204 of Mercy Street is based in fact. Historians estimate that as many as 1,000 women may have disguised themselves as men and served in the Confederate and Union armies. Among the best-known and well-documented cases are those of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, a.k.a. Pvt. Lyons Wakeman; Loreta Janeta Velazquez, a.k.a. Lt. Harry T. Buford; Sarah Emma Edmonds, a.k.a. Pvt. Franklin Thompson; and Jennie Hodgers, a.k.a. Albert D. J. Cashier.

Military records reveal that women fought-and died-in all the major battles of the Civil War, participating in clashes in Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, among many others. Dressed as men, women took on a wide range of military roles in the Civil War. Sarah Edmonds participated in the Peninsula Campaign as a soldier, spy, and courier-and even ended up working as a (male) nurse at Mansion House Hospital!

Female combatants faced the same dangers as their male counterparts, of course, but they also confronted unique dangers. In particular, they lived in fear of discovery, which might lead to expulsion or imprisonment. Fortunately for the women who disguised themselves as men, enlistment physical examinations were extremely cursory. Moreover, many women soldiers, who usually came from working-class backgrounds, had adopted men's clothing and male personas in their teens, most frequently in order to obtain better pay and greater independence than " women's work " in domestic service or the "needle trades" could provide. Their familiarity with "men's work" as "hired men" and "stableboys" eased their transition to army life and helped them to evade detection.

Military records reveal that women fought-and died-in all the major battles of the Civil War, participating in clashes in Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, among many others.

The presence of many underage soldiers in both armies also facilitated their deception; young women in uniform easily "passed" as beardless boys. The conditions of camp life-most soldiers slept fully clothed, rarely bathed, and relieved themselves in the woods-also made it possible to avoid scrutiny.

Thus, most cross-dressing soldiers were discovered only when injury or illness brought them under the closer inspection of doctors and nurses, as was the case for Private Ames on Mercy Street. One especially instructive case of belated discovery involved an unnamed New Jersey woman, whose "military bearing" and "gallant conduct" in battle so impressed her senior officers that she was promoted from corporal to sergeant-shortly before she gave birth!

Most women soldiers not only evaded discovery, but also served with distinction. Official reports praised the military record of Pvt. Franklin Thompson (Sarah Edmonds), asserting that the young recruit was devoted to the regiment, "sharing in all its toils and privations, marching and fighting in the various engagements in which it participated ... never absent from duty, obeying all orders with intelligence and alacrity, his whole aim and desire to render zealous and efficient aid to the Union cause."

Thompson's dedication was typical. Fully 15 percent of women soldiers sustained battle wounds; 18 percent were taken prisoner of war; and 11 percent died while serving. Overall, women soldiers had a combined casualty rate of 44 percent, compared to 30 percent for their male counterparts. These figures, combined with women's 14 percent promotion rate-4 percentage points higher than men's-all suggest that female soldiers were especially dedicated members of the Civil War military.

An unnamed New Jersey woman, whose "military bearing" and "gallant conduct" in battle so impressed her senior officers that she was promoted from corporal to sergeant-shortly before she gave birth!

After the war, Sarah Edmonds doffed her uniform and resumed life as a woman, marrying and raising several children before successfully applying for a military pension in 1884. Other cross-dressing soldiers, however, lived the majority of their lives as men.

Several years after adopting male attire in order to seek more remunerative employment, Irish immigrant Jennie Hodgers-thereafter known as Albert D. J. Cashier-enlisted in the Union Army in 1862 at the age of 19. After being honorably discharged in 1865, Cashier returned to Illinois and resumed life as a male laborer. Cashier successfully maintained a male identity, even joining the Grand Army of the Republic (a Union veterans' organization), until a broken leg required hospitalization at the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois, in 1911.

Friends and physicians managed to keep Cashier's secret until 1914, when Hodgers was declared insane and transferred to a mental hospital, dying the following year. While scholars of LGBTIQ history often describe Cashier as an example of a transgender individual, most women soldiers of the era embraced gender nonconformity only for the duration of the conflict. However, whether for a few years or for a lifetime, women who dressed as men in 19th century America clearly rejected the strictures of Victorian femininity and demonstrated women's capacity to adapt to changing circumstances.

Although the experiences of women in the military were in many ways exceptional, women soldiers, like other groups of women in the Civil War era, sought-and found-ways to increase their independence and expand their horizons.
Sources

Amy Benck, "Albert D. J. Cashier: Woman Warrior, Insane Civil War Veteran, or Transman?"

DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), New Jersey soldier quotations p. 15.

Lauren Cook Burgess, ed., An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, Alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers, 1862-1864 (Pasadena, Md.: Minerva Center, 1994).

Sarah Emma Edmonds, Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse, and Spy: A Woman's Adventures in the Union Army, ed. By Elizabeth D. Leonard (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999).

Elizabeth D. Leonard, All The Daring of a Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1999), Edmonds/Thompson quotation pp. 172-173.

C. J. Worthington, ed., The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez (1876: rpt., New York: Arno Press, 1972).

Anya Jabour, M.A., Ph.D., has been teaching and researching the history of women, families, and children in the nineteenth-century South for more than twenty years. She is Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana, where she is affiliated with Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and African-American Studies and has received several awards for teaching and research. She is excited to be sharing her love for the Civil War-era South with PBS.
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'I Wanted to Do My Part': Women as Soldiers in Civil War America | Mercy Street Revealed

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Last Updated by Anya Jabour on Anya Jabour, Ph.D., has been teaching and researching the history of women, families and children in the 19th-century South for more than 20 years. She is Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana, where she is affiliated with Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African-American Studies and has received several awards for teaching and research.

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Women: Make sure you choose a Confederate woman

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Women: Make sure you choose a Confederate woman

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https://www.remedialherstory.com/9-women-in-the-civil-war.html#/

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The role of women throughout the American Civil War was diverse and widespread. No matter wether one was black or white, southern or northern, women were vital in the war efforts. Some were soldiers,…

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Women: Make sure you choose a Confederate woman

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Women: Make sure you choose a Confederate woman

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https://blueandgrayeducation.org/2020/03/civil-war-women/

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The Civil War wasn't just a man's war. For the first time in American history, women played a significant role in the wartime effort. Women took on jobs beyond their society-mandated ones inside the home, including spy, nurse, and soldier. Clara Barton once claimed that the four-year war advanced the social position of women by 50 years. Here are some of the war's most amazing women who made a difference, and related sites to visit to learn more about them.
Clara Barton

One of the Civil War's most famous women, Clara Barton risked her life distributing supplies to soldiers. She started off assisting the wounded at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. From then on throughout the war, she could be found on battlefields, tending the wounded on both sides. One patient told her: "This is the second time you saved my life." He went on to explain she had been his teacher in New Jersey (she became a teacher at the age of 16 and, at the age of 30, opened a free school in Bordentown, New Jersey). She escaped death several times, including during the Battle of Antietam, when a bullet whizzed through her sleeve only to kill the man behind her. After the war, Barton went on to found the American Red Cross. A little known fact about her is that, after leaving the free school (they hired a man to be principal rather than her and she wasn't happy), she worked at the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C.; she may have been the federal government's first female employee. Some of the men resented her presence, even spitting tobacco on her skirt.
Clara Barton sites:

Clara Barton National Historic Site, Glen Echo, MD: Clara Barton lived in this house, just outside Washington, D.C., for the last 15 years of her life. It served as the first headquarters of the American Red Cross.

Clara Barton Soldiers Missing Soldiers Office Museum, Washington, DC: This is where Barton lived as she struck out for Civil War battlefields, and where she orchestrated the searching for missing soldiers after the war. It's been beautifully preserved as it appeared in her day.

Clara Barton Birthplace Museum, North Oxford, MA: Barton's childhood home is now a museum.

Rose O'Neal Greenhow

Washington socialite Rose O'Neal Greenhow was beautiful, educated, and refined-her nickname Wild Rose came from her olive skin and complexion. Given her social connections to powerful men, she was recruited as a Confederate spy soon after the outbreak of the war. In fact, she warned General Beauregard about General Irvin McDowell's movements toward Manassas Junction before Bull Run-helping to sway a Confederate victory. She was thrown in prison for a year (sometimes flying the Confederate flag from her window), then deported to Richmond. Jefferson Davis rewarded her generously, then sent her to France and England to use her guile and charms to earn support for the Confederacy. Upon her return, while attempting to run the federal blockade at Wilmington, her small boat ran aground, and, weighted down by gold sovereigns, she drowned.
Rose O'Neal Greenhow sites:

Home of Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Washington, D.C.: Her house at 398 16th Street, N.W., no longer stands. LOOK AT CIVIL WAR BOOK

Home of Rose O'Neal Greenhow, London: The house at 34 Sackville Street is where the famous Confederate spy resided as she strove to gain English support for the Confederacy.

Harriet Tubman

Born on Maryland's Eastern Shore, legendary abolitionist Harriet Tubman (ca 1821-1913) escaped from slavery in 1849, going on to help many others find their way to freedom along the Underground Railroad. While her courage and acumen as a "conductor" is well known, her work as a nurse, cook-and spy-during the Civil War is lesser so. Her intimate knowledge of the landscape gleaned along the Underground Railroad, her skills in arranging secret meetings and scouting without notice, along with her ability to think on her feet all proved valuable assets in hunting for rebel camps and reporting on Confederate movements. In one operation, she provided info regarding the location of Confederate mines in the Combahee River, so that Union boats carrying black troops proceeded unharmed. This action made her the first and only woman to organize a military operation during the Civil War. To top it off, she told local enslaved people that these ships cold carry them to freedom, so when she gave the word, hundreds rushed forward to be rescued; more than 700 would be freed, a hundred of which went on to serve the Union army.
Harriet Tubman sites:
Sarah Rosetta Wakeman

Private Lyons Wakeman served for nearly two years for the Union in the Civil War. Even after becoming ill during the Red River Campaign and dying in a New Orleans hospital of chronic diarrhea, his secret was not discovered-the fact that "he" was a "she." In fact, no one knew her secret until 1976, when her letters were discovered. And that's what makes her different from the hundreds of other women who fought as soldiers-her letters were preserved to tell her story. In one letter she wrote: "I don't know how long before I shall have to go into the field of battle. For my part I don't care. I don't feel afraid to go." She is buried in Chalmette National Cemetery near New Orleans under the name Private Lyons Wakeman.
Sarah Rosetta Wakeman sites:
Belle Boyd

A beautiful debutante from Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), known as the "Siren of the Shenandoah," Isabella "Belle" Boyd started off as a nurse. But when Union troops came to her hometown, she unleashed her charms, snagging info from them about troop movements and passing what she learned along to Confederate officers. Her most famous mission involved riding through enemy lines to alert Gen. Stonewall Jackson that Union troops planned to blow up bridges in Martinsburg. Thanks to her, General Jackson successfully routed Union troops out of the Shenandoah Valley. Later on, she carried documents to England for Confederate President Jefferson Davis. When her ship was intercepted by Union troops, she fell in love with Union officer Lt. Samuel Wylde, whom she later married in England. The church still looks exactly as it did on the day they said "I do."
Belle Boyd sites:

Belle Boyd House and Civil War Museum and Archives, Martinsburg, West Virginia: The ballroom is decorated in Victorian style, as Boyd would have known it. The rest of the house showcases Civil War artifacts from Berkeley County.

James Church, London: The church at 197 Piccadilly where Belle Boyd married Union officer Lt. Samuel Wylde.

Elizabeth Van Lew

A wealthy socialite from Richmond, Virginia, born of northern parents, Elizabeth Van Lew opposed slavery and secession. When the Libby Prison was established in an old tobacco warehouse on the edge of town, she and her mother brought supplies to Union prisoners-and helped them escape. As the war continued, her mission turned into a full-on intelligence gathering operation, gleaning information from recently captured prisoners about Confederate troop movements, which she passed along to Union officers. In 1863 Gen. Benjamin Butler recruited her as a spy, and she developed a ring of 12 people, both black and white, to collect info from Confederates for the Union; she often smuggled messages in hollowed eggs. One of her spies was "Mary Jane," formerly enslaved by the Van Lews. She never recovered her social status, labeled a traitor and spy by her former friends, though after the war, President Grant appointed her postmaster of Richmond. After a lifetime of giving and caring for her family's former slaves, she died penniless. The family of a Union soldier she had helped paid for her funeral.
Elizabeth Van Lew sites:
Shockoe Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia: Elizabeth Van Lew is buried in this somewhat overlook cemetery, along with Chief Justice John Marshall, Edgar Allan Poe's adoptive parents, and activist Nora Houston.

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The Civil War wasn't just a man's war. For the first time in American history, women played a significant role in the wartime effort. Women took on jobs beyond their society-mandated ones inside the home, including spy, nurse, and soldier. Clara Barton once claimed that the four-year war advanced the social position of women by 50 years.

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Women: Make sure you choose a Confederate woman

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Women: Make sure you choose a Confederate woman

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https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/female-soldiers-civil-war

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The American Battlefield Trust’s Untold Story of female soldiers in the Civil War.

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https://www.history.com/news/civil-war-native-american-indian-territory-cherokee-home-guard

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV5FQoWdvwQ

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Choosing Sides: Native Americans and the Civil War

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https://www.cowboysindians.com/2017/11/native-americans-in-the-civil-war/

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In 1861 it seemed that America was coming apart. Secession, Confederate nationhood, the firing on Fort Sumter, and a mesmeric rush to combat engulfed the nation. The realities of the crisis differed for everyone as individuals examined family, community, state, and national allegiances. One hundred and fifty years after the cataclysm of the American Civil War, we still tend to think of it in terms of black-and-white: the majority white soldiers and civilians, the minority African-American slaves. But what of the indigenous peoples of America?

For many American Indians, the impending conflict created no less of a crisis than it did for the dominant society. But their experience would be primarily defined by their location in the country. Geography was everything. As the tide of non-Indian settlement swept from East to West, indigenous people became minorities within settled regions. They remained Native, but adapted various political, economic, and cultural aspects of their lives to better coexist with their new neighbors. By the time the Civil War started, Indians in settled regions experienced the conflict as members of larger communities whose movements they did not control. Indians living on the edge of incorporated states were better able to retain tribal autonomy, yet they were still strongly influenced by national and state political discourse. Those groups well beyond the white frontier in "Indian Country," however, generally lived with little concern for U.S. politics.

As the nation became consumed by war, few Anglos on either side of the Great Divide considered the Native Americans living among them. East of the Mississippi, tribal lands had been so diminished that most of the 30,000 Indians in the Union did not live in powerful tribal units. Thus, as the country headed for dissolution, Eastern Indians were left to make individual choices about whether or not to engage in the conflict. The Indian minority was concerned less about the divisive issues of slavery and the preservation of the American Constitution than about their ongoing struggle to hold on to their remaining land and culture. If fighting for the Union cause brought the respect and perhaps gratitude of those in power, then it was a means to an end. Army service also brought regular pay and food, adventure, and the continuation of an honorable tradition of Native warriors.

Indians all over the North took up arms for the Union cause. Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters enlisted more than 150 Ottawa, Chippewa, Delaware, Huron, Oneida, and Potawatomi Indians. Sharpshooters received extra training, enjoyed high morale, and used their Sharps breechloaders to devastating effect. But they also experienced discrimination. Fellow soldiers often made uncomplimentary remarks, generally sticking to well-worn stereotypes of "desperate" or drunken men. Yet the Indian sharpshooters proved themselves time and time again in the grueling Virginia battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg. After the ill-fated Battle of the Crater during the seige of Petersburg, survivors recounted how a group of mortally wounded Indian soldiers chanted a traditional death song before finally succumbing, inspiring others with their valor.

Native Americans living on the ever-shifting Western frontier confronted a different situation. Most Indian nations on the periphery of the organized states sought to avoid involvement in national issues that did not seem to affect their lives. However, neutrality was not an option for those in strategic locations. Indeed, recently settled areas just west of the Mississippi would bear the full brunt of the conflict. Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) lay directly between Confederate and Union territory. Both the United States and the Confederacy eventually realized that this important buffer area between Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas would play a critical role in the war. But before the national governments organized diplomatic missions, citizens in states adjoining Indian Territory clamored for Indian involvement. They were determined to recruit the thousands of Native people on their borders for their side in the war. Arkansas offered weapons, while Texas readied men to occupy former federal forts. The Native nations found themselves facing mounting pressure to take sides.

The Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole nations could still be considered newcomers in Indian Territory in 1861, having arrived there at the end of the arduous journey known to history as Indian Removal two decades before. They were still putting their societies back together when the war came. Native leaders consumed with economic progress, political infighting, and societal disarray now had to choose sides in the conflict dividing the larger nation. The choice was not an easy one as the federal government provided the annuities owed to the nations for surrendering land in the East, while tribal members had strong economic, social, and religious ties to the surrounding Southern culture.

Each of the five southeastern Indian nations decided independently which side to support, and each chose the Confederacy. The United States' complete disengagement with the region and the Confederacy's proactive diplomatic overtures helped to sway the Indian leaders. The Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole nations all signed treaties of alliance with the Confederate States of America in 1861. Official lines were drawn, but the outcome was far from simple.

Native soldiers were mustered into Confederate units comprised of their own members - including officers, a privilege the Union never afforded to either Indians or African-Americans in its service. At least one of the Indian officers, Cherokee Brig. Gen. Stand Watie, rose to prominence and is remembered as the highest-ranking Indian in the Confederate army.

Military service quickly became complicated for the Cherokees as they were ordered to attack neighboring Creeks loyal to the Union. This demand, which ran counter to ideas of Native kinship and values, caused unrest among Cherokee troops, and many left Confederate service. Soon their chief, John Ross, took advantage of the belated arrival of Union support in the territory and pledged his allegiance to the United States for the remainder of the war. The Cherokees were now sending men to don both blue and gray, causing an internal civil war within their nation.

The loyal Creeks suffered terribly as refugees in Kansas territory, awaiting federal support to allow them to return home unmolested by their Confederate kin. Seminoles, too, were split by mid-war and fought for both sides. However, the Choctaw and Chickasaw entered the war more united politically. Because they were heavily engaged in a slave-based, cash crop market economy, these two nations decided for Southern allegiance and remained committed.

Fighting raged in Indian Territory for most of the war. Regular troops from both armies, as well as countless guerrillas and raiders, swept back and forth through the region. Except for a few notable battles, like Honey Springs in July 1863, most of the fighting was characterized by skirmishes and raids. These small but destructive engagements took a terrible toll on soldiers and civilians. Homes and businesses burned, farmland lay fallow, mills ceased operation, livestock disappeared. Poverty, disease, and dislocation threatened to destroy Native society. The region suffered both military engagements and enemy occupation unlike any area of the Union and most of the Confederacy.

As the federal government became consumed with war, Indian relations fell off the radar screen in Washington. But on the Western fringe, the drumbeat of nationalism combined with the lack of federal oversight created a perfect storm for the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people.

In 1862, Colorado was still a territory with a new and ambitious governor, John Evans. A railroad and real estate investor, Evans presided over a territory facing increasing tensions between white settlers and Plains Indian tribes. Evans began to fear that the tribes were uniting and amassing arms as troops were being pulled out of Colorado to fight in the Civil War, so in the summer of 1864 he obtained authorization from President Lincoln to temporarily form the 3rd Colorado Infantry for the sole purpose of fighting "hostile" Indians.

Commanded by Methodist minister Col. John Chivington, the 3rd Colorado found itself with no one to fight after chiefs Black Kettle and White Antelope met with Evans and Chivington in Denver and accepted the governor's entreaty to make peace. The chiefs agreed to bring any Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who didn't want to fight to Fort Lyon for protection, where they camped nearby alongside Big Sandy Creek.

But when Evans left for Washington to personally advocate for statehood, Chivington created his own conflict. On November 29, 1864, Chivington led his men in a surprise attack on the encampment of 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. This was an Indian village - not a raiding party - and at daybreak the still sleepy community was entirely unprepared for attack.

Surviving witnesses described the morning as a frenzied bloodlust of torture and killing. Seven hundred troops of the 1st and 3rd Colorado Cavalries committed atrocities upon 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho, most of whom were unarmed women and children, leaving 160 to 200 dead and many more raped and severely injured. Congressional investigations into the Sand Creek Massacre revealed that Chivington launched the gruesome attack without authorization and found that he should be removed from office and punished, but no charges were ever brought. In response, many Cheyenne and Arapaho joined the militaristic Dog Soldiers, seeking revenge on settlers throughout the southern Plains.

For many Native Americans, the irony of the Civil War was that they were inexorably involved, whether they chose to take sides or not. The repercussions of the enormous conflict entangled Native peoples living both within and without the borders of the Union and Confederate states. Not desired as participants at the start, their value as recruits grew as the war dragged on, as more and more white men died. By the end, a Native American - Ely S. Parker - would stand side by side with Ulysses S. Grant for the signing of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House, forever immortalized in that historic moment. But military involvement, whether sought or forced, did not substantially benefit Native peoples. Instead, the war of brother against brother, tribe against tribe, would cost them a great deal.

Dr. Clarissa W. Confer is an assistant professor of history at California University of Pennsylvania and the author of The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007) and Daily Life During the Indian Wars (Greenwood, 2010).
From the January 2012 issue.

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Native Americans in the Civil War - C&I Magazine

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In 1861 it seemed that America was coming apart. Secession, Confederate nationhood, the firing on Fort Sumter, and a mesmeric rush to combat engulfed the nation. The realities of the crisis differed for everyone as individuals examined family, community, state, and national allegiances.

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https://time.com/5781480/three-cornered-war-excerpt/

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The Civil War Wasn't Just About the Union and the Confederacy. Native Americans Played a Role Too

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As the Civil War began, the Union wanted to control New Mexico as a way to access the gold in the mountains of the West and California's deep-water ports. The Confederates wanted these same resources, of course.

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https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/American-Civil-War/273689

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At 4:30 am on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery in Charleston, South Carolina, opened fire on Fort Sumter, which was held by the United States Army. The bombardment set off a savage four-year war between two great geographic sections of the United States. One section was the North-23 Northern and Western states that supported the federal government. The other section was the South-11 Southern states that had seceded (withdrawn) from the Union and formed an independent government called the Confederate States of America. The struggle between these two combatants is generally known as the American Civil War, though it is also referred to as the War Between the States or the War of the Rebellion.

The Civil War came as a climax to a long series of quarrels between the North and South over the interpretation of the United States Constitution. In general, the North favored a loose interpretation that would grant the federal government expanded powers. The South wanted to reserve all undefined powers to the individual states.

This difference of opinion sprang primarily from economic considerations. The North, as well as the West, wanted internal improvements sponsored by the federal government-roads, railroads, and canals. The South, however, had little desire for these projects. Another source of conflict was the opening of public lands in the West. The distribution of such lands in small lots speeded the development of this section; but it was opposed in the South because it aided the free farmer rather than the slaveholding plantation owner. A similar quarrel developed over the tariff, a tax on goods imported from other countries. A high tariff protected the Northern manufacturers. The South wanted a low tariff in order to trade its cotton to Great Britain and other countries for cheap foreign goods.

One issue, however, overshadowed all others-the right of the federal government to prohibit slavery in the Western territories. Such legislation would severely limit the number of slave states in the Union. At the same time the number of free states would keep multiplying. Many Southerners feared that a government increasingly dominated by free states might eventually endanger existing slaveholdings. Thus the South strongly opposed all efforts to block the expansion of slavery. If the federal government did succeed in exercising this power, many Southern political leaders threatened secession as a means of protecting states' rights.

After the war, slavery became more and more unpopular. By 1804 seven of the northernmost states had abolished slavery, and emancipation (the freeing of enslaved people) was common even in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.

Just as slavery seemed to be dying out, it was revived by an agricultural rebirth in the South. A new demand for cotton and the introduction of improved machinery such as the cotton gin transformed the Southern states into the greatest cotton-growing region in the world. Cotton production jumped from 178,000 bales in 1810 to 3,841,000 bales in 1860. This tremendous increase in production required an army of new workers, chiefly enslaved Black people. Within 50 years the number of slaves rose from about 1,190,000 to almost 4,000,000.

At the same time that slavery became highly profitable in the South, a wave of democratic reform swept the North and West. There were demands for political equality and social and economic advances. The goals were free public education, rights for women, better wages and working conditions for laborers, and humane treatment for criminals and the insane.

This crusading ardor soon led to an all-out attack on the slavery system in the South, coupled with a strong opposition to its spread into new territories. It charged that such an institution nullified the greatest human right-that of being a free person. Reformers now called for the complete abolition of slavery.

The first abolitionist to gain national attention was William Lloyd Garrison of Boston, in 1831. Within a few years, orators were giving antislavery speeches throughout the North, and abolitionist newspapers and societies sprang up. Some of the abolitionists even denounced the federal Constitution because it legalized and condoned slavery. Such a radical was Wendell Phillips, one of New England's ablest orators. In 1836 he gave up his law practice because his conscience would not allow him to take the oath to support the Constitution.

Despite their noisy campaign, the abolitionists remained a small minority. They were generally condemned by their neighbors and were often the victims of ruthless persecution. Some antislavery printing offices were mobbed and burned. One abolitionist editor, Elijah Lovejoy of Alton, Illinois, was murdered.

White abolitionists, especially, had no firsthand knowledge of slavery, and their criticisms were often wide of the mark. Southerners who might have doubted the wisdom of slavery now began to defend it with great earnestness. They said it was not a necessary evil but a righteous and benevolent institution. They compared it with the "wage-slave" system of the North and claimed that the slaves were better cared for than the free factory workers. Southern preachers proclaimed that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible. Differences over the slavery issue prompted some Southern churches to break away from the parent group and form sectional denominations.

In the House of Representatives, Southerners fought back in 1836 by requiring all antislavery petitions to be tabled without reading or discussion. John Quincy Adams, the former president and now a member of the House, finally won repeal of the rule in 1844.

More and more Northerners became convinced that slavery should not be allowed to spread to new territories. At the same time Southerners were becoming equally determined to create new slave states. For 40 years this issue created an ever-widening breach between the South and the rest of the country. The slave states had long been a separate section economically. Now they began to regard themselves as a separate social and political unit as well.

The first clear evidence of political sectionalism came in 1819 when Missouri asked to be admitted to the Union as a slave state. Some Northerners in Congress objected to the expansion of slavery, and Congress could not come to an agreement. At the time, there were 22 states, half of them free states and half of them slave states. In the Senate, where each state had two members, the senators from slave and free states were equal in number. A way to break the deadlock finally came in late 1819, when Maine applied to become a state. After months of wrangling, Congress passed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It allowed Missouri to become a slave state and Maine to become a free state, thereby preserving the balance of slave and free states and the balance of power in the Senate. The Missouri Compromise also banned slavery from any future territories or states north of Missouri's southern border.

The most disputed part of the agreement was the Fugitive Slave Act. Under the new law, Black people who were caught running away from slavery could not testify on their own behalf or have a trial by jury. Severe penalties were set for federal marshals who refused to enforce the law and for anyone who helped an enslaved person escape. Nevertheless, many antislavery advocates openly flouted this law. In fact, its harshness led many abolitionists to work harder to help enslaved people, including through the Underground Railroad. This organized system aided runaway enslaved people by providing places where they might hide and receive food and be directed to the next "stop" on the way to Canada and freedom. Some Northern states passed "personal liberty laws," in an effort to prevent enforcement of this fugitive slave act.

Meanwhile, a new political party, the Republican Party, had been formed in 1854 to combat the extension of slavery. This party gained strength so rapidly that Southern leaders threatened to secede from the Union if the "Black Republicans" came to power. When the new party did win the elections of 1860 and Lincoln was chosen president, the Southern states carried out their threat. They were led by South Carolina, which withdrew from the Union on December 20, 1860. By February 1861, six other states of the lower South- Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas-had seceded. The states that seceded set up a new government, the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy, and made Jefferson Davis president.

Many efforts were made to preserve the Union and to prevent bloodshed. The outgoing president, James Buchanan, was devoted to the Union but believed that the Constitution forbade his taking any action against the South. For several weeks Lincoln also followed a wait-and-see course.

Political factions in Congress, however, sought a solution. A Senate committee, headed by John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, prepared an amendment to the Constitution. It provided that the Missouri Compromise line would be extended to the Pacific Ocean and that Congress would be prohibited from interfering with slavery in territories below this line of 36°30′. It also provided that the federal government would pay for enslaved people who escaped to the North. The proposal died, however, when President-elect Lincoln refused his support because it left open the way for the expansion of slavery.

Another effort for peace was made by the Virginia legislature, which called a conference of the states at Washington, D.C., on February 4, 1861. Seven slave and 14 free states sent representatives. The conference recommended various concessions to the South. Congress ignored these suggestions, however, and instead passed an amendment to the Constitution offered by Senator Douglas. This provided that Congress should never interfere with slavery in the states. It was not ratified by the necessary number of states and was forgotten when the fighting began.

When Lincoln became president, he took care to avoid all threats of force, but he promised to protect "the property and places" in the South belonging to the federal government. One of those places was Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Disregarding Lincoln's vow, Charleston land batteries opened fire on the fort on April 12, 1861. The small federal garrison surrendered the next day. The Civil War had begun.

Until the bombardment of Fort Sumter, many people in the North and South had been determined to prevent war. Some Northerners had argued to "let the erring sisters go in peace." Many Southerners had opposed secession, and in some of the rebelling states the decision to leave the Union was made only after a close popular vote. The attack on Fort Sumter, however, ended all hope of peace. Lincoln at once called upon the loyal states to furnish 75,000 state militia, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis asked for 100,000 volunteers from the Southern states. Both sections were eager for battle. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas now joined the Confederacy. The four border states- Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri-stayed with the North. In Virginia some of the western counties broke away from the Old Dominion and set up a separate government that later joined the Union as West Virginia.

In the division of the country's resources, the North fared far better than the South. Only 11 states left the Union, and 23 (24 with West Virginia) remained loyal. The population of the loyal states was about 23 million; that of the seceding states, less than 10 million, of whom more than a third were enslaved people.

The wealth of the North was estimated at more than twice that of the South (excluding slave property). The North had every type of industry, including about 90 percent of the total manufacturing of the entire country and most of its mineral resources. The South was chiefly agricultural, with a heavy dependence upon cotton production.

The North had more than twice as many miles of railroads as the South. It also possessed the means of maintaining effective railroad operation, whereas the South did not. This was militarily important because the Civil War was the first major war in which railroads furnished the chief means of transportation of troops and supplies. On the seas the North retained most of the United States Navy and most of the privately owned merchant vessels. The two main assets of the South were its armies fought on interior lines, thus lessening transportation and communication problems; and it had expert military leaders, notably in the East.

In the beginning both sides tried to raise troops only on a volunteer basis, but they soon found it necessary to adopt a military draft. The South resorted to conscription in 1862, and the North did the following year. Both sides also had great difficulty in equipping their troops. It was many months before Northern factories were producing enough goods for the Union armies. The South, with few industrial resources, had to import much of its equipment from Europe, running it through the naval blockade imposed by Union vessels.

By the end of 1861 two major battlefronts had developed. One was in the East where Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania suffered the bulk of the fighting. The other front was in the West, at first along the Mississippi River.

On the Eastern front each side tried to capture the opposing capital. The Union capital was Washington, D.C., and the Confederate capital was Richmond, Virginia. General McClellan, the first Union commander there, was a great drillmaster but a timid warrior. He was repeatedly outmaneuvered by the Confederate commander, General Robert E. Lee, who proved to be one of the greatest military leaders of all time.

In the spring of 1862 McClellan brought his Army of the Potomac by water as far as Fortress Monroe, Virginia. He planned to take Richmond by moving up the narrow peninsula between the York and James rivers. McDowell's troops, held at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in defense of Washington, D.C., were to be kept in reserve. McClellan's Peninsular Campaign got off to a slow start. The Army of the Potomac was delayed a month besieging weakly held Yorktown, Virginia, and was halted again at the Battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) on May 31 and June 1. When McClellan was almost ready to attack Richmond, McDowell was ordered away to the Shenandoah Valley.

In the Shenandoah Valley, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson had routed Northern troops in a lightning advance on Harpers Ferry. From this point his "foot cavalry" seemed to threaten Washington itself. Jackson then slipped away and hurried his men by train to Richmond. Here Lee had sent General J.E.B. ("Jeb") Stuart on a cavalry raid that brilliantly encircled McClellan's forces. Lee then took the offensive. He drove McClellan back in the Seven Days' Battles, ending at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.

Lee now crossed the Potomac River to invade Maryland. He wanted to transfer the fighting to Northern soil and at the same time to influence the coming Congressional elections against Lincoln. To protect his rear, Lee sent Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry. Meanwhile, McClellan, who had succeeded Pope, accidentally obtained a copy of Lee's general orders. He advanced to meet Lee along Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg. While McClellan hesitated for a whole day, Jackson with three divisions made a forced march up from Harpers Ferry. When the Union troops finally did attack on September 17, in the Battle of Antietam, they met most of Lee's reunited forces. Late that afternoon Confederate General A.P. Hill's division arrived from Harpers Ferry just in time to prevent a possible decisive Union victory. Nevertheless, Union troops halted the Confederate advance on Maryland.

The Union victory at Antietam, slight though it was, gave President Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This order decreed the freedom of all enslaved people in territory still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. The president took this momentous step to introduce a new moral aim in the war and to prevent foreign intervention.

Then Lincoln began a long search for a general to cope with the brilliant Lee. McClellan was relieved. He was replaced by General Ambrose Burnside, who led the Army of the Potomac to a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 13, 1862.

It was not until more than a year later, however, that the Mississippi River was completely open. On July 4, 1863, as Lee was retreating from his defeat at Gettysburg, Vicksburg fell to General Grant after a desperate siege. Five days later Port Hudson, the last Confederate river fort, surrendered. With the Mississippi River now under Union control, the Confederacy was geographically divided into two parts.

To the East, Confederate General John H. Morgan led a raiding party into Kentucky in July 1862. The following summer he swept into Indiana and Ohio before his force was defeated and captured. Other raiders under General Nathan B. Forrest destroyed Federal stores and lines of communication in Tennessee. The Southern Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg invaded Kentucky in September 1862 but was turned back by General D.C. Buell's Union army at Perryville on October 8.

General Bragg withdrew to central Tennessee, pursued by the Union army now commanded by General W.S. Rosecrans. At Murfreesboro, in the Battle of Stones River on December 31-January 2, Bragg was defeated again. He retreated to Chattanooga. Six months later General Bragg gave up Chattanooga without a struggle. He was then reinforced by Longstreet's corps from Virginia. At the Battle of Chickamauga Creek in Georgia on September 19-20, 1863, the combined Confederate forces lashed back at the Union troops. The battle might have been a major Federal disaster but for the firm stand taken by General George H. Thomas and his men.

In March 1864, Grant became commander in chief of all Federal armies and moved his headquarters to Virginia. Seeing that the long fighting had severely weakened Lee's forces, Grant began a relentless campaign of increased attrition. He forced bloody but inconclusive battles at the Wilderness, May 5-6; Spotsylvania, May 8-12; and Cold Harbor, June 1-3. He then circled Richmond and laid siege to the important railroad junction of Petersburg, Virginia.

In July 1864, Lee sent General Jubal Early raiding in Shenandoah Valley, hoping to repeat Jackson's successes of 1862. General Early, however, was routed by General Philip Sheridan 's cavalry, who then ravaged the valley, destroying Confederate food supplies.

In Georgia, Sherman's Army of the West captured Atlanta on September 2, 1864. The army then marched on to the sea, leaving behind a swath of waste and destruction 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide. Sherman reached Savannah on December 20. Meanwhile Confederate General Hood, attempting a counterattack in Tennessee, was decisively defeated at Franklin on November 30 and at Nashville on December 15-16.

From Savannah, Sherman turned northward to join forces with Grant. This pincer movement against Lee proved unnecessary, however. A Federal victory at Five Forks, Virginia, on April 1, 1865, forced Lee to abandon both Petersburg and Richmond and flee westward. Finally, with his army depleted and his supplies exhausted, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9. Sherman took the surrender of Joseph Johnston's army in North Carolina on April 26. On May 4 General Richard Taylor surrendered the Confederate forces in Mississippi and Alabama. Three weeks later General E. Kirby-Smith surrendered the trans-Mississippi forces in Texas. The American Civil War was over.

Early in the war, President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the entire Southern coastline and, by pressing all kinds of ships into use, severely curtailed Confederate shipping. Efforts to break the blockade were in vain. In the first battle between ironclad ships, the South's Merrimack ( Virginia) could get no better than a draw in its famous battle with the North's Monitor.

Several commerce destroyers were built in England for the Confederacy. They did much damage to Northern shipping, but they could not defeat the blockade. Gradually the Union tightened its grip on the seas by capturing the Southern ports through which blockade runners smuggled supplies. New Orleans fell first, in 1862. In 1864 Farragut's warships took Mobile harbor. The next year Fort Fisher, guarding Wilmington's harbor, was stormed by Commander David Dixon Porter's fleet, in cooperation with land forces under General Alfred H. Terry. A little more than a month later, Sherman's capture of Charleston sealed off the last major port.

At the beginning of the war the South counted heavily on foreign intervention. It believed that European countries must have Southern cotton for their industries and that if necessary they would fight the North to get it. In 1861 the Confederacy dispatched two agents to England and France, but Federal warships took them off a British ship as prisoners of war. This incident nearly involved the United States and Great Britain in war.

The Union protested to Great Britain about the commerce destroyers that the British government permitted to be built in local shipyards. The most famous of these vessels was the Alabama, commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes. Other difficulties arose from the enforcement of the Federal blockade. Fortunately neither Britain nor the United States wanted war. When British workingmen learned that the Union was fighting for the cause of free labor, their sympathies were all with the North. England found other sources of supply for cotton and profited from trade as a neutral.

One of the big problems on the home front was the large group of Northerners who opposed the war. These " Copperheads," as they were called, organized secret societies such as the Knights of the Golden Circle. They sought to embarrass the government by discouraging enlistments, opposing the draft, and even helping Confederate prisoners to escape. Copperheads became influential in the Democratic Party and in the elections of 1862 scored important victories in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa.

President Lincoln served only six weeks of his second term. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, and died the following day.

The victory of the Federal forces established that no state could secede from the Union or even nullify a national law. The war paved the way for the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbade the use of slave labor in the United States. After the war the United States faced grave problems of readjustment and reconstruction. The economic, social, and political outgrowths of the war are discussed in the article covering the Reconstruction period. ( See also Black Americans.)

Although the Civil War preserved the Union, the physical, psychological, and economic costs were enormous. While there were some desertions on both sides, the personal valor and the very heavy casualties have not yet ceased to astound scholars and military historians. Based on the three-year standard of enlistment, about 1,556,000 soldiers served in the Federal armies. They suffered a total of 634,703 casualties, with 359,528 dead and 275,175 wounded. Probably about 800,000 men served in the Confederate forces. The South sustained approximately 483,000 casualties, with about 258,000 dead and perhaps 225,000 wounded. Many of the casualties on both sides died of disease.

It is often said that the American Civil War tragically pitted "brother against brother." This image works as a metaphor for the terrible divisiveness of the conflict, representing the country as a family. It was also literally true. In many American families-especially in the upper South, or border states-some family members openly sympathized with the South, while other members publicly sided with the North. In some cases, brothers or other family members actually fought on opposing sides in the war. President Lincoln himself had brothers-in-law who fought for the Confederacy.

The war was also very costly economically. Faced with a shortage of funds, both governments were obliged to print large amounts of paper money. As a result, both sides experienced runaway inflation. Inflation was much more drastic in the South, where, by the end of the war, flour sold at $1,000 a barrel. While separate Confederate figures are lacking, the war finally cost the United States more than $15 billion. The South, especially, where most of the war was fought and which lost its labor system, was physically and economically devastated. Some spiritual wounds caused by the war still have not been healed.

The American Civil War had a profound impact on the development of modern weapons and techniques. There were many innovations. It was the first war in history in which the telegraph and the railroad played significant roles. It was also the first war in which ironclad warships clashed. It was the first war in which machine guns were employed and the first in which rifled ordnance (equipment) and shell guns were used extensively. The American Civil War was also the first to have widespread newspaper coverage and the first to be recorded by photography. The medical care of troops was organized systematically for the first time. Land and water mines were used for the first time in a war. The American Civil War was the first to employ a submarine that could sink a warship. It was also the first war in which armies widely employed aerial reconnaissance (by means of observation balloons).

The first shots of the long-feared civil war were fired by the South on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. The fort was named for a Revolutionary War hero, Thomas Sumter. The federal government had begun building it on a small island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1829. The country was at peace, and construction lagged. The fort was still not finished when South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. South Carolina claimed that secession entitled it to all government property within its boundaries. President James Buchanan refused to give up forts in seceded states but promised not to send reinforcements.

When the dispute began, Fort Sumter was unoccupied. But Major Robert Anderson soon moved his small force into Sumter from Fort Moultrie, a weaker position on the north side of the harbor. Fort Sumter was besieged until the outbreak of the war. On April 11, 1861, General Pierre Beauregard, commanding the Confederate forces, demanded the surrender of the fort. Anderson refused. On April 12 the bombardment began. Faced with overwhelming odds, Anderson was forced to surrender on April 13. He sent the following dispatch to Washington:

Having defended Fort Sumter for 34 hours, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed, the powder-magazine surrounded by flames, and no provisions but port remaining, I accepted the terms of evacuation offered by General Beauregard, and marched out of the fort with colors flying and drums beating, saluting my flag with 50 guns.

People of the North who had calmly been saying, "Let the South go," were now aroused to fever heat. Many enlisted in response to Lincoln's call for 75,000 men. The North gained much in unity of action by the loss of Fort Sumter; the South gained only the fort. When the Confederate forces abandoned Charleston in 1865, Fort Sumter again passed to the North but as a battered ruin of no military value. It became a national monument in 1948.

Battles of Bull Run (Manassas)
Two battles of the Civil War were fought in northern Virginia near a small river called Bull Run and a town called Manassas Junction. First Bull Run was the first major battle of the war. Both the North and the South thought it might be the last.

First Battles of the Ironclads
On the afternoon of March 8, 1862, five vessels of the United States Navy lay at anchor in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Suddenly a strange-looking object moved through the water toward the U.S. vessel Cumberland from the Confederate stronghold in Norfolk, Virginia. It was a reconstructed U.S. ship, the Merrimack (renamed the Virginia). The vessel had been sunk when the Norfolk navy yard was abandoned at the beginning of the war. The Confederates had raised the vessel, cut off the sides, and covered what was left with iron plates. This was one of the earliest practical applications of armor to a warship.

The ironclad steered straight for the Cumberland. It was met by heavy fire, but, when it reached the Cumberland, its iron beak cut through the side of the wooden vessel "as a knife goes through cheese." The Merrimack next set fire to the Congress with red-hot shot from its guns. Then the vessel steamed away to prepare for its next victory.

By the next morning, however, the situation was entirely changed. When the Merrimack started toward the Minnesota, preparing to dispose of it as quickly as the two victims of the previous day, there suddenly appeared in the ironclad's path an odd object, about one-fourth the Merrimack's size and resembling a "cheese-box on a raft." This was the famous Monitor, a Union ironclad designed by John Ericsson, a Swedish engineer.

The fight between the two ships began at once and lasted for nearly four hours. The Monitor was more easily handled than the Merrimack, but its shots could not do much harm to the other's iron sides. On the other hand, the Monitor's single revolving turret offered a hopeless target for its opponent. Thousands of people stood on the shore and breathlessly watched the combat. The distance between the vessels varied from half a mile to a few yards. The Monitor's commander was wounded, and the Merrimack, badly damaged, steamed back to Norfolk.

This fight between the Merrimack and Monitor was one of the most important naval battles ever fought, for it made the warships of all the old navies useless. All countries had to discard their wooden vessels and to begin building ironclads. During the Civil War the Union was able to build more iron ships faster than the Confederacy could.

Battle of Shiloh
On a Sunday morning in southwestern Tennessee, on April 6, 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant sat enjoying a leisurely breakfast below Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, while his army cooked breakfast in the camps grouped about Shiloh church not far away. Nobody expected trouble from the retreating Confederate forces under General Albert S. Johnston that were supposed to be camped at Corinth, Mississippi, 20 miles away. Grant had not kept cavalry watching the Confederates, nor had he posted outposts sufficiently far in front.

Suddenly the crack of rifles and roar of battle broke the calm. When Grant reached his troops, his situation looked disastrous. The Confederates in full force had burst from covering woods and were driving the desperately resisting bands of Union soldiers from their camps. All day the battle raged with terrific losses. Practically no control could be exercised by either commander over his raw troops. By night the Union troops had been driven almost to the river.

The situation changed overnight. General D.C. Buell arrived with 25,000 Union troops, and Johnston of the Confederates died of a wound he had suffered while leading a charge. His successor, General Beauregard, was driven from the field the next day and retired to Corinth. The Union armies of some 70,000 lost about 13,000 killed and wounded. The Confederate loss was 10,000 out of some 40,000.

Shiloh was the second great battle of the war and the most bitterly fought engagement of the whole struggle. Bitter criticism was heaped upon Grant for his heavy losses. But President Lincoln refused to remove him, and Grant soon justified the president's faith. The Confederates, on the other hand, lost almost as heavily and missed their chance to break up the Union advance in the west.

Battle of Antietam
For weeks the tide of the Civil War ran in favor of the Confederacy. The morale of the North had been lowered by General George B. McClellan's disastrous Peninsular Campaign in Virginia in 1862. As a result, President Lincoln was forced to postpone issuing his Emancipation Proclamation for fear of seeming to appeal to Blacks for aid in a losing cause. When he laid aside the proclamation, he vowed he would give it to the world after the first Union victory.

Instead of victory came more setbacks. General Lee crossed the Potomac River, carrying the war into the North and striking terror into the hearts of the people of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Finally, on September 17, 1862, his troops met the numerically superior forces of McClellan at the little creek of Antietam in Maryland. All day long the Battle of Antietam raged. The loss of men either killed or wounded on each side was about 11,000.

No decisive results were obtained from the fierce conflict of that day. On the next day, however, Lee felt that it was wiser to withdraw from the field. Thus the victory seemed to be left with McClellan. Lee had not obtained the aid from the people of Maryland that he had expected, and so he recrossed the Potomac into Virginia. McClellan made no attempt for a while to follow him, and so little military advantage was gained. Nevertheless, the people of the North were encouraged, and Lincoln had the opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. For these two reasons the Battle of Antietam was one of the important battles of the Civil War.

Battle of Fredericksburg
One of the costliest defeats suffered by the Union forces in the war was at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 13, 1862. At that time Lee had retreated from the North as a result of his defeat at Antietam. With about 78,000 men he had established himself on the high bluffs of the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg.

The Army of the Potomac, led by Union General Ambrose E. Burnside, held the north bank of the river at Falmouth. There were about 120,000 men under his command. With many difficulties he transported them across the river on pontoon bridges to attack the strongly entrenched Confederates.

After six assaults with great losses, Burnside was persuaded by his officers not to renew the attack. Two nights later, under the cover of a storm on December 15, the discouraged remainder of the Union army was brought back to Falmouth.

The Union army had lost about 12,500 men, while the Confederate loss was more than 5,000 men. As a result of his tragic defeat, Burnside was replaced a week later by General Joseph ("Fighting Joe") Hooker.

The gloom that this disaster brought to the people in the North was changed to rejoicing a few weeks later. Then news came of the Union victory in the Battle of Murfreesboro, or Stones River, Tennessee, fought from December 31 to January 2.

At Murfreesboro the Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg were repulsed by the Union army under General William S. Rosecrans. This victory opened the way for the Union advance to Chattanooga and finally to "Atlanta and the sea."

Campaign for Vicksburg
A primary objective of the Union forces in the Civil War was to cut the Confederacy in two by winning control of the Mississippi River. To do this it was necessary to take the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. As long as Vicksburg was held by the South, Union vessels could not operate freely on the river. The city also served as an important transportation point for the Confederacy. Supplies, arms, and men from the southwestern states were assembled at Vicksburg and then transported eastward by rail.

On January 29, 1863, General Grant was put in command of the Army of the West, with orders to capture Vicksburg. It was a difficult assignment because the city, located east of the Mississippi, was on a high bluff overlooking a hairpin bend in the river. All earlier attacks against Vicksburg had failed. Grant now set his men to work with pick and shovel rather than with guns. They tried to dig a canal across the neck of land opposite the city and thus bypass Vicksburg by turning the river from its old bed. Despite their most strenuous efforts, Grant's troops failed to change the course of the river. Another way to reach the city had to be found. Grant saw that Vicksburg could be approached only from the south and east.

The west bank of the Mississippi became dry enough for the men to travel over, but how were they to recross to the east bank after getting below the city? This could be done in only one way: The Union fleet would have to face the Confederate batteries and go down the stream as the men marched along the west shore. One dark night the attempt was made. The Confederates learned of the plan and sent troops across the river in skiffs. They set fire to houses on the shore so that Confederate gunners might have light to see the Union ships. Nevertheless, all but one of the Union's vessels ran by the batteries in safety and transported Grant's men to the eastern bank.

This was all accomplished by the end of April 1863. Now began the task of pushing the Confederate troops back into the city. Seven times Grant met and defeated them before he reached Vicksburg. Failing to take the town by storm, he settled down to starve it into surrender. For seven weeks the town held out.

A Confederate woman who was shut up in the city gave this description of life during that time: "So constantly dropped the shells around the city that the inhabitants made preparations to live under the ground during the siege. We seized the opportunity one evening, when the gunners were probably at their supper, for we had a few moments of quiet, to take possession of our cave. Our dining, breakfasting, and supper hours were quite irregular. When the shells were falling fast, the servants came in for safety, and our meals waited; again they would fall slowly . . . and out would start the cooks to do their work."

Supplies ran low and were rationed. Horses and mules were killed for meat. Men died of disease and starvation. When General John Pemberton finally asked what terms would be given them, Grant replied: "Unconditional surrender." Pemberton was forced to accept these hard terms on July 4, 1863. Vicksburg had fallen; the Confederacy was divided.

Battle of Chancellorsville
Before the Union finally took over Vicksburg, the South won one of its greatest victories in the Civil War in May 1863 at Chancellorsville, Virginia. General Lee achieved perhaps his most brilliant success in this battle. At the start of the battle, Lee had about 60,000 men in a region east of Chancellorsville and south of Fredericksburg.

The newly appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac, General Hooker, had moved his forces during April to an area north of Chancellorsville and west of Fredericksburg. By April 30 the Union army of about 130,000 men was well entrenched. Hooker sent a detachment under General John Sedgwick to attack Fredericksburg. He then prepared to advance and engage Lee's army in a major battle.

Lee's cavalry leaders had told him of the movements of Hooker's troops, including some actions that were meant to be deceptive. Quickly Lee decided to attack.

On the morning of May 1 Lee sent a division under General Jubal Early to pin down Sedgwick's forces at Fredericksburg. With the remainder of his army Lee marched west to meet Hooker's advancing troops. By midafternoon the armies were in combat. Under heavy Confederate pressure the Union soldiers slowly withdrew to their strongly fortified defensive positions. Fighting came to a halt at nightfall.

During the night Lee decided to attempt an encircling movement. He ordered Stonewall Jackson to lead 30,000 men around the southern flank of the Union army. General Jackson began the long march after midnight. In the morning the Confederates were seen by the Federals guarding the southern flank of the Union army. The Federals attacked but did not seriously hamper Jackson's march.

Jackson moved west, then north. He entered the tangled forest called The Wilderness, and soon his forces were in the rear of the Union army. Jackson then turned eastward and attacked. His Confederates drove into the Union lines, which faltered and fell back. When the Federals reached their defenses near Chancellorsville, they held their ground.

During the night Jackson rode ahead of his lines to scout the situation around United States Ford. On returning he was mistaken for a Federal officer and was fired upon by a Confederate sentry. The wound proved to be mortal. He died eight days later.

On the morning of May 3 the Confederates seized Hazel Grove, a hill near Chancellorsville. They mounted 50 cannons on it. Fire from this artillery killed large numbers of Union men. Fierce fighting raged throughout the day, and losses were heavy on both sides. Hooker himself was a casualty of the day. A cannon shell wrecked the porch of the two-story brick house that was Hooker's headquarters. A falling pillar struck Hooker on the head. When the general regained consciousness he was dazed and in pain, yet refused to turn over full authority to the officer next in command. This decision has been blamed for much of the uncertainty and confusion that led to the defeat of the huge Union army.

At Fredericksburg, Sedgwick defeated Early and routed his troops. Sedgwick then marched westward to join the battle around Chancellorsville. He attacked Lee's rear guard, which was larger than he had expected. When darkness stopped the fighting on all fronts, Sedgwick had trenches dug and other defenses prepared.

In the afternoon of May 4 Lee attacked Sedgwick's well-entrenched corps. Its lines held firm for the most part, and Lee made little progress. Federal forces repelled attempts to take United States Ford and other key points. Sedgwick maintained his position throughout the day.

There were only unimportant skirmishes on May 5. That night Hooker decided on a total withdrawal. Early on May 6 the first Federal units began crossing the Rappahannock River at United States Ford. By the evening of May 6 most of the Union army was safely across the river. Lee, with his badly battered army, did not attempt to pursue the Federals. Meanwhile Sedgwick's detachment succeeded in crossing at Scott's Ford.

Union losses in killed, wounded, and missing amounted to some 17,000 men, or about 13 percent of the total force. The Confederates lost about 13,000 men, or more than 21 percent of the Army of Northern Virginia, and in Stonewall Jackson they lost an irreplaceable leader. The South's victory was its costliest as well as one of its greatest.

Battle of Gettysburg
The North won three of the most important battles of the Civil War in 1863. Two of these Union victories occurred in early July in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and, after a long siege, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In the fall the third crucial engagement was staged in the area around Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The Battle of Gettysburg was a crushing defeat for the South. After the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, Lee began his second invasion of the North on June 5, 1863. He hoped to further discourage the Union and to possibly get European countries to recognize the Confederacy. Lee's invasion army consisted of 75,000 troops organized into three corps, commanded by Generals James Longstreet, R.S. Ewell, and A.P. Hill. The advance elements moved down the Shenandoah Valley toward Harpers Ferry. Marching through Maryland into Pennsylvania, the Confederates reached Chambersburg and turned eastward. They occupied York and Carlisle and menaced Harrisburg. Meanwhile, the dashing Confederate cavalryman J.E.B. ("Jeb") Stuart set off on a questionable ride around the Federal army. He was unable to join Lee's main army until the second day of fighting at Gettysburg.

General Hooker moved his Union forces northward, keeping them between Lee's army and Washington, in order to protect the capital. When Hooker's request for additional men was denied, he resigned. General George G. Meade replaced him.

Confederate and Union forces came together unexpectedly at the important crossroads town of Gettysburg. The resulting battle was the greatest ever fought in the Western Hemisphere. The Battle of Gettysburg began on July 1, 1863. About 28,000 Confederate troops attacked the advance Union cavalry, which was led by General John Buford. The cavalry was soon joined by Federal infantrymen under General John F. Reynolds. When he died, he was replaced by Major General Abner Doubleday. Doubleday ably handled the Federal troops, which at about 18,000 men were outnumbered. After nine hours of intense fighting, with heavy casualties on both sides, the Confederate forces finally prevailed. They forced the Union troops back through Gettysburg to strategic Cemetery Ridge south of town. Meade assembled the rest of his army there that night.

On the second day of battle, there were a great number of desperate attacks and counterattacks. The Confederates gained control of such locations as the Peach Orchard, Wheat Field, and Devil's Den. However, they failed to seize the vital Little Round Top and Cemetery Hill and could capture only a part of Culp's Hill. There were again heavy losses on both sides.

On July 3, the third and final day of the battle, Lee launched what has been called the greatest infantry charge in American history. He sent nearly 15,000 soldiers, led by General George Edward Pickett, to assault the center of Meade's lines on Cemetery Ridge. The ridge was held by about 10,000 Federal infantrymen. Despite heroic efforts, only several hundred Southerners temporarily cracked the center of the Federal lines. The rest of the Confederates were shot down by Federal cannoneers and musketrymen, captured, or thrown back; Pickett's men suffered casualties of almost 60 percent. With their formations hopelessly tangled, lacking reinforcement, and under savage attack from three sides, the Southerners retreated. However, Meade felt unable to counterattack, and Lee continued his retreat into Virginia.

The losses at Gettysburg were among the war's heaviest. Of 88,000 Northern troops, the casualties numbered about 23,000, with more than 3,100 killed. Of 75,000 Southerners, there were between 20,000 and 28,000 casualties, with more than 4,500 killed.

Lee's defeat stemmed from overconfidence in his troops, Ewell's inability to fill the boots of General Stonewall Jackson, and faulty reconnaissance. Though Meade has been criticized for not destroying the enemy by a vigorous pursuit, he had stopped the Confederate invasion and won a critical three-day battle. Never again was Lee able to mount a full-scale invasion of the North with his entire army.

Battle of Chattanooga
The campaign that led to the Battle of Chattanooga began on September 19, 1863. General Rosecrans's Union army at Chickamauga, Georgia, was routed by General Bragg 's Confederates. Rosecrans fell back to Chattanooga. Bragg occupied Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. Confederate troops then cut off the Union army from its supply base at Bridgeport, Alabama, downstream on the Tennessee River.

To aid the trapped Federals, the government sent reinforcements to Chattanooga-General Sherman with an army from Vicksburg and General Hooker with 15,000 men from Virginia. General Grant was put in supreme command. He immediately replaced Rosecrans with General George H. Thomas.

On October 27 and 28 Grant's command cleared the Tennessee River of Confederates west of Lookout Mountain. This action reopened the road to Bridgeport. East of the city Union troops seized Orchard Knob on November 23. The next day Grant sent Hooker to attack Lookout Mountain. The attack seemed foolhardy because the mountain sides were steep and choked with vegetation. In addition, a thick fog had gathered, giving the conflict the name "battle above the clouds."

Hooker attacked vigorously. He had about 9,000 men against a defending force of less than 2,000. By afternoon the lower slopes had been taken. Bragg then abandoned Lookout Mountain to meet a new threat on his right flank-Sherman was attacking General William J. Hardee at the north end of Missionary Ridge.

Sherman was stopped and Hooker prevented from joining in the attack on General John C. Breckinridge. By the afternoon of November 25 the Union offensive had stalled completely. To help Sherman's attack from the north, Grant ordered Thomas to capture a line of rifle pits at the western foot of the ridge. Thomas's men won their objective. Then, instead of halting as ordered, they continued the attack up to the top of the ridge. The surprised Union generals could only follow, and the equally surprised Confederates on the crest broke ranks and fled. Soon Bragg's entire army was in headlong flight to the south. This victory gave the North control of the railroads centered in Chattanooga. The South now had only one east-west route-through Atlanta. During the series of battles the Union army, which consisted of 56,359 men, suffered 5,824 casualties. The Confederates, with 46,165 men, lost 6,667 killed, wounded, or missing.

Armstrong, Jennifer. Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War (Atheneum, 2005).Beller, S.P. The Civil War (Benchmark, 2003).Burgan, Michael. North over South: Final Victory in the Civil War (Compass Point, 2011).Collier, Christopher, and Collier, J.L. Civil War (Benchmark, 2000).DeFord, D.H. African Americans During the Civil War (Chelsea House, 2006).Hakim, Joy. War, Terrible War, rev. 3rd ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2005).McGowen, Tom. The Surrender at Appomattox (Children's Press, 2004).Murray, A.R., ed. Civil War: Battles and Leaders, 1st American ed. (DK, 2004).Nardo, Don. From Bull Run to Gettysburg: Early Battles of the Civil War (Compass Point, 2011).Nardo, Don. A Nation Divided: The Long Road to the Civil War (Compass Point, 2011).Ojeda, Auriana, ed. The Civil War: 1850-1895 (Thomson/Gale, 2003).Sheinkin, Steve, and Robinson, Tim. Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War (Square Fish/Roaring Brook Press, 2012).Stanchak, J.E. Civil War, rev. ed. (DK, 2011).

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At 4:30 am on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery in Charleston, South Carolina, opened fire on Fort Sumter, which was held by the United States Army. The bombardment set...

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https://www.thoughtco.com/civil-war-4133348

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The bloodiest conflict in American history, the Civil War pitted brother against brother. Use these resources to better understand how this conflict tore the nation apart and how both sides struggled to achieve victory.

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The bloodiest conflict in American history, the Civil War pitted brother against brother. Use these resources to better understand how this conflict tore the nation apart and how both sides struggled to achieve victory.

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https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm

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The Union included the states of Maine, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California, Nevada, and Oregon. Abraham Lincoln was their President.

The Confederacy included the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Jefferson Davis was their President.

Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri were called Border States.

HOMEFRONT Finance
On the homefront, the Union had $234,000,000 in bank deposit and coined money or specie while the Confederacy had $74,000,000 and the Border States had $29,000,000.
Populations
The population of the Union was 18.5 million. In the Confederacy, the population was listed as 5.5 million free and 3.5 million enslaved. In the Border States there were 2.5 million free inhabitants and 500,000 enslaved people.
Agriculture
With the exception of rice and tobacco, the Union had a clear agricultural advantage. Particularly horses: the Union had twice that of the Confederacy, 3.4 million to the CSA's 1.7.

The Union led corn production with 400 million bushels compared to the 250 million bushels in the Confederacy and 150 million bushels in the Border States.

The Confederacy produced nearly all of the nation's rice which amounted to 225 million bushels.

The Confederacy led tobacco production with 225 million pounds compared to 110 million pounds produced in the Border States and 50 million pounds produced in the Union.

The Union led wheat production with 100 million bushels produced in comparison to 35 million bushels in the Confederacy and 20 million bushels in the Border States.

The Union was attributed with having 40 million heads of livestock compared to 35 million in the Confederacy and only 10 million in the Border States.
Industry
The Union had 101,000 factories, while the Confederacy had 21,000 and the Border States had 9,000.

The Union had 1.1 million factory workers, while the Confederacy had 111,000 and the Border States had 70,000.

The Union had 20,000 miles of railroad compared to 9,000 in the Confederacy and 1,700 in the Border States.
MILITARY Enlistment Strength
Enlistment strength for the Union Army is 2,672,341 which can be broken down as:

Enlistment strength for the Confederate Army ranges from 750,000 to 1,227,890. Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records.
Civilian Occupations
Farmers comprised 48 percent of the civilian occupations in the Union. Others included mechanics, 24 percent; laborers, 16 percent; commercial, 5 percent; miscellaneous, 4 percent; and professional occupations, 3 percent.

Farmers comprised 69 percent of the civilian occupations in the Confederacy. Others included laborers, 9 percent; mechanics, 5.3 percent; commercial, 5 percent; professional occupations, 2.1 percent; and miscellaneous, 1.6 percent.
Bloodiest Battles
The bloodiest battles of the Civil War were:

Note: Antietam had the greatest number of casualties of any single-day battle.
Troop Strength
In July 1861, the two armies were nearly equal in strength with less than 200,000 soldiers on each side; however at the peak of troop strength in 1863, Union soldiers outnumbered Confederate soldiers by a ratio of 2 to 1. The size of Union forces in January 1863 totaled over 600,000. Two years later, that number had not changed dramatically for the Union Army but had dropped to about 200,000 for the Confederate Army.
Casualties
The 642,427 total Union casualties have been divided accordingly:

The 483,026 total Confederate casualties have been divided accordingly:
Prisoners
Of the 211,411 Union soldiers captured 16,668 were paroled on the field and 30,218 died in prison. Of the 462,634 Confederate soldiers captured 247,769 were paroled on the field and 25,976 died in prison. The mortality rate for prisoners of war was 15.5 percent for Union soldiers and 12 percent for Confederate soldiers.

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Facts - The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)

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The Union included the states of Maine, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California, Nevada, and Oregon. Abraham Lincoln was their President. The Confederacy included the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.

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 Battles: Make sure you pick Confederate victories

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 Battles: Make sure you pick Confederate victories

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https://www.history.com/news/key-civil-war-battles

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When Southern rebels bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April 1861, it was the start of a war between the Union and the secessionist Confederate States of America that would stretch on for four bloody years.

The war took a brutal toll. According to statistics compiled by the National Park Service,110,100 men on the Union side lost their lives in combat and another 275,174 were wounded in action, while 94,000 Confederates were killed and another 194,026 were wounded. Still more soldiers died of disease, starvation and accidents, so that the total death toll may have been as high as 850,000, according to a 2011 analysis.

Today, when we think of the Civil War, the names of a few hallowed battlefields, such as Gettysburg and Shiloh, come to mind. But the conflict was far bigger and bloodier in scope. Union and Confederate forces met in more than 10,000 armed confrontations across the nation, ranging from small clashes to full-scale battles involving tens of thousands of soldiers, in locations from Vermont to Arizona.

"Evaluating the importance of a battle can be a tricky business," explains Jim Campi, a spokesman for the American Battlefield Trust, an organization that works to preserve historic battles sites across the nation and highlight their importance. "Battles are best assessed by their overall impact on the larger conflict-did it extend the war, or bring it closer to its conclusion; did it achieve a strategic objective, eliminate an enemy force or enable a combatant to bring more force to bear at a decisive point?"

Here are seven battles that proved pivotal in the American Civil War.

First Bull Run

July 21, 1861: Union Gen. Irvin McDowell marched out of Washington, D.C. into Virginia, intent on seizing the Confederate capital of Richmond and putting an end to the war. But most of McDowell's men were inexperienced, 90-day volunteers, who'd joined in expectation of a brief conflict and had little idea what was in store for them. They came up against a force commanded by Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard, which was defending a critical railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia. When McDowell's forces attacked, the Confederates initially were driven back, but reinforcements soon arrived, including a brigade led by then-Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, who would earn the nickname "Stonewall" for his tenacity in holding ground.

In the war's first major battle, Union forces were routed, with an estimated 2,896 killed, wounded, missing or captured. The victorious Confederates suffered 1,982 casualties of their own. As each side counted their dead, it became evident that the struggle ahead would be longer and more grisly than Americans had expected.

Fort Donelson

February 11-16, 1862: One of the first major Union victories was then-Brig. Gen Ulysses S. Grant's capture of Fort Donelson, located along the Cumberland River in Tennessee. The Confederates initially repulsed an attack by union gunboats, and planned a bold counterattack against the Union troops to clear a path for escape. The Confederates seemed on the verge of success when they halted and retreated to their fortifications. That gave Grant time to figure out a weak point in the Confederate line-and attack it.

Confederate generals Gideon Pillow and John B. Floyd fled, leaving behind 13,000 soldiers, who waved a white flag above their fortifications. When the rebels asked for terms of surrender, Grant replied that no terms "except unconditional and immediate surrender" would be acceptable. This earned him the nickname " Unconditional Surrender."

The victory, along with the capture of nearby Fort Henry, opened up the state of Tennessee to Union invasion, and helped turn Grant into a national hero.
EXPLORE: Ulysses S. Grant: An Interactive Map of His Key Civil War Battles
Antietam

September 17, 1862: Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia invaded Maryland in an attempt to knock the Union back on its heels. President Abraham Lincoln sent Maj. Gen. George McClellan and his Army of the Potomac to stop him.

The two forces initially collided at dawn in a cornfield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, where their movements were obscured by the tall corn stalks as they fired upon one another. The battle eventually shifted to a stone bridge along Antietam Creek, where Union troops had to storm a Confederate position three times before finally capturing it. An estimated 22,717 men on both sides were killed, wounded, captured or went missing.

Though the battle ended in a stalemate, the Union had stymied Lee's invasion. That gave Lincoln enough confidence to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which redefined the Civil War from a struggle to preserve the Union to one focused on ending slavery. Meanwhile, photographs by Alexander Gardner of bodies strewn on the battlefield, displayed in Matthew Brady 's gallery in New York, brought home to northerners the brutal cost of the war.
READ MORE: How Photographer Mathew Brady Highlighted Gruesome Realities of the Civil War
Chancellorsville

May 1-6, 1863: Lee achieved one of his greatest triumphs at Chancellorsville, Virginia, where he divided his forces and sent Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson to force his way through a rough forest to outflank units led by Union Gen. Joseph Hooker. After several days of fighting, the Union troops were forced to retreat. By the end, Hooker had suffered more than 17,000 casualties to Lee's nearly 13,000.

It was a decisive victory for Lee and the South-but it came at a high cost. Among Lee's casualties was Jackson, one of the most capable Confederate officers. Jackson was wounded by friendly fire and died four days after the battle.
READ MORE: 7 Things You May Not Know About the Battle of Chancellorsville
Vicksburg

May 18-July 4, 1863: Confederate President Jefferson Davis saw Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress port and railroad hub along the Mississippi River, as "the nail head that holds the South's two halves together." That made it imperative for the Union to take what was known as the Gibraltar of the Confederacy.

In mid-May, Grant sent his forces to attack the city several times, but they were unable to penetrate the Confederates' defenses. That forced him to settle into a long siege, in which he bombarded Vicksburg with artillery and fire from Union gunboats, and forced Confederate defenders and the civilian population to endure hunger and illness. Many hid in man-made caves dug under the city.

In June, Grant tried one last assault, deploying miners to tunnel under the Confederate fortifications and plant explosives that carved out a 12-foot-deep crater. But the Union forces were unable to advance out of it and had to retreat. By July, Confederate Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton and his 29,000 men couldn't hold out any longer, and had to surrender to Grant.

The victory gave the Union control of the critical supply line of the entire Mississippi River. And the Confederacy was split.
READ MORE: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Help Win the Civil War
Gettysburg

July 1-3, 1863: Lee again invaded the Union in the summer of 1863 in hopes that he could beat the Union on its own soil, threaten Washington, D.C., and force Lincoln to agree to a peace treaty.

With Virginia devastated by the war, he also desperately needed supplies for his soldiers. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was pursued by Union forces led by Maj. Gen. George Meade, who caught up with them in Pennsylvania and confronted the Confederates at Gettysburg, in what was one of the most fateful battles in history.

Initially, the Confederates drove Union troops from fields west and north of the town, but they failed on the second day to break the Union line. On July 3, Lee attacked the center of the Union forces at Cemetery Ridge, south of Gettysburg. After two hours of shelling, Confederate Gen. George Pickett led two brigades in an assault on the Union position. Pickett's Charge, as it became known, turned into a disaster, with the Confederates suffering 60 percent casualties. Lee was forced to retreat and abandon his invasion.

The battle was a crushing defeat for the Confederacy, and losses were devastating on both sides. Union casualties numbered 23,000, while the Confederates lost some 28,000 men. The South's hopes for foreign recognition of the Confederacy were erased. Demoralized, Lee offered his resignation to President Jefferson Davis, but was refused.

The Battle of Gettysburg took on even more significance in November 1863, when President Lincoln traveled to the site and delivered the Gettysburg Address. In the famously short but powerful speech, Lincoln honored the sacrifice of the soldiers who died there and redefined the war as a struggle for the nation.
READ MORE: How the Battle of Gettysburg Turned the Tide of the Civil War
Atlanta

July 22, 1864: Near the end of the war, a trio of Union armies, led by Gen. William T. Sherman converged upon Atlanta, where they were met outside the city by a desperate Confederate counterattack that failed.

The Battle of Atlanta was the bloodiest part of Sherman's March through Georgia, costing the Union 3,700 casualties, while the Confederates lost 5,500 men. Sherman's forces continued their advance and finally surrounded the city, besieging it for the entire month of August.

Finally, on September 1, Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood, a veteran of Antietam and Gettysburg who had lost his leg at the Battle of Chickamauga, gave up and abandoned the city, allowing Sherman's forces to enter.

The capture of Atlanta crippled the Confederate war effort. For Lincoln, who faced a difficult election in 1864 against one of his former generals, George B. McClellan, the victory provided a lift at the polls, helping him win and pursue the war to its conclusion.
WATCH: America: The Story of Us: Civil War on HISTORY Vault

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When Southern rebels bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April 1861, it was the start of a war between the Union and the secessionist Confederate States of America that would stretch on for four bloody years. The war took a brutal toll.

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Battles: Make sure you pick Confederate victories

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Battles: Make sure you pick Confederate victories

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https://www.thoughtco.com/ten-bloodiest-civil-war-battles-104527

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https://www.ducksters.com/biography/world_leaders/robert_e_lee.php

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https://kids.kiddle.co/Robert_E._Lee

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Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 - October 12, 1870) was the General-in-chief of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He led the Army of Northern Virginia in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. Lee is considered one of America's greatest generals.