Portal:American Civil War

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The American Civil War Portal

Specifications of the third Confederate national flag

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

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

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Wappocomo viewed from Cumberland Road (West Virginia Route 28) in July 2013.

Wappocomo is a late 18th-century Georgian mansion and farm overlooking the South Branch Potomac River north of Romney, Hampshire County, West Virginia, USA. It is located along Cumberland Road (West Virginia Route 28) and the South Branch Valley Railroad.

The original section of the mansion at Wappocomo was built in 1774 by Nicholas Casey (1745–1833), using bricks that had been used as ballast to stabilize ships loading tobacco in the James River. The Wappocomo property had been a part of the South Branch Survey of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron's Northern Neck Proprietary. The Parsons family, prominent in Virginia and West Virginia politics in the 18th and 19th centuries, acquired Wappocomo and continue to maintain ownership of the property into the 21st century. (Full article...)

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Grand Parade of the States

The U.S. state of West Virginia was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the American Civil War (see History of West Virginia), in which it became the only modern state to have declared its independence from the Confederacy. In the summer of 1861, Union troops, which included a number of newly formed Western Virginia regiments, under General George McClellan drove off Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Philippi in Barbour County. This essentially freed Unionists in the northwestern counties of Virginia to form a functioning government of their own as a result of the Wheeling Convention. Before the admission of West Virginia as a state, the government in Wheeling formally claimed jurisdiction over all of Virginia, although from its creation it was firmly committed to the formation of a separate state.

After Lee's departure, western Virginia continued to be a target of Confederate raids. Both the Confederate and state governments in Richmond refused to recognize the creation of the new state in 1863, and thus for the duration of the war the Confederacy regarded its own military offensives within West Virginia not as invasion but rather as an effort to liberate what it considered to be enemy-occupied territory administered by an illegitimate government in Wheeling. Nevertheless, due to its increasingly precarious military position and desperate shortage of resources, Confederate military actions in what it continued to regard as "western Virginia" focused less on reconquest as opposed to both on supplying the Confederate Army with provisions as well as attacking the vital Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that linked the northeast with the Midwest, as exemplified in the Jones-Imboden Raid. Guerrilla warfare also gripped the new state, especially in the Allegheny Mountain counties to the east, where loyalties were much more divided than in the solidly Unionist northwest part of the state. Despite this, the Confederacy was never able to seriously threaten the Unionists' overall control of West Virginia. (Full article...)

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Thaddeus Stevens (April 4, 1792 – August 11, 1868) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, being one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party during the 1860s. A fierce opponent of slavery and discrimination against black Americans, Stevens sought to secure their rights during Reconstruction, leading the opposition to U.S. President Andrew Johnson. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the American Civil War, he played a leading role, focusing his attention on defeating the Confederacy, financing the war with new taxes and borrowing, crushing the power of slave owners, ending slavery, and securing equal rights for the freedmen.

Stevens was born in rural Vermont, in poverty, and with a club foot, which left him with a permanent limp. He moved to Pennsylvania as a young man and quickly became a successful lawyer in Gettysburg. He interested himself in municipal affairs and then in politics. He was an active leader of the Anti-Masonic Party, as a fervent believer that Freemasonry in the United States was an evil conspiracy to secretly control the republican system of government. He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he became a strong advocate of free public education. Financial setbacks in 1842 caused him to move his home and practice to the larger city of Lancaster. There, he joined the Whig Party and was elected to Congress in 1848. His activities as a lawyer and politician in opposition to slavery cost him votes, and he did not seek reelection in 1852. After a brief flirtation with the Know-Nothing Party, Stevens joined the newly formed Republican Party and was elected to Congress again in 1858. There, with fellow radicals such as Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, he opposed the expansion of slavery and concessions to the South as the war came. (Full article...)

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

Did you know...

... that Benjamin Jackson was likely paid at least $300 to fight in the American Civil War as Lewis Saunders?
... that Chinese-born Joseph Pierce enlisted as a Union Army soldier, fought at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War, and was made a corporal?
... that according to one historian, James S. Rains made a "significant contribution to the Confederate war effort" by getting drunk?
... that the only functioning secondary school in Mississippi during the American Civil War was founded by Thomas S. Gathright?
... that after the Little Rock campaign, Union forces held three-quarters of Arkansas?
... that in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the only Black-led organization providing teachers to formerly enslaved people was the African Civilization Society?