Before the American Civil War a movement sprang up in abolitionist circles around the nation that to many represented an ideal solution that would end slavery without introducing millions of freed blacks into American Society. Colonization, as the name implies, had the goal of colonizing slaves in Africa in a country called Liberia. As such, there were numerous attempts to convince Africans to willingly...
Just as the issue of secession and the firing on Fort Sumter triggered the War Between the States, the issue of readmission (and arguably) the assassination of President Lincoln triggered an almost equally bitter conflict. This conflict, however, arose between the Executive and Legislative branches. It is quite possible that only a man of Lincoln's strength could have succeeded in handling the Reconstruction...
Courageously "march[ing] under a constantly increasing shower of shot and shell," General John Bell Hood and his fighting Texans battled their war towards a Union embankment and on to glory. The stage was the Battle of Gaines's Mills on June 27th, 1862, and it was up to Hood and his men to lead the charge to Confederate victory. This was the battle, as Hood describes it in his memoir, which launched...
By mid-1863 the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi was the final Confederate bastion on the Mississippi River, making it all that stood between General Ulysses S. Grant and the East/West division of the Confederacy itself, a goal stipulated in the Anaconda Plan. Since its capture would mean a major strategic victory for the North, the city held immense symbolic, as well as strategic, importance to both...
The Civil War cost the United States over 620,000 men's lives; many of these men were officers in major divisions who fought in ten or more engagements. One of the veterans of the war was a man by the name of James Wren from Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Wren was a Captain for Company B in the 48th Pennsylvania Regiment. His diary excerpts show that being an officer was not as glorious as it could be nor...
Although many regard war as good for absolutely nothing, the truth of the matter is that troops are not the only things that advance in war. In fact, some of the greatest advancements made by mankind in fields ranging from medicine to the arts can trace their roots to military necessity. One such example made in the field of Civil Rights during the American Civil War was Special Field Orders Number...
For one of the first times in American history, the women of New Orleans were taking the protection of their city and its reputation into their own hands. Spitting and yelling at soldiers from the north and refusing to even acknowledge their presence in the streets, even when the soldiers were offering the women assistance. There were many hostile feelings between the north and the south...
In 1851, United States Deputy Marshall Henry W. Allen arrested freed slave William Henry in Syracuse, New York. Allen claimed Henry was a fugitive slave from Missouri. Though Henry was temporarily aided in escaping by local abolitionists, Marshall Allen and police arrested William Henry. This arrest happened in a brutal manner and William Henry was "excessively bruized in the struggle and was taken...
During the Civil War the 90th Pennsylvania saw some of the most intense action of any regiment in the war. Made up of volunteer men from the Philadelphia area, these troops moved shortly after their formation into Maryland to be on call as soon as they were needed for battle. They went into many of the first battles of the war including First Bull Run, different skirmishes, and the battle of Antietam....
During the Civil War the 90th Pennsylvania saw some of the most intense action of any regiment in the war. Made up of volunteer men from the Philadelphia area, these troops moved shortly after their formation into Maryland to be on call as soon as they were needed for battle. They went into many of the first battles of the war including First Bull Run, different skirmishes, and the battle of Antietam....