On February 6th, General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union captured Fort Henry, Tennessee, the first victory for the United States in the Civil War. Accompanied by his troops, General Grant arrived on the morning of the 6th, having been transported by a fleet of ironclads commanded by Commodore Foote. After setting foot on land, it took a mere two hours until the fort was captured, officially being...
The most infamous of slave traders, Captain Nathaniel Gordon was finally brought to justice, and the significance of that event was reported and commented on at length in the March 8, 1862 edition of Harper's Weekly summarizing from accounts in the Times and Herald. This was an important event because the international slave trade had been considered piracy but had...
On January 9, 1862, the Sovereign Convention of the People of South Carolina met sitting in Columbia, South Carolina [the state capital] and enacted several highly important ordinances concerning the state. A first order was to strengthen the hands of the executive branch by the creation of a Council to whom [in conjunction with the Governor] plenary powers were entrusted. This new Council's...
In 1862 Sigismunda S. Kimball, from Shenandoah County, Virginia was suddenly, like so many other women of the South, thrown into a completely different world as the Civil War raged through the South. Mrs. Kimball was put in charge of her family's plantation while her husband was away at war and she kept the plantation records in a journal which she wrote in everyday. In this journal she wrote...
"If you love your freedom-if you love your home-if you love your wife and children-if you love your God, strike, strike quick, strike hard," urged The Camden Confederate on February 28, 1862. This newspaper, published weekly in Camden, South Carolina, was full of pleas for Southern unity and attacks against the North. Like many Southern newspapers, The Camden Confederate tried...
The message was clear; those fighting for the Confederate Army were "destroy[ing] the government of [their] fathers." In an advertisement in 1862 in Winchester, Virginia, the government established by the "the patriot statesmen and warriors of the revolution" asked that the confederate soldiers "throw down [their] arms" and come rejoin the Union. The ad insisted that the "bad men" of the confederacy...
Dissent, the one word that is able to break apart any organization. One particular instance of dissent took place in 1862 in Springfield, Missouri. The citizens of Springfield became thoroughly displeased with the practices of the confederate soldiers in their town. These practices, undertaken by General Sterling Price of the Confederate Army, became the focusing point of controversy for the citizens...
Censorship and secrecy became the motto of the Union Army in the beginning of 1862. By this point, the war had only been going on for one year and civilians already had begun to grow weary of its costs. Union citizens came to be weary of the issue surrounding government censorship of communication devices such as the newspapers and mail. One of the complaints concerning this matter appeared in
Abraham Lincoln is sometimes viewed as a “bleeding heart” because he pardoned, commuted, or delayed sentencing for hundreds of soldiers sentenced to death for desertion or absenteeism. He soon earned a reputation among political leaders and military commanders for being “soft” on discipline by chronically interfering with military executions. Lincoln’s leniency did not go unnoticed or...
Texas land was ideal for slaveholders. There was seemingly no end to the vast land territory, there were long growing seasons, and they could grow multiple crops throughout the year. Although slavery arrived late to Texas, it soon became as powerful as an institution as elsewhere in the South.
One example of the desire to attain slaves to work the land is evident in the slave trade offer...