Portal:American Civil War

The American Civil War Portal

This chaplain gave services to Union troops

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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Asian Americans, who are Americans of Asian descent, have fought and served on behalf of the United States since the American Revolutionary War. During the American Civil War Asian Americans fought for both the Union and the Confederacy. Afterwards Asian Americans served primarily in the U.S. Navy until the Philippine–American War.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Asian Americans began to attend U.S. military academies, and the first Asian Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor. World War I saw Asian Americans serving as "non-whites" in the National Army. After World War I, Asian American service fell into obscurity until World War II when significant contributions by Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Korean Americans were documented. (Full article...)

Grand Parade of the States

During the American Civil War, North Carolina joined the Confederacy with some reluctance, mainly due to the presence of Southern Unionist sentiment within the state. A popular vote in February, 1861 on the issue of secession was won by the unionists but not by a wide margin.

This slight lean in favor of staying in the Union would shift towards the Confederacy in response to Abraham Lincoln's April 15 proclamation that requested 75,000 troops from all Union states, leading to North Carolina's secession. Similar to Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia, North Carolina wished to remain uninvolved in the likely war but felt forced to pick a side by the proclamation. Throughout the war, North Carolina widely remained a divided state. The population within the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state contained large pockets of Unionism. Even so, North Carolina would help contribute a significant amount of troops to the Confederacy, and channeled many vital supplies through the major port of Wilmington, in defiance of the Union blockade. (Full article...)

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Portrait of Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman at the Peabody Essex Museum

Timothy Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman (March 18, 1845 – February 27, 1863) was an American Union Army soldier of Native Hawaiian descent. Considered one of the "Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War", he was among a group of more than one hundred documented Native Hawaiian and Hawaii-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was still an independent nation.

Born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, he was the eldest son of Kinoʻoleoliliha, a Hawaiian high chiefess, and Benjamin Pitman, an American pioneer settler from Massachusetts. Through his father's business success in the whaling and sugar and coffee plantation industries and his mother's familial connections to the Hawaiian royal family, the Pitmans were quite prosperous and owned lands on the island of Hawaiʻi and in Honolulu. He and his older sister Mary were educated in the mission schools in Hilo alongside other children of mixed Hawaiian descent. After the death of his mother in 1855, his father remarried to the widow of a missionary, thus connecting the family to the American missionary community in Hawaiʻi. However, following the deaths of his first wife and later his second wife, his father decided to leave the islands and returned to Massachusetts with his family in 1861. The younger Pitman continued his education in the public schools around Boston. (Full article...)

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Featured picture

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

Did you know...

... that an African-American was appointed postmaster of Baynesville, Virginia, in 1893 in preference to a former Confederate soldier?
... that Dethloff Willrodt fought for the Union army on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, having previously been a soldier in the Confederate army?
... that singer Frank Croxton performed a duet with his father for the unveiling of a monument to a Confederate States Army general?
... that Colonel Bradley Winslow was brevetted by US president Abraham Lincoln for "brave and gallant conduct" during the siege of Petersburg in the American Civil War?
... that some Confederate bullets were sourced from a silver mine?
... that Benjamin Jackson was likely paid at least $300 to fight in the American Civil War as Lewis Saunders?