Civil War

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's attempt to invade the North. The two armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties. Union casualties were 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing), while Confederate casualties ...

Sarah J. Hale, a writer and the editor of a popular women’s magazine, Godey’s Ladies Journal, was born on October 24th, 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire. Her parents Gordon Buell and Martha Whittlesay Buell believed in equal education for both genders, so Sarah was home-schooled by her mother. Later, Sarah became a local schoolteacher and in 1813 she married a lawyer, David Hale. Together, Sarah and her husband formed a small literary club and soon she began writing. After the death of her husband in 1822, Sarah turned to writing to support herself and her five children. Hale authored many books and hundreds of poems, including ...

In the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the U. S. Supreme Court – disregarding the constitutionally-authorized ban – declared that Congress could not interfere with slavery or prohibit it in any territory, thereby “reopening the African slave trade [through] perversions of judicial power.” Republicans won the election of 1860 and, in accordance with this plank in their platform, they begin to take action to end slavery. For example, in  1862, they passed a federal law prohibiting slavery in the federal territories – a direct affront to the 1857 Dred Scott decision in which the U. S. Supreme Court had forbidden ...

The Confederate Army was unstoppable – within weeks of winning the Civil War. General Robert E. Lee had won the Second Battle of Bull Run and was marching 55,000 Confederate troops into Maryland on Sept. 3, 1862. The Confederate Army was welcomed into Maryland as anti-Union protests had been filling Baltimore’s streets. On Sept. 13, 1862, President Lincoln met with Rev. William Patterson, Rev. John Dempster and other Methodist, Baptist and Congregational leaders. The ministers presented Lincoln with a petition urging him to emancipate the slaves. Lincoln told them: “I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice ...

June 18th 1861, Thaddeus Lowe ascended with a tethered balloon five hundred feet above the National Mall. He intended to demonstrate, amid the Civil War, practicality of observing enemy troop movements from the air. His audience was the Commander-in-Chief. A telegraph wire connected the basket with the White House. The scientist sent a message to the President Lincoln: This point of observation commands an area nearly fifty miles in diameter. The city, with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene. I take great pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station, and in ...

On April 12, 1861, the war began when Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor forcing its surrender. In response to the attack, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. While Northern states responded quickly, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas refused, opting to join the Confederacy instead. In July, Union forces commanded by Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell began marching south to take the rebel capital of Richmond. On the 21st, they met a Confederate army near Manassas and were defeated.  (Source) What was the Real Cause of the American Civil ...

The discovery of a letter from newly inaugurated President Abraham Lincoln to the governor of Florida has generated renewed interest in Lincoln's views toward slavery. The letter, found at the Lehigh County Historical Society in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is a form letter from Lincoln to Governor Madison S. Perry transmitting "an authenticated copy of a Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States." On March 16, 1861, Lincoln sent the same letter to all of the governors of the states, including states that had already seceded from the Union and formed their own confederate government. What was this ...

On March 11, 1861, the Confederate States of America (CSA) approved a new national constitution to serve as the nascent country’s supreme law of the land. Upon a cursory reading of the Confederate Constitution (available alongside the U.S. version at Civil Discourse), readers will notice that it is a near-copy of the U.S. Constitution. Most sections are copied verbatim or near-verbatim with small additions that initially seem insignificant. So how different are the two documents? The answer is that the two documents contain small differences that have huge ramifications. As FSU professor Randall Holcombe notes, the Confederate Constitution was basically an ...

In 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed a bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska, a vast area of land that would become Kansas, Nebraska, Montana and the Dakotas. Known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the controversial bill raised the possibility that slavery could be extended into territories where it had once been banned. Its passage intensified the bitter debate over slavery in the United States, which would later explode into the Civil War. The discovery of gold in California in 1849, and California’s subsequent request to become a state, sparked a fierce battle in Congress. As California had banned slavery, its admission to the Union ...