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The Civil War

Dixie (Song of the South) became to the South what the "Marsellaise" is to France.

I have always thought Dixie one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it ... I now request the band to favor me with its performance.

Abraham Lincoln (April 10, 1865)

The meeting lasted approximately an hour and a half. When it was over, the Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered.

The guns have long since ceased to sound. The zest and fury of the time have gone. But the salient and polarizing force, ushered forth by a strong-willed and God-fearing people who pitted their strength and energy against each other, reflects the vanguard of pre-eminence by which this nation was built and thrives on today - shall not these memories live on?

W.K. Vardaman, Jr.

The War Between the States

Robert E. Lee Born: 1807 (Virginia) Died: 1870 Military Education: West Point, 1829 (2nd in a class of 46) Military Experience: Mexican War, put down John Brown raid. Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee had the formidable task of checking the Federal army's advance into Virginia. Outnumbered and poorly equiped, Lee's army struggled with what became a war of attrition. Personal Description: Great leader of the lost Confederate cause. After the War: Became President of Washington College.

Ulysses S. Grant Born: 1822 (Ohio) Died: 1885 Military Education: West Point, 1843 (21st in a class of 39) Military Experience: Mexican War, frontier duty After his victories around Chattanooga, he was made General-in-Chief of the U.S. army and took over the strategic direction of the war. Directed the "relentless pounding" of Lee's army in a costly campaign. Personal Description: "His face has three expressions: deep thought; extreme determination; and great simplicity and calmness." After the War: Became President of the U.S.

United States 1861
	Red: the federal, non-slaveholding states Blue: the border slaveholding states Yellow: the confederate states Green: Indian territory, or present day Oklahoma Remainder: U.S. territories

U.S. Census Population In 1860 - 31,443,321				Admission & Secession Dates Of States At Time Of Civil War Period
Free and Slave				State	Admission	Seceded
	Free	27,489,561		Alabama	Dec 14, 1819	Jan 11, 1861
	Slave	3,953,760		Arkansas	Jun 15, 1836	May 06, 1861
Cities Over 100,000				California	Dec 09, 1850
	New York	805,651		Connecticut	Jan 09, 1788
	Philadelphia	562,529		Delaware	Dec 07, 1787
	Baltimore	212,418		Florida	Mar 03, 1845	Jan 10, 1861
	Boston	177,812		Georgia	Jan 02, 1788	Jan 19, 1861
	New Orleans	168,675		Illinois	Dec 03, 1818
	Cincinnati	161,044		Indiana	Dec 11, 1816
	St. Louis	160,773		Iowa	Dec 28, 1846
	Chicago	109,260		Kansas	Jan 29, 1861
Cities Over 50,000				Kentucky	Jun 01, 1792
	Buffalo	81,129		Louisiana	Apr 30, 1812	Jan 26, 1861
	Newark	71,914		Maine	Mar 15, 1820
	Louisville	68,033		Maryland	Apr 28, 1788
	Albany	62,367		Massachusetts	Feb 06, 1788
	Washington	61,122		Michigan	Jan 26, 1837
	San Francisco	56,802		Minnesota	May 11, 1858
	Providence	50,666		Mississippi	Dec 10, 1817	Jan 09, 1861
Other				Missouri	Aug 10, 1821
	Charleston	40,578		New Hampshire	Jun 21, 1788
	Richmond	37,910		New Jersey	Dec 18, 1787
	Montgomery	35,967		New York	Jul 26, 1788
	Mobile	29,606		North Carolina	Nov 21, 1789	May 20, 1861
	Memphis	22,623		Ohio	Mar 01, 1803
	Savannah	22,292		Oregon	Jan 14, 1859
Horse Population				Pennsylvania	Dec 12, 1787
	Federal	4,417,130		Rhode Island	May 29, 1790
	Confederate	1,698,338		South Carolina	May 23, 1788	Dec 20, 1860
Mule Population				Tennessee	Jun 01, 1796	Jun 08,1861
	Federal	328,890		Texas	Dec 29, 1845	Feb 01, 1861
	Confederate	800,665		Vermont	Mar 04, 1791
Working Oxen				Virginia	Jun 25, 1788	Apr 17, 1861
	Federal	856,645		West Virginia	Jun 20, 1863
	Confederate	1,382,430		Wisconsin	May 29, 1848

Best Available Number Of Major And Minor Military Actions - 10,458

Total Union Prisoners Held In The South:

Approximately 126,950, With The Prisoner Fatality At 22,576.

Total Confederate Prisoners Held In The North:

Approximately 220,000, The War Department Lists Prisoner Fatalities At 26,436.

Missouri Compromise Of 1820

Congress had acceded to Missouri's request for admission as a slave state in 1820, but was careful at the same time to draw a line through the rest of the old Louisiana Purchase and bar slavery north of it in the wistful hope that a permanent border would thereby be created between freedom and slavery: That compact would hold for a quarter century.

But slavery would not be compromised. "This momentous question," wrote the aged Thomas Jefferson, "like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the Union." President John Quincy Adams agreed: "I take it for granted that the present question is a mere preamble — a title page to a great tragic volume."

The Kansas - Nebraska Act
An Act to Organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas.

The act would let the settlers in the new territories decide for themselves whether slavery was to be barred. Effectively eliminating the lines drawn in 1820 between slave an free soil. "If the people of Kansas want a slaveholding state," said Stephen A. Douglas (Lincoln-Douglas), "let them have it, and if they want a free state they have the right to it, and it is not for the people of Illinois, or Missouri, or New York, or Kentucky, to complain, whatever the decision of the people of Kansas may be."

A new political organization grew out of northern protests against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a curious amalgam of nativists and temperance advocates, disillusioned free-soil Democrats and disaffected Whigs, but united now in their opposition to seeing slavery extended into hitherto forbidden territory. They were first called simply the "Anti-Nebraska men," then the Republican party; their enemies called them the "Black Republicans." "Come on then, Gentlemen of the Slave States," said Senator William Seward of New York. "We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers and is in the right."

Five thousand proslavery Missourians crossed into Kansas illegally, seized polling places, and installed a legislature that made even speaking against slavery a crime. Antislavery settlers set up their own government, backed by northerners who sent in reinforcements and crates of Sharps rifles — called "Beecher's Bibles" after the Brooklyn clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe's brother, who had pledged that his congregation would buy and ship twenty-five of them to Kansas. There were shootings, stabbings. A proslavery sheriff was killed at Lawrence. Eight hundred southerners raided the town to search out the assassin, got drunk, and instead burned down the hotel that had been antislavery headquarters.

Echoes of the Kansas violence reached the floor of the United States Senate itself. After the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts had finished a two-day denunciation of proslavery Missourians as "hirelings picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization," Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina caned him into unconsciousness. "I gave him about thirty first-rate stripes," Brooks told reporters proudly. "Towards the last, he bellowed like a calf. I wore my cane out completely but saved the head — which is gold." Admirers sent him new canes. Northern and southern senators alike began to carry knives and pistols into the chamber. It was the news of Sumner's beating that had first driven John Brown to murder in Kansas; it had caused him to become "crazy," his eldest son remembered, "crazy."

In the next three months, more than two hundred men were killed in "Bleeding Kansas." The killing along the Missouri border would not stop for ten years.

Civil War Battle Names

So many battlefields of the Civil War bear double names that we cannot believe the duplication has been accidental. It is the unusual which impresses. The troops of the North came mainly from cities, towns, and villages, and were, therefore, impressed by some natural object near the scene of the conflict and named the battle from it. The soldiers from the South were chiefly from the country and were, therefore, impressed by some artificial object near the field of action. In one section the naming has been after the handiwork of God; in the other section it has been after the handiwork of man. Thus, the first passage of arms is called the battle of Bull Run at the North — the name of a little stream. At the South it takes the name of Manassas, from a railroad station.

Excerpt from an article written by General D.H. Hill, late of the Confederate army, that appeared in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.

Nearly 20 percent of America's Civil War battlefields have already been destroyed - denied forever to future generations. Of those that remain, only 15 percent are protected by the Federal government. There is only one national organization working to save all of these battlefields: The Civil War Preservation Trust is America's largest non-profit organization (501-C3) devoted to the preservation of our nation's endangered Civil War battlefields.

Play Movie Trailer

Gods And Generals This epic film from writer-director Ron Maxwell chronicles the early events of the American Civil War. It's a prequel to his earlier Gettysburg, with some of the same cast, and is part of a planned trilogy. Stephen Lang plays Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the famous (and deeply religious) Confederate general who, along with fellow General Robert E. Lee (Robert Duvall), must weigh the mighty consequences of his actions, as each battle costs the lives of thousands of men. Over on the Union side there's Jeff Daniels as Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who, like Jackson and Lee, is fond of making long, poetic speeches to his troops. Beginning with the start of the war and ending with Jackson's death, the film chronicles the three main battles leading up to Gettysburg, using their actual locations and thousands of actual Civil War re-enactors as extras. Maxwell pays careful attention to authentic period detail as he chronicles the minutiae of the generals' domestic lives in the intervals between the harrowing battle scenes. While a little on the long side, the end result should serve as an invaluable document for history buffs.

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