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When Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, no one doubted that a battle to control the Mississippi River was imminent. Throughout the war, the Federals pushed their way up the river. Every port and city seemed to fall against the force of the Union navy. The capital was forced to retreat from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. Many of the smaller towns, like Bayou Sara and Donaldsonville, were nearly shelled completely off the map. It was...
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In February 1864, General William Sooy Smith led a force of over seven thousand cavalry on a raid into the Mississippi Prairie, bringing fire and destruction to one of the very few breadbaskets remaining in the Confederacy. Smith's raid was part of General William T. Sherman's campaign to march across Mississippi from Vicksburg to destroy the railroad junction at Meridian. Both Smith and Sherman intended to burn everything in their path that could...
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In February 1862, after defeats at Bull Run and at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, the Union army was desperate for victory on the eve of its first offensive of the Civil War. The strategy was to penetrate the Southern heartland with support from a new "Brown Water"? navy. In a two-week campaign plagued by rising floodwaters and brutal winter weather, two armies collided in rural Tennessee to fight over two forts that controlled the Tennessee and Cumberland...
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Midway between Memphis and New Orleans along the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was essential to both Confederate and Union campaigns. With both sides bent on claiming the city, Vicksburg, and the fate of the nation, lay in the balance. General Ulysses S. Grant began his campaign on the city in November 1862, but he was forced to abandon the operation in December when the fiery General Earl Van Dorn made a daring raid on Grant's main supply depot at...
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Nestled between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia's Shenandoah Valley enjoyed tremendous prosperity before the Civil War. This valuable stretch of land--called "the Breadbasket of the Confederacy" due to its rich soil and ample harvests--became the source of many conflicts between the Confederate and Union armies. Of the thirteen major battles fought here, none was more influential than the Battle of Cedar Creek. On October 19, 1864,...
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On January 19, 1862, Confederate and Union forces clashed in the now-forgotten Battle of Mill Springs. Armies of inexperienced soldiers chaotically fought in the wooded terrain of south-central Kentucky as rain turned bloodied ground to mud. Mill Springs was the first major Union victory since the Federal disaster of Bull Run. This Union triumph secured the Bluegrass State in Union hands, opening the large expanses of Tennessee for Federal invasion....
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In 1864, Union troops controlled much of the South, Sherman's men marched with impunity through Georgia and defeat at Gettysburg was a painful and distant memory. The Confederacy needed to stem the tide. Confederate major general Sterling Price led an army of twelve thousand troops on a desperate charge through Missouri to deliver the state to the Confederacy and dash President Lincoln's hopes for reelection. This daring campaign culminated with the...
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The Tennessee Campaign of November and December 1864 was the Southern Confederacy's last significant offensive operation of the Civil War. General John Bell Hood of the Confederate Army of Tennessee attempted to capture Nashville, the final realistic chance for a battlefield victory against the Northern juggernaut. Hood's former West Point instructor, Major General George Henry Thomas, led the Union force, fighting those who doubted him in his own...
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Local civilians and Civil War veterans felt a special connection to Fort Davidson long after the war. The survivors formed the Pilot Knob Memorial Association to ensure that the focal point of their battle, their glory and their Civil War would never be forgotten. Historian Walter Busch presents the association's records, along with Iron County court records, newspaper accounts and surviving photographs, to relate the history of the Battle of Pilot...
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In 1865, Waynesboro played host to the last gasp of the Confederate army in the Shenandoah Valley. Although the Battle of Waynesboro isn't among the most recognizable clashes, such as Gettysburg or Antietam, it still holds a special place in American history. The Union forces, led by General Philip Sheridan, included a young brigadier general named George Armstrong Custer. The battle was also the last major conflict for famed Confederate general Jubal...
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Though the First and Second Battles of Newtonia did not match epic Civil War battles like Antietam, where over thirty-five hundred soldiers were killed in a single day, and Gettysburg, where twice that number died in three days of fighting, such smaller engagements were just as important to the men who lived through them. The ones who didn't were just as dead, and for a brief time at least, the combat often raged just as violently. With the approach...
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Major General William T. Sherman's march from Savannah, Georgia, to Columbia, South Carolina, was marked by a battle with an unrelenting enemy: the swamps of the Palmetto State. For more than two weeks, Sherman's veterans faced an unforgiving quagmire, coupled by daily skirmishes with gallant bands of outnumbered Confederates. Along the way, a ruined countryside and wrecked towns marked the path of an army unlike any "since the days of Julius Caesar."...
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November 1861. The South was winning the Civil War. Fort Sumter had fallen to the Confederates. The Federal army was routed at Manassas. The blockade of Southern ports was a farce; commerce and weapons flowed almost as freely as before the war. There were stirrings of interest from foreign powers in recognizing the Confederacy and brokering a forced peace accord. The Federals needed to turn the tide. The largest fleet ever assembled by the United...
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Striking out from Knoxville, Tennessee in late March of 1865, Major General George Stoneman unleashed his cavalry division upon Southern Appalachia intent on "leaving nothing for the Rebellion to stand upon." The raiders wreaked havoc on government stores, civilian property and indispensable infrastructure, dashing all hope for the dying Confederacy's stand on the rugged peaks of the Blue Ridge. They eventually trampled through five southern states,...
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In the predawn darkness of September 29, 1864, black Union soldiers attacked a heavily fortified position on the outskirts of the Confederate capital of Richmond. In a few hours of desperate fighting, these African American soldiers struck a blow against Robert E. Lee's vaunted Army of Northern Virginia and proved to detractors that they could fight for freedom and citizenship for themselves and their enslaved brethren. For fourteen of the black soldiers...
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Prior to the Civil War, Atlanta was at the intersection of four rail lines, rendering the Georgia crossroads the fastest-growing city in the Deep South. As the Confederate States formed, Atlanta was a city deeply divided about secession. By the spring of 1863, war had arrived at the doorstep of Atlanta. Join historian Bob Davis as he tells the story of the devastation that befell Atlanta, the Union occupation and how the "Gate City" was reborn from...
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Join William C. Connery as he recounts the notable events and battles that occurred in Northern Virginia in 1861 after the firing on Fort Sumter. Beginning in May 1861, both the Confederate and Union armies assembled in Northern Virginia as politicians were deciding how and where the Civil War would be fought. Several months passed as both armies maneuvered and attempted to complete reconnaissance on the other. During this early time, the first officers...
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Though West Virginia was founded for the purpose of remaining loyal to the Union, severing ties with Virginia, home of the capital of the Confederacy, would prove difficult. West Virginia's fate would be tested on its battlegrounds. In August 1863, Union general William Woods Averell led a six-hundred-mile raid culminating in the Battle of White Sulphur Springs in Green Brier County. Colonel George S. Patton, grandfather of the legendary World War...
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Following victories at Carthage and Wilson's Creek in the summer of 1861, the Confederate-allied Missouri State Guard achieved its greatest success when it advanced on Lexington in September. Former Missouri governor General Sterling Price and his men laid siege for three days against a Union garrison under the command of Colonel James Mulligan. An ingenious mobile breastwork of hemp bales soaked in water, designed to absorb hot shot, enabled the...
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After the Battle of Perryville in October 1862, the focus of the Civil War in the West shifted back to Tennessee. The Union Army of the Cumberland regrouped in Nashville, while the Confederate Army of Tennessee camped 30 miles away in Murfreesboro. On December 26 the Federals marched southward and fought a three-day brawl at Stones River with their Confederate counterparts. The Confederates withdrew, and both armies spent the winter and spring harassing...
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