American Civil War

Recent news and articles

Civil War blockade runner Scottish Chief found on bottom of Hillsborough River tampabay.com :: 2009-09-16 :: Wrecks: Civil War-era
Burned and sunk, the steamship Scottish Chief lay at the bottom of the Hillsborough River for 146 years, a legend for its ability to keep Tampa supplied amidst the city's isolation during the Civil War. Underwater archaeologist John William Morris said a research team has spotted the ship, a vessel not seen since the night in 1863 when Union troops raided the shipyard burning two blockade runners. Even with new sonar technology it took some time to confirm that the vague trace in the sand was that of the lost blockade runner. The find comes one year after the discovery of the Kate Dale in the river, which had been reduced to wooden ship's ribs.

The California Confederates examiner.com :: 2009-09-16 :: Confederate - Confederacy - American Civil War
California was far from the major actions of the American Civil War, but it was very important by both sides because of its riches and location near Mexico. While California treated its Native-American population very harshly it was an anti-slavery Union state. However, a number of California's cities were strongholds of pro-Southern sympathies. This was a major concern to Union commanders who moved troops from the West to strengthen garrisons in the Golden State. Union soldiers guarded wagon trains of California gold heading East. The problem for a California Confederate was how to get to the war.

No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 by Richard Slotkin [book review] wesleyan.edu :: 2009-09-16 :: Battles and Battlefields - American Civil War
No Quarter is a recount of the Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864. At first glance, the Union's plan seemed brilliant: A regiment of miners would tunnel beneath a Confederate fort, pack the tunnel with explosives, and blow a hole in the enemy lines. Then a specially trained division of African American infantry would spearhead an attack to exploit the breach created by the explosion. The attack was made ineffective by poor leadership and political infighting in the Union command. The explosion ripped open an immense crater, which became a death trap for troops that attempted to pass through it. [Buy from Amazon: US, UK, CA, DE, FR]

Lincoln's last signature? Signed envelope, thought to be real, found at flea market morningjournal.com :: 2009-08-30 :: Abraham Lincoln
"Let this man enter with this note. April 14, 1865. A. Lincoln." The short sentence on an envelope marked the beginning of an adventure for Bruce Steiner, who discovered the relic at a box of mixed papers he bought at Jamie's Flea Market in 2006. "It can't be real," Steiner thought when he first saw the signature, dated the fateful day a bullet from John Wilkes Booth's Derringer ended Lincoln's life. Steiner, a Civil War buff, antique collector and amateur historian, said the envelope raised skepticism - for example historical societies refused to return his phone calls. But expert John Lupton carried out a handwriting analysis, and he thinks the item is authentic.

Museum of Southern History: Historical accuracy and making the past to come life jacksonville.com :: 2009-08-30 :: Civil War Museums
One woman came searching for her ancestors who fought in the Civil War, only to learn that 3 out of 4 were deserters. "It's all about historical accuracy. Political correctness has destroyed history," said Ben Willingham, incoming board president of the Museum of Southern History. "Don't force-feed dates and times. History needs to be brought alive with people and stories, ancestors," says curator Van Seagraves, who wears Confederate uniform for school tour groups and lets kids taste tack - hard bread that soldiers ate. He also lets them shoot blanks from antique weapons. The collection includes one of Lincoln's burial flags, a copy of Nathan B. Forrest's Memphis speech.

Museum at Ford's Theater explores the Lincoln assassination dallasnews.com :: 2009-08-10 :: John Wilkes Booth - Lincoln Assassination
After 10pm on April 14, 1865, one of America's most admired actors, John Wilkes Booth, mortally wounded President Abraham Lincoln. 9 hours later Lincoln died across the street from Ford's Theater at the home of merchant William Petersen. A nation mourned, and Vice President Andrew Johnson, himself one of the missed targets of a vast conspiracy, became the 17th president. The new Ford Theater museum makes it possible to understand Booth's view of Lincoln. Here visitors can see the assassin's derringer, knife, diary, compass, and belongings of his co-conspirators. Also on show are the clothing and boots Lincoln had to Ford's Theater on the night he died.

Black spies infiltrated staff of Confederate president Jefferson Davis fosters.com :: 2009-08-10 :: Spy & Intelligence - American Civil War
When Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, realised somebody on his staff was leaking information to the Union, the last person he thought of was the nanny, Mary Elizabeth Bowser. He thought she was only an illiterate slave. "Wrong Jeff, she was a school teacher from Philadelphia," said Hari Jones, curator of the African American Civil War Memorial Museum in Washington, adding that: "African American spies in the Civil War were critical to the Union effort." Called the Lincoln's Loyal Legal League, a network of African American spies used their own form of communication to weaken the Confederate effort and pass on information to the Northern states.

What the Confederate flag means today - Between a flag and a boycott thesunnews.com :: 2009-07-07 :: Confederacy Today & Aftermath
Today, the confederate flag can be found on the side of a barn; on a bikini in the window of a shop; at the Confederate Soldier's monument on Statehouse grounds; on T-shirts, tattoos, and bumper stickers. Its meaning has become as varied as its displays. It's about heritage because it was carried into battle by ancestors fighting to defend their homeland. It's about hate because when Confederate General Robert E. Lee marched north to Gettysburg, one of the things that the Army of Northern Virginia did was seize free black folk and send them back into slavery - whether they had originally been slaves or not.

Auburn University obtains surrender letter Ulysses S. Grant wrote to Robert E. Lee al.com :: 2009-07-07 :: General Ulysses S. Grant
A rare letter from Union General Ulysses S. Grant to Confederate General Robert E. Lee details the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and setting the stage for the end of the Civil War. The handwritten letter (April 10, 1865) is a copy Grant made of a letter he wrote to Lee after Lee formally surrendered at Appomattox. Grant calls on Confederate forces to give up artillery and pledge their loyalty to the U.S., but says that officers can keep side arms and all of the soldiers can return to their homes "not to be disturbed by the United States authorities as long as they observe their Parolle & the laws inforced where they reside."

Western front Civil War battles often forgotten rockwallheraldbanner.com :: 2009-07-07 :: Battles and Battlefields - American Civil War
Scholars and historians say the Civil War on the Kansas-Missouri border, and the Civil War in the Ozarks, has been forgotten and overshadowed by larger battles in the East. --- Including skirmishes, Missouri saw 1,200 engagements during the Civil War: more than any other state except Virginia and Tennessee. --- Kansas has several Civil War battlefields, including a cemetery in Baxter Springs where soldiers killed by Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill’s forces are buried. The biggest battle in the state was fought in October 1864 along the banks of Mine Creek, featuring one of the largest cavalry face-offs of the war.

The Civil War Medicine Museum in Frederick examiner.com :: 2009-07-07 :: Civil War Museums
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine - in Frederick, Maryland - is located in a building used by an embalmer who treated the bodies of Civil War soldiers. Shattered bones and stories of injured soldiers are exhibited in a respectful, professional manner. The tour in the museum is set up thematically and flows easily from one section to another: from medical education to recruitment to camp life, evacuation of the wounded, to field dressing, hospitals, embalming, and modern military medicine.

Archaeologists locate Confederate cannons from a sunken Confederate gunboat in the Pee Dee River sciencedaily.com :: 2009-06-10 :: Wrecks: Civil War-era
Archaeologists have located 2 large cannons - each weighing upwards of 5 tons - from sunken Confederate gunboat C.S.S. Pee Dee in the Pee Dee River and have pinpointed where the Mars Bluff Naval Yard once stood on the east side of the river in Marion County, S.C. Underwater archaeologist Christopher Amer says the findings and the artifacts recovered will help tell the story of the people who worked at the Mars Bluff Naval Yard and how they built the Confederate warships. The Mars Bluff Naval Yard was one of many Confederate naval yards that were located inland in Southern states so gunboats and support vessels could be built and protected from Union forces.

Valuable Abraham Lincoln document found in the Hawaii State Archives kgmb9.com :: 2009-06-10 :: Civil War Documents, Archives
A document that was hidden away in the Hawaii State Archives for decades has finally been explained. Abraham Lincoln signed it as part of his plan to free slaves during the Civil War. Someone found the file in a vault in 1935. They noticed Lincoln's signature, but did not know what the document was. It remained a mystery until Daniel Stowell visited the archives, realizing the date, Sept. 22, 1862, was the date Lincoln signed the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. "This document is intimately related to the end of slavery in the US. It's the beginning of the process. The order to the Secretary of State to affix the seal of the US to make official the preliminary emancipation proclamation."

Civil War memorabilia up for auction after Civil War Museum closes capitalnews9.com :: 2009-06-04 :: Relics and Memorabilia - American Civil War
It's one of the biggest and rarest collections of Civil War memorabilia in the entire country. And it's about to be auctioned off. "This is probably one of the hardest things that we had to do. The cannons, the costumes, the uniforms, the guns are going," explained Eastover Resort owner Ticki Winsor. Eastover Resort in Lenox is the home of the Civil War Museum. But because of the bad economy, Winsor is forced to sell the property, including everything in the museum.

Female Confederate spy Isabelle Boyd - Cleopatra of the Secession examiner.com :: 2009-06-04 :: Spy & Intelligence - American Civil War
Isabelle Boyd - one of the most infamous of Confederate spies, who provided information to General "Stonewall" Jackson - today lies buried among the very "Yankees" she plotted so hard against. She became known as "Le Belle Rebelle" by French war correspondents and the "Cleopatra of the Secession" by the North and is now sometimes referred to as the "Wisconsin's Southern Belle." Isabelle's town was occupied by the Union in 1861. One day a band of drunken Union soldiers broke into her home looking for souvenirs. They found nothing and one soldier intent on raising the Union flag pushed her mother. Belle drew her pistol and shot the man dead - She was just 17.

St. Louis opens Civil War era court documents stltoday.com :: 2009-06-04 :: Civil War Documents, Archives
Archivists browsing through pages inside metal file drawers at the St. Louis circuit clerk's office have unlocked never-before told stories of looting, betrayal and slavery in the years after the American Civil War. Now these rare documents, uncovered during a 10-year preservation project, will be available to anyone who wants to read about how Missourians tried to bring law and order after the chaos of war. "This is a treasure trove of information, most of which has never been seen by historians. These cases are attempting to right the wrongs that people saw in those years," said Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.

American history 1861-1865: U.S. Civil War was a conflict between the Abraham Lincoln led Union and 11 southern states that formed CSA - the Confederate States of America, led by Jefferson Davis. In the first year the Union got control of the border states and established a naval blockade as both sides raised large armies. In 1862 the bloody battles began. Robert E. Lee get a series of Confederate victories, but his best general, Stonewall Jackson, was killed at the Chancellorsville in May 1863. Lee's invasion of the North was repulsed at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. In July 1863 Ulysses Grant seized control of Mississippi by capturing Vicksburg, thus splitting the Confederacy. The war ended after the Confederacy collapsed following General Robert E. Lee's surrender at the Battle of Appomattox.

Also called: 'War of the Rebellion', 'War of Southern Independence', 'War of Northern Aggression' and 'War Between the States'.

American Civil War in the News is a edited review of American Civil War related news and articles, providing collection of hand-picked 1861-1865 era history.