Portal:American Civil War

The American Civil War Portal

Confederate batteries bombard Fort Sumter

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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An interior sketch of Fort Runyon, showing activity at the fort during August 1861. The Capitol building is faintly visible in the background, across the Potomac River.

Fort Runyon was a timber and earthwork fort constructed by the Union Army following the occupation of northern Virginia in the American Civil War in order to defend the southern approaches to the Long Bridge as part of the defenses of Washington, D.C. during that war. The Columbia Turnpike and Alexandria and Loudon Railroad ran through the pentagonal structure, which controlled access to Washington via the Long Bridge. With a perimeter of almost 1,500 yards (1,400 m), and due to its unusual shape it was approximately the same size, shape, and in almost the same location as the Pentagon, built 80 years later.

Runyon was built immediately after the entry of Union forces into Virginia on May 24, 1861, on the land of James Roach, a Washington building contractor. Fort Runyon was the largest fort in the ring of defenses that protected Washington during the Civil War and was named after Brigadier General Theodore Runyon, commander of the Fourth Division of the Army of Northeastern Virginia during the First Battle of Bull Run. Union soldiers garrisoned the fort until its dismantling following the end of the Civil War in 1865. Today, no trace of the fort remains on the site, though a historical marker has been constructed by the Arlington Historical Society. (Full article...)

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Grand Parade of the States

After the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Kingdom of Hawaii under King Kamehameha IV declared its neutrality on August 26, 1861. However, many Native Hawaiians and Hawaii-born Americans (mainly descendants of the American missionaries), abroad and in the islands, enlisted in the military regiments of various states in the Union and the Confederacy. (Full article...)

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James Wood Bush (c. 1844–45 – April 24, 1906) was an American Union Navy sailor of British and Native Hawaiian descent. He was among a group of more than one hundred Native Hawaiian and Hawaii-born combatants in the American Civil War, at a time when the Kingdom of Hawaii was still an independent nation.

Enlisting in the Union Navy in 1864, Bush served as a sailor aboard USS Vandalia and the captured Confederate vessel USS Beauregard, which maintained the blockade of the ports of the Confederacy. He was discharged from service in 1865 after an injury, which developed into a chronic condition in later life. The impoverished Bush was unable to return to Hawaii for more than a decade, during which time he traveled through New England and much of the Pacific. Back in Hawaii, he worked as a government tax collector and road supervisor for the island of Kauai, where he settled down. In later life, he converted to Mormonism and became an active member of the Hawaiian Mission. After the annexation of Hawaii to the United States, Bush was recognized for his military service, and in 1905 was granted a government pension for the injuries he received in the Navy. He died at his home on Kauai on April 24, 1906. (Full article...)

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

Did you know...

... that Edward W. Gantt was a Confederate soldier who defected to the Union during the American Civil War?
... that some Confederate bullets were sourced from a silver mine?
... that CSS Beaufort fought USS Albatross in the first ship-versus-ship action of the American Civil War?
... that some historians believe that Steele's Greenville expedition marked a shift in the Union's war policy?
... that Enoch Marvin Banks resigned from the University of Florida because of public outrage over his belief that the American Civil War was caused by slavery?
... that Charles Herman Allen, university administrator and American Civil War captain, opened the University of Wisconsin to female enrollment in 1863?