Without question, the most famous battle of the Civil War took place outside of the small town of Gettysburg from July 1-3, 1863. Over those three days, nearly 8,000 would die, over 30,000 would be casualties, and the most famous attack of the war, Picketts Charge, would fail Robert E. Lees Army of Northern Virginia. The South would go on to lose the war, and when it did, the importance of Gettysburg as one of the high tide marks of the Confederacy became apparent, making the battle all th...

One of the most important, and controversial, Confederate generals during the Civil War was Lieutenant General James Longstreet, Robert E. Lees old warhorse. Longstreet was Lees principal subordinate for most of the war, ably managing a corps in the Army of Northern Virginia. Longstreet was instrumental in Confederate victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga, while he was also effective at Antietam and the Battle of the Wilderness, where he was nearly killed by a shot thr...

Wade Hampton III (March 28, 1818 April 11, 1902) was one of the foremost Confederate cavalry leaders during the Civil War and afterward a politician from South Carolina, serving as its 77th Governor and as a U.S. Senator. At the start of the war, he resigned from the Senate and enlisted as a private in the South Carolina Militia; however, the governor of South Carolina insisted that Hampton accept a colonel's commission, even though he had no military experience at all. Hampton organized and...

In the narrative of the Civil War, Edward Porter Alexander has loomed larger in death than in life. Just 25 years old when the war broke out, Porter Alexander had already served as an engineer and officer in the U.S. Army, but the native Georgian resigned his commission in May 1861 and joined the Confederacy after his home state seceded. Porter Alexander spent 1861 as an intelligence officer, and he served as part of a signal guard, but he soon became chief of ordnance for Joseph Johnstons...

The Army of the Potomac had pushed Robert E. Lees army out of Maryland in September 1862 after the Battle of Antietam, but President Lincoln and his War Department wanted the army to continue going after the Army of Northern Virginia after it retreated back into Virginia. When George B. McClellan refused to do it, Lincoln fired him and installed Ambrose E. Burnside as the new commander. Burnside, who didnt believe himself capable of commanding the Army of the Potomac, only took the job bec...

After the American Civil War began in April 1861, Ulysses S. Grant made a meteoric rise to the top of the Union war effort. Illinois. On April 6, 1862 a determined full-force attack from the Confederate Army took place at the Battle of Shiloh; the objective was to destroy the entire Western Union offensive once for all. Over 44,699 Confederate troops led by Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard, vigorously attacked five divisions of Grants army bivouacked nine miles south at Pittsbu...

John Codman Ropes (18361899) was an American military historian and lawyer and was the co-founder of law firm Ropes & Gray. After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Ropes turned his attention principally to military history. He ceaselessly assisted with business and personal help and friendship the officers and men of the 20th Massachusetts regiment, in which his brother, Henry Ropes, was killed in action at Gettysburg, and after the war he devoted himself to the collection and elucidatio...

Daniel Harvey Hill or D.H. Hill (July 12, 1821 September 24, 1889) was a Confederate general during the Civil War who was known as an aggressive leader, and as an austere, deeply religious man, with a dry, sarcastic humor. He was brother-in-law to Stonewall Jackson and a close friend to both James Longstreet and Joseph E. Johnston, but disagreements with both Robert E. Lee and Braxton Bragg cost him favor with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Although his military ability was well re...

The most famous attack of the Civil War was also one of its most flawed and deadly. Having been unable to break the Army of the Potomacs lines on the left and right flank during Day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee decided to make a thrust at the center of the Unions line with about 15,000 men spread out over three divisions. Though it is now known as Picketts Charge, named after division commander George Pickett, the assignment for the charge was given to General James Longstreet, whose 1s...

Confederate Military History is a 12-volume series of books written and/or edited by former Confederate general Clement A. Evans that deals with specific topics related to the military personalities, places, battles, and campaigns in various Southern United States, including those of the Confederacy. Written with a heavy Southern slant, the articles that comprise the compendium deal with the famous events of the war. This account is of the Battle of Shiloh, fought in April 1862. At the tim...

The Sand Creek Massacre (also known as the Chivington Massacre, the Battle of Sand Creek or the Massacre of Cheyenne Indians) was an incident in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a village of friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 70163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. The location has...

With the exception of George Washington, perhaps the most famous and celebrated general in American history is Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807 October 12, 1870), despite the fact he led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia against the Union in the Civil War. The son of U.S. Revolutionary War hero Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, a relative of Martha Custis Washington, and a top graduate of West Point, Lee had distinguished himself so well before the Civil War that President Lincoln as...