Portal:American Civil War/Selected event

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Add a new Selected event to the next available subpage.
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Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/01

The Signal Corps in the American Civil War comprised two organizations: the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which began with the appointment of Major Albert J. Myer as its first signal officer just before the war and remains an entity to this day, and the Confederate States Army Signal Corps, a much smaller group of officers and men, using similar organizations and techniques as their Union opponents. Both accomplished tactical and strategic communications for the warring armies, including electromagnetic telegraphy and aerial telegraphy ("wig-wag" signaling). Although both services had an implicit mission of battlefield observation, intelligence gathering, and artillery fire direction from their elevated signal stations, the Confederate Signal Corps also included an explicit espionage function.

The Union Signal Corps, although effective on the battlefield, suffered from political disputes in Washington, D.C., particularly in its rivalry with the civilian-led U.S. Military Telegraph Service. Myer was relieved of his duties as chief signal officer by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton for his attempts to control all electromagnetic telegraphy within the Signal Corps. He was not restored to his role as chief signal officer until after the war.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/02

The Battle of Fort Donelson was fought from February 12 to February 16, 1862, in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. The capture of the fort by Union forces opened the Cumberland River as an avenue of invasion of the South and elevated Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant from an obscure and largely unproven leader to the rank of major general and the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

The battle followed the capture of Fort Henry on February 6. Grant moved his army 12 miles overland to Fort Donelson on February 12 through February 13 and conducted several small probing attacks. On February 14, U.S. Navy gunboats under Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote attempted to reduce the fort with naval gunfire, but was forced to withdraw after sustaining heavy damage from Donelson's water batteries. On February 15, with their fort surrounded, the Confederates, commanded by Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd, launched a surprise attack against Grant's army, attempting to open an avenue of escape. Grant, who was away from the battlefield at the start of the attack, arrived to rally his men and counterattack. Despite achieving a partial success, Floyd lost his nerve and recalled his men back into their entrenchments. On the morning of February 16, Floyd and his second-in-command, Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow, both turned over their command to Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, who agreed to unconditional surrender terms from Grant.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/03

Civil War tokens are token coins that were privately minted and distributed in the United States between 1862 and 1864. They were used mainly in the Northeast and Midwest. The widespread use of the tokens was a result of the scarcity of government-issued cents during the Civil War. Such tokens became illegal after the United States Congress passed a law on April 22, 1864 prohibiting the issue of any one or two-cent coins, tokens or devices for use as currency. On June 8, 1864 an additional law was passed that forbade all private coinage. Civil War tokens are divided into three types—store cards, patriotic tokens, and sutler tokens. All three types were utilized as currency, and are differentiated by their designs. The collectible value of the tokens is determined chiefly by their rarity.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/04

The Battle of Chancellorsville was a major action of the American Civil War, fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863. Called General Robert E. Lee's "perfect battle" due to his risky but successful division of his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force, the battle pitted Union Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac against an army half its size, Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee's audacity and Hooker's timid performance in combat combined to result in a significant and embarrassing Union defeat. The Confederate victory was tempered by the mortal wounding of Lt. Gen. Stonewall Jackson, a loss that Lee likened to "losing my right arm." The Chancellorsville campaign began with the crossing of the Rappahannock River by the Union army on the morning of April 27, 1863. Heavy fighting began on May 1 and did not end until the Union forces retreated across the river on the night of May 5 to May 6.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/05

H. L. Hunley sank her first and only victim, and herself sank on February 17, 1864. The Hunley was a submarine of the Confederate States of America that demonstrated both the advantages and the dangers of undersea warfare. The Hunley was the first submarine to sink a warship, although the submarine was also lost during the process. The Confederates lost 32 men in Hunley's career. The submarine was renamed after the death of her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, and some time after she had been taken into the Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina.

H. L. Hunley, almost 40 feet (12 m) long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, launched in July 1863, and shipped by rail to Charleston, SC on August 12, 1863. On February 17, 1864, Hunley attacked and sank the 1800-ton steam sloop USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor, but soon after, Hunley also apparently sank, drowning all 8 crewmen. Over 136 years later, on August 8, 2000, the wreck was recovered, and on April 17, 2004, the DNA-identified remains of the eight Hunley crewmen were interred in Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery, with full military honors.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/06

Fort Corcoran was a wood-and-earthwork fortification constructed by the Union Army in northern Virginia as part of the defenses of Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War. Built in 1861, shortly after the occupation of Arlington, Virginia by Union forces, it protected the southern end of the Aqueduct Bridge and overlooked the Potomac River and Theodore Roosevelt Island, then known as Mason's Island. The fort was named after Colonel Michael Corcoran, commander of the 69th New York Volunteer Regiment, one of the units that constructed the fort. Fort Corcoran was home to the Union Army Balloon Corps and the headquarters of the defenses of Washington south of the Potomac River, and served throughout the war before being dismantled in 1866. Today, no trace of the fort remains, though a small historical marker has been erected by the Arlington Historical Society.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/07

The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1 – July 3, 1863), fought in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of the Gettysburg Campaign, was the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War and is frequently cited as the war's turning point. Union Major General George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North.

Following his brilliant success at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley for his second invasion of the North, hoping to reach as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia, and to influence Northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war. Prodded by President Abraham Lincoln, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved almost on the eve of battle and replaced by Meade.

Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans were casualties in the three-day battle. That November President Lincoln used the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery to honor the Union dead and redefine the purpose of the war in his historic Gettysburg Address.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/08

The Fifteenth Amendment is one of the Reconstruction Amendments. This amendment prohibits the states or the federal government from using a citizen's race, color, or previous status as a slave as a voting qualification. Its basic purpose was to enfranchise former slaves. The first person to vote under the provisions of the amendment was Thomas Mundy Peterson who cast his ballot in a Perth Amboy school board election being held on March 31, 1870. After the passage on a per capita and absolute basis, more blacks were elected to political office during the period from 1865 to 1880 than at any other time in American history. Although no state elected a black governor during Reconstruction, a number of state legislatures were effectively under the control of a substantial African American caucus. These legislatures brought in programs that are considered part of government's duty now, but at the time were radical, such as universal public education. They also set aside all racially biased laws, even those prohibiting interracial marriage. Despite the efforts of groups like the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate black voters and white Republicans, assurance of federal support for democratically elected southern governments meant that most Republican voters could both vote and rule in confidence.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/09

The coal torpedo was a hollow iron casting filled with explosives and covered in coal dust, deployed by the Confederate Secret Service during the American Civil War, and intended for doing harm to Union steam transportation. When shoveled into the firebox amongst the coal, the resulting explosion would at the very least damage the boiler and render the engines inoperable. In the worst case scenario (or best case, depending on the point-of-view) the damaged boiler, under high steam pressure, would explode, injuring the crew and scattering burning coals over the deck to start a fire that would sink the vessel.

Union Admiral David Dixon Porter credited the coal torpedo with sinking the Greyhound, a private steamboat that had been commandeered by General Benjamin F. Butler for use as a floating headquarters on the James River. The device was also Credited for the explosion of the gunboat USS Chenango. One of the weapons were found inside of Jefferson Davis' office by Union General Edward Ripley when Union forces captured Richmond in April 1865.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/10

The Richmond and Danville Railroad was chartered in Virginia in the United States in 1847. The portion between Richmond and Danville, Virginia was completed in 1856. The railroad was only 140 miles long during the American Civil War but it played a vital role in linking Richmond to the rest of the Confederacy. Known as the "first railroad war," the Civil War left the South's railroads and economy devastated. When the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad was cut in 1864, the R&D's connection with the Piedmont Railroad was the only remaining connection from Richmond to the rest of the South.

After the war, it grew to become the Richmond and Danville Railroad System, eventually covering 3,300 miles (5,300 km) in 9 states. In 1894, the R&D became part of the Southern Railway Company. In 1980, it became part of today's Norfolk Southern Railway.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/11

The Great Locomotive Chase or Andrews' Raid was a military raid that occurred April 12, 1862, in northern Georgia during the American Civil War. Volunteers from the Union Army stole a train in an effort to disrupt the vital Western & Atlantic Railroad (W&A), which ran from Atlanta, Georgia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. They were pursued by other locomotives, and the raiders were eventually captured, with some being executed as spies.

James J. Andrews, a civilian scout and part-time spy, proposed the daring raid aimed at destroying the Western and Atlantic Railroad link to Chattanooga, isolating the city from Atlanta. He recruited a civilian named William Campbell, as well as 22 volunteer Union soldiers from three Ohio regiments. Some of Andrews' Raiders became the very first recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Portal:American Civil War/Selected event/12

The steamboat Sultana was a Mississippi River paddlewheeler destroyed in an explosion on 27 April 1865. This resulted in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. An estimated 1,700 of the 2,400 passengers were killed when one of the overcrowded ship's four boilers exploded and the Sultana sank not far from Memphis, Tennessee. This disaster received somewhat diminished attention as it took place soon after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and during the closing weeks of the Civil War.

Most of the new passengers were Union soldiers, chiefly from Ohio and just released from Confederate prison camps such as Cahawba and Andersonville. The US government had contracted with the Sultana to transport these former prisoners of war back to their homes. With a legal capacity of only 376, the Sultana was severely overcrowded. Many of her passengers had been weakened by their incarceration and associated illnesses. Passengers were packed into every available berth, and the overflow was so severe that the decks were completely packed.