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The Missouri Compromise
By 1818, Missouri Territory had gained sufficient population to warrant its admission into the Union as a state. Its settlers came largely from the South, and it was expected that Missouri would be a slave state. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was an intricate package of five bills, passed on September 4, 1850, defusing a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North that arose from expectation of territorial expansion of the United States with the Texas Annexation -
Kansas Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders -
Election of 1860
The United States presidential election of 1860 set the stage for the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout most of the 1850s on questions of states' rights and slavery in the territories. -
New Techonology during the civil war
Civil War Technology led historians to call the American Civil War the first modern war because of the array of new technology with which it was fought. The new technology ranged from weapons to cameras and telegraphs to tin cans. New weapons allowed soldiers to be more effective, but this new technology also meant that more soldiers were killed. -
Secession Crisis of 1861
Some prominent Southern leaders, Jefferson Davis among them, wanted to give the Lincoln administration a chance to convience the sectional strife. However, South Carolina sized the initiative, having clearly warned that if the Republicans won the 1860 election then the state would leave the Union. -
Firing of fort Sumter
was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. -
Battle of Bull Run
It was the first real major conflict of the American Civil War. A Union army, consisting of 28,000 men, commanded by General McDowell, fought 33,000 Confederates under General Beauregard. The Union army, under pressure to crush the rebellion in the South, marched towards Richmond, but met the Confederate forces coming north from Manassas, a Southern base. -
Journal entry from an Confederate Soldier
This regiment, Col. Stephen W. Stryker, was recruited under the auspices of the Ellsworth Association of the State of New York. The original plan was to obtain from every ward and town of the State one man; this plan was not adhered to, but later more than one enlistment was allowed to each, and the counties of Albany and Erie furnished each two companies, and Herkimer county one company. -
Eastern Front
Despite all of the vastness of the United States in 1861, when conflict came the Federal and Confederate capitols were only 100 miles apart. This proximity ensured that the area of Northern Virginia that separated them was to become one of the most important theatres of conflict -
Western Front
United States that wanted to impose a blockade. President Lincoln very quickly declared a blockade against the main Confederate ports -
Battle of Shiloh Western Front
With the loss of Forts Henry and Donelson in February, General Albert Sidney Johnston withdrew his disheartened Confederate forces into west Tennessee, northern Mississippi and Alabama to reorganize. In early March, General Halleck responded by ordering General Grant to advance his Union Army of West Tennessee on an invasion up the Tennessee River. The Union won the battle. -
Fall of New Orleans Eastern Front
On April 24, 1862, Federal gunboats made their way past two Confederate forts to ascend the Mississippi River, and the Union navy captured New Orleans. -
7 Days Battle Eastern Front
near Richmond, Virginia during the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee drove the invading Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, away from Richmond and into a retreat down the Virginia Peninsula. The series of battles is sometimes known erroneously as the Seven Days Campaign, but it was actually the culmination of the Peninsula Campaign, not a separate campaign in its own right. -
Journal entry from a union soilder
William T. Patterson, originally of Athens County, Ohio, served as a Quarter Master Sergeant with the 116th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. This tan leather diary covers the time period from November 7, 1861 to April 9, 1862. Incidentally, Patterson's diary ends the same day that Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House and while he is aware that the war might soon be ending, he appears not to know yet that a treaty has been signed.
