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Medicine during the Civil War
Soon after Fort Sumter fell, the federal government set up the United States Sanitary Commission. Its task was twofold: to improve the hygienic conditions of army camps and to recruit and train nurses. The “Sanitary” proved a great success. -
Ft. Sumter
Confederate soldiers immediately began taking over federal installations in their states-courthouses, post offices, and especially forts. By the time of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, only two Southern forts remained in Union hands. The more important was South Carolina's Fort Sumter, on an island in Charleston harbor. -
Secession of Virginia
Virginia Secedes News of Fort Sumter's fall united the North. When Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve for three months, the response was over-whelming. In Iowa, 20 times the stat's quota rushed to enlist. -
Battle at Bull Run
Bull Run The first major bloodshed occurred on July 21, about three months after Fort Sumter fell. An army of 30,000 inexperienced Union soldiers on its way toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, only 100 miles from Washington, D.C., came upon an equally inexperienced Confederate army encamped near the little creek of Bull Run, just 25 miles from the Union capital. Lincoln commanded General Irvin McDowell to attack, nothing, "You are green, it is true, but they are green also." -
New Technology/Weapons
Even more deadly that the development of ironclad ships was the invention of the rifle and the minié ball. Rifles were more accurate than old-fashioned muskets, and soldiers could load rifles more quickly and therefore fire more rounds during battle. The minié was a soft lead bullet that was more destructive than earlier bullets. Troops in the Civil War also used primitive hand grenades and land mines. -
Battle at Shiloh
Shiloh One month after the victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, in late March of 1862, Grant gathered his troops neat a small Tennessee church named Shiloh, which was close to the Mississippi border. -
Battle at Richmond
“ON TO RICHMOND” After dawdling all winter, McClellan
finally got under way in the spring of 1862. He transported
the Army of the Potomac slowly toward the Confederate
capital. On the way he encountered a Confederate army
commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. After a series of
battles, Johnston was wounded, and command of the army
passed to Robert E. Lee. -
Battle at Antietam
The clash proved to be the bloodiest single-day battle in American history. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation cleared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." -
Battle at Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863 -
Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the -
Surrender at Appomattox
By late March 1865, it was clear that the end of the Confederacy was near. Grant and Sheridan were approaching Richmond from the west, while Sherman was approaching from the south. On April 2—in response to news that Lee and his troops had been overcome by
Grant’s forces at Petersburg—President Davis and his government abandoned their capital, setting it afire to keep the Northerners from taking it. -
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The assassin, John Wilkes Booth—a 26-year-old actor and Southern sympathizer—then leaped down to the stage. In doing so, he caught his spur on one of the flags draped across the front of the box. Booth landed hard on his left leg and broke it. He rose and said something that the audience had trouble understanding. Some thought it was the state motto of Virginia, “Sic semper tyrannis”—in English “Thus be it ever to tyrants.
