The state of Virginia’s position in the American Civil War echoed that of the state’s most prominent citizen during this turbulent era, one whose name would become synonymous both with the state and the war: General Robert E. Lee. Like his home state of Virginia, Lee had been an important part of the Union [...]

I intend to make Georgia howl. William Tecumseh Sherman
By the 1930s, most of those who’d lived through the American Civil War were long gone. The war was beginning to fade from the American memory, or at least become less prominent. However, one book and the movie that it spawned not only brought the [...]

As one of the first states to secede from the Union, Alabama’s stance during the Civil War was overwhelmingly pro-Confederate. However, the road to rebellion was not, in Alabama’s case, an especially easy one; while most of the state was happy to secede, there were Alabamans who did not go willingly.
Alabama’s Deep-South delta location [...]

Few states were as violently divided about the Civil War as Missouri. A state whose very formation was the progenitor of the “Missouri Compromise” that served to settle growing dissention between free and slave states, Missouri was from its very beginning a state at odds over the tensions that wold result in the Civil [...]

It was inevitable that Mississippi would play a major part in the Civil War. A Deep South Delta state where King Cotton reigned supreme, it’s heavy reliance on slavery to man the large cotton plantations that comprised the state assured that it would secede if the institution of slavery was threatened. The fact [...]

To many, Pennsylvania’s major contribution to the Civil War was the battle of Gettysburg; the best-known battle of the war, the war’s turning point, the bloodiest battle of the war, whatever one associates with Gettysburg, it is the primary historical touch point for Pennsylvania during the Civil War.
However, Pennsylvania was more than just the home [...]

If the mind of the Civil War was firmly entrenched in Virginia, with the seemingly indefatigable General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, then the heart of the Civil War was in Tennessee. Following only just behind Virginia in the number of battles fought, Tennessee saw some of the bloodiest scenes of the war, [...]

The American Civil War ended not with a bang, or a whimper, but with something in between. It was not a decisive battle, a Waterloo, as such, that drew the war to a close, but rather the culmination of defeats that brought the weakened Confederacy to its knees, making it impossible to continue either [...]

The name “Kentucky” comes from the Cherokee – it means “dark and bloody ground.” At no time in the state’s history was this name more apt than during the Civil War. A hotly contested border state, Kentucky’s ground was dark and bloody indeed from military battles and skirmishes that took place throughout the [...]

The Civil War was the defining moment in the lives of most Americans who lived during that era. The influence of that period in their lives influenced the remaining years of their lives.
It is no wonder then, that many of those who lived through the war collected their stories, reminisces, and other anecdotes into [...]