Secession and Civil War

In many abolitionist circles, there was concern that a small number of Southern slaveholders were already dominating the national political landscape. Many Whigs pointed to the Mexican War as...

South Carolina seceded for two main reasons. First, they did not trust what Lincoln said. Second, they felt that even if he were not an abolitionist he would govern only for the North, neglecting...

Most historians would agree that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War, because the issue of slavery lay just beneath all of the more specific issues that led to secession. After the war,...

How about Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. A novel about Gettysburg told from the perspectives of John Buford, Joshua Chamberlain, James Longstreet, Robert E. Lee, and other leaders. I believe...

I still occasionally have to refer to my various Civil War dictionaries when I read, but I more often use biographical references for assistance. Ezra J. Warners Generals in Gray and Generals in...

I would argue that Civil War was inevitable, the reason being that it was the only viable way of resolving the issue of slavery once and for all. A number of compromises had been tried in the past,...

There are any number of hugely important individuals who were involved in the Civil War in very important ways. The most famous of these were probably General Ulysses S. Grant, General Robert E....

There are two kinds of resources for an army. There are material resources and there are less tangible resources. At the beginning of the Civil War, the Union had much more in the way of...

The most important outcome of the Civil War from an economic standpoint was the massive expansion of the federal government in economic spheres. This was a direct consequence of the war itself, and...

When discussing the United States during the 1860s, "the Union" refers quite simply to the federal government and the northern states that remained together in the face of southern separatism. The...

I would say that some of the most challenging elements that Lincoln faced was maneuvering the Union into a position to win a long term conflict. It is easy to overlook the fact that few saw the...

While it is true that the war was not specifically fought over slavery, I think that it is going too far to say that slavery was “just a small part” of what caused the war. Slavery was at the...

The efforts to reach compromise between the North and the South failed because events kept happening to reopen the problems and bring them to people's attention again. For example, after the...

In 1861, you could have made a case either way. For the CSA, you could have said that they had the best officers because most of the officer corps of the Army came from the South. You could also...

The main thing that the presidential election of 1860 showed was that the United States was a country that was irreparably split along regional lines. This made secession and the Civil War...

There were so many reform movements, including religious and social movements, in this era that the early nineteenth century is often called the Age of Reform in American society. Two notable, and...

The "lost cause" is the idea that the Civil War was a valiant fight on the part of the South to preserve their distinctive way of life. It portrays the Southerners who fought in the war as people...

The basic answer for this is that the war was not going well and so the Union had a much greater incentive to allow African Americans to fight. In 1861 and 1862, the North had been losing a lot of...