Military

In the years after the American Civil War, famous generals and common soldiers alike published their remembrances.  These accounts appeared in books, in magazines, and, as was the case here, in newspapers.  The press created Civil War series such as the one reprinted here from the New York Tribune.  The most famous of all these series appeared in The Century Magazine and in the late 1880s was published in four volumes under the title Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. (In 2002, a fifth volume was added to the original four.)

Most Union soldiers fought the American Civil War close to home. Recruits from Pennsylvania in the Army of the Potomac, for example, spent the entire war within one or two hundred miles of home. Farther west, men from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio did not have far to travel to reach the battlefields of Kentucky and Tennessee.

In 1836, the northeastern region of Mexico known as Tejas revolted, fought for its independence, and became The Republic of Texas. In truth, its citizens were mostly farmers from the southern United States who had emigrated to Texas seeking new land, including many people from Mississippi.

The Civil War took the lives of more Americans than all the other United States conflicts combined, from the American Revolution through Vietnam. Amazingly, more soldiers succumbed to disease, such as measles and dysentery, than died from the awful wounds caused by grape, cannister, and rifled musket minie balls. Being a White or a Black soldier in the conflict between the North and the South was no glamorous adventure; it was horror of the worst magnitude.

The six southern states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida met February 4, 1861, in convention at Montgomery, Alabama, and established the Confederate States of America.

They were soon joined by Texas, and after the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, they were joined by Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Virginia. Missouri and Kentucky were prevented from seceding by the presence of federal troops, but both states sent unofficial representatives to the Confederate Congress and both supplied troops to the Confederate Army.