Portal:American Civil War
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The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a sectional rebellion against the United States of America by the Confederate States, formed of eleven southern slave states' governments which moved to secede from the Union after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. The Union's victory was eventually achieved by leveraging advantages in population, manufacturing and logistics and through a strategic naval blockade denying the Confederacy access to the world's markets.
In many ways, the conflict's central issues – the enslavement of African Americans, the role of constitutional federal government, and the rights of states – are still not completely resolved. Not surprisingly, the Confederate army's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 did little to change many Americans' attitudes toward the potential powers of central government. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution in the years immediately following the war did not change the racial prejudice prevalent among Americans of the day; and the process of Reconstruction did not heal the deeply personal wounds inflicted by four brutal years of war and more than 970,000 casualties – 3 percent of the population, including approximately 560,000 deaths. As a result, controversies affected by the war's unresolved social, political, economic and racial tensions continue to shape contemporary American thought. The causes of the war, the reasons for the outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of much discussion even today.
Abraham Lincoln's carefully crafted address, secondary to other presentations that day, came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant.
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Antebellum Louisiana was a leading slave state, where enslaved Africans and African Americans comprised the majority of the population through the eighteenth century. By 1860 47% of the population was enslaved. The state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population, particularly in the cities, supported southern states rights and slavery, while pockets of support for the U.S. government existed in the more rural areas.
Louisiana declared secession from the Union on January 26, 1861. New Orleans was captured by U.S. troops on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the U.S. government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana then under U.S. control as a state within the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress. For the latter part of the war, both the Union and the Confederacy recognized their own distinct Louisiana governors.
Richard Heron Anderson (October 7, 1821 – June 26, 1879) was a career U.S. Army officer, fighting with distinction in the Mexican–American War. Born in the High Hills of Santee at Borough House Plantation (Hill Crest), near the town of Stateburg located in Sumter County, South Carolina, Anderson graduated 40th out of 56 cadets from the United States Military Academy in July 1842, and was brevetted a second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Dragoons. In the Mexican-American War, Anderson took part in the Siege of Veracruz in March 1847, the Battle of Contreras in August, and the Battle of Molino del Rey on September 8. After frontier service, Anderson resigned his commission in 1861 to join the Confederate States Army as a colonel.During the war, Anderson was quickly promoted to division command, was wounded at Antietam, and fought his division at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Anderson took charge of Longstreet's Corps when its commander was severely wounded, and led the corps at Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and in the defenses of Petersburg, getting his own Fourth Corps command when Longstreet returned from his convalescence. After Appomattox Court House, he returned to his Stateburg home to farm and work for the South Carolina railroad.
An illustration for Harper's Weekly of the burning of McPhersonville, South Carolina during the Carolinas Campaign
- ... that salt workers in the Confederate States of America were immune from being drafted?
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