Antietam

Tuesday, 25 December 2012

Lincoln and Lee at Antietam: The Cost of Freedom

Gods and Generals Trailer w/ Antietam Scenes

Going Home: Antietam's Last Unknown Soldier

Civil War Photography - The Dead of Antietam

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Appomattox Campaign
The Appomattox Campaign was a series of battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865, in Virginia that culminated in the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the effective end of the American Civil War.
At the conclusion of the Richmond–Petersburg Campaign (also known as the Siege of Petersburg), Lee's army was outnumbered and exhausted from a winter of trench warfare over a 30 mi (48 km) front, numerous battles, disease, and desertion. At the Battle of Five Forks on April 1, Union forces under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant cut the final railroad line supplying Lee's army in Petersburg, and ordered a general assault along the Petersburg fortification line. On April 2, Grant's army achieved a breakthrough of the lines in the Third Battle of Petersburg, which prompted Lee to order the evacuation of both Petersburg and the Confederate capital of Richmond on the night of April 2–3.
Lee hoped to withdraw to the southwest and unite his army with Confederate forces in North Carolina, but Grant's army pursued relentlessly. On April 6, Lee's army suffered a significant defeat at the Battle of Sayler's Creek, but continued to move to the west in an attempt to elude the Union Army. Cornered, outnumbered, and short of supplies, Lee finally agreed to surrender his army on April 9 at Appomattox Court House.

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Atlanta Campaign
The Atlanta Campaign was a series of battles fought in the Western Theater of the American Civil War throughout northwest Georgia and the area around Atlanta during the summer of 1864. Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman invaded Georgia from the vicinity of Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning in May 1864, opposed by the Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston.
Johnston's Army of Tennessee withdrew toward Atlanta in the face of successive flanking maneuvers by Sherman's group of armies. In July, the Confederate president replaced Johnston with the more aggressive John Bell Hood, who began challenging the Union Army in a series of damaging frontal assaults. Hood's army was eventually besieged in Atlanta and the city fell on September 2, hastening the end of the war.
The Atlanta Campaign followed the Union victory in the Battles for Chattanooga in November 1863; Chattanooga was known as the "Gateway to the South", and its capture opened that gateway. After Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to general-in-chief of all Union armies, he left his favorite lieutenant, Sherman, in charge of the Western armies. Grant's strategy was to apply pressure against the Confederacy in several coordinated offensives. While he, George G. Meade, Benjamin Butler, Franz Sigel, George Crook, and William W. Averell advanced in Virginia against Robert E. Lee, and Nathaniel Banks attempted to capture Mobile, Alabama, Sherman was assigned the mission of defeating Johnston's army, capturing Atlanta, and striking through Georgia and the Confederate heartland.

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Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam ( /ænˈtiːtəm/) also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South, fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties on both sides.
After pursuing Confederate General Robert E. Lee into Maryland, Union Army Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan launched attacks against Lee's army, in defensive positions behind Antietam Creek. At dawn on September 17, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee's left flank. Attacks and counterattacks swept across Miller's cornfield and fighting swirled around the Dunker Church. Union assaults against the Sunken Road eventually pierced the Confederate center, but the Federal advantage was not followed up. In the afternoon, Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside's corps entered the action, capturing a stone bridge over Antietam Creek and advancing against the Confederate right. At a crucial moment, Confederate Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill's division arrived from Harpers Ferry and launched a surprise counterattack, driving back Burnside and ending the battle. Although outnumbered two-to-one, Lee committed his entire force, while McClellan sent in less than three-quarters of his army, enabling Lee to fight the Federals to a standstill. During the night, both armies consolidated their lines. In spite of crippling casualties, Lee continued to skirmish with McClellan throughout September 18, while removing his battered army south of the Potomac River.

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Battle of Atlanta
Coordinates: 33°44′45″N 84°20′56″W / 33.7459°N 84.3488°W / 33.7459; -84.3488
The Battle of Atlanta was a battle of the Atlanta Campaign fought during the American Civil War on July 22, 1864, just southeast of Atlanta, Georgia. Continuing their summer campaign to seize the important rail and supply center of Atlanta, Union forces commanded by William T. Sherman overwhelmed and defeated Confederate forces defending the city under John B. Hood. Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson was killed during the battle. Despite the implication of finality in its name, the battle occurred midway through the campaign and the city did not fall until September 2, 1864, after a Union siege and various attempts to seize railroads and supply lines leading to Atlanta. After taking the city, Sherman's troops headed south-southeastward toward Milledgeville, the State capital, and on to Savannah with the March to the Sea.
The fall of Atlanta was especially noteworthy for its political ramifications. In the 1864 election, former Union General George B. McClellan, a Democrat, ran against President Lincoln on a peace platform calling for truce with the Confederacy. The capture of Atlanta and Hood's burning of military facilities as he evacuated were extensively covered by Northern newspapers, significantly boosting Northern morale, and Lincoln was reelected by a large margin.

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Battle of Boonsboro
The Battle of Boonsboro took place on July 8, 1863, in Washington County, Maryland, as part of the Retreat from Gettysburg during the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War.
While Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia retreated toward Virginia following its defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate cavalry held the South Mountain passes. The cavalry fought a rearguard action against elements of the Union 1st and 3rd Cavalry Divisions and supporting infantry. This action was one of a series of successive cavalry engagements around Boonsboro, Hagerstown, and Williamsport.
Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart faced a difficult assignment—locate the Union cavalry and prevent it from severing Gen. Lee's avenue of retreat to Williamsport and the Potomac River. The result was the biggest and most sustained cavalry battle in Maryland during the campaign. The Battle of Boonsboro occurred along the National Road on Wednesday, July 8, 1863.
Stuart, with five cavalry brigades, advanced from the direction of Funkstown and Williamsport. He first encountered Federal resistance at Beaver Creek Bridge, 4.5 miles north of Boonsboro. By 11 a.m., the Confederate cavalry had pushed forward to several mud-soaked fields, where fighting on horseback was nearly impossible, forcing Stuart's troopers and Brig. Gens. H. Judson Kilpatrick's and John Buford's Union cavalry divisions to dismount and slug it out like infantry.

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Battle of Funkstown
The Second Battle of Funkstown (more commonly simply referred to as the Battle of Funkstown) took place near Funkstown, Maryland, on July 10, 1863, during the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War. Union forces of the Army of the Potomac attacked the rear guard of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during its retreat from Pennsylvania following the Battle of Gettysburg.
A strong Confederate presence at Funkstown threatened any Union advance against Gen. Robert E. Lee’s position near Williamsport and the Potomac River as he retreated to Virginia after the Battle of Gettysburg. Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, posted at Funkstown, posed a serious risk to the Federal right and rear if the Union army lunged west from Boonsboro. Stuart, meanwhile, determined to wage a spirited defense to ensure Lee time to complete fortifications protecting his army and his avenue of retreat.
As Brig. Gen. John Buford’s Federal cavalry division cautiously approached Funkstown via the National Road on Friday morning July 10, 1863, it encountered Stuart’s crescent-shaped, three-mile-long battle line. It was Stuart’s first defensive battle since reentering Maryland. The high ground constituted Stuart’s extreme right, held by Preston Chew’s horse artillery. A nearby stone barn and barnyard wall proved a superb defensive position for the 34th Virginia Battalion’s dismounted cavalry.

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Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg (local ⁱ/ˈɡɛtɨsbɜrɡ/, with an /s/ sound), was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point.Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North.
After his success at Chancellorsville in Virginia in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion of the North—the Gettysburg Campaign. With his army in high spirits, Lee intended to shift the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged northern Virginia and hoped to influence Northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war by penetrating as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia. Prodded by President Abraham Lincoln, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved just three days before the battle and replaced by Meade.

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Battle of Hancock
The Battle of Hancock, also called the Romney Campaign, was a battle fought during the Romney Expedition, occurred January 5–6, 1862, in Washington County, Maryland, and Morgan County, West Virginia, as part of Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's operations against the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad during the American Civil War.
On January 1, 1862, Confederate general Stonewall Jackson led his men from Winchester to Bath in an attempt to disturb traffic on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Jackson's men reached the Potomac River opposite the garrisoned town of Hancock, Maryland on January 5, after a skirmish with Union soldiers. Jackson's artillery opened fire on the town from Orrick's Hill but it resulted in only minor damage. Union garrison commander Brig. Gen. Frederick W. Lander refused to surrender to Jackson, who continued the bombardment for two days while unsuccessfully searching for a safe river crossing. On January 7, the Confederate soldiers withdrew and set out for Romney, West Virginia.

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Battle of Mile Hill
The Battle of Mile Hill was a cavalry skirmish during the American Civil War, that took place just north of Leesburg, Virginia, on September 2, 1862. It preceded the occupation of the town by the Army of Northern Virginia just prior to its crossing of the Potomac River starting the Maryland Campaign.
Confederate cavalry under Col. Thomas T. Munford surprised and routed the Federal force of Cole's Maryland Cavalry and the independent Loudoun Rangers. The engagement successfully cleared the area of Federal forces, allowing Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to occupy the town two days later on September 4, before crossing the Potomac north of town on September 6.
After the failure of Army of Northern Virginia to deliver a decisive blow to the Army of Virginia at the Battle of Ox Hill following the Second Battle of Bull Run, Robert E. Lee decided it unwise to pursue the Federals any further towards their fortifications near Washington D.C.. Instead, he planned to move into Loudoun County to obtain forage and provisions and to reorganize the army before his planned invasion of Maryland.

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Battle of Mobile Bay
The Battle of Mobile Bay of August 5, 1864, was an engagement of the American Civil War in which a Federal fleet commanded by Rear Adm. David G. Farragut, assisted by a contingent of soldiers, attacked a smaller Confederate fleet led by Adm. Franklin Buchanan and three forts that guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay.
The battle was marked by Farragut's seemingly rash but successful run through a minefield that had just claimed one of his ironclad monitors, enabling his fleet to get beyond the range of the shore-based guns. This was followed by a reduction of the Confederate fleet to a single vessel, ironclad CSS Tennessee. Tennessee did not then retire, but engaged the entire Northern fleet. The armor on Tennessee gave her an advantage that enabled her to inflict more injury than she received, but she could not overcome the imbalance in numbers.
She was eventually reduced to a motionless hulk, unable either to move or to reply to the guns of the Union fleet. Her captain then surrendered, ending the battle. With no Navy to support them, the three forts within days also surrendered. Complete control of the lower Mobile Bay thus passed to the Union forces.

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Battle of Monocacy
The Battle of Monocacy (also known as Monocacy Junction) was fought on July 9, 1864, just outside Frederick, Maryland, as part of the Valley Campaigns of 1864, in the American Civil War. Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early defeated Union forces under Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace. The battle was part of Early's raid through the Shenandoah Valley and into Maryland, attempting to divert Union forces away from Gen. Robert E. Lee's army under siege at Petersburg, Virginia.
Reacting to Early's raid, Union General-in-Chief Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant dispatched two brigades of the VI Corps, about 5,000 men, under Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts on July 6, 1864. Until those troops arrived, however, the only Federal force between Early and the capital city was a command of 6,300 men (mostly Hundred Days Men) commanded by Major General Lew Wallace. At the time, Wallace, who would eventually become best known for his book Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, was the head of the Union's Middle Atlantic Department, headquartered at Baltimore (also referred to as the VIII Corps). Very few of Wallace's men had ever seen battle.

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Battle of Nashville
The Battle of Nashville was a two-day battle in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign that represented the end of large-scale fighting in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. It was fought at Nashville, Tennessee, on December 15–16, 1864, between the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood and Federal forces under Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. In one of the largest victories achieved by the Union Army during the war, Thomas attacked and routed Hood's army, largely destroying it as an effective fighting force.
Hood followed up his defeat in the Atlanta Campaign by moving northwest to disrupt the supply lines of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman from Chattanooga, hoping to challenge Sherman into a battle that could be fought to Hood's advantage. After a brief period of pursuit, Sherman decided to disengage and to conduct instead his March to the Sea, leaving the matter of Hood's army and the defense of Tennessee to Thomas. Hood devised a plan to march into Tennessee and defeat Thomas's force while it was geographically divided. He pursued Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield's army from Pulaski to Columbia and then attempted to intercept and destroy it at Spring Hill. Because of a series of Confederate command miscommunications in the Battle of Spring Hill (November 29, 1864), Schofield was able to withdraw from Columbia and slip past Hood's army at Spring Hill relatively unscathed.

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Battle of Pea Ridge
The Battle of Pea Ridge (also known as Elkhorn Tavern) was a land battle of the American Civil War, fought on March 6–8, 1862, at Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas, near Garfield. Union forces led by Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis moved south from central Missouri, driving Confederate forces into northwestern Arkansas. Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn reorganized the Confederate army and launched a counter-offensive, hoping that a victory would enable the Confederates to recapture northern Arkansas and Missouri. In a two–day battle, Curtis held off the Confederate attack on the first day and drove Van Dorn's force off the field on the second day. The outcome of the battle essentially cemented Union control of Missouri and northern Arkansas. The battle was one of the few during the war in which a Confederate army outnumbered its Union opponent.
Union forces in Missouri during the latter part of 1861 and early 1862 had effectively pushed the Missouri State Guard under Maj. Gen. Sterling Price out of the state. By the spring of 1862, Union Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis determined to pursue the Confederates back into Arkansas with his Army of the Southwest.

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Battle of Perryville
The Battle of Perryville, also known as the Battle of Chaplin Hills, was fought on October 8, 1862, in the Chaplin Hills west of Perryville, Kentucky, as the culmination of the Confederate Heartland Offensive (Kentucky Campaign) during the American Civil War. Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Mississippi won a tactical victory against primarily a single corps of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Union Army of the Ohio. The battle is considered a strategic Union victory, sometimes called the Battle for Kentucky, since Bragg withdrew to Tennessee soon thereafter. The Union retained control of the critical border state of Kentucky for the remainder of the war.
On October 7, Buell's army, in pursuit of Bragg, converged on the small crossroads town of Perryville in three columns. Union forces first skirmished with Confederate cavalry on the Springfield Pike before the fighting became more general, on Peters Hill, when the Confederate infantry arrived. Both sides were desperate to get access to fresh water. The next day, at dawn, fighting began again around Peters Hill as a Union division advanced up the pike, halting just before the Confederate line. After noon, a Confederate division struck the Union left flank—the I Corps of Maj. Gen. Alexander M. McCook—and forced it to fall back. When more Confederate divisions joined the fray, the Union line made a stubborn stand, counterattacked, but finally fell back with some units routed.

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Battle of Shiloh
The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. A Union army under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the river. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack on Grant there. The Confederates achieved considerable success on the first day, but were ultimately defeated on the second day.
On the first day of the battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the river and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west, hoping to defeat Grant's Army of the Tennessee before the anticipated arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fierce fighting, and Grant's men instead fell back to the northeast, in the direction of Pittsburg Landing. A position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the "Hornet's Nest", defended by the men of Brig. Gens. Benjamin M. Prentiss's and W. H. L. Wallace's divisions, provided critical time for the rest of the Union line to stabilize under the protection of numerous artillery batteries. Gen. Johnston was killed during the first day of fighting, and Beauregard, his second in command, decided against assaulting the final Union position that night.

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Battle of Unison
The Battle of Unison or Battle of Union refers to a series of American Civil War cavalry skirmishes in Loudoun County, Virginia, between October 31 – November 2, 1862, between the Confederate forces of J.E.B. Stuart and various units of the Union Army of the Potomac. Although driven from the field in individual engagements, Stuart accomplished his mission to delay the enemy and screen the movements of the retreating Army of Northern Virginia.
Following the Battle of Antietam, Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia limped back into Virginia through the Shenandoah Valley. At the same time, J.E.B. Stuart and his cavalry set out from Williamsport to ride around the Federal army for the second time in the war. On October 10, 1862, Stuart completed his ride and reentered Virginia via White's Ford in Loudoun County, bringing along nearly 1,200 captured horses. Stuart quickly passed through the county and crossed over Snickers Gap into the Shenandoah Valley to rejoin Lee's army.
On October 27, George B. McClellan and his Army of the Potomac belatedly reentered Virginia in pursuit of Lee, crossing the Potomac River around Berlin (present day Brunswick, Maryland) and Harpers Ferry. The Union army proceeded down the Loudoun Valley, foraging off local farms. On October 30, Stuart, with Brigadier General Fitzhugh Lee's brigade and Major John Pelham's artillery, reentered Loudoun County to reconnoiter the enemy's position and screen the movement of the Army of Northern Virginia as it repositioned itself south of the Rappahannock River. After crossing the Blue Ridge into Loudoun County, they bivouacked in Bloomfield for the night.

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Chattanooga Campaign
The Chattanooga Campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in October and November 1863, during the American Civil War. Following the defeat of Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland at the Battle of Chickamauga in September, the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Gen. Braxton Bragg besieged Rosecrans and his men by occupying key high terrain around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was given command of Union forces in the West and significant reinforcements began to arrive with him in Chattanooga from Mississippi and the Eastern Theater.
After opening a supply line (the "Cracker Line") to feed his starving men and animals, Grant's army fought off a Confederate counterattack at the Battle of Wauhatchie on October 28–29, 1863. On November 23, the Army of the Cumberland under Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas advanced from the fortifications around Chattanooga to seize the minor high ground at Orchard Knob while elements of the Army of the Tennessee under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman maneuvered to launch a surprise attack against Bragg's right flank on Missionary Ridge. On November 24, Eastern Theater troops under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker defeated the Confederates in the Battle of Lookout Mountain and began a movement toward Bragg's left flank at Rossville.

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Knoxville Campaign
The Knoxville Campaign was a series of American Civil War battles and maneuvers in East Tennessee during the fall of 1863. Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside occupied Knoxville, Tennessee, and Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet were detached from Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee at Chattanooga to prevent Burnside's reinforcement of the besieged Union forces there. Ultimately, Longstreet's own siege of Knoxville ended when Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led elements of the Army of the Tennessee and other troops to Burnside's relief after Union troops had broken the Confederate siege of Chattanooga. Although Longstreet was one of Gen. Robert E. Lee's best corps commanders in the East, he was unsuccessful in his role as an independent commander in the West and accomplished little in the Knoxville Campaign.
The mountainous, largely Unionist region of East Tennessee was considered by President Abraham Lincoln to be a key war objective. Besides possessing a population loyal to the Union, the region was rich in grain and livestock and controlled the railroad corridor from Chattanooga to Virginia. Throughout 1862 and 1863, Lincoln pressured a series of commanders to move through the difficult terrain and occupy the area. Ambrose Burnside, who had been soundly defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, was transferred to the Western Theater and given command of the Department and the Army of the Ohio in March 1863. Burnside was ordered to move against Knoxville as swiftly as possible while, at the same time, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland was ordered to operate against Bragg in Middle Tennessee (the Tullahoma Campaign and the subsequent Chickamauga Campaign).

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Loudon Park Cemetery
Loudon Park Cemetery a subsidiary of Stewart Enterprises, Inc., the second largest operator of funeral homes and cemeteries in the United States, is a 350-acre (142 ha) cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. It was incorporated in 1853 on the site of the "Loudon" estate, previously owned by a local merchant and politician. A portion of the eastern section is owned by the Federal Government as Loudon Park National Cemetery, acquired in 1861 for the remains of Union soldiers killed during the Civil War, 2,300 eventually being buried there. There is also a Confederate soldiers section, marked by a statue of a Confederate soldier with two angels. The entrance for Loudon Park Cemetery is located at 3620 Wilkens Avenue.
Notable persons interred at the cemetery include:
The Weiskittel-Roehle Burial Vault, faced with cast iron, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

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Maryland
Maryland (ⁱ/ˈmɛrɨlənd/) is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east. Maryland was the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution, and three nicknames for it (the Old Line State, the Free State, and the Chesapeake Bay State) are occasionally used. Maryland is the 9th smallest state by area, but the 19th most populous and the 5th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state's most populated city is Baltimore. Its capital is Annapolis. It was named after Queen Henrietta Maria.
Maryland has an area of 12,406.68 square miles (32,133.2 km²) and is comparable in overall area with the European country of Belgium (11,787 square miles (30,530 km²)). It is the 42nd largest/9th smallest state, and is closest in size to Hawaii (10,930.98 square miles (28,311.1 km²)), the next smallest state. The next largest state, Maryland's neighbor West Virginia, is almost twice the size of Maryland (24,229.76 square miles (62,754.8 km²)).

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Peninsula Campaign
The Peninsula Campaign (also known as the Peninsular Campaign) of the American Civil War was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The operation, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, was an amphibious turning movement against the Confederate States Army in Northern Virginia, intended to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. McClellan was initially successful against the equally cautious General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of the aggressive General Robert E. Lee turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a humiliating Union defeat.
McClellan landed his army at Fort Monroe and moved northwest, up the Virginia Peninsula. Confederate Brig. Gen. John B. Magruder's defensive position on the Warwick Line caught McClellan by surprise. His hopes for a quick advance foiled, McClellan ordered his army to prepare for a siege of Yorktown. Just before the siege preparations were completed, the Confederates, now under the direct command of Johnston, began a withdrawal toward Richmond. The first heavy fighting of the campaign occurred in the Battle of Williamsburg, in which the Union troops managed some tactical victories, but the Confederates continued their withdrawal. An amphibious flanking movement to Eltham's Landing was ineffective in cutting off the Confederate retreat. In the Battle of Drewry's Bluff, an attempt by the U.S. Navy to reach Richmond by way of the James River was repulsed.

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Second French Empire
The Second French Empire (French: Le Second Empire Français) was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.
Although the machinery of government was almost the same under the Second Empire as it had been under the First, its founding principles were different. The function of the Empire, as Emperor Napoleon III often repeated, was to guide the people internally towards justice and externally towards perpetual peace. Holding his power by universal male suffrage, and having frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached previous oligarchical governments with neglecting social questions, he set out to solve them by organising a system of government based on the principles of the "Napoleonic Idea", i.e. of the emperor, the elect of the people as the representative of the democracy, and as such supreme; and of himself, the representative of the great Napoleon I of France, "who had sprung armed from the French Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove", as the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary period.

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Siege of Corinth
The Siege of Corinth (also known as the First Battle of Corinth) was an American Civil War battle fought from April 29 to May 30, 1862, in Corinth, Mississippi.
Following the Union Army victory at the Battle of Shiloh, the Union armies under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck—the Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Ohio, and the Army of the Mississippi—advanced on the vital rail center of Corinth, Mississippi. Made cautious by the staggering losses at Shiloh, Halleck embarked on a tedious campaign of offensive entrenchment, fortifying after each advance. By May 25, 1862, after moving five miles in three weeks, Halleck was in position to lay siege to the town.
Confederate commander General P.G.T. Beauregard saved his army by a hoax. Some of the men were given three days' rations and ordered to prepare for an attack. As expected, one or two went over to the Union with that news. The preliminary bombardment began, and Union forces maneuvered for position. During the night of May 29, the Confederate army moved out. They used the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to carry the sick and wounded, the heavy artillery, and tons of supplies. When a train arrived, the troops cheered as though reinforcements were arriving. They set up dummy Quaker Guns along the defensive earthworks. Camp fires were kept burning, and buglers and drummers played. The rest of the men slipped away undetected, withdrawing to Tupelo, Mississippi. When Union patrols entered Corinth on the morning of May 30, they found the Confederate troops gone.

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Siege of Petersburg
The Richmond–Petersburg Campaign was a series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia, fought from June 9, 1864, to March 25, 1865, during the American Civil War. Although it is more popularly known as the Siege of Petersburg, it was not a classic military siege, in which a city is usually surrounded and all supply lines are cut off, nor was it strictly limited to actions against Petersburg. The campaign was nine months of trench warfare in which Union forces commanded by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assaulted Petersburg unsuccessfully and then constructed trench lines that eventually extended over 30 miles (48 km) from the eastern outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, to around the eastern and southern outskirts of Petersburg. Petersburg was crucial to the supply of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's army and the Confederate capital of Richmond. Numerous raids were conducted and battles fought in attempts to cut off the railroad supply lines through Petersburg to Richmond, and many of these caused the lengthening of the trench lines, overloading dwindling Confederate resources.

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Siege of Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
When two major assaults (May 19 and May 22, 1863) against the Confederate fortifications were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. With no reinforcement, supplies nearly gone, and after holding out for more than forty days, the garrison finally surrendered on July 4. This action (combined with the capitulation of Port Hudson on July 9) yielded command of the Mississippi River to the Union forces, who would hold it for the rest of the conflict.
The Confederate surrender following the siege at Vicksburg is sometimes considered, when combined with Gen. Robert E. Lee's defeat at Gettysburg the previous day, the turning point of the war. It also cut off communication with Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department for the remainder of the war. The city of Vicksburg would not celebrate Independence Day for about eighty years as a result of the siege and surrender.

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Tullahoma Campaign
The Tullahoma Campaign or Middle Tennessee Campaign was fought between June 24 and July 3, 1863, during the American Civil War. The Union Army of the Cumberland, commanded by Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, outmaneuvered the Confederate Army of Tennessee, commanded by General Braxton Bragg, from a strong defensive position, driving the Confederates from Middle Tennessee and threatening Chattanooga.
The Tullahoma Campaign was arguably Rosecrans's most significant achievement of the war, described by historians as a "brilliant" campaign that achieved significant goals with very few casualties on either side. However, it was overshadowed by contemporaneous Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and it left his opponent's army essentially intact, which led to Rosecrans's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga in September.

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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.

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Vicksburg Campaign
The Vicksburg Campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River. The Union Army of the Tennessee under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the river by capturing this stronghold and defeating Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's forces stationed there.
The campaign consisted of many important naval operations, troop maneuvers, failed initiatives, and eleven distinct battles from December 26, 1862, to July 4, 1863. Military historians divide the campaign into two formal phases: Operations Against Vicksburg (December 1862 – January 1863) and Grant's Operations Against Vicksburg (March–July 1863).
Grant initially planned a two-pronged approach in which half of his army, under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, would advance to the Yazoo River and attempt to reach Vicksburg from the northeast, while Grant took the remainder of the army down the Mississippi Central Railroad. Both of these initiatives failed. Grant conducted a number of "experiments" or expeditions—Grant's Bayou Operations—that attempted to enable waterborne access to the Mississippi south of Vicksburg's artillery batteries. All five of these initiatives failed as well. Finally, Union gunboats and troop transport boats ran the batteries at Vicksburg and met up with Grant's men who had marched overland in Louisiana. On April 29 and April 30, 1863, Grant's army crossed the Mississippi and landed at Bruinsburg, Mississippi. An elaborate series of demonstrations and diversions fooled the Confederates and the landings occurred without opposition. Over the next 17 days, Grant maneuvered his army inland and won five battles, captured the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi, and assaulted and laid siege to Vicksburg.

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Virginia
Virginia (ⁱ/vərˈdʒɪnjə/), officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state located in the South Atlantic region of the United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most populous city and Fairfax County the most populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population is over eight million.
The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607 the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent New World English colony. Slave labor and the land acquired from displaced Native American tribes each played a significant role in the colony's early politics and plantation economy. Virginia was one of the 13 Colonies in the American Revolution and joined the Confederacy in the American Civil War, during which Richmond was made the Confederate capital and Virginia's northwestern counties separated to form the state of West Virginia. Although the Commonwealth was under conservative single-party rule for nearly a century following Reconstruction, both major national parties are competitive in modern Virginia.

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Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893) was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg was his finest hour, but his relief by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade caused lasting enmity between the two men.
In San Francisco, after the war, he obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there. In his final years in New Jersey, he was a prominent member and later president of the Theosophical Society.
Doubleday is often mistakenly credited with inventing baseball, although he never made such a claim, and there is no evidence to support it.
Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa, New York, in a small house on the corner of Washington and Fenwick Streets. The family all slept in the attic loft of the one-room house. His Doubleday grandfather, also named Abner, had fought in the American Revolutionary War. His maternal grandfather joined the Army at 14 and was a mounted messenger for George Washington. His father, Ulysses F. Doubleday, fought in the War of 1812, published newspapers and books, and represented Auburn, New York for four years in the United States Congress. Abner spent his childhood in Auburn and later was sent to Cooperstown to live with his uncle and attend a private preparatory high school. He practiced as a surveyor and civil engineer for two years before entering the United States Military Academy in 1838. He graduated in 1842, 24th in a class of 56 cadets, and was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery. One of the persistent legends of baseball history is that Doubleday invented the game in 1839, although he was in West Point at the time.

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Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ⁱ/ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən/ (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator in the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives in the 1840s. After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch-rival Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party nomination. With almost no support in the South he swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found. And the war came.

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Abram Duryée
Abram Duryée ( /dʊərˈjeɪ/; April 29, 1815 – September 27, 1890) was a Union Army general during the American Civil War, the commander of one of the most famous Zouave regiments, the 5th New York Volunteer Infantry. After the war he was New York City Police Commissioner.
Duryée was born in New York City to a family of soldiers of French Huguenot ancestry. His grandfather fought in the American Revolutionary War, and his father and two uncles were officers during the War of 1812. Graduating from the grammar school at Columbia College, Abram worked as a merchant and became wealthy as a mahogany importer in New York. In 1833, he joined the New York State Militia, serving in the 142nd New York Regiment. He moved on to the 27th Regiment (the 7th today) five years later. Starting as a private, he eventually rose to Colonel of the regiment in 1859. During his time in the militia, he led the regiment in the Astor Place Riot and was wounded twice. When he resigned his commission in 1859, it was against the protests of his colleagues.

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Alfred Pleasonton
Alfred Pleasonton (July 7, 1824 – February 17, 1897) was a United States Army officer and General of Union cavalry during the American Civil War. He commanded the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac during the Gettysburg Campaign, including the largest predominantly cavalry battle of the war, Brandy Station. In 1864 he was transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Theater, where he defeated Confederate General Sterling Price in two key battles, effectively ending the war in Missouri. He was the son of Stephen Pleasonton and younger brother of Augustus Pleasonton.
Pleasonton was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Stephen and Mary Hopkins Pleasonton. Stephen was well known at the time of Alfred's birth. During the War of 1812, as a U.S. State Department employee, Stephen's personal initiative saved crucial documents in the National Archives from destruction by the British invaders of Washington, including the original Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. However, while working as a U.S. Treasury Department employee, he was involved in scandals in the 1830s involving corruption in awarding of contracts for government lighthouses, which turned out to have substandard construction and began deteriorating prematurely. He was investigated by the U.S. Congress, which cited his "lethargy and maladministration" and led to his dismissal in 1852, casting a pall over the family reputation. (The administration of U.S. lighthouses was transferred to a nine-member Lighthouse Board, which, ironically, included Alfred's future commander during the coming Civil War, George G. Meade.)

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Allan Pinkerton
Allan Pinkerton (25 August 1819 – 1 July 1884) was a Scottish American detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
Pinkerton was born in the Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland, to William Pinkerton and his wife, Isobel McQueen, on August 25, 1819. The location of the house where he was born is now occupied by the Glasgow Central Mosque.^{[citation needed]} A cooper by trade, he was active in the British Chartist movement as a young man. Pinkerton married Joan Carfrae (a singer) in Glasgow on 13 March 1842 secretly before moving to America. Disillusioned by the failure to win suffrage, Pinkerton emigrated to the United States in 1842, at the age of 23.
In 1843, Pinkerton heard of Dundee, Illinois, fifty miles northwest of Chicago on the Fox River. He built a cabin and started a cooperage there, sending for his wife in Chicago after the cabin was complete. As early as 1844, Pinkerton worked for Chicago Abolitionist leaders, and his Dundee home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

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Ambrose Burnside
Ambrose Everett Burnside (May 23, 1824 – September 13, 1881) was an American soldier, railroad executive, inventor, industrialist, and politician from Rhode Island, serving as governor and a U.S. Senator. As a Union Army general in the American Civil War, he conducted successful campaigns in North Carolina and East Tennessee but was defeated in the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg and Battle of the Crater, earning his reputation as one of the most incompetent generals of the war. His distinctive style of facial hair is now known as sideburns, derived from his last name.
Burnside was born in Liberty, Indiana, the fourth of nine children of Edghill and Pamela (or Pamilia) Brown Burnside, a family of Scottish origin. His great-great-grandfather Robert Burnside (1725–1775) was born in Scotland and settled in the Province of South Carolina. His father, a native of South Carolina, was a slave owner who freed his slaves when he relocated to Indiana. Ambrose attended Liberty Seminary as a young boy, but his education was interrupted when his mother died in 1841; he was apprenticed to a local tailor, eventually becoming a partner in the business. His interest in military affairs and his father's political connections obtained an appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1843. He graduated in 1847, ranking 18th in a class of 38, and was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Artillery. He traveled to Veracruz for the Mexican-American War but arrived after hostilities ceased and performed mostly garrison duty around Mexico City.

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Andrew Hull Foote
Andrew Hull Foote (September 12, 1806 – June 26, 1863) was an American naval officer who was noted for his service in the American Civil War and also for his contributions to several naval reforms in the years prior to the war. When the war came, he was appointed to command of the Western Gunboat Flotilla, predecessor of the Mississippi River Squadron. In that position, he led the gunboats in the Battle of Fort Henry. For his services with the Western Gunboat Flotilla, Foote was among the first naval officers to be promoted to the then-new rank of rear admiral.
Foote was born at New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Senator Samuel Augustus Foote (or Foot) and Eudocia Hull. As a child Foote was not known as a good student, but showed a keen interest in one day going to sea. His father compromised and had him entered at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Six months later in 1822, he left West Point and accepted an appointment as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy.
Between 1822 and 1843, Foote saw service in the Caribbean, Pacific, and Mediterranean, African Coast and at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Foote first began as a midshipman on the USS Grampus. In 1830, Foote was commissioned a lieutenant, and was stationed in the Mediterranean. In 1837, Foote circumnavigated the globe in the USS John Adams. After serving on sea, Foote was put in charge of the Philadelphia Naval Asylum. After serving on land Foote went back to sea, and organized a Temperance Society aboard the USS Cumberland. This group developed into a movement that resulted in ending the policy of supplying grog to U.S. Naval personnel.

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Benjamin Wade
Benjamin Franklin "Bluff" Wade (October 27, 1800 – March 2, 1878) was a U.S. lawyer and United States Senator. In the Senate, he was associated with the Radical Republicans of that time.
Born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, on October 27 to Mary Wade and James Wade. Benjamin Wade's first job was as a laborer on the Erie Canal. He also taught school before studying law in Ohio with Elisha Whittlesey. After being admitted to the bar in 1828, he began practicing law in Jefferson, Ohio.
Wade formed a partnership with Joshua Giddings, a prominent anti-slavery figure in 1831. He became the prosecuting attorney of Ashtabula County by 1836, and as a member of the Whig Party, Wade was elected to the Ohio State Senate, serving two two-year terms between 1837 and 1842. He established a new law practice with Rufus P. Ranney and was elected presiding judge of the third district in 1847. Between 1847 and 1851, Wade was a judge of common pleas in what is now Summit County (Ohio).
After the decline of the Whigs' power, Wade joined the Republican Party, and in 1851 he was elected by his legislature to the United States Senate. There, he associated with such eventual Radical Republicans as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. He fought against the controversial Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He was one of the most radical politicians in America at that time, supporting women's suffrage, trade union rights, and equality for African-Americans. He was also critical of how certain aspects of capitalism were practiced in the 19th century.

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Braxton Bragg
Braxton Bragg (March 22, 1817 – September 27, 1876) was a career United States Army officer, and then a general in the Confederate States Army—a principal commander in the Western Theater of the American Civil War and later the military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Bragg, a native of North Carolina, was educated at West Point and became an artillery officer. He served in Florida and then received three brevet promotions for distinguished service in the Mexican-American War, most notably the Battle of Buena Vista. He established a reputation as a strict disciplinarian, but also as a junior officer willing to publicly argue with and criticize his superior officers, including those at the highest levels of the Army. After a series of posts in the Indian Territory, he resigned from the U.S. Army in 1856 to become a sugar plantation owner in Louisiana.
During the Civil War, Bragg trained soldiers in the Gulf Coast region. He was a corps commander at the Battle of Shiloh and subsequently was named to command the Army of Mississippi (later known as the Army of Tennessee). He and Edmund Kirby Smith attempted an invasion of Kentucky in 1862, but Bragg retreated following the inconclusive Battle of Perryville in October. In December, he fought another inconclusive battle at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the Battle of Stones River, but once again withdrew his army. In 1863, he fought a series of battles against Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans and the Union Army of the Cumberland. In June, he was outmaneuvered in the Tullahoma Campaign and retreated into Chattanooga. In September, he was forced to evacuate Chattanooga, but counterattacked Rosecrans and defeated him at the Battle of Chickamauga, the bloodiest battle in the Western Theater, and the only major Confederate victory. In November, Bragg's army was routed in turn by Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Battles for Chattanooga.

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Bruce Catton
Charles Bruce Catton (October 9, 1899 – August 28, 1978) was an American historian and journalist, best known for his books on the American Civil War. Known as a narrative historian, Catton specialized in popular history, featuring colorful characters and historical vignettes, in addition to the basic facts, dates, and analyses. Although his books were well researched and supported by footnotes, they were not generally presented in a rigorous academic style. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia.
Charles Bruce Catton was born in Petoskey, Michigan, to George R. and Adela M. (Patten) Catton, and raised in Benzonia, Michigan. His father was a Congregationalist minister, who accepted a teaching position in Benzonia Academy and later became the academy's headmaster. As a boy, Catton first heard the reminiscences of the aged veterans who had fought in the Civil War. In his memoir, Waiting for the Morning Train (1972), Catton explained how their stories made a lasting impression upon him:

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Carnot Posey
Carnot Posey (August 5, 1818 – November 13, 1863) was a Mississippi planter and lawyer, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Bristoe Station. He was transported for care to the University of Virginia, where the rooms on the Lawn all served as Confederate hospital rooms. He was placed in the same room [Room 33 West Lawn] where he lived many years earlier as a UVa Law student and later died in that room of his wounds.
Posey was born near Woodville, Mississippi, the fourth of eight children of planter John Brooke Posey and Elizabeth Screven Posey. He attended the common schools and then graduated from college in Jackson, Mississippi, before studying law at the University of Virginia. He returned to his family's plantation and later established a law practice in Woodville. He married Mary Collins in May 1840 and they had two sons. However, Mary Posey died four years later.
When the Mexican-American War erupted, Posey was commissioned a first lieutenant in the 1st Mississippi Rifles, a volunteer regiment commanded by future Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Posey fought at the Battle of Buena Vista, where he was wounded.

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Carpetbagger
In United States history, carpetbagger was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners (also referred to as Yankees) who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877.
The term referred to the observation that these newcomers tended to carry "carpet bags," a common form of luggage at the time (sturdy and made from used carpet). It was used as a derogatory term, suggesting opportunism and exploitation by the outsiders. Together with Republicans they are said to have politically manipulated and controlled former Confederate states for varying periods for their own financial and power gains. In sum, carpetbaggers were seen as insidious Northern outsiders with questionable objectives meddling in local politics, buying up plantations at fire-sale prices and taking advantage of Southerners. Carpetbagger is not to be confused with copperhead, which is a term given to a person from the North who sympathized with the Southern claim of right to Secession.
The term carpetbaggers was also used to describe the Republican political appointees who came South, arriving with their travel carpet bags. Southerners considered them ready to loot and plunder the defeated South.

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Charles Griffin
Charles Griffin (December 18, 1825 – September 15, 1867) was a career officer in the United States Army and a Union general in the American Civil War. He rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac and fought in many of the key campaigns in the Eastern Theater.
After the war, he commanded the Department of Texas during Reconstruction. He proved to an ardent supporter of the Congressional policies of the Radical Republicans and of freedmen's rights, and controversially disqualified a number of antebellum state officeholders in Texas, replacing them with loyal Unionists.
Griffin was born in Granville, Ohio, the son of Apollos Griffin. He attended the nearby Kenyon College in Gambier, and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, placing 23rd out of 38 in the Class of 1847. Commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant, he served with the 2nd U.S. Artillery during the final campaign of the Mexican-American War.
He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1849 and served in the New Mexico Territory against Navajo Indians until 1854, when he left the Southwest frontier. He then taught artillery tactics at West Point, forming an artillery battery from the academy's enlisted men shortly after the Southern states began seceding from the Union.

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David Dixon Porter
David Dixon Porter (June 8, 1813 – February 13, 1891) was a member of one of the most distinguished families in the history of the United States Navy. Promoted as the second man to the rank of admiral, after his adoptive brother David G. Farragut, Porter helped improve the Navy as the Superintendent of the US Naval Academy after significant service in the American Civil War.
He began naval service as a midshipman at the age of 10 under his father, Commodore David Porter, on the frigate USS John Adams. For the remainder of his life, he was associated with the sea. Porter served in the Mexican War in the attack on the fort at Vera Cruz. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was part of a plan to hold Fort Pickens, near Pensacola, Florida, for the Union; its execution disrupted the effort to relieve the garrison at Fort Sumter, leading to its fall. Porter commanded an independent flotilla of mortar boats at the capture of New Orleans. Later, he was advanced to the rank of (acting) rear admiral in command of the Mississippi River Squadron, which cooperated with the army under Major General Ulysses S. Grant in the Vicksburg campaign. After the fall of Vicksburg, he led the naval forces in the difficult Red River Campaign in Louisiana. Late in 1864, Porter was transferred from the interior to the Atlantic coast, where he led the Navy in the joint assaults on Fort Fisher, the final significant naval action of the war.

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David Farragut
David Glasgow Farragut (July 5, 1801 – August 14, 1870) was a flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War. He was the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral in the United States Navy. He is remembered in popular culture for his order at the Battle of Mobile Bay, usually paraphrased: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" by U.S. Navy tradition.
Farragut was born in 1801 to Elizabeth Shine (b. 1765 - d. 1808), of North Carolina Scots-Irish descent, and her husband George Farragut, a native of Minorca, Spain, at Lowe's Ferry on the Holston River. It was a few miles southeast of Campbell's Station, near Knoxville, Tennessee. His father operated the ferry and also served as a cavalry officer in the Tennessee militia. Born Jordi Farragut, his father became a Spanish merchant captain from Minorca, son of Antoni Farragut and Joana Mesquida. He had joined the American Revolutionary cause after arriving in America in 1766, when he changed his first name to George. The Farraguts moved west to Tennessee after George finished serving in the American Revolution.

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David Rumph Jones
David Rumph Jones (April 5, 1825 – January 15, 1863) was a Confederate general in the American Civil War.
Jones was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina. By his marriage to Sarah Taylor, daughter of Brig. Gen. Joseph Pannell Taylor, he was a nephew of Zachary Taylor, the 12th US President, and a cousin of Jefferson Davis and Richard Taylor. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1846 and served in the Mexican-American War.
Jones was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army on June 17, 1861, and major general on October 11, 1862. He commanded a brigade in Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard's Confederate Army of the Potomac at the First Battle of Bull Run and then a brigade in the division of Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder in the Peninsula Campaign. In the Seven Days Battles, he temporarily led the division when Magruder served as a wing commander. When Magruder departed for the Western Theater in July, Jones got permanent command, leading his troops at Second Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Antietam, in both cases under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet. At Antietam, his division held the right flank of the Army of Northern Virginia when the Union IX Corps attacked. The strain of campaigning aggravated a longstanding heart condition and Jones died in Richmond, Virginia the following January. He is buried there in Hollywood Cemetery.

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Don Carlos Buell
Don Carlos Buell (March 23, 1818 – November 19, 1898) was a career United States Army officer who fought in the Seminole War, the Mexican-American War, and the American Civil War. Buell led Union armies in two great Civil War battles—Shiloh and Perryville. The nation was angry at his failure to defeat the outnumbered Confederates after Perryville, or to secure East Tennessee. Historians concur that he was brave and industrious, and a master of logistics, but was too cautious and too rigid to meet the great challenges he faced in 1862. Buell was relieved of field command in late 1862 and made no more significant military contributions.
Buell was born in Lowell, Ohio. He was a first cousin of George P. Buell, also a Union general.
He lived in Indiana for a time before the Civil War. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1841 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Infantry regiment. In the Mexican-American War, he served under both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. He was breveted three times for bravery and was wounded at Churubusco. Between the wars he served in the U.S. Army Adjutant General's office and as an adjutant in California, reaching the rank of captain in 1851.

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Edmund Kirby Smith
Edmund Kirby Smith (May 16, 1824 – March 28, 1893) was a career United States Army officer and educator. He served as a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, notable for his command of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy after the fall of Vicksburg.
After the conflict ended Smith worked in both the telegraph and railway business, and also served as a college professor until his death.
Smith was born in St. Augustine, Florida, to Joseph Lee Smith and Frances Kirby Smith. Both his parents were natives of Connecticut, and moved to Florida in 1821 shortly before the elder Smith was named a U.S. District Judge there. In 1836, his parents sent him to a military boarding school in Virginia, which he attended until his enrollment in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
On July 1, 1841, Smith entered West Point and graduated four years later, standing 25th out of 41 cadets. While there he was nicknamed "Seminole" after his native state, and brevetted a second lieutenant in the 5th U.S. Infantry on July 1, 1845. He was promoted to second lieutenant on August 22, 1846, now serving in the 7th U.S. Infantry.

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Edward Ferrero
Edward Ferrero (January 18, 1831 – December 11, 1899) was one of the leading dance instructors, choreographers, and ballroom operators in the United States. He also served as a Union Army general in the American Civil War, best remembered for his role in the Battle of the Crater in 1864.
Ferrero was born in Granada, Spain. His parents were natives of Italy, and had just arrived in Spain when their son was born. Thirteen months later, the family moved to the United States and settled in New York City. Ferrero's father, a noted dancer and a personal friend of the revolutionary soldier Giuseppe Garibaldi, soon opened a dance academy. When the elder Ferrero retired in his early fifties, Edward took over operation of the academy. He educated the wealthy and elite of New York society in the art of dance, and originated many dances that spread in popularity throughout the country. Ferrero became renowned as one of America's leading experts in dance. He worked part-time as a dance instructor at the United States Military Academy and was the author of The Art of Dancing in 1859.

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Edwin Forbes
Edwin Austin Forbes (1839 – March 6, 1895) was an American landscape painter and etcher who first gained fame during the American Civil War for his detailed and dramatic sketches of military subjects, including battlefield combat scenes.
Forbes was born in New York, studied under A. F. Tait, and began as an animal and landscape painter. During the Civil War, he was special artist for Frank Leslie's Magazine. Many of the spirited etchings he drew during the conflict were later presented by General Sherman to the government. They are now preserved in the War Office at Washington because of their historic value.
After the war, Forbes painted landscape and cattle scenes, among which are "Orange County Pasture" (1879) and "Evening—Sheep Pasture" (1881). In 1877 he was made an honorary member of the London Etching Club.
He died in 1895 in Brooklyn and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.

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Fitz John Porter
Fitz John Porter (August 31, 1822 – May 21, 1901) (sometimes written FitzJohn Porter or Fitz-John Porter) was a career United States Army officer and a Union General during the American Civil War. He is most known for his performance at the Second Battle of Bull Run and his subsequent court martial.
Although Porter served well in the early battles of the Civil War, his military career was ruined by the controversial trial, which was called by his political rivals. After the war, he worked for almost 25 years to restore his tarnished reputation and was finally restored to the army's roll.
Porter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He came from a family prominent in American naval service; his cousins were William D. Porter, David Dixon Porter, and David G. Farragut. But Porter's father, Captain John Porter, was an alcoholic who had been reassigned to land duty. Porter's childhood was chaotic because of his father's illness. The younger Porter pursued an army career. He graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1845, standing eighth out of 41 cadets, and was brevetted a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Artillery.

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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave.
Douglass wrote several autobiographies, eloquently describing his experiences in slavery in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became influential in its support for abolition. He wrote two more autobiographies, with his last, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881 and covering events through and after the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in the United States' struggle to reach its potential as a "land of the free". Douglass actively supported women's suffrage. Without his approval he became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the impracticable and small Equal Rights Party ticket. Douglass held multiple public offices.

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George Crook
George R. Crook (September 8, 1828 – March 21, 1890) was a career United States Army officer, most noted for his distinguished service during the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. During the 1880s, the Apache nicknamed Crook Nantan Lupan, which means "Grey Wolf."
Crook was born to Thomas and Elizabeth Matthews Crook on a farm near Taylorsville, Ohio (near Dayton). Nominated to the United States Military Academy by Congressman Robert Schenck, he graduated in 1852, ranking near the bottom of his class.
He was assigned to the 4th U.S. infantry as brevet second lieutenant, serving in California, 1852–61. He served in Oregon and northern California, fighting against several Native American tribes. He commanded the Pitt River Expedition of 1857 and, in one of the several engagements, was severely wounded by an Indian arrow. He established Fort Ter-Waw in what is now Klamath, California.
Crook was promoted to first lieutenant in 1856, and to captain in 1860. He was ordered east and in 1861, with the beginning of the American Civil War, was made colonel of the 36th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

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George Henry Thomas
George Henry Thomas (July 31, 1816 – March 28, 1870) was a career United States Army officer and a Union General during the American Civil War, one of the principal commanders in the Western Theater.
Thomas served in the Mexican-American War and later chose to remain with the United States Army for the Civil War, despite his heritage as a Virginian. He won one of the first Union victories in the war, at Mill Springs in Kentucky, and served in important subordinate commands at Perryville and Stones River. His stout defense at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863 saved the Union Army from being completely routed, earning him his most famous nickname, the "Rock of Chickamauga." He followed soon after with a dramatic breakthrough on Missionary Ridge in the Battle of Chattanooga. In the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of 1864, he achieved one of the most decisive victories of the war, destroying the army of Confederate General John Bell Hood, at the Battle of Nashville.
Thomas had a successful record in the Civil War, but he failed to achieve the historical acclaim of some of his contemporaries, such as Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. He developed a reputation as a slow, deliberate general who shunned self-promotion and who turned down advancements in position when he did not think they were justified. After the war, he did not write memoirs to advance his legacy. He also had an uncomfortable personal relationship with Grant, which served him poorly as Grant advanced in rank and eventually to the presidency.

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George Sykes
George Sykes (October 9, 1822 – February 8, 1880) was a career United States Army officer and a Union General during the American Civil War.
Sykes was born in Dover, Delaware. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1842 and was commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Infantry. He served in the Mexican-American War and Seminole War and was brevetted as a captain for actions at the Battle of Cerro Gordo.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Sykes was assigned as a major in the 14th U.S. Infantry. At the First Battle of Bull Run, he commanded the Regular Infantry Battalion, a collection of eight regular army companies from different regiments, the only regulars on the field. He continued his association with regulars in the early defensive positions around Washington, D.C., and then as a division commander of regulars in the Peninsula Campaign, the 2nd Division of the V Corps. His men, who often referred to themselves as "Sykes' Regulars," distinguished themselves defending their position at Gaines' Mill during the Seven Days Battles, before the Union line broke elsewhere.

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Gideon Welles
Gideon Welles (July 1, 1802 – February 11, 1878) was the United States Secretary of the Navy from 1861 to 1869. His buildup of the Navy to successfully execute blockades of Southern ports was a key component of Northern victory of the Civil War. Welles was also instrumental in the Navy's creation of the Medal of Honor.
Gideon Welles, the son of Samuel Welles and Ann Hale, was born on July 1, 1802 in Glastonbury, Connecticut. His father was a shipping merchant and fervent Jeffersonian; he was a member of the Convention which formed the first state Connecticut Constitution in 1818 that abolished the colonial charter and officially severed the political ties to England. This constitution is also notable for having reversed the earlier Orders and provided for freedom of religion. He was a member of the seventh generation of his family in America. His original immigrant ancestor was Thomas Welles, who arrived in 1635 and was the only man in Connecticut's history to hold all four top offices: governor, deputy governor, treasurer, and secretary. He was also the transcriber of the Fundamental Orders. Welles was the second great grandson of Capt. Samuel Welles and Ruth (Rice) Welles, the daughter of Edmund Rice, a 1638 immigrant to Sudbury and founder of Marlborough, Massachusetts.

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Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.
As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten by masters to whom she was hired out. Early in her life, she suffered a head wound when hit by a heavy metal weight. The injury caused disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream activity, which occurred throughout her life. A devout Christian, Tubman ascribed the visions and vivid dreams to revelations from God.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Tubman was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery was prohibited.

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Hector Tyndale
Hector Tyndale (a.k.a. George Hector Tyndale) was a Union general during the American Civil War rising to the rank of Brevet Major General of Volunteers. He notably led brigades at the battles of Antietam and Wauhatchie. Apart from the war Tyndale was an expert in porcelain and pottery.
Tyndale's father was a prominent Philadelphia businessman who engaged in the importation of china and glassware. Hector Tyndale eventually followed his father's footsteps and ran the family business in partnership with his brother-in-law. Tyndale made several trips to personally inspect European factories this becoming very familiar with the whole art of pottery and porcelain making. His personal collection became one of the finest in the whole country.
Tyndale became involved in Republican politics in Philadelphia around 1856. Although a Republican he was not an abolitionist and therefore had no sympathy for the fate of John Brown and his raiders. Despite this Tyndale agreed to escort the widow of John Brown to pay a last visit to her husband and recover his body after execution. It was believed Mrs. Brown's life was in danger because of her husband's recent actions. Brown's body was delivered to Tyndale who insisted on its identification before accepting it on Mrs. Brown's behalf.

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Henry Jackson Hunt
Henry Jackson Hunt (September 14, 1819 – February 11, 1889) was Chief of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War. Considered by his contemporaries the greatest artillery tactician and strategist of the war, he was a master of the science of gunnery and rewrote the manual on the organization and use of artillery in early modern armies. His courage and tactics affected the outcome of some of the most significant battles in the war.
Hunt was born in the frontier outpost of Detroit, Michigan, the son of Samuel Wellington Hunt, a career infantry officer. He was named after his uncle, Henry Jackson Hunt, who was the second mayor of Detroit. As a child in 1827, he accompanied his father on the expedition to the future Kansas Territory that founded Fort Leavenworth. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1839 as a brevet second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Artillery. He served in the Mexican War under Winfield Scott, and was appointed a brevet captain for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco and to major at Chapultepec. On October 5, 1856, Brevet Major Hunt commanded Company M, 2nd U.S. Artillery from Fort Leavenworth, that protected the polls at Eaton, Kansas, during the territorial legislature elections. Hunt served with the same unit during the Utah War in 1857 against the Mormons. His permanent (regular army) promotions to captain and major were in 1852 and 1861, respectively.

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Howell Cobb
(Thomas) Howell Cobb (September 7, 1815 – October 9, 1868) was an American political figure. A Southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as a Secretary of Treasury under President James Buchanan (1857–1860) and the 40th Governor of Georgia (1851–1853).
He is, however, probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederate States of America, having served as the President of the Provisional Confederate Congress, when delegates of the secessionist states issued creation of the Confederacy.
Cobb served for two weeks between the foundation of the Confederacy and the election of Jefferson Davis as first President. This made him, as the Speaker of the Congress, provisional Head of State at this time.
Born in Jefferson County, Georgia, Cobb was raised in Athens, Georgia, and attended the University of Georgia where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. He was of Welsh American ancestry. He was admitted to the bar in 1836 and became solicitor general of the western judicial circuit of Georgia.

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Irish people
The Irish people (Irish: Muintir na hÉireann or na hÉireannaigh; Ulster-Scots: Airisch or Airish fowk) are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years (according to archaeological studies, see Prehistoric Ireland). The Irish people's earliest ancestors are recorded in legends – they are claimed to be descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians.Lebor Gabála Érenn, a book of Irish mythology tells that Tuatha Dé Dananns were Scythian descendants.
The main groups that interacted with the Irish in the Middle Ages include the Picts, Scots, and the Vikings. Due to this contact, Icelanders are noted for having some Irish descent. The Anglo-Norman invasion of the High Middle Ages, the English plantations and the subsequent English rule of the country introduced the Normans and Flemish into Ireland. Welsh, Picts, Bretons, and small parties of Gauls and even Anglo-Saxons are known in Ireland from much earlier times.

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Irvin McDowell
Irvin McDowell (October 15, 1818 – May 4, 1885) was a career American army officer. He is best known for his defeat in the First Battle of Bull Run, the first large-scale battle of the American Civil War.
McDowell was born in Columbus, Ohio, son of Abram Irvin McDowell and Eliza Seldon McDowell, both of Irish Catholic descent. He was a cousin-in-law of John Buford, and his brother, John Adair McDowell, served as the first colonel of the 6th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Irvin initially attended the College de Troyes in France before graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1838, where one of his classmates was P.G.T. Beauregard, his future adversary at First Bull Run. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and posted to the 1st U.S. Artillery. McDowell served as a tactics instructor at West Point, before becoming aide-de-camp to General John E. Wool during the Mexican-American War. He was brevetted captain at Buena Vista and served in the Adjutant General's department after the war. While in that department he was promoted to major on May 31, 1856.

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Jacob Dolson Cox
Jacob Dolson Cox, (Jr.) (October 27, 1828 – August 4, 1900) was a lawyer, a Union Army general during the American Civil War, and later a Republican politician from Ohio. He served as the 28th Governor of Ohio and as United States Secretary of the Interior.
Cox was born in Montreal, Canada, to American parents, Jacob Dolson Cox and Thedia Redelia Kenyon Cox. The elder Cox was a well-known contractor in New York City, living temporarily in Montreal while he superintended the roof construction of the Church of Notre Dame. He returned with his parents to New York City a year later. His early education included private readings with a Columbia College student. His practical education began at the age of 14 as he worked in a law office as a clerk, and at 16 learned bookkeeping at a brokerage firm. Although as a youth he considered a career at sea, his parents joined the Congregational Church and he decided to study for the ministry. He was influenced by the Reverends Samuel D. Cochran and Charles Grandison Finney, leaders of Oberlin College, which he attended and with which he maintained a lifelong association, including service as a trustee from 1876 to 1900.

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James Longstreet
James Longstreet (January 8, 1821 – January 2, 1904) was one of the foremost Confederate generals of the American Civil War and the principal subordinate to General Robert E. Lee, who called him his "Old War Horse." He served under Lee as a corps commander for many of the famous battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia in the Eastern Theater, but also with Gen. Braxton Bragg in the Army of Tennessee in the Western Theater. Biographer and historian Jeffry D. Wert wrote that "Longstreet ... was the finest corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia; in fact, he was arguably the best corps commander in the conflict on either side."
Longstreet's talents as a general made significant contributions to the Confederate victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga, in both offensive and defensive roles. He also performed strongly during the Seven Days Battles, the Battle of Antietam, and until he was seriously wounded, at the Battle of the Wilderness. His performance in semiautonomous command during the Knoxville Campaign resulted in a Confederate defeat. His most controversial service was at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he disagreed with General Lee on the tactics to be employed and reluctantly supervised the disastrous infantry assault known as Pickett's Charge.

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James Seddon
James Alexander Seddon (July 13, 1815 – August 19, 1880) was an American lawyer and politician who served two terms in the U.S. Congress as a member of the Democratic Party. He was appointed Confederate States Secretary of War by Jefferson Davis during the American Civil War.
Seddon was born in Falmouth, Stafford County, Virginia. He was a descendant of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. Due to frail health, he was educated primarily at home and became self-taught as a youth. At the age of twenty-one, Seddon entered the law school of the University of Virginia, graduating and settling in Richmond, where he established a successful law practice.
In 1845, he was nominated by the Democratic Party for Congress and was easily elected. Two years later, he was renominated, but declined due to platform differences with the party. In 1849, Seddon was reelected to Congress, serving from December 1849 until March 1851. Owing to poor health, he declined another nomination at the end of his term and retired to "Sabot Hill," his estate on the James River above Richmond.

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Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history. Davis was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane (Cook) Davis. After attending Transylvania University, Davis graduated from West Point and fought in the Mexican–American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment. He served as the United States Secretary of War under Democratic President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce administration, he served as a Democratic U.S. Senator representing the State of Mississippi. As a senator, he argued against secession, but did agree that each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.

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John Bell Hood
John Bell Hood (June 1 or June 29, 1831 – August 30, 1879) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Hood had a reputation for bravery and aggressiveness that sometimes bordered on recklessness. Arguably one of the best brigade and division commanders in the Confederate States Army, Hood became increasingly ineffective as he was promoted to lead larger, independent commands late in the war, and his career was marred by his decisive defeats leading an army in the Atlanta Campaign and the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.
Hood's education at the United States Military Academy led to a career as a junior officer in both the infantry and cavalry of the antebellum U.S. Army in California and Texas. At the start of the Civil War, he offered his services to his adopted state of Texas. He achieved his reputation for aggressive leadership as a brigade commander in the army of Robert E. Lee during the Seven Days Battles in 1862, after which he was promoted to division command. He led a division under James Longstreet in the campaigns of 1862–63. At the Battle of Gettysburg, he was severely wounded, rendering his left arm useless for the rest of his life. Transferred with many of Longstreet's troops to the Western Theater, Hood led a massive assault into a gap in the Union line at the Battle of Chickamauga, but was wounded again, requiring the amputation of his right leg.

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John Ericsson
John Ericsson (July 31, 1803 – March 8, 1889) was a Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer, as was his brother Nils Ericson. He was born at Långbanshyttan in Värmland, Sweden, but primarily came to be active in England and the United States. He is remembered best for designing the steam locomotive Novelty (in partnership with engineer John Braithwaite) and the ironclad USS Monitor.
John's and Nils's father Olaf Ericsson who worked as the supervisor for a mine in Värmland had lost money in speculations and had to move his family from Värmland to Forsvik in 1810. There he worked as a 'director of blastings' during the excavation of the Swedish Göta Canal. The extraordinary skills of the two brothers were discovered by Baltzar von Platen, the architect of the Göta Canal. The two brothers were dubbed cadets of mechanics of the Swedish Royal Navy and engaged as trainees at the canal enterprise. At the age of fourteen, John was already working independently as a surveyor. His assistant had to carry a footstool for him to reach the instruments during surveying work.

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John Gibbon
John Gibbon (April 20, 1827 – February 6, 1896) was a career United States Army officer who fought in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars.
Gibbon was born in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the fourth child of ten born to Dr. John Heysham Gibbons and Catharine Lardner Gibbons. When Gibbon was nearly 11 years old the family moved near Charlotte, North Carolina, after his father took a position as chief assayer at the U.S. Mint. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1847 and was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery. He served in the Mexican-American War without seeing combat, attempted to keep the peace between Seminoles and settlers in south Florida, and taught artillery tactics at West Point, where he wrote The Artillerist's Manual in 1859. The manual was a highly scientific treatise on gunnery and was used by both sides in the Civil War. In 1855, Gibbon married Francis "Fannie" North Moale. They had four children: Frances Moale Gibbon, Catharine "Katy" Lardner Gibbon, John Gibbon, Jr. (who died as a toddler) and John S. Gibbon.

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John Hunt Morgan
John Hunt Morgan (June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864) was a Confederate general and cavalry officer in the American Civil War.
Morgan is best known for Morgan's Raid when, in 1863, he and his men rode over 1,000 miles covering a region from Tennessee, up through Kentucky, into Indiana and on to southern Ohio. This would be the farthest north any uniformed Confederate troops penetrated during the war.
John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta (Hunt) Morgan. He was an uncle of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan and a maternal grandson of John Wesley Hunt, an early founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and one of the first millionaires west of the Allegheny Mountains. He was also the brother-in-law of A.P. Hill and of Basil W. Duke.
Morgan's paternal grandfather Luther Morgan had settled in Huntsville, but a downturn in the cotton economy forced him to mortgage his holdings. His father, Calvin Morgan, lost his Huntsville home in 1831 when he was unable to pay the property taxes following the failure of his pharmacy. The family then moved to Lexington, where he would manage one of his father-in-law's sprawling farms.

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John Sedgwick
John Sedgwick (September 13, 1813 – May 9, 1864) was a teacher, a career military officer, and a Union Army general in the American Civil War. He was the highest ranking Union casualty in the Civil War, killed by a sniper at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.
Sedgwick was born in the Litchfield Hills town of Cornwall, Connecticut. He was named after his grandfather, John Sedgwick (brother of Theodore Sedgwick), an American Revolutionary War general who served with George Washington. After teaching for two years, he attended the United States Military Academy, graduated in 1837 ranked 24th of 50, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army's artillery branch. He fought in the Seminole Wars and received two brevet promotions in the Mexican-American War, to captain for Contreras and Churubusco, and to major for Chapultepec. After returning from Mexico he transferred to the cavalry and served in Kansas, in the Utah War, and in the Indian Wars, participating in 1857 in a punitive expedition against the Cheyenne.

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Jonathan Letterman
Jonathan Letterman (December 11, 1824 – March 15, 1872) was an American surgeon credited as being the originator of the modern methods for medical organization in armies. Dr. Letterman is known today as the "Father of Battlefield Medicine." His system enabled thousands of wounded men to be recovered and treated during the American Civil War.
Letterman was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, the son of a well-known surgeon. He graduated from Jefferson College in 1845 and Jefferson Medical College in 1849. That same year he was given the position of assistant surgeon in the Army Medical Department.
Letterman served in Florida during military campaigns against the Seminole Indians until 1853. He then spent a year in Fort Ripley, Minnesota. He was then ordered to Fort Defiance in New Mexico Territory to aid the campaign against the Apache. He was transferred to Fort Monroe in Virginia. From 1860 to 1861 he was engaged in California against the Utes.
His younger brother, William Henry Letterman, co-founded the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity with Charles Page Thomas Moore in Canonsburg after tending to sick classmates in the Fall of 1850. After graduation from Jefferson College, William followed his brother into Jefferson Medical College.

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Joseph Hooker
Joseph Hooker (November 13, 1814 – October 31, 1879) was a career United States Army officer, achieving the rank of major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Although he served throughout the war, usually with distinction, Hooker is best remembered for his stunning defeat by Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.
After graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1837, Hooker served in the Seminole Wars and the Mexican-American War, receiving three brevet promotions. Resigning from the Army in 1853, he pursued farming, land development, and (unsuccessfully) politics in California. After the start of the Civil War he returned to the Army as a brigadier general. He distinguished himself as an aggressive combat commander leading a division in the Battle of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862, resulting in his promotion to major general. As a corps commander, he led the initial Union attacks at the Battle of Antietam, in which he was wounded. At the Battle of Fredericksburg, he commanded a "Grand Division" of two corps, and was ordered to conduct numerous futile frontal assaults that caused his men to suffer serious losses. Throughout this period, he conspired against and openly criticized his army commanders. Following the defeat at Fredericksburg, he was given command of the Army of the Potomac.

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Joseph Wheeler
Joseph Wheeler (September 10, 1836 – January 25, 1906) was an American military commander and politician. He has the rare distinction of serving as a general during war time for two opposing forces: first as a noted cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and later as a general in the United States Army during both the Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War near the turn-of-the-twentieth-century. For much of the Civil War he served as the senior cavalry general in the Army of Tennessee and fought in most of its battles in the Western Theater.
Between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, Wheeler served multiple terms as a United States Representative from the state of Alabama.
Although of New England ancestry, Joseph Wheeler was born near Augusta, Georgia and spent most of his early life growing up with relatives in Connecticut. However, he was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point from the state of Georgia and always considered himself a Georgian and Southerner.

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Josiah Gorgas
Josiah Gorgas (July 1, 1818 – May 15, 1883) was one of the few Northern-born Confederate generals and was later president of the University of Alabama.
As chief of ordnance during the American Civil War, Gorgas managed to keep the Confederate armies supplied with weapons and ammunition, despite the Union blockade and even though the South had hardly any munitions industry before the war began. He kept diaries during the Civil War which are now a popular subject of study for historians.
Josiah Gorgas was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. He was graduated from West Point in 1841 and was assigned to the Ordnance Department. He served in the Mexican-American War and was promoted to captain in 1855. In 1853, he married Amelia Gayle, daughter of former Alabama governor John Gayle.
Gorgas served in arsenals in different parts of the country before the Civil War broke out. Early in his career, Gorgas served at Watervliet Arsenal near Troy, New York, and at the Detroit Arsenal. Following the Mexican-American War, Gorgas served in Pennsylvania and in November 1851 was transferred to Fort Monroe in Virginia. There he began his association with the Tredegar Iron Company, which would become an important Southern foundry once the Civil War began. Gorgas went on to serve at the Mount Vernon Arsenal north of Mobile, Alabama beginning in 1853. He was commanding the Frankford Arsenal when he resigned from the United States Army on March 21, 1861 (effective April 3).

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Lafayette McLaws
Lafayette McLaws (January 15, 1821 – July 24, 1897) was a United States Army officer and a Confederate general in the American Civil War.
McLaws, who pronounced his first name English pronunciation: /ləˈfeɪ.ɛt/ lə-FAY-et, was born in Augusta, Georgia. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1842, placing 48th out of 56 cadets. McLaws served as an infantry officer in the Mexican-American War, in the West, and in the Utah War to suppress the Mormon uprising. While at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, he married Emily Allison Taylor, the niece of Zachary Taylor, making him a cousin-in-law of future Confederates Richard Taylor and Jefferson Davis.
At the start of the Civil War, resigning as a U.S. Army captain, McLaws was commissioned a major in the Confederate States Army. He was quickly promoted to colonel of the 10th Georgia Infantry regiment; then quickly again to brigadier general in brigade and division command in the Seven Days Battles; then, on May 23, 1862, to major general. He joined Maj. Gen. James Longstreet's First Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia as 1st Division commander and stayed with Longstreet for most of the war.

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Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office with his American Letter Mail Company, which was forced out of business by the United States government.
Spooner was born on a farm in Athol, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1808, and died "at one o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, May 14, 1887, in his little room at 109 Myrtle Street, [Boston,] surrounded by trunks and chests bursting with the books, manuscripts, and pamphlets which he had gathered in his active pamphleteer's warfare over half a century long."
Spooner advocated what he called Natural Law – or the "Science of Justice" – wherein acts of initiatory coercion against individuals and their property were considered "illegal" but the so-called criminal acts that violated only man-made legislation were not.

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Maxcy Gregg
Maxcy Gregg (August 1, 1814 – December 15, 1862) was a lawyer, soldier in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War, and a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War who was killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg.
Gregg was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the grandson of Esek Hopkins, commodore of the Continental Navy. He was educated at South Carolina College (now called the University of South Carolina). He practiced law with his father, and fought in the Mexican-American War as a major in the 12th U.S. Infantry. Gregg had many scholarly pursuits, including astronomy, botany, ornithology, and languages, and owned his own private observatory.
Gregg was a major proponent of secession prior to the commencement of the Civil War. In 1858, he issued the secessionists' manifesto in a pamphlet entitled, "An Appeal to the State Rights Party of South Carolina." In it, Gregg argued that Carolinians had looked unfavorably upon and rejected incorporation into the Democratic Party since the tariff controversy. Andrew P. Calhoun, James Tradewell, A.C. Garlington, and W.E. Martin also contributed statements to the "Appeal."

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Nathan George Evans
Nathan George "Shanks" Evans (February 3, 1824 – November 23, 1868) was a captain in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry who became a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Evans was born in Marion, South Carolina, the third son of Thomas and Jane Beverly (née Daniel) Evans. He briefly attended Randolph-Macon College before receiving an appointment to West Point from John C. Calhoun. After graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1848, Evans served on the western frontier with the dragoons and cavalry before resigning in 1861 to enter Confederate service. He was commissioned a colonel and commanded a small brigade at the First Battle of Bull Run, where he was the first Confederate field commander to perceive the Union intent to attack the Confederate left flank at dawn. His command went far toward saving the day for the South. During the thick of the fight, he was everywhere, closely followed by an aide carrying his "barrelito" (small barrel) of Evans' favorite whiskey on his back.

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Nathan Kimball
Nathan Kimball (November 22, 1822 – January 21, 1898) was a physician, politician, postmaster, and military officer, serving as a general in the Union army during the American Civil War. He was the first statewide commander of the Grand Army of the Republic veterans organization in Indiana.
Kimball was born in Fredericksburg, Indiana, a small rural hamlet where he attended the local school. He attended the Washington County Seminary and then Indiana Asbury College (what is now DePauw University) from 1839 until 1841 before leaving to teach school and farm in Independence, Missouri. He studied medicine under his brother-in-law at the University of Louisville Medical School in 1844 and established a private practice in Salem and Livonia. He married Martha A. McPheeters in Washington County, Indiana, on September 22, 1845. The couple had one child, a son named James.
When the Mexican-American War erupted, Dr. Kimball volunteered his services to state, raising a company from Livonia in the 2nd Indiana Infantry and being elected as a captain. Kimball was distinguished at the Battle of Buena Vista, where he rallied his company and held them fast even as the rest of the regiment crumbled and fled in disorder. He mustered out in June 1847 and returned to Indiana, where resumed his medical practice, expanding it to Loogootee. He was defeated for election as a Whig to the Indiana State Senate in 1847. His wife died in early 1850, and he married Emily McPheeters in August. In 1852, he again lost an election, this time for Presidential Elector. Kimball joined the newly formed Republican Party in 1854. His medical practice flourished, and he became well known in the region.

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Philip Sheridan
Philip Henry Sheridan (March 6, 1831 – August 5, 1888) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who transferred Sheridan from command of an infantry division in the Western Theater to lead the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the East. In 1864, he defeated Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley and his destruction of the economic infrastructure of the Valley, called "The Burning" by residents, was one of the first uses of scorched earth tactics in the war. In 1865, his cavalry pursued Gen. Robert E. Lee and was instrumental in forcing his surrender at Appomattox.
Sheridan prosecuted the later years of the Indian Wars of the Great Plains. Both as a soldier and private citizen, he was instrumental in the development and protection of Yellowstone National Park. In 1883 Sheridan was appointed general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, and in 1888 he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army during the term of President Grover Cleveland.

wn.com/Philip_Sheridan
Raphael Semmes
For other uses, see Semmes (disambiguation).
Raphael Semmes (September 27, 1809 – August 30, 1877) was an officer in the United States Navy from 1826 - 1860 and the Confederate States Navy from 1860 - 1865. During the American Civil War he was captain of the famous commerce raider CSS Alabama, which took a record sixty-nine prizes. Late in the war he was promoted to rear admiral and also served briefly as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. Admiral/General Semmes is the only North American to have the distinction of holding both ranks simultaneously.
Semmes was born in Charles County, Maryland, a cousin of future Confederate general Paul Jones Semmes and Union Navy Captain Alexander Alderman Semmes.
He graduated from Charlotte Hall Military Academy. He entered the Navy as a midshipman in 1826. After serving in the navy, he studied law and was admitted to the bar.
During the Mexican-American War, he commanded the brig USS Somers in the Gulf of Mexico. The ship was lost in a storm off Veracruz, Mexico, in December 1846. Semmes was commended for his actions during the loss of the Somers.

wn.com/Raphael_Semmes
Robert Toombs
Robert Augustus Toombs (July 2, 1810 – December 15, 1885) was an American and Confederate political leader, Whig Party Senator from Georgia, a founding father of the Confederacy, its first Secretary of State, and a minor Confederate general in the Civil War. He feuded bitterly with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Clawson says he was "a bullish politician whose blend of acerbic wit, fiery demeanor, and political tact aroused the full spectrum of emotions from his constituents and colleagues....[he] could not balance his volatile personality with his otherwise keen political skill."
Born near Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia, Robert Augustus Toombs was the fifth child of Catherine Huling and Robert Toombs. He was of English descent. His father died when he was five, and he entered Franklin College at the University of Georgia in Athens when he was just fourteen. During his time at Franklin College he was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society, which honors him as one of its most legendary alumni to this day. After the university chastised him for unbecoming conduct in a card-playing incident, Toombs continued his education at Union College, in Schenectady, New York, from which he graduated in 1828. Toombs went on to study law at the University of Virginia Law School in Charlottesville. Shortly after his admission to the Georgia bar, he married his childhood sweetheart, Julia A. Dubose, with whom he had three children.

wn.com/Robert_Toombs
Roger Atkinson Pryor
Roger Atkinson Pryor (July 19, 1828 – March 14, 1919) was a newspaper editor and politician in Virginia who became known for his fiery oratory in favor of secession; he was elected both to national and Confederate office, and served as a general for the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. In 1865 he moved to New York City to remake his life, and in 1868 brought up his family. He was among a number of influential southerners in the North who became known as "Confederate carpetbaggers."
He became a law partner with Benjamin F. Butler (based in Boston), noted in the South as a hated Union general during the war. Their partnership was financially successful, and Pryor became active in the Democratic Party in the North. In 1877 he was chosen to give a Decoration Day address, in which, according to one interpretation, he vilified Reconstruction and promoted the Lost Cause, while reconciling the noble soldiers as victims of politicians. In 1890 he joined the Sons of the American Revolution, one of the new heritage societies that was created following celebration of the United States Centennial.

wn.com/Roger_Atkinson_Pryor
Stephen Mallory
Stephen Russell Mallory (1812 – November 9, 1873) served in the United States Senate as, Senator (Democrat) from Florida from 1850 to the secession of his home state and the outbreak of the American Civil War. For much of that period, he was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. This was a time of rapid naval reform, and he insisted that the ships of the United States Navy should be as capable as those of Great Britain and France, the foremost navies in the world at that time. He also wrote a bill and guided it through Congress that provided for compulsory retirement of officers who did not meet the standards of the profession.
Although he was not a leader in the secession movement, Mallory followed his state out of the Union. When the Confederate States of America was formed, he was named Secretary of the Navy in the administration of President Jefferson Davis. He held the position throughout the existence of the Confederacy. Because of indifference to naval matters by most others in the Confederacy, Mallory was able to shape the Confederate Navy according to the principles he had learned while serving in the US Senate. Some of his ideas, such as the incorporation of armor into warship construction, were quite successful and became standard in navies around the world; on the other hand, the navy was often handicapped by administrative ineptitude in the Navy Department. During the war, he was weakened politically by a Congressional investigation into the Navy Department for its failure in defense of New Orleans. After months of taking testimony, the investigating committee concluded that it had no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

wn.com/Stephen_Mallory
Sterling Price
Sterling Price (September 20, 1809 – September 29, 1867) was a lawyer, planter, and politician from the U.S. state of Missouri, who served as the 11th Governor of the state from 1853 to 1857. He also served as a United States Army brigadier general during the Mexican-American War, and a Confederate Army major general in the American Civil War. Price is best known for his victories in New Mexico and Chihuahua during the Mexican conflict, and for his losses at the Battles of Pea Ridge and Westport during the Civil War–the latter being the culmination of his ill-fated Missouri Campaign of 1864. Following the war, Price took his remaining troops to Mexico rather than surrender, unsuccessfully seeking service with the Emperor Maximillian there. He ultimately returned to Missouri, where he died in poverty and was buried in St. Louis.
Sterling "Old Pap" Price was born near Farmville, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, into a family of Welsh origin. His mother was Elizabeth Williamson, and his father was Pugh Price, whose ancestor John Price was born in Brecknock, Wales, in 1584 and settled in the Virginia Colony. Price attended Hampden-Sydney College in 1826 and 1827, where he studied law and worked at the courthouse near his home. He was admitted to the Virginia bar and established a law practice.

wn.com/Sterling_Price
Stonewall Jackson
Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (January 21, 1824 – May 10, 1863) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War, and one of the best-known Confederate commanders after General Robert E. Lee. His military career includes the Valley Campaign of 1862 and his service as a corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee. Confederate pickets accidentally shot him at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863; the general survived with the loss of an arm to amputation. However, he died of complications from pneumonia eight days later. His death was a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting not only its military prospects, but also the morale of its army and of the general public.
Jackson in death became an icon of Southern heroism and commitment, joining Lee in the pantheon of the "Lost Cause".
Military historians consider Jackson to be one of the most gifted tactical commanders in U.S. history. His Valley Campaign and his envelopment of the Union Army right wing at Chancellorsville are studied worldwide even today as examples of innovative and bold leadership. He excelled as well in other battles: the First Battle of Bull Run (where he received his famous nickname "Stonewall"), Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Jackson was not universally successful as a commander, however, as displayed by his weak and confused efforts during the Seven Days Battles around Richmond in 1862.

wn.com/Stonewall_Jackson
Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens (April 4, 1792 – August 11, 1868), of Pennsylvania, was a Republican leader and one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Stevens, a witty, sarcastic speaker and flamboyant party leader, dominated the House from 1861 until his death and wrote much of the financial legislation that paid for the American Civil War. Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner were the prime leaders of the Radical Republicans during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. A biographer characterizes him as, "The Great Commoner, savior of free public education in Pennsylvania, national Republican leader in the struggles against slavery in the United States and intrepid mainstay of the attempt to secure racial justice for the freedmen during Reconstruction, the only member of the House of Representatives ever to have been known as the 'dictator' of Congress."
Historians' views of Stevens have swung sharply since his death as interpretations of Reconstruction have changed. The Dunning School, which viewed the period as a disaster because it violated American traditions of republicanism and fair government, depicted Stevens as a villain for his advocacy of harsh measures in the South, and this characterization held sway for much of the early 20th Century.

wn.com/Thaddeus_Stevens
Truman Seymour
Truman Seymour (September 24, 1824 – October 30, 1891) was a career soldier and an accomplished painter. He served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, rising to the rank of major general. He commanded the Union troops at the Battle of Olustee, the largest Civil War battle fought in Florida.
Seymour was born in Burlington, Vermont. The son of a Methodist minister, he attended Norwich University, beginning in 1840. After spending two years at Norwich, Seymour received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1846, ranked nineteenth in a class of fifty-nine graduates. West Point’s Class of 1846 stands as one of the most illustrious in the academy’s storied history with George McClellan, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Jesse Lee Reno, Darius Couch, George Stoneman, Sam Sturgis, David R. Jones, and George Pickett among its members. After graduating, Seymour was assigned to the 1st U.S. Artillery.
He immediately began his military service in the Mexican-American War. During that war, he was promoted to first lieutenant for his performance in the battles of Contreras and Churubusco. After returning to the United States following the war, he became an assistant professor of drawing at West Point from 1850 to 1853 and fought against the Seminoles in Florida from 1856 to 1858. He was promoted to captain on November 22, 1860.

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Walter Phelps
Walter Phelps Jr. (Oct 15, 1832–February 20, 1878) was an officer in the Union Army throughout the American Civil War, ending the war as commanding general of the First Iron Brigade. Phelps was born in New York, however the date is unknown because his records are believed to have been lost in a fire in his native home.
Phelps was appointed Colonel of the 22nd New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment that mustered in on June 6, 1861 for two-years service. Colonel Phelps later assumed command of the 1st Brigade, 1st Corps, 1st Division, after General Hatch was transferred out of the Brigade.
Colonel Phelps wrote: "In compliance with orders from General Hatch, I assumed command of his brigade Sunday, September 14, [1862] at 10 a.m. The column of General Hooker's corps was then moving through Frederick toward Middletown on the pike."
He was then in command of the First Iron Brigade but at this time it was known simply as the "Iron Brigade" because at this time the "Iron Brigade of the West" had not gained its acclaim. At the Battle of Antietam however the "Iron Brigade of the East" supported and rescued the "Iron Brigade of the West". Phelps' Iron Brigade advanced through the cornfield early on the 17th in close support of General John Gibbon's Iron Brigade. The 14th Brooklyn under his command helped the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers as a Confederate charge was about to push them back through the cornfield. Phelps' Brigade got the farthest during the action, the 14th Brooklyn being the only regiment to reach Dunkard Church and hold their waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

wn.com/Walter_Phelps
William Barksdale
William Barksdale (August 21, 1821 – July 3, 1863) was a lawyer, newspaper editor, U.S. Congressman, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. A staunch secessionist, he was mortally wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg while leading his brigade's attack on Union forces not far from Cemetery Ridge.
William Barksdale was born in Smyrna, Tennessee, the son of William Barksdale and Nancy Hervey Lester Barskdale. He was the older brother of Ethelbert Barksdale, who would serve in both the antebellum U.S. Congress and then the Confederate States Congress during the Civil War.
Barksdale graduated from the University of Nashville and practiced law in Mississippi from the age of 21, but gave up his practice to become the editor of the Columbus [Mississippi] Democrat, a pro-slavery newspaper. He enlisted in the 2nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment and served in the Mexican War as a captain and quartermaster, but often participated in the infantry fighting as well.
After the war, he entered the U.S. House of Representatives and achieved national prominence as a States' rights Democrat, serving from March 4, 1853, to January 12, 1861. He was considered to be one of the most ferocious of all the "Fire-Eaters" in the House. He allegedly stood by the side of Representative Preston S. Brooks as Brooks attacked Massachusetts abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber with a cane, although he was not one of the members that the House tried to censure after the incident.

wn.com/William_Barksdale
William Corby
Rev. William Corby, CSC (October 2, 1833 – December 28, 1897) was an American priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and a Union Army chaplain attatched to the Irish Brigade. Corby is perhaps best known for his giving general absolution to the Irish Brigade on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, which was dramatized in the film Gettysburg. Fr. Corby also served twice as President of the University of Notre Dame. The school's Corby Hall is named for him, and a statue of him similar to that at Gettysburg stands outside this building on the Notre Dame campus.
Fr. Corby was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Daniel Corby, an Irish native, and his wife Elizabeth, a Canadian.
Widely remembered among military chaplains and celebrated by Irish-American fraternal organizations, his statue with right hand raised in the gesture of blessing was the first statue of a non-general erected on the Gettysburg Battlefield.

wn.com/William_Corby
William Farrar Smith
William Farrar Smith (February 17, 1824 – February 28, 1903), was a civil engineer, a member of the New York City police commission, and Union general in the American Civil War.
Smith, known to his friends as "Baldy", was born at St. Albans, Vermont, a cousin of John G. Smith, and the son of Ashbel and Sarah Butler Smith. He was educated locally in Vermont until he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1841, and graduated four years later standing fourth of 41 cadets. Smith was brevetted a second lieutenant on July 1, 1845, and was assigned to the Topographical Engineers Corps. He was promoted to second lieutenant on July 14, 1849, and promoted to first lieutenant on March 3, 1853.
During his service in the Corps, Smith conducted surveys of the Great Lakes, the states of Texas, Arizona, and Florida, as well as much of Mexico. While serving in Florida, Smith was stricken with the infectious disease malaria. Although he would recover at the time, the illness affected his physical health for the rest of his life. In 1856 Smith began his involvement in the lighthouse service, which was headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, and eventually rose to become the Engineer Secretary of the Lighthouse Board.

wn.com/William_Farrar_Smith
William Quantrill
William Clarke Quantrill (July 31, 1837 – June 6, 1865) was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War. After leading a Confederate bushwhacker unit along the Missouri-Kansas border in the early 1860s, which included the infamous raid and sacking of Lawrence, Kansas in 1863, Quantrill eventually ended up in Kentucky where he was mortally wounded in a Union ambush in May 1865, aged 27.
Quantrill was the oldest of 12 children, four of which did not make it past infancy.. He was born at Canal Dover (now just Dover), Ohio, on July 31, 1837. His father was Thomas Henry Quantrill, formerly of Hagerstown, Maryland. His mother, Caroline Cornelia Clark, was a native of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They were married on October 11, 1836, and moved to Canal Dover the following December.
William was well educated and followed in his father’s footsteps and became a school teacher at the age of sixteen. In 1854, his abusive father died of tuberculosis, leaving the family with a huge financial debt. William's mother had to turn her home into a boarding house in order to survive. He helped support the family working as a school teacher, but left home a year later and headed to Mendota, Illinois.. In Illinois, William continued his career as a teacher but soon moved again to Indiana. While in Indiana, William worked as a bookkeeper for a lumberyard in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as well as working as a school teacher all in order to try and support his family. However, unable to earn a decent wage, he quickly took up gambling and moved out to Salt Lake City, Utah. It was during this time that he learned how to use the Bowie knife, Sharps rifle and the Colt revolver. At the age of 19 he moved to Missouri at the urging of his friends and his mother. She was able to find a family friend that would take William with him to Missouri..

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William Rosecrans
William Starke Rosecrans (September 6, 1819 – March 11, 1898) was an inventor, coal-oil company executive, diplomat, politician, and United States Army officer. He gained fame for his role as a Union general during the American Civil War. He was the victor at prominent Western Theater battles, but his military career was effectively ended following his disastrous defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863.
Rosecrans was a graduate of West Point who served as a professor at the Academy and in engineering assignments before leaving the Army to pursue a career in civil engineering. At the start of the Civil War, leading troops from Ohio, he achieved early combat success in western Virginia. In 1862 in the Western Theater, he won the battles of Iuka and Corinth while under the command of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. His brusque, outspoken manner and willingness to quarrel openly with superiors caused a professional rivalry with Grant (as well as with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton) that would adversely affect Rosecrans's career.

wn.com/William_Rosecrans
Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott (June 13, 1786 – May 29, 1866) was a United States Army general, and unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Whig Party in 1852.
Known as "Old Fuss and Feathers" and the "Grand Old Man of the Army," he served on active duty as a general longer than any other man in American history, and many historians rate him the best American commander of his time. Over the course of his forty-seven-year career, he commanded forces in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Black Hawk War, the Second Seminole War, and, briefly, the American Civil War, conceiving the Union strategy known as the Anaconda Plan that would be used to defeat the Confederacy. He served as Commanding General of the United States Army for twenty years, longer than any other holder of the office.
A national hero after the Mexican-American War, he served as military governor of Mexico City. Such was his stature that, in 1852, the United States Whig Party passed over its own incumbent President of the United States, Millard Fillmore, to nominate Scott in the United States presidential election. Scott lost to Democrat Franklin Pierce in the general election, but remained a popular national figure, receiving a brevet promotion in 1856 to the rank of lieutenant general, becoming the first American since George Washington to hold that rank.

wn.com/Winfield_Scott

The Battle of Antietam

The Battle of Antietam, fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antie...

published: 30 Apr 2012

author: HistoryFeed

Lincoln and Lee at Antietam: The Cost of Freedom

Lincoln and Lee at Antietam -- The Cost of Freedom focuses on the single bloodiest day in ...

published: 14 Sep 2012

author: jansonmedia

1 of 5 Battle of Antietam 1862.mp4

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published: 26 Feb 2010

author: kelandsmith1

The Battle of Antietam

The American Civil War. If you want to download this video then use this site: keepvid.com...

published: 12 Aug 2008

author: piksluger

Gods and Generals Trailer w/ Antietam Scenes

This rare trailer features several deleted scenes from the movie including the Battle of A...

published: 12 Feb 2010

author: gettysburgguy

Going Home: Antietam's Last Unknown Soldier

On September 15 2009, almost exactly 147 years following the Battle of Antietam, a young N...

published: 16 Sep 2009

author: mannie1952

Huntin around Antietam

We have traveled out of North Carolina to go do some digging down in Maryland for the week...

published: 31 Aug 2009

author: WeDigDixie

2 of 5 Battle of Antietam 1862.mp4

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published: 26 Feb 2010

author: kelandsmith1

The Battle of Antietam

Antietam National Battlefield rangers describe how 23000 soldiers were killed, wounded or ...

published: 11 Sep 2012

author: antietamnps

Civil War Photography - The Dead of Antietam

Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of w...

published: 20 Sep 2012

author: antietamnps

3 of 5 Battle of Antietam 1862.mp4

...

published: 26 Feb 2010

author: kelandsmith1

Antietam Luminary December 4, 2011

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published: 16 Dec 2011

author: antietamnps

4 of 5 Battle of Antietam 1862.mp4

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published: 26 Feb 2010

author: kelandsmith1

Michigan At Antietam

Nearly 90000 Michigan men volunteered to for fight for the Union Army during the American ...

published: 16 Jun 2012

author: MotionPossible

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photo: AP / Virginie Nguyen Huang

In this Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 photo, a Free Syrian Army fighter takes cover during fighting with the Syrian Army in Azaz, Syria.

Syria's chemical weapons safe for now: Russia

Newstrack India

23 Dec 2012

Tweet. Moscow, Dec 23 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Chemical weapons in Syria are under the control of the government, which has consolidated them in one or two locations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. "As of right now, the (Syrian) government is doing all it can to safeguard those weapons," he said. "We are following all leads concerning chemical weapons," Lavrov said ... "My answer is very simple. Why use us as a postman ... pm/ ... ) .. ). ... . ....(size: 3.2Kb)

photo: Creative Commons / Giorgione

Anbetung der Hirten (Adoration of the Shepherds) (c. 1500–10), by Italian painter Giorgio da Castelfranco. Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary as a fulfillment of the Old Testament's Messianic prophecy.

Liberating Burdensome and Tortuous Beasts (An Animal Liberation Theology)

WorldNews.com

24 Dec 2012

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. A deadly silence immediately followed after a bullet penetrated the calf's skull. Against my wishes, Vic had decided against either amputating its leg or contacting a veterinarian-something he reasoned would have been too expensive. The unfortunate calf had slid down into a ravine where its hind leg, which was mangled and torn, became wrapped in barbed wire ... But it was more than a bellow ... 9....(size: 6.3Kb)

photo: AP / Musadeq Sadeq

A member of security escorts a U.S. convoy in to the Kabul police headquarters, where a an American advisor was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 24, 2012.

Afghan policewoman kills US adviser in Kabul

my SA

24 Dec 2012

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan policewoman shot and killed an American adviser outside the police headquarters in Kabul on Monday, the latest in a rising tide of insider attacks by Afghans against their foreign allies, senior Afghan officials said. The woman, identified as Afghan police Sgt ... The woman was taken into Afghan custody shortly after the attack ... As many Afghans, the policewoman uses only one name ... Air Force Lt. Col ... Gen ... ....(size: 4.6Kb)

photo: AP / Altaf Qadri

Indian police officers baton charge protesters near the Presidential Palace in New Delhi, India, Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012.

India govt to probe gang-rape, enhance punishment

Khaleej Times

23 Dec 2012

A commission will be set up to probe the gang-rape and torture of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi and measures to ensure such crimes do not recur while laws will be amended to enhance punishment for rape, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said . He also appealed the thousands of protesters on the capital’s streets, demanding justice for the victim, to withdraw ... “The government is serious on the issue. ...  . . ....(size: 2.4Kb)

photo: AP

In this released by the South Korean Defense Ministry on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012, taken at unknown location in South Korea, an investigator examines a piece of debris from a rocket launched on Dec. 12, 2012, by North Korea, which was found by the South Korean navy in the Yellow Sea, off Gunsan, South Korea.

North Korea rocket launch was 'missile test'

Al Jazeera

23 Dec 2012

North Korea's launching of a rocket into space last week amounted to the test of a ballistic missile capable of carrying a half-ton payload over 10,000km, the South Korean defence ministry says. "Based on our analysis and simulation, the missile is capable of flying more than 10,000km with a warhead of 500-600kg," a defence ministry official told reporters on Sunday ... 415 Source .. Agencies. Share. Send Feedback. Featured on Al Jazeera. Jaws....(size: 18.8Kb)

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Review: Ricky Swallow's modern sculpture feels right at home at Huntington

The Los Angeles Times

24 Dec 2012

It's not obvious at first. At the end of a hallway at the top of the staircase, a tall, slender sculpture appears framed in a window ... a tear revealing a corrugated surface underneath ... Death, Mourning, and Memory in the American Civil War" in the Boone Gallery, where a room of truly harrowing photographs documenting the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam is accompanied by a haunting soundtrack by painter and sound artist Steve Roden ... ... ....(size: 33.7Kb)

American nightmare: the art of the Civil War

The Independent

24 Dec 2012

War has been the defining challenge for artists, as for society, for virtually all of history. And for most of the last century and a half the painting and sculpture have vied with photography as the means of best expressing its reality and its consequences ... Alexander Gardner's shots of the dead after the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg are as great and as grim as any photographer achieved in the European world wars or Vietnam....(size: 6.0Kb)

'Threat Vector' covers cyberwarfare, Tom Clancy-style

STL Today

23 Dec 2012

When Tom Clancy’s fans head into a new book, they know what to expect — lots of technical detail, lots of blood and gore. That’s what they’ll find in Clancy’s latest, “Threat Vector .”. The cover features the silhouette of a made-in-St ... But the more dangerous combat in “Threat Vector” is cyberwarfare ... As for blood and gore, the casualty count in “Threat Vector” approaches the numbers run up in the Battle of Antietam ... ‘Threat Vector’....(size: 2.3Kb)

Friday's Scores

San Francisco Chronicle

22 Dec 2012

BOYS' BASKETBALL. Aliquippa 68, Shenango 63. Allegheny-Clarion Valley 64, Keystone 58. Apollo-Ridge 67, West Shamokin 52. Archbishop Ryan 65, Abraham Lincoln 45. Bald Eagle Area 55, Philipsburg-Osceola 36. Beaver Area 54, Ambridge 35. Beaver Falls 78, Elwood City Riverside 57. Bellwood-Antis 70, Juniata Valley 39. Bensalem 57, William Tennent 49. Bentworth 69, Frazier 67. Berks Catholic 59, Fleetwood 48 ... 64 ... Truman 53 ... Wyomissing 65, Antietam 37....(size: 12.1Kb)

Junior State of America to Run AP US History Summer Program at the University of Virginia

San Francisco Chronicle

22 Dec 2012

Students will be enriched by the five-week AP US History program at the historic University of Virginia ... Washington, DC (PRWEB) December 21, 2012 ... "Moving our AP U.S ... UVA's proximity to some of the most important sites in American history --- Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, the Civil War sites from Charlottesville to Antietam, and the homes of three American Presidents --- Monticello, Montpelier and Mount Vernon." ... ###....(size: 3.1Kb)

D.C., Maryland And Virginia Real Estate: Retreats, Escapes And Other Peaceful Properties (PHOTOS)

Huffington Post

20 Dec 2012

WASHINGTON -- You'd probably feel a lot more relaxed right now if you could get away from it all. Really, really far away from it all, like all the way to a seven-bedroom lodge right on a Maryland ski slope. Or a five-bedroom house built in the 1700s that sits on 180 acres in rural Virginia ... Loading Slideshow ... 3116 7th St ... 3116 7th St ... This three-bedroom, three-bath house has river and creek views, and sits on a bend of Antietam Creek ... 1 ... 2....(size: 15.9Kb)

2012 a good year for Washington County tourism

Springfield News-Sun

19 Dec 2012

The sesquicentennial celebrations of the Battles of Antietam and the Battle of South Mountain, both part of the Maryland Campaign of the Civil War in 1862, played a major role in the increase of visitors, which are defined as people who travel 50 miles or more into the county, according to Riford ... "For instance, October, way after the anniversary of the battles of Antietam and what not, was our busiest month of the year."....(size: 3.3Kb)

Emancipation Proclamation Draft on Display in January (The Library of Congress)

noodls

18 Dec 2012

(Source. The Library of Congress). Contact. Donna Urschel (202) 707-1639. Contact. Erin Allen (202) 707-7302 December 18, 2012. Lincoln's First Draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to be on Display in January. The Library of Congress will place on display the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, handwritten by President Abraham Lincoln, for six weeks beginning Jan ... 3 through Feb ... S.E. in Washington, D.C ... 17, 1862 at Antietam. On Sept....(size: 3.7Kb)

A compelling look at a remarkable year

The Miami Herald

16 Dec 2012

On the afternoon of New Year’s Day in 1863, an exhausted President Abraham Lincoln sat down to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the rebellious Southern states ... But the president had a problem ... His keen sense of timing and political maneuvering — and the bloody battle of Antietam, which repulsed Confederate forces — gave him the space and time to issue the Emancipation Proclamation ... ....(size: 3.8Kb)

Twelve Months of Reading

Wall Street Journal

15 Dec 2012

Richard Slotkin's "The Long Road to Antietam" stands out for its ability to show how human relationships remain powerful historical forces, even during times of great crisis ... Lincoln's frustrations with McClellan's half-measures helped him to appreciate the full scope of what the Civil War needed to achieve, leading to his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam....(size: 74.3Kb)

Holiday gift suggestions for the Civil War enthusiast

The Examiner

13 Dec 2012

For the hard-to-buy-for Civil War buff in your family, here are some gift suggestions. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling book “Team of Rivals. The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” ... Or Ted Alexander’s excellent book “Battle of Antietam. The Bloodiest Day”. This year was the Sesquicentennial of the Battle of Antietam ... Lee and covering the war up to Gettysburg ... ....(size: 1.8Kb)

Should You See This Gruesome Image?

New America Foundation

12 Dec 2012

Last March, responding to news of a killing, I found myself walking in the darkness at a crime scene in Quila, a small community outside Culiacán in Sinaloa, the state that is ground zero in Mexico’s drug war ... Rigor mortis appeared to be setting in ... They go back to one of America’s earliest encounters with gruesome photographs—Alexander Gardner’s images of Civil War casualties from the Battle of Antietam in 1862....(size: 10.2Kb)

Shiloh to Host Birthday Celebration (NPS - National Park Service)

noodls

11 Dec 2012

(Source. NPS - National Park Service). Date. December 10, 2012. Contact. Shiloh Visitor Center, 731-689-5696. Contact. Hardin County Tourism, 731-925-8181 ... In the power-point presentation I will discuss the creation of the park, and some of the changes it has seen over the years," stated Park Ranger Heather Smedley ... Shiloh was one of the first five military parks created, along with Chickamauga, Vicksburg, Antietam, and Gettysburg....(size: 2.9Kb)

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"Antietam" redirects here. For other uses, see Antietam (disambiguation).

Battle of Antietam

Part of the American Civil War

The Battle of Antietam, by Kurz & Allison, depicting the scene of action at Burnside's Bridge

Date	September 17, 1862 (1862-09-17)
Location	Near Sharpsburg, Maryland
Result	Tactically inconclusive; strategic Union victory^[1]

Belligerents

United States (Union)

CSA (Confederacy)

Commanders and leaders

George B. McClellan

Robert E. Lee

Strength

75,500 "present for duty"^[2]

38,000 "engaged"^[2]

Casualties and losses

12,401

(2,108 killed
9,540 wounded
753 captured/missing)^[3]

10,316

(1,546 killed
7,752 wounded
1,018 captured/missing)^[3]

v t e Maryland Campaign

Mile Hill Harpers Ferry Crampton's Gap South Mountain Antietam Shepherdstown Unison

The Battle of Antietam ( /ænˈtiːtəm/) also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South, fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties on both sides.^[4]

After pursuing Confederate General Robert E. Lee into Maryland, Union Army Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan launched attacks against Lee's army, in defensive positions behind Antietam Creek. At dawn on September 17, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee's left flank. Attacks and counterattacks swept across Miller's cornfield and fighting swirled around the Dunker Church. Union assaults against the Sunken Road eventually pierced the Confederate center, but the Federal advantage was not followed up. In the afternoon, Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside's corps entered the action, capturing a stone bridge over Antietam Creek and advancing against the Confederate right. At a crucial moment, Confederate Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill's division arrived from Harpers Ferry and launched a surprise counterattack, driving back Burnside and ending the battle. Although outnumbered two-to-one, Lee committed his entire force, while McClellan sent in less than three-quarters of his army, enabling Lee to fight the Federals to a standstill. During the night, both armies consolidated their lines. In spite of crippling casualties, Lee continued to skirmish with McClellan throughout September 18, while removing his battered army south of the Potomac River.^[5]

Despite having superiority of numbers, McClellan's attacks failed to achieve force concentration, allowing Lee to counter by shifting forces and moving interior lines to meet each challenge. Despite ample reserve forces that could have been deployed to exploit localized successes, McClellan failed to destroy Lee's army. Nevertheless, Lee's invasion of Maryland was ended, and he was able to withdraw his army back to Virginia without interference from the cautious McClellan. Although the battle was tactically inconclusive, it had significance as enough of a victory to give President Abraham Lincoln the confidence to announce his Emancipation Proclamation, which discouraged the British and French governments from potential plans for recognition of the Confederacy.

1 Background and the Maryland Campaign
2 Opposing forces
- 2.1 Confederate
- 2.2 Union
3 Battle
4 Aftermath
5 Gallery
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links

Background and the Maryland Campaign [link]

Further information: Maryland Campaign

Maryland Campaign, actions September 3 to September 15, 1862.

Confederate

Union

Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia—about 55,000 men^[6]—entered the state of Maryland on September 3, 1862, following their victory at Second Bull Run on August 30. Emboldened by success, the Confederate leadership intended to take the war into enemy territory. Lee's invasion of Maryland was intended to run simultaneously with an invasion of Kentucky by the armies of Braxton Bragg and Kirby Smith. It was also necessary for logistical reasons, as northern Virginia's farms had been stripped bare of food. Based on events such as the Baltimore riots in the spring of 1861 and the fact that President Lincoln had to pass through the city in disguise en route to his inauguration, Confederate leaders assumed that Maryland would welcome the Confederate forces warmly. They sang the tune "Maryland, My Maryland!" as they marched, but by the fall of 1862 pro-Union sentiment was winning out, especially in the western parts of the state. Civilians generally hid inside their houses as Lee's army passed through their towns, while the Army of the Potomac was cheered. Some Confederate politicians, including President Jefferson Davis, believed the prospect of foreign recognition would increase if they won a military victory on Northern soil; such a victory might gain recognition and financial support from Great Britain and France, although there is no evidence that Lee thought the South should base its military plans on this possibility.^[7]

While McClellan's 75,500-man Army of the Potomac was moving to intercept Lee, two Union soldiers (Corporal Barton W. Mitchell and First Sergeant John M. Bloss^[8] of the 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry) discovered a mislaid copy of Lee's detailed battle plans—Special Order 191—wrapped around three cigars. The order indicated that Lee had divided his army and dispersed portions geographically (to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Hagerstown, Maryland), thus making each subject to isolation and defeat if McClellan could move quickly enough. McClellan waited about 18 hours before deciding to take advantage of this intelligence and reposition his forces, thus squandering an opportunity to defeat Lee decisively.^[9]

There were two significant engagements in the Maryland campaign prior to the major battle of Antietam: Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's capture of Harpers Ferry and McClellan's assault through the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Battle of South Mountain. The former was significant because a large portion of Lee's army was absent from the start of the battle of Antietam, attending to the surrender of the Union garrison; the latter because stout Confederate defenses at two passes through the mountains delayed McClellan's advance enough for Lee to concentrate the remainder of his army at Sharpsburg.^[10]

Opposing forces [link]

Confederate [link]

Confederate corps commanders
Maj. Gen. James Longstreet Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart

Further information: Antietam Confederate order of battle

General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was organized into two large infantry corps.^[11]

The First Corps, under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, consisted of the divisions of:

Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws (brigades of Brig. Gens. Joseph B. Kershaw, Howell Cobb, Paul J. Semmes, and William Barksdale).
Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson (brigades of Cols. Alfred Cumming, W.A. Parham, and Carnot Posey, and Brig. Gens. Lewis A. Armistead, Roger A. Pryor, and Ambrose R. Wright).
Brig. Gen. David R. Jones (brigades of Brig. Gens. Robert A. Toombs, Thomas F. Drayton, Richard B. Garnett, James L. Kemper, and Cols. Joseph T. Walker and George T. Anderson).
Brig. Gen. John G. Walker (brigades of Colonel Van H. Manning and Brig. Gen. Robert Ransom, Jr.).
Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood (brigades of Cols. William T. Wofford and Evander M. Law).
Independent brigade under Brig. Gen. Nathan G. "Shanks" Evans.

The Second Corps, under Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, consisted of the divisions of:

Brig. Gen. Alexander R. Lawton (brigades of Col. Marcellus Douglass, Brig. Gen. Jubal A. Early, Col. James A. Walker, and Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays).
Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill (the Light Division — brigades of Brig. Gens. Lawrence O'Bryan Branch, Maxcy Gregg, James J. Archer, and William Dorsey Pender, and Cols. John M. Brockenbrough and Edward L. Thomas).
Brig. Gen. John R. Jones (brigades of Cols. A.J. Grigsby, E. T. H. Warren, Bradley T. Johnson, and Brig. Gen. William E. Starke).
Maj. Gen. D.H. Hill (brigades of Brig. Gens. Roswell S. Ripley, Robert E. Rodes, Samuel Garland, Jr., George B. Anderson, and Col. Alfred H. Colquitt).

The remaining units were the Cavalry Corps, under Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, and the reserve artillery, commanded by Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton. The Second Corps was organized with artillery attached to each division, in contrast to the First Corps, which reserved its artillery at the corps level.

Union [link]

Further information: Antietam Union order of battle

Union corps commanders
Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner Fitz John Porter.jpg Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside Maj. Gen. Joseph K. Mansfield

Lincoln with McClellan and staff at the Grove Farm after the battle. Notable figures (from left) are 5. Alexander S. Webb, Chief of Staff, V Corps; 6. McClellan;. 8. Dr. Jonathan Letterman; 10. Lincoln; 11. Henry J. Hunt; 12. Fitz John Porter; 15. Andrew A. Humphreys; 16. Capt. George Armstrong Custer.

Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac, bolstered by units absorbed from John Pope's Army of Virginia, included six infantry corps.^[12]

The I Corps, under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, consisted of the divisions of:

Brig. Gen. Abner Doubleday (brigades of Col. Walter Phelps, Brig. Gens. Marsena R. Patrick and John Gibbon, and Lt. Col. J. William Hofmann).
Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts (brigades of Brig. Gen. Abram Duryée, Col. William A. Christian, and Brig. Gen. George L. Hartsuff).
Brig. Gen. George G. Meade (brigades of Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour, Col. Albert Magilton and Lt. Col. Robert Anderson).

The II Corps, under Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, consisted of the divisions of:

Maj. Gen. Israel B. Richardson (brigades of Brig. Gen. John C. Caldwell, Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Meagher, and Col. John R. Brooke).
Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick (brigades of Brig. Gens. Willis A. Gorman, Oliver O. Howard, and Napoleon J.T. Dana).
Brig. Gen. William H. French (brigades of Brig. Gen. Nathan Kimball, Col. Dwight Morris, and Brig. Gen. Max Weber).

The V Corps, under Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter, consisted of the divisions of:

Maj. Gen. George W. Morell (brigades of Col. James Barnes, Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin, and Col. T.B.W. Stockton).
Brig. Gen. George Sykes (brigades of Lt. Col. Robert C. Buchanan, Major Charles S. Lovell, and Col. Gouverneur K. Warren).
Brig. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys (brigades of Brig. Gen. Erastus B. Tyler and Col. Peter H. Allabach).

The VI Corps, under Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin, consisted of the divisions of:

Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum (brigades of Col. Alfred T.A. Torbert, Col. Joseph J. Bartlett, and Brig. Gen. John Newton).
Maj. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith (brigades of Brig. Gens. Winfield S. Hancock and William T. H. Brooks and Col. William H. Irwin).
A division from the IV Corps under Maj. Gen. Darius N. Couch (brigades of Brig. Gens. Charles Devens, Jr., Albion P. Howe, and John Cochran).

The IX Corps, under Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside (Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox exercised operational command during the battle), consisted of the divisions of:

Brig. Gen. Orlando B. Willcox (brigades of Cols. Benjamin C. Christ and Thomas Welsh).
Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis (brigades of Brig. Gens. James Nagle and Edward Ferrero).
Brig. Gen. Isaac P. Rodman (brigades of Cols. Harrison S. Fairchild and Edward Harland).
Kanawha Division, under Col. Eliakim P. Scammon (brigades of Cols. Hugh Ewing and George Crook).

The XII Corps, under Maj. Gen. Joseph K. Mansfield, consisted of the divisions of:

Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams (brigades of Brig. Gens. Samuel W. Crawford and George H. Gordon).
Brig. Gen. George S. Greene (brigades of Lt. Col. Hector Tyndale, Col. Henry J. Stainrook, and Col. William B. Goodrich).

The cavalry division of Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton consisted of the brigades of Maj. Charles J. Whiting and Cols. John F. Farnsworth, Richard H. Rush, Andrew T. McReynolds, and Benjamin F. Davis.

Battle [link]

Overview of the Battle of Antietam.

Near the town of Sharpsburg, Lee deployed his available forces behind Antietam Creek along a low ridge, starting on September 15. While it was an effective defensive position, it was not an impregnable one. The terrain provided excellent cover for infantrymen, with rail and stone fences, outcroppings of limestone, and little hollows and swales. The creek to their front was only a minor barrier, ranging from 60 to 100 feet (18–30 m) in width, and was fordable in places and crossed by three stone bridges each a mile (1.5 km) apart. It was also a precarious position because the Confederate rear was blocked by the Potomac River and only a single crossing point, Boteler's Ford at Shepherdstown, was nearby should retreat be necessary. (The ford at Williamsport, Maryland, was 10 miles (16 km) northwest from Sharpsburg and had been used by Jackson in his march to Harpers Ferry. The disposition of Union forces during the battle made it impractical to consider retreating in that direction.) And on September 15, the force under Lee's immediate command consisted of no more than 18,000 men, only a third the size of the Federal army.^[13]

The first two Union divisions arrived on the afternoon of September 15 and the bulk of the remainder of the army late that evening. Although an immediate Union attack on the morning of September 16 would have had an overwhelming advantage in numbers, McClellan's trademark caution and his belief that Lee had as many as 100,000 men at Sharpsburg caused him to delay his attack for a day.^[14] This gave the Confederates more time to prepare defensive positions and allowed Longstreet's corps to arrive from Hagerstown and Jackson's corps, minus A.P. Hill's division, to arrive from Harpers Ferry. Jackson defended the left (northern) flank, anchored on the Potomac, Longstreet the right (southern) flank, anchored on the Antietam, a line that was about 4 miles (6 km) long. (As the battle progressed and Lee shifted units, these corps boundaries overlapped considerably.)^[15]

On the evening of September 16, McClellan ordered Hooker's I Corps to cross Antietam Creek and probe the enemy positions. Meade's division cautiously attacked the Confederates under Hood near the East Woods. After darkness, artillery fire continued as McClellan continued to position his troops. McClellan's plan was to overwhelm the enemy's left flank. He arrived at this decision because of the configuration of bridges over the Antietam. The lower bridge (which would soon be named Burnside Bridge) was dominated by Confederate positions on the bluffs overlooking it. The middle bridge, on the road from Boonsboro, was subject to artillery fire from the heights near Sharpsburg. But the upper bridge was 2 miles (3 km) east of the Confederate guns and could be crossed safely. McClellan planned to commit more than half his army to the assault, starting with two corps, supported by a third, and if necessary a fourth. He intended to launch a simultaneous diversionary attack against the Confederate right with a fifth corps, and he was prepared to strike the center with his reserves if either attack succeeded.^[16] The skirmish in the East Woods served to signal McClellan's intentions to Lee, who prepared his defenses accordingly. He shifted men to his left flank and sent urgent messages to his two commanders who had not yet arrived on the battlefield: Lafayette McLaws with two divisions and A.P. Hill with one division.^[17]

McClellan's plans were ill-coordinated and were executed poorly. He issued to each of his subordinate commanders only the orders for his own corps, not general orders describing the entire battle plan. The terrain of the battlefield made it difficult for those commanders to monitor events outside of their sectors, and McClellan's headquarters were more than a mile in the rear (at the Philip Pry house, east of the creek), making it difficult for him to control the separate corps. Therefore, the battle progressed the next day as essentially three separate, mostly uncoordinated battles: morning in the northern end of the battlefield, midday in the center, and afternoon in the south. This lack of coordination and concentration of McClellan's forces almost completely nullified the two-to-one advantage the Union enjoyed and allowed Lee to shift his defensive forces to meet each offensive.^[18]

Morning [link]

Assaults by the I Corps, 5:30 to 7:30 a.m.

The battle opened at dawn (about 5:30 a.m.) on September 17 with an attack down the Hagerstown Turnpike by the Union I Corps under Joseph Hooker. Hooker's objective was the plateau on which sat the Dunker Church, a modest whitewashed building belonging to a local sect of German Baptists. Hooker had approximately 8,600 men, little more than the 7,700 defenders under Stonewall Jackson, and this slight disparity was more than offset by the Confederates' strong defensive positions.^[19] Abner Doubleday's division moved on Hooker's right, James Ricketts's moved on the left into the East Woods, and George Meade's Pennsylvania Reserves division deployed in the center and slightly to the rear. Jackson's defense consisted of the divisions under Alexander Lawton and John R. Jones in line from the West Woods, across the Turnpike, and along the southern end of the Miller Cornfield. Four brigades were held in reserve inside the West Woods.^[20]

As the first Union men emerged from the North Woods and into the Cornfield, an artillery duel erupted. Confederate fire was from the horse artillery batteries under Jeb Stuart to the west and four batteries under Col. Stephen D. Lee on the high ground across the pike from the Dunker Church to the south. Union return fire was from nine batteries on the ridge behind the North Woods and twenty 20-pounder Parrott rifles, 2 miles (3 km) east of Antietam Creek. The conflagration caused heavy casualties on both sides and was described by Col. Lee as "artillery Hell."^[21]

Seeing the glint of Confederate bayonets concealed in the Cornfield, Hooker halted his infantry and brought up four batteries of artillery, which fired shell and canister over the heads of the Federal infantry, covering the field. All at once, the cornfield exploded into chaos as a savage battle raged through the area. Men beat each other over the heads with rifle butts and stabbed each other with bayonets. Officers rode around on their horses sweating and cursing and yelling orders no one could hear in the noise. Rifles became hot and fouled from too much firing. The air was filled with a hail of bullets and shells.^[22]

Dead Confederate soldiers from Starke's Louisiana Brigade, on the Hagerstown Turnpike, north of the Dunker Church. Photograph by Alexander Gardner

Meade's 1st Brigade of Pennsylvanians, under Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour, began advancing through the East Woods and exchanged fire with Colonel James Walker's brigade of Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina troops. As Walker's men forced Seymour's back, aided by Lee's artillery fire, Ricketts's division entered the Cornfield, also to be torn up by artillery. Brig. Gen. Abram Duryée's brigade marched directly into volleys from Colonel Marcellus Douglass's Georgia brigade. Enduring heavy fire from a range of 250 yards (230 m) and gaining no advantage because of a lack of reinforcements, Duryée ordered a withdrawal.^[20]

The reinforcements that Duryée had expected—brigades under Brig. Gen. George L. Hartsuff and Col. William A. Christian—had difficulties reaching the scene. Hartsuff was wounded by a shell, and Christian dismounted and fled to the rear in terror. When the men were rallied and advanced into the Cornfield, they met the same artillery and infantry fire as their predecessors. As the superior Union numbers began to tell, the Louisiana "Tiger" Brigade under Harry Hays entered the fray and forced the Union men back to the East Woods. The casualties received by the 12th Massachusetts Infantry, 67%, were the highest of any unit that day.^[23] The Tigers were beaten back eventually when the Federals brought up a battery of 3-inch ordnance rifles and rolled them directly into the Cornfield, point-blank fire that slaughtered the Tigers, who lost 323 of their 500 men.^[24]

...the most deadly fire of the war. Rifles are shot to pieces in the hands of the soldiers, canteens and haversacks are riddled with bullets, the dead and wounded go down in scores.

Captain Benjamin F. Cook of the 12th Massachusetts Infantry, on the attack by the Louisiana Tigers at the Cornfield^[25]

While the Cornfield remained a bloody stalemate, Federal advances a few hundred yards to the west were more successful. Brig. Gen. John Gibbon's 4th Brigade of Doubleday's division (recently named the Iron Brigade) began advancing down and astride the turnpike, into the cornfield, and in the West Woods, pushing aside Jackson's men.^[26] They were halted by a charge of 1,150 men from Starke's brigade, leveling heavy fire from 30 yards (30 m) away. The Confederate brigade withdrew after being exposed to fierce return fire from the Iron Brigade, and Starke was mortally wounded.^[27] The Union advance on the Dunker Church resumed and cut a large gap in Jackson's defensive line, which teetered near collapse. Although the cost was steep, Hooker's corps was making steady progress.

Confederate reinforcements arrived just after 7 a.m. The divisions under McLaws and Richard H. Anderson arrived following a night march from Harpers Ferry. Around 7:15, General Lee moved George T. Anderson's Georgia brigade from the right flank of the army to aid Jackson. At 7 a.m., Hood's division of 2,300 men advanced through the West Woods and pushed the Union troops back through the Cornfield again. The Texans attacked with particular ferocity because as they were called from their reserve position they were forced to interrupt the first hot breakfast they had had in days. They were aided by three brigades of D.H. Hill's division arriving from the Mumma Farm, southeast of the Cornfield, and by Jubal Early's brigade, pushing through the West Woods from the Nicodemus Farm, where they had been supporting Jeb Stuart's horse artillery. Some officers of the Iron Brigade rallied men around the artillery pieces of Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, and Gibbon himself saw to it that his previous unit did not lose a single caisson.^[28] Hood's men bore the brunt of the fighting, however, and paid a heavy price—60% casualties—but they were able to prevent the defensive line from crumbling and held off the I Corps. When asked by a fellow officer where his division was, Hood replied, "Dead on the field."^[29]

Hooker's men had also paid heavily but without achieving their objectives. After two hours and 2,500 casualties, they were back where they started. The Cornfield, an area about 250 yards (230 m) deep and 400 yards (400 m) wide, was a scene of indescribable destruction. It was estimated that the Cornfield changed hands no fewer than 15 times in the course of the morning.^[30] Major Rufus R. Dawes, who assumed command of Iron Brigade's 6th Wisconsin Regiment during the battle, later compared the fighting around the Hagerstown Turnpike with the stone wall at Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania's "Bloody Angle", and the slaughter pen of Cold Harbor, insisting that "the Antietam Turnpike surpassed them all in manifest evidence of slaughter."^[31] Hooker called for support from the 7,200 men of Mansfield's XII Corps.

... every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the [Confederates] slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker^[22]

Assaults by the XII Corps, 7:30 to 9:00 a.m.

Half of Mansfield's men were raw recruits, and Mansfield was also inexperienced, having taken command only two days before. Although he was a veteran of 40 years' service, he had never led large numbers of soldiers in combat. Concerned that his men would bolt under fire, he marched them in a formation that was known as "column of companies, closed in mass," a bunched-up formation in which a regiment was arrayed ten ranks deep instead of the normal two. As his men entered the East Woods, they presented an excellent artillery target, "almost as good a target as a barn." Mansfield himself was shot in the stomach and died the next day. Alpheus Williams assumed temporary command of the XII Corps.^[32]

The new recruits of Mansfield's 1st Division made no progress against Hood's line, which was reinforced by D.H. Hill's divisions under Colquitt and McRae. The 2nd Division of the XII Corps, under George Sears Greene, however, broke through McRae's men, who fled under the mistaken belief that they were about to be trapped by a flanking attack. This breach of the line forced Hood and his men, outnumbered, to regroup in the West Woods, where they had started the day.^[23] Greene was able to reach the Dunker Church, Hooker's original objective, and drove off Stephen Lee's batteries. Federal forces held most of the ground to the east of the turnpike.

Hooker attempted to gather the scattered remnants of his I Corps to continue the assault, but a Confederate sharpshooter spotted the general's conspicuous white horse and shot Hooker through the foot. Command of his I Corps fell to General Meade, since Hooker's senior subordinate, James B. Ricketts, had also been wounded. But with Hooker removed from the field, there was no general left with the authority to rally the men of the I and XII Corps. Greene's men came under heavy fire from the West Woods and withdrew from the Dunker Church.

The Dunker Church at Antietam

The Dunker Church after September 17, 1862. Here, both Union and Confederate dead lie together on the field.

In an effort to turn the Confederate left flank and relieve the pressure on Mansfield's men, Sumner's II Corps was ordered at 7:20 a.m. to send two divisions into battle. Sedgwick's division of 5,400 men was the first to ford the Antietam, and they entered the East Woods with the intention of turning left and forcing the Confederates south into the assault of Ambrose Burnside's IX Corps. But the plan went awry. They became separated from William H. French's division, and at 9 a.m. Sumner, who was accompanying the division, launched the attack with an unusual battle formation—the three brigades in three long lines, men side-by-side, with only 50 to 70 yards (60 m) separating the lines. They were assaulted first by Confederate artillery and then from three sides by the divisions of Early, Walker, and McLaws, and in less than half an hour Sedgwick's men were forced to retreat in great disorder to their starting point with over 2,200 casualties, including Sedgwick himself, who was taken out of action for several months by a wound.^[33] Sumner has been condemned by most historians for his "reckless" attack, his lack of coordination with the I and XII Corps headquarters, losing control of French's division when he accompanied Sedgwick's, failing to perform adequate reconnaissance prior to launching his attack, and selecting the unusual battle formation that was so effectively flanked by the Confederate counterattack. Historian M.V. Armstrong's recent scholarship, however, has determined that Sumner did perform appropriate reconnaissance and his decision to attack where he did was justified by the information available to him.^[34]

The final actions in the morning phase of the battle were around 10 a.m., when two regiments of the XII Corps advanced, only to be confronted by the division of John G. Walker, newly arrived from the Confederate right. They fought in the area between the Cornfield in the West Woods, but soon Walker's men were forced back by two brigades of Greene's division, and the Federal troops seized some ground in the West Woods.

The morning phase ended with casualties on both sides of almost 13,000, including two Union corps commanders.^[35]

Midday [link]

Assaults by the XII and II Corps, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

By midday, the action had shifted to the center of the Confederate line. Sumner had accompanied the morning attack of Sedgwick's division, but another of his divisions, under French, lost contact with Sumner and Sedgwick and inexplicably headed south. Eager for an opportunity to see combat, French found skirmishers in his path and ordered his men forward. By this time, Sumner's aide (and son) located French, described the terrible fighting in the West Woods and relayed an order for him to divert Confederate attention by attacking their center.^[36]

French confronted D.H. Hill's division. Hill commanded about 2,500 men, less than half the number under French, and three of his five brigades had been torn up during the morning combat. This sector of Longstreet's line was theoretically the weakest. But Hill's men were in a strong defensive position, atop a gradual ridge, in a sunken road worn down by years of wagon traffic, which formed a natural trench.^[37]

French launched a series of brigade-sized assaults against Hill's improvised breastworks at around 9:30 a.m. The first brigade to attack, mostly inexperienced troops commanded by Brig. Gen. Max Weber, was quickly cut down by heavy rifle fire; neither side deployed artillery at this point. The second attack, more raw recruits under Col. Dwight Morris, was also subjected to heavy fire but managed to beat back a counterattack by the Alabama Brigade of Robert Rodes. The third, under Brig. Gen. Nathan Kimball, included three veteran regiments, but they also fell to fire from the sunken road. French's division suffered 1,750 casualties (of his 5,700 men) in under an hour.^[38]

Reinforcements were arriving on both sides, and by 10:30 a.m. Robert E. Lee sent his final reserve division—some 3,400 men under Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson—to bolster Hill's line and extend it to the right, preparing an attack that would envelop French's left flank. But at the same time, the 4,000 men of Maj. Gen. Israel B. Richardson's division arrived on French's left. This was the last of Sumner's three divisions, which had been held up in the rear by McClellan as he organized his reserve forces.^[39] Richardson's fresh troops struck the first blow.

Leading off the fourth attack of the day against the sunken road was the Irish Brigade of Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Meagher. As they advanced with emerald green flags snapping in the breeze, a regimental chaplain, Father William Corby, rode back and forth across the front of the formation shouting words of conditional absolution prescribed by the Roman Catholic Church for those who were about to die. (Corby performed a similar service at Gettysburg in 1863.) The mostly Irish immigrants lost 540 men to heavy volleys before they were ordered to withdraw.^[40]

Gen. Richardson personally dispatched the brigade of Brig. Gen. John C. Caldwell into battle around noon (after being told that Caldwell was in the rear, behind a haystack), and finally the tide turned. Anderson's Confederate division had been little help to the defenders after Gen. Anderson was wounded early in the fighting. Other key leaders were lost as well, including George B. Anderson (no relation; Anderson's successor, Col. Charles C. Tew of the 2nd North Carolina, was killed minutes after assuming command)^[41] and Col. John B. Gordon of the 6th Alabama. (Gordon received four serious wounds in the fight. He lay unconscious, face down in his cap, and later told colleagues that he should have smothered in his own blood, except for the act of an unidentified Yankee, who had earlier shot a hole in his cap, which allowed the blood to drain.)^[42] Rodes was wounded in the thigh but was still on the field. These losses contributed directly to the confusion of the following events.

We were shooting them like sheep in a pen. If a bullet missed the mark at first it was liable to strike the further bank, angle back, and take them secondarily.

Sergeant of the 61st New York^[43]

As Caldwell's brigade advanced around the right flank of the Confederates, Col. Francis C. Barlow and 350 men of the 61st and 64th New York saw a weak point in the line and seized a knoll commanding the sunken road. This allowed them to get enfilade fire into the Confederate line, turning it into a deadly trap. In attempting to wheel around to meet this threat, a command from Rodes was misunderstood by Lt. Col. James N. Lightfoot, who had succeeded the unconscious John Gordon. Lightfoot ordered his men to about-face and march away, an order that all five regiments of the brigade thought applied to them as well. Confederate troops streamed toward Sharpsburg, their line lost.

Richardson's men were in hot pursuit when massed artillery hastily assembled by Gen. Longstreet drove them back. A counterattack with 200 men led by D.H. Hill got around the Federal left flank near the sunken road, and although they were driven back by a fierce charge of the 5th New Hampshire, this stemmed the collapse of the center. Reluctantly, Richardson ordered his division to fall back to north of the ridge facing the sunken road. His division lost about 1,000 men. Col. Barlow was severely wounded, and Richardson mortally wounded.^[44] Winfield S. Hancock assumed division command. Although Hancock would have an excellent future reputation as an aggressive division and corps commander, the unexpected change of command sapped the momentum of the Federal advance.^[45]

The Bloody Lane in 2005.

Confederate dead lie in the "Bloody Lane" after the Battle of Antietam, 1862.

The carnage from 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on the sunken road gave it the name Bloody Lane, leaving about 5,600 casualties (Union 3,000, Confederate 2,600) along the 800-yard (700 m) road. And yet a great opportunity presented itself. If this broken sector of the Confederate line were exploited, Lee's army would have been divided in half and possibly defeated. There were ample forces available to do so. There was a reserve of 3,500 cavalry and the 10,300 infantrymen of Gen. Porter's V Corps, waiting near the middle bridge, a mile away. The VI Corps had just arrived with 12,000 men. Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin of the VI Corps was ready to exploit this breakthrough, but Sumner, the senior corps commander, ordered him not to advance. Franklin appealed to McClellan, who left his headquarters in the rear to hear both arguments but backed Sumner's decision, ordering Franklin and Hancock to hold their positions.^[46]

Later in the day, the commander of the other reserve unit near the center, the V Corps, Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter, heard recommendations from Maj. Gen. George Sykes, commanding his 2nd Division, that another attack be made in the center, an idea that intrigued McClellan. However, Porter is said to have told McClellan, "Remember, General, I command the last reserve of the last Army of the Republic." McClellan demurred and another opportunity was lost.^[47]

Afternoon [link]

Assaults by the IX Corps, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The action moved to the southern end of the battlefield. McClellan's plan called for Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and the IX Corps to conduct a diversionary attack in support of Hooker's I Corps, hoping to draw Confederate attention away from the intended main attack in the north. However, Burnside was instructed to wait for explicit orders before launching his attack, and those orders did not reach him until 10 a.m.^[48] Burnside was strangely passive during preparations for the battle. He was disgruntled that McClellan had abandoned the previous arrangement of "wing" commanders reporting to him. Previously, Burnside had commanded a wing that included both the I and IX Corps and now he was responsible only for the IX Corps. Implicitly refusing to give up his higher authority, Burnside treated first Maj. Gen. Jesse L. Reno (killed at South Mountain) and then Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox of the Kanawha Division as the corps commander, funneling orders to the corps through him.

Burnside had four divisions (12,500 troops) and 50 guns east of Antietam Creek. Facing him was a force that had been greatly depleted by Lee's movement of units to bolster the Confederate left flank. At dawn, the divisions of Brig. Gens. David R. Jones and John G. Walker stood in defense, but by 10 a.m. all of Walker's men and Col. George T. Anderson's Georgia brigade had been removed. Jones had only about 3,000 men and 12 guns available to meet Burnside. Four thin brigades guarded the ridges near Sharpsburg, primarily a low plateau known as Cemetery Hill. The remaining 400 men—the 2nd and 20th Georgia regiments, under the command of Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs, with two artillery batteries—defended Rohrbach's Bridge, a three-span, 125-foot (38 m) stone structure that was the southernmost crossing of the Antietam.^[49] It would become known to history as Burnside's Bridge because of the notoriety of the coming battle. The bridge was a difficult objective. The road leading to it ran parallel to the creek and was exposed to enemy fire. The bridge was dominated by a 100-foot (30 m) high wooded bluff on the west bank, strewn with boulders from an old quarry, making infantry and sharpshooter fire from good covered positions a dangerous impediment to crossing.

Go and look at [Burnside's Bridge], and tell me if you don't think Burnside and his corps might have executed a hop, skip, and jump and landed on the other side. One thing is certain, they might have waded it that day without getting their waist belts wet in any place.

Confederate staff officer Henry Kyd Douglas^[50]

Antietam Creek in this sector was seldom more than 50 feet (15 m) wide, and several stretches were only waist deep and out of Confederate range. Burnside has been widely criticized for ignoring this fact, starting with derision from Confederate staff officer Henry Kyd Douglas.^[50] However, the commanding terrain across the sometimes shallow creek made crossing the water a comparatively easy part of a difficult problem. Burnside concentrated his plan instead on storming the bridge while simultaneously crossing a ford McClellan's engineers had identified a half mile (1 km) downstream, but when Burnside's men reached it, they found the banks too high to negotiate. While Col. George Crook's Ohio brigade prepared to attack the bridge with the support of Brig. Gen. Samuel Sturgis's division, the rest of the Kanawha Division and Brig. Gen. Isaac Rodman's division struggled through thick brush trying to locate Snavely's Ford, 2 miles (3 km) downstream, intending to flank the Confederates.^[51]

Crook's assault on the bridge was led by skirmishers from the 11th Connecticut, who were ordered to clear the bridge for the Ohioans to cross and assault the bluff. After receiving punishing fire for 15 minutes, the Connecticut men withdrew with 139 casualties, one third of their strength, including their commander, Col. Henry W. Kingsbury, who was fatally wounded.^[52] Crook's main assault went awry when his unfamiliarity with the terrain caused his men to reach the creek a quarter mile (400 m) upstream from the bridge, where they exchanged volleys with Confederate skirmishers for the next few hours.^[53]

While Rodman's division was out of touch, slogging toward Snavely's Ford, Burnside and Cox directed a second assault at the bridge by one of Sturgis's brigades, led by the 2nd Maryland and 6th New Hampshire. They also fell prey to the Confederate sharpshooters and artillery, and their attack fell apart.^[54] By this time it was noon, and McClellan was losing patience. He sent a succession of couriers to motivate Burnside to move forward. He ordered one aide, "Tell him if it costs 10,000 men he must go now." He increased the pressure by sending his inspector general, Col. Delos B. Sackett, to confront Burnside, who reacted indignantly: "McClellan appears to think I am not trying my best to carry this bridge; you are the third or fourth one who has been to me this morning with similar orders."^[55]

The third attempt to take the bridge was at 12:30 p.m. by Sturgis's other brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Edward Ferrero. It was led by the 51st New York and the 51st Pennsylvania, who, with adequate artillery support and a promise that a recently canceled whiskey ration would be restored if they were successful, charged downhill and took up positions on the east bank. Maneuvering a captured light howitzer into position, they fired double canister down the bridge and got within 25 yards (23 m) of the enemy. By 1 p.m., Confederate ammunition was running low, and word reached Toombs that Rodman's men were crossing Snavely's Ford on their flank. He ordered a withdrawal. His Georgians had cost the Federals more than 500 casualties, giving up fewer than 160 themselves. And they had stalled Burnside's assault on the southern flank for more than three hours.^[56]

Burnside's Bridge.
Charge of the 51st New York and 51st Pennsylvania across Burnside's Bridge, by Edwin Forbes.
Battle of Antietam by Kurz and Allison.
Confederate guns on the hill above poured fire into the Union ranks at Burnside's bridge. Photo taken just after the Battle of Antietam, 1862.

Burnside's assault stalled again on its own. His officers had neglected to transport ammunition across the bridge, which was itself becoming a bottleneck for soldiers, artillery, and wagons. This represented another two-hour delay. Gen. Lee used this time to bolster his right flank. He ordered up every available artillery unit, although he made no attempt to strengthen D.R. Jones's badly outnumbered force with infantry units from the left. Instead, he counted on the arrival of A.P. Hill's Light Division, currently embarked on an exhausting 17 mile (27 km) march from Harpers Ferry. By 2 p.m., Hill's men had reached Boteler's Ford, and Hill was able to confer with the relieved Lee at 2:30, who ordered him to bring up his men to the right of Jones.^[57]

The Federals were completely unaware that 3,000 new men would be facing them. Burnside's plan was to move around the weakened Confederate right flank, converge on Sharpsburg, and cut Lee's army off from Boteler's Ford, their only escape route across the Potomac. At 3 p.m., Burnside left Sturgis's division in reserve on the west bank and moved west with over 8,000 troops (most of them fresh) and 22 guns for close support.^[58]

An initial assault led by the 79th New York "Cameron Highlanders" succeeded against Jones's outnumbered division, which was pushed back past Cemetery Hill and to within 200 yards (200 m) of Sharpsburg. Farther to the left, Rodman's division advanced toward Harpers Ferry Road. Its lead brigade, under Col. Harrison Fairchild, containing several colorful Zouaves of the 9th New York, came under heavy shellfire from a dozen enemy guns mounted on a ridge to their front, but they kept pushing forward. There was panic in the streets of Sharpsburg, clogged with retreating Confederates. Of the five brigades in Jones's division, only Toombs's brigade was still intact, but he had only 700 men.^[59]

A. P. Hill's division arrived at 3:30 p.m. Hill divided his column, with two brigades moving southeast to guard his flank and the other three, about 2,000 men, moving to the right of Toombs's brigade and preparing for a counterattack. At 3:40 p.m., Brig. Gen. Maxcy Gregg's brigade of South Carolinians attacked the 16th Connecticut on Rodman's left flank in the cornfield of farmer John Otto. The Connecticut men had been in service for only three weeks, and their line disintegrated with 185 casualties. The 4th Rhode Island came up on the right, but they had poor visibility amid the high stalks of corn, and they were disoriented because many of the Confederates were wearing Union uniforms captured at Harpers Ferry. They also broke and ran, leaving the 8th Connecticut far out in advance and isolated. They were enveloped and driven down the hills toward Antietam Creek. A counterattack by regiments from the Kanawha Division fell short.^[60]

The IX Corps had suffered casualties of about 20% but still possessed twice the number of Confederates confronting them. Unnerved by the collapse of his flank, Burnside ordered his men all the way back to the west bank of the Antietam, where he urgently requested more men and guns. McClellan was able to provide just one battery. He said, "I can do nothing more. I have no infantry." In fact, however, McClellan had two fresh corps in reserve, Porter's V and Franklin's VI, but he was too cautious, concerned about an imminent massive counterstrike by Lee. Burnside's men spent the rest of the day guarding the bridge they had suffered so much to capture.^[61]

Aftermath [link]

Confederate dead gathered for burial after the battle.^[62] Photograph by Alexander Gardner

The battle was over by 5:30 p.m. Losses for the day were heavy on both sides. The Union had 12,401 casualties with 2,108 dead. Confederate casualties were 10,318 with 1,546 dead. This represented 25% of the Federal force and 31% of the Confederate.^[3] More Americans died on September 17, 1862, than on any other day in the nation's military history.^[63] Several generals died as a result of the battle, including Maj. Gens. Joseph K. Mansfield and Israel B. Richardson and Brig. Gen. Isaac P. Rodman on the Union side (all mortally wounded), and Brig. Gens. Lawrence O. Branch and William E. Starke on the Confederate side (killed).^[64]

On the morning of September 18, Lee's army prepared to defend against a Federal assault that never came. After an improvised truce for both sides to recover and exchange their wounded, Lee's forces began withdrawing across the Potomac that evening to return to Virginia.^[65]

President Lincoln was disappointed in McClellan's performance. He believed that McClellan's cautious and poorly coordinated actions in the field had forced the battle to a draw rather than a crippling Confederate defeat. Historian Stephen Sears agrees.^[66]

In making his battle against great odds to save the Republic, General McClellan had committed barely 50,000 infantry and artillerymen to the contest. A third of his army did not fire a shot. Even at that, his men repeatedly drove the Army of Northern Virginia to the brink of disaster, feats of valor entirely lost on a commander thinking of little beyond staving off his own defeat.

— Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red

The president was even more astonished that from September 17 to October 26, despite repeated entreaties from the War Department and the president himself, McClellan declined to pursue Lee across the Potomac, citing shortages of equipment and the fear of overextending his forces. General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck wrote in his official report, "The long inactivity of so large an army in the face of a defeated foe, and during the most favorable season for rapid movements and a vigorous campaign, was a matter of great disappointment and regret."^[67] Lincoln relieved McClellan of his command of the Army of the Potomac on November 7, effectively ending the general's military career.

President Lincoln and General George B. McClellan in the general's tent near the Antietam battlefield, October 3, 1862. Photograph by Alexander Gardner

Some students of history question the designation of "strategic victory" for the Union. After all, McClellan performed poorly in the campaign and the battle itself, and Lee displayed great generalship in holding his own in battle against an army that greatly outnumbered him. Casualties were comparable on both sides, although Lee lost a higher percentage of his army. Lee withdrew from the battlefield first, the technical definition of the tactical loser in a Civil War battle. However, in a strategic sense, despite being a tactical draw, Antietam is considered a turning point of the war and a victory for the Union because it ended Lee's strategic campaign (his first invasion of the North) and it allowed President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, which took effect on January 1, 1863. Although Lincoln had intended to do so earlier, he was advised by his Cabinet to make this announcement after a Union victory to avoid the perception that it was issued out of desperation. The Union victory and Lincoln's proclamation played a considerable role in dissuading the governments of France and Britain from recognizing the Confederacy; some suspected they were planning to do so in the aftermath of another Union defeat. When the issue of emancipation was linked to the progress of the war, neither government had the political will to oppose the United States. Historian James M. McPherson summed up the importance of Antietam in his Crossroads of Freedom:^[68]

No other campaign and battle in the war had such momentous, multiple consequences as Antietam. In July 1863 the dual Union triumphs at Gettysburg and Vicksburg struck another blow that blunted a renewed Confederate offensive in the East and cut off the western third of the Confederacy from the rest. In September 1864 Sherman's capture of Atlanta reversed another decline in Northern morale and set the stage for the final drive to Union victory. These also were pivotal moments. But they would never have happened if the triple Confederate offensives in Mississippi, Kentucky, and most of all Maryland had not been defeated in the fall of 1862.

— James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom

The battle is commemorated at Antietam National Battlefield.

Gallery [link]

Confederate soldiers on the Antietam battlefield as they fell inside the fence on the Hagerstown road, September 1862 {picture #550} by Alexander Gardner
Harper's Weekly drawing of dead soldiers on Antietam battlefield–based on Gardner photograph
Confederate horses lay dead and artillery caissons destroyed on Antietam battlefield^[69]
Dead on Antietam battlefield^[70]
Confederate dead at Bloody Lane, looking east from the north bank. Alexander Gardner photograph
Confederate dead at Bloody Lane, looking northeast from the south bank. Alexander Gardner photograph^[71]
"Confederate soldier who after being wounded had evidently dragged himself to a little ravine on the hillside where he died".^[62] Photograph by Alexander Gardner
Federal burial party by Alexander Gardner^[72]
"A Lonely Grave" — Federal grave at Antietam by Alexander Gardner^[73]
Antietam Battlefield photograph by Alexander Gardner^[74]
Artillery hell by Captain James Hope (Dunker Church at the far left)
"A Fateful Turn" — Late morning looking east toward the Roulette Farm by Captain James Hope
"The Aftermath at Bloody Lane" by Captain James Hope
"Wasted Gallantry" by Captain James Hope
Burnside Bridge by Captain James Hope
The Lutheran Church just east of Sharpsburg marks the extent of the Union offensive during the Battle of Antietam, 1862.

Notes [link]

^ NPS; see the discussion of "strategic victory" in the Aftermath section.
^ ^a ^b Eicher, p. 363. Sears, p. 173, cites 75,000 Union troops, with an effective strength of 71,500, with 300 guns; on p. 296, he states that the 12,401 Union casualties were 25% of those who went into action and that McClellan committed "barely 50,000 infantry and artillerymen to the contest"; p. 389, he cites Confederate effective strength of "just over 38,000," including A.P. Hill's division, which arrived in the afternoon. Priest, p. 343, cites 87,164 men present in the Army of the Potomac, with 53,632 engaged, and 30,646 engaged in the Army of Northern Virginia. Luvaas and Nelson, p. 302, cite 87,100 Union engaged, 51,800 Confederate. Harsh, Sounding the Shallows, pp. 201-02, analyzes the historiography of the figures, and shows that Ezra A. Carman (a battlefield historian who influenced some of these sources) used "engaged" figures; the 38,000 excludes Pender's and Field's brigades, roughly half the artillery, and forces used to secure objectives behind the line.
^ ^a ^b ^c Sears, pp. 294-96; Cannan, p. 201. Confederate casualties are estimates because reported figures include undifferentiated casualties at South Mountain and Shepherdstown; Sears remarks that "there is no doubt that a good many of the 1,771 men listed as missing were in fact dead, buried uncounted in unmarked graves where they fell." McPherson, p. 129, gives ranges for the Confederate losses: 1,546–2,700 dead, 7,752–9,024 wounded. He states that more than 2,000 of the wounded on both sides died from their wounds. Priest, p. 343, reports 12,882 Union casualties (2,157 killed, 9,716 wounded, 1,009 missing or captured) and 11,530 Confederate (1,754 killed, 8,649 wounded, 1,127 missing or captured). Luvaas and Nelson, p. 302, cite Union casualties of 12,469 (2,010 killed, 9,416 wounded, 1,043 missing or captured) and 10,292 Confederate (1,567 killed, 8,725 wounded for September 14–20, plus approximately 2,000 missing or captured).
^ McPherson, p. 3.
^ NPS.
^ McPherson, p. 100; Eicher, p. 337; Sears, p. 69 "perhaps 50,000".
^ Sears, pp. 65-66; McPherson, pp. 88-95.
^ Sears, p. 112; McPherson, p. 108.
^ McPherson, p. 109.
^ McPherson, pp. 110-12.
^ Eicher, p. 337; O.R. Series 1, Vol. XIX part 2 (S# 28), p. 621; Luvaas and Nelson, pp. 294-300; Esposito, map 67; Sears, pp. 366-72. Although most histories, including the Official Records, refer to these organizations as Corps, that designation was not formally made until November 6, 1862, after the Maryland Campaign. Longstreet's unit was referred to as the Right Wing, Jackson's the Left Wing, for most of 1862. (Gen. Lee referred in official correspondence to these as "commands". See, for instance, Luvaas and Nelson, p. 4. Lee used this term because a Confederate law forbade the creation of army corps. It had been intended as a states' rights measure to ensure that governors would retain some control over the troops from their state, and Lee lobbied strongly for repeal of this law.) Harsh, Sounding the Shallows, pp. 32-90, states that D.H. Hill was temporarily in command of a "Center Wing" with his own division commanded initially by Brig. Gen. Roswell S. Ripley, and the divisions of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws and Brig. Gen. John G. Walker. The other references list him strictly as a division commander.
^ Sears, pp. 359–66; Welcher, pp. 786–88; Eicher, p. 338.
^ Bailey, p. 60.
^ Sears, p. 174.
^ Sears, pp. 164, 175-76.
^ Bailey, p. 63.
^ Harsh, Taken at the Flood, pp. 366-67; Sears, p. 174.
^ Sears, pp. 169-74.
^ Sears, p. 181.
^ ^a ^b Wolff, p. 60.
^ Sears, pp. 190–91.
^ ^a ^b Bailey, p. 70.
^ ^a ^b Wolff, p. 61.
^ Bailey, pp. 71, 73.
^ Bailey, p. 71.
^ Dawes, pp. 88-91.
^ Bailey, p. 75.
^ Dawes, pp. 91-93.
^ Bailey, p. 79.
^ Bailey, p. 81.
^ Dawes, p. 95.
^ Bailey, pp. 79-80.
^ Armstrong, pp. 3-27; Sears, pp. 221-30; Eicher, pp. 353-55; Wolff, pp. 61-62.
^ Armstrong, pp. 39-55.
^ Kennedy, p. 120.
^ Bailey, p. 93.
^ Bailey, p. 94.
^ Wolff, p. 63.
^ Bailey, p. 99.
^ Bailey, p. 100.
^ Bailey, pp. 101, 103.
^ Sears, p. 242.
^ Bailey, p. 102.
^ Sears, p. 254.
^ Bailey, p. 108.
^ Bailey, pp. 108-9.
^ Bailey, p. 141.
^ Jamieson, p. 94. McClellan issued the order at 9:10, after the repulse of Hooker's and Mansfield's assaults, having waited for the VI Corps to reach the battlefield and take up a reserve position.
^ Wolff, p. 64.
^ ^a ^b Douglas, p. 172.
^ Eicher, 359-60; Sears, p. 260; Wolff, p. 64.
^ Tucker, p. 87.
^ Sears, p. 263.
^ Bailey, p. 120.
^ Sears, pp. 264-65.
^ Sears, pp. 266-67; Bailey, pp. 125-26.
^ Sears, p. 276.
^ Bailey, p. 131.
^ Bailey, pp. 133-36.
^ Bailey, pp. 136-37.
^ Sears, pp. 291-92.
^ ^a ^b Site identified by Frassanito, pp. 105-108.
^ Antietam is sometimes cited as the bloodiest day in all of American history, but the deaths from the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 are significantly higher. The bloodiest battle in American history was Gettysburg, but its more than 46,000 casualties occurred over three days. Antietam ranks fifth in terms of total casualties in the Civil War, falling behind Chickamauga, Chancellorsville, and Spotsylvania Court House.
^ Sears, pp. 206, 254, 287, 290, 194.
^ Sears, pp. 297, 306-07.
^ Sears, p. 296.
^ Bailey, p. 67.
^ McPherson, p. 155.
^ Site identified by Frassanito, pp. 168-70.
^ Site identified by Robert Kalasky, "Military Images" Volume XX, Number 6 May-June 1999, pp. 24-29.
^ The Union soldiers looking on were likely members of the 130th Pennsylvania, who were assigned burial detail
^ Site identified by Frassanito, pp. 144-47.
^ Site identified by Frassanito, pp. 171-74.
^ Original description claimed "Battlefield of Antietam on the Day of the Battle" 17 September 1862; however, see Frassanito, pp. 70-73.

References [link]

Armstrong, Marion V. Disaster in the West Woods: General Edwin V. Sumner and the II Corps at Antietam. Sharpsburg, MD: Western Maryland Interpretive Association, 2002.
Bailey, Ronald H., and the Editors of Time-Life Books. The Bloodiest Day: The Battle of Antietam. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. ISBN 0-8094-4740-1.
Cannan, John. The Antietam Campaign: August–September 1862. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1994. ISBN 0-938289-91-8.
Dawes, Rufus R. A Full Blown Yankee of the Iron Brigade: Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8032-6618-9. First published 1890 by E. R. Alderman and Sons.
Douglas, Henry Kyd. I Rode with Stonewall: The War Experiences of the Youngest Member of Jackson's Staff. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940. ISBN 0-8078-0337-5.
Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-684-84944-5.
Esposito, Vincent J. West Point Atlas of American Wars. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959. OCLC 5890637. The collection of maps (without explanatory text) is available online at the West Point website.
Frassanito, William A. Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1978. ISBN 1-57747-005-2.
Harsh, Joseph L. Sounding the Shallows: A Confederate Companion for the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-87338-641-8.
Harsh, Joseph L. Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-87338-631-0.
Jamieson, Perry D. Death in September: The Antietam Campaign. Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 1999. ISBN 1-893114-07-4.
Kalasky, Robert. "Union dead...Confederate Dead'." Military Images Magazine. Volume XX, Number 6, May–June 1999.
Kennedy, Frances H., ed. The Civil War Battlefield Guide. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. ISBN 0-395-74012-6.
Luvaas, Jay, and Harold W. Nelson, eds. Guide to the Battle of Antietam. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987. ISBN 0-7006-0784-6.
McPherson, James M. Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, The Battle That Changed the Course of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-513521-0.
Priest, John Michael. Antietam: The Soldiers' Battle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-19-508466-7.
Sears, Stephen W. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. ISBN 0-89919-172-X.
Tucker, Phillip Thomas. Burnside's Bridge: The Climactic Struggle of the 2nd and 20th Georgia at Antietam Creek. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000. ISBN 0-8117-0199-9.
Welcher, Frank J. The Union Army, 1861–1865 Organization and Operations. Vol. 1, The Eastern Theater. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-253-36453-1.
Wolff, Robert S. "The Antietam Campaign." In Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. ISBN 0-393-04758-X.
National Park Service battle description

External links [link]

Animated history of the Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam: Maps, histories, photos, and preservation news (Civil War Trust)
Lincoln and Lee at Antietam
Antietam National Battlefield Park
Antietam on the Web
Official Reports from Antietam: George McClellan, Robert E. Lee
USS Antietam
Collection of pictures by Alexander Gardner
Online transcription of 1869 record of original Confederate Burials in Washington County, Maryland, including Antietam Battlefield {Washington County Maryland Free Library-for reference only}
History of Antietam National Cemetery, including a descriptive list of all the loyal soldiers buried therein, published 1869
Hagerstown Herald of Freedom and Torch Light Sept 1862, first edition after the Battle of Antietam
Brotherswar.com The Battle of Antietam
Battle of Antietam: Two Great American Armies Engage in Combat article by Ted Alexander

Coordinates: 39°28′24″N 77°44′41″W / 39.4732°N 77.7447°W / 39.4732; -77.7447

v t e Maryland in the American Civil War

Battles	Maryland Campaign Battle of Antietam Battle of Boonsboro Battle of Crampton's Gap Battle of Folck's Mill Battle of Funkstown Battle of Hancock Battle of Monocacy Battle of South Mountain Battle of Williamsport

Events	Baltimore Riot of 1861 Ex parte Merryman Special Order 191 Maryland Constitution of 1864

Miscellaneous	Maryland, My Maryland

Museums	Baltimore Civil War Museum National Museum of Civil War Medicine President Street Station Surratt House Museum USS Constellation

People	Maryland Civil War regiments Soldiers and civilians

Places	Antietam Battlefield Burnside's Bridge Fort McHenry Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area Loudon Park Cemetery Monocacy Battlefield Point Lookout State Park

American Civil War (outline)

Origins

Origins / Issues	Timeline leading to the War Antebellum era Bleeding Kansas Border states Dred Scott v. Sandford Missouri Compromise Secession States' rights

Slavery	African-Americans Emancipation Proclamation Fugitive slave laws Slave power Uncle Tom's Cabin

Abolitionism	John Brown Frederick Douglass William Lloyd Garrison Lysander Spooner Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad

Combatants
Theaters
Campaigns
Battles
States

Combatants

Union (USA)	Army Navy Revenue Cutter Service

Confederacy (CSA)	Army Navy Marine Corps

Theaters

Campaigns

Major battles

Involvement
by state or territory

Leaders

Confederate

Military	R.H. Anderson Beauregard Bragg Cooper Early Ewell Forrest Gorgas Hill Hood Jackson A.S. Johnston J.E. Johnston Lee Longstreet Morgan Mosby Price Quantrill Semmes E.K. Smith Stuart Taylor Wheeler

Civilian	Benjamin Breckinridge Bocock Davis Mallory Memminger Seddon Stephens

Union

Military	Anderson Buell Butler Burnside Du Pont Farragut Foote Fremont Grant Halleck Hooker Hunt McClellan McDowell Meade Meigs Pope D.D. Porter Rosecrans Scott Sheridan Sherman Thomas

Civilian	Adams Chase Ericsson Lincoln Pinkerton Seward Stanton Stevens Wade Welles

Aftermath

U.S. Constitution	13th Amendment 14th Amendment 15th Amendment

Reconstruction	Alabama Claims Carpetbaggers Freedman's Bank Freedmen's Bureau Jim Crow laws Redeemers Southern Claims Commission

Cemeteries	Confederate memorials and cemeteries National cemeteries U.S. memorials and cemeteries

Veterans	Grand Army of the Republic Old soldiers' homes United Confederate Veterans

Other topics	Ku Klux Klan Lost Cause

Related topics
Categories

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Antietam Filmography

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Contents

Background and the Maryland Campaign [link]

Opposing forces [link]

Confederate [link]

Union [link]

Battle [link]

Morning [link]

Midday [link]

Afternoon [link]

Aftermath [link]

Gallery [link]

See also [link]

Notes [link]

References [link]

Further reading [link]

External links [link]

http://wn.com/Battle_of_Antietam

Related pages:

http://it.wn.com/Battaglia di Antietam

http://id.wn.com/Pertempuran Antietam

http://es.wn.com/Batalla de Antietam

http://ru.wn.com/Сражение при Энтитеме

http://nl.wn.com/Slag bij Antietam

http://pt.wn.com/Batalha de Antietam

http://pl.wn.com/Bitwa nad Antietam

http://fr.wn.com/Bataille d'Antietam

http://de.wn.com/Schlacht am Antietam