Civil War

There remains a haunting stillness over the grounds around Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, where 3,650 Union and Confederate soldiers perished on the deadliest day—September 17, 1862—in American history. In a discussion of A Fierce Glory: Antietam—The Desperate Battle that Saved Lincoln and...

Public historians Diane Eickhoff and Aaron Barnhart recall how hundreds of women defied cultural norms of the time to participate in the Civil War, cutting their hair, binding their breasts, donning men’s clothing, and reporting to army recruiters for duty. Others served as scouts or s...

In the keynote address for the Quindaro Symposium, held April 19-21 in Kansas City, Kansas, historian Quintard Taylor explores the history of the Quindaro region from 1855-65, and the nexus between border fighting and freedom for the enslaved.  

Was Abraham Lincoln the transcendent champion of African-American freedom that history books depict? Author Fred Kaplan tempers that image in a discussion of his book Lincoln and the Abolitionists: John Quincy Adams, Slavery, and the Civil War, casting Abe as a less fervent re...

African-Americans have served proudly in every great American war, including the Civil War, where their verve and valor led to the establishment of all-black regiments in 1866. These “Buffalo Soldiers” played a significant role in the military campaigns and settlement of the American West, and paved the way for Afri...

After four of the bloodiest years of warfare in its history, peace finally had come to the United States in May 1865. For two glorious days, Washington, D.C., residents watched as the mighty Union armies that had compelled the surrender of the Confederacy’s main forces marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in triumph. “The...

By the time of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the land and people of western Missouri had suffered as much as any during the Civil War. The 1863 edict known as “Order No. 11”—forcing the evacuation of all non-rural residents of three western counties including Jackson—and the Federal army that...

For Abraham Lincoln, the road to the future always began in the past – with the Founding Fathers, who inspired him to take up public life, showed him how to win arguments, and laid out his nation’s principles. On the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death, historian Richard Brookhiser delivers an illu...

On the morning of May 3, 1863, on the cusp of one of the most remarkable tactical battlefield victories in American military history, Gen. Robert E. Lee rode to a crossroads clearing in Virginia known as Chancellorsville amid the cheers of his high-spirited Confederate troops. Few in that moment of triumph co...