Civil War History

Find old Civil War articles here. We have great newspaper articles about the Civil War check them out today!

The Significance of the Union Victory at Vicksburg
(The National Park Service, 1954)

The great objective of the war in the West – the opening of the Mississippi River and the severing of the Confederacy – had been realized with the fall of Vicksburg.

On July 9 [1863], the Confederate commander at Port Hudson, upon learning of the fall of Vicksburg, surrendered his garrison of 6,000 men. One week later the merchant steamboat Imperial tied up at the wharf at New Orleans, completing the 1,000-mile passage from St. Louis undisturbed by hostile guns. After two years of land and naval warfare, the Mississippi River was open, the grip of the South had been broken, and merchant and military traffic had now a safe avenue to the gulf of Mexico. In the words of Lincoln:


The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.

1863: The Importance of Chattanooga and East Tennessee
(National Park Service, 1956)

Situated where the Tennessee River passes through the Cumberland Mountains, forming gaps, Chattanooga was called the Key to East Tennessee and Gateway to the deep South. The possession of Chattanooga was vital to the Confederacy, and a coveted goal of the Northern armies. Chattanooga’s principal importance during the Civil War was it’s position as a railroad center.


Click here to print American Civil War chronologies.

1863: The Importance of Chattanooga and East Tennessee
(National Park Service, 1956)

Situated where the Tennessee River passes through the Cumberland Mountains, forming gaps, Chattanooga was called the Key to East Tennessee and Gateway to the deep South. The possession of Chattanooga was vital to the Confederacy, and a coveted goal of the Northern armies. Chattanooga’s principal importance during the Civil War was it’s position as a railroad center.


Click here to print American Civil War chronologies.

1863: The Importance of Chattanooga and East Tennessee
(National Park Service, 1956)

Situated where the Tennessee River passes through the Cumberland Mountains, forming gaps, Chattanooga was called the Key to East Tennessee and Gateway to the deep South. The possession of Chattanooga was vital to the Confederacy, and a coveted goal of the Northern armies. Chattanooga’s principal importance during the Civil War was it’s position as a railroad center.


Click here to print American Civil War chronologies.

The Siege of Vicksburg
(Famous Events, 1913)

A summary of General Grant’s victory at Vicksburgstyle=border:none, Mississippi, during the summer of 1863. It is made clear to the reader how vital the city was to the Rebel’s defensive strategy in that Vicksburg was the last stronghold remaining which served to protect the Mississippi valley; President Jefferson Davis and his Confederates knew well that if the city fell, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas would be isolated.

Lincoln Without the Myths
(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

Relying on the expertise of various Lincoln scholars (Paul M. Angle, Dr. William Barton, Reinhard Luthin and David Mearns), efforts were made to verify whether or not all the many aphorisms, bon mots, maxims and plentiful epigrams attributed to Lincoln were indeed authored by the slain president, or were they the product of the hundreds of forgers and prevaricators that followed in his wake.

Abraham Lincoln: Inventor
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

There, to a coterie of Lincoln addicts on Abe’s 131st birthday, U.S. Patent Commissioner Conway P. Coe displayed a model of a device Lincoln patented in 1849, when he was still an unknown congressman from Illinois. Commissioner Coe read the patent application, in Lincoln’s own handwriting, for a gadget to float flatboats in shallow water.

A Study of the Gettysburg Address
(The Outlook, 1913)

Jesse W. Weik (1857 – 1930) was one of the earliest of Lincoln scholars.

In preparation for Herndon and Weik’s Life of Lincolnstyle=border:none (1889), he visited every place in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky where Abraham Lincoln lived; examined the records of all the lawsuits in which Lincoln was engaged, and talked to everyone he could find who knew Lincoln. For thirty years and more he has made a special study of the sources, written and unwritten, of the personal history of President Lincoln.

The Gathering Storm: 1860
(The Southern Rebellion, 1867)

Attached is a printable chronology of important events that took place four months prior to the American Civil War.

December, 1860, was a busy month for Secessionists, with all sorts of gatherings, hand shaking and back-slapping; while in Washington the elected representatives to the U.S. Congress from the state of South Carolina resigned.

In North Carolina, U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson (1805 – 1871) gets a sense of what is coming down the pike and removes his troops from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter.

Lincoln’s Address at Cooper Union
(The National Park Service, 1956)

Before his 1860 address at the Cooper Institute (presently known as Cooper Union) Abraham Lincoln was known in the East chiefly as a rather obscure western lawyer who had gained some prestige a little over a year earlier in the debates with Douglas during the Illinois senatorial contest. The day after the address Horace Greeley’s NEW YORK TRIBUNE remarked:

No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.

This speech put within Lincoln’s grasp a chance for the Presidency.


Attached, you will find his very powerful conclusion to the address.


Click here to read about the Confederate conscription laws.

Scroll to Top