Fort Sumter Archives

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Battle of Belmont: Ulysses S. Grant’s First Battle

By Donald J. Roberts II

When the Civil War started in 1861, there were only two officers in the Union Army who had commanded a force in battle larger than a brigade. Read more

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First Manassas: The Battle of Bull Run

By Earl Echelberry

On March 4, 1861, with war clouds threatening the land, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the 16th president of the United States. Read more

This mortar battery was erected outside Confederate earthworks at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1862. McClellan slowed his advance to bring mortars up. The Southerners then retired toward Richmond.

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Civil War Artillery

By John D. Gresham

For much of its history, artillery has been a weapon of mass destruction and attrition, a force designed to cause casualties, destroy fortifications, and wear an enemy down with its noise, explosions, and shrapnel. Read more

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Rose O’Neal Greenhow: The Spy Who Won Bull Run

By David Alan Johnson

“But for you, there would have been no Battle of Bull Run.” When Confederate President Jefferson Davis made that blanket statement in the summer of 1862, he was not addressing Pierre G.T. Read more

A provost marshal’s office at Aquia Creek, Virginia, in February 1863 draws a desultory crowd. Some soldiers used provost duty to avoid combat.

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Military Intelligence: The Civil War Provost Guard

By John Wenner

With the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Civil War began in earnest. The first recruits, on both sides, were completely uninitiated in the ways of military life. Read more

A hard-bitten Prussian recruiting officer dragoons a reluctant peasant into the service in Louis Joseph Watteau’s 1770 painting, The Unwilling Recruit.

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To Field an Army: A Short History of the Draft

By Mike Haskew

The call of a nation on its civilian population either to create a military force or to augment a standing army is virtually as old as civilization itself. Read more

Looking back at the Battle of Gettysburg

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The American Civil War: Forging a National Identity

by Mike Haskew

The American Civil War was the tragic culmination of divergent perspectives on the proper conduct of the government of the United States and socio-economic issues that had been frequently at the forefront of American political life for decades. Read more

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Lincoln vs. Frémont and His “Hasty Emancipation”

As the early days of the American Civil War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was being contested on the battlefield, President Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more

Robert E. Lee turned to his capable commander, John B. Goron, to conduct the last great Confederate attack to break the Siege of Petersburg.

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John B. Gordon: Robert E. Lee’s Man for Fort Stedman

by Joseph Lowry

In selecting a leader for the attack on Fort Stedman, Robert E. Lee could scarcely have chosen a better commander than Maj. Read more

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Firing on Fort Sumter: the Start of Civil War

By Al Hemingway

Shortly after midnight on the morning of April 12, 1861, four men in a rowboat made their way across the pitch-black harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, toward Fort Sumter, an unfinished and architecturally insignificant masonry fort three miles out from the city where the harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. Read more

Both during the Civil War and for years afterward, many prominent photographers visited Sumter, including James M. Osborn and Samuel Cooley.

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Fort Sumter: A Photographical Diary

by Al Hemingway

As the epicenter of the Civil War, Fort Sumter naturally attracted much photographic attention. The first photographer to visit the fort after the 1861 bombardment and surrender was F.K. Read more

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Union Army Defeat at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff

By Conan Brew

In the wake of the humiliating and unexpected defeat, and fourth in a line that stretched back to Fort Sumter, the Battle of Bull Run, and the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, the Union Congress created a seven-man Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to oversee and review all battles and the events surrounding them. Read more

Ulysses S. Grant was working as a clerk in his family’s leather business in Galena, Illinois when the first shots of the American Civil War were fired.

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Ulysses S. Grant: Clerk to Commanding General

by Donald J. Roberts II

The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, marked the beginning of the American Civil War. Read more

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A Murderous Order at Culp’s Hill

By Joshua Sheperd

Although Union Colonel Silas Colgrove had previously led his men through some of the most horrific fighting in the eastern theater of the Civil War, the order he received on the morning of July 3, 1863, in the woods near Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg, was the most unnerving he had ever received. Read more

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Bushrod Johnson: Yankee Quaker, Confederate General

By Roy Morris Jr.

Of all the unlikely heroes of the Civil War, none was more unlikely than Bushrod Johnson, Ohio-born Quaker turned Confederate general. Read more

Abraham Lincoln clashed publicly with Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont over his hasty emancipation proclamation in Missouri.

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The Frémont Emancipation Proclamation

By Lawrence Weber

As the early days of the Civil War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was beginning to be contested on the battlefield, Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more

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American Civil War Timeline: the Road to War

by William Welsh

One of the catalysts for a major rebellion in the United States were irregular warfare in “Bleeding Kansas” from 1854 to 1861 between anti-slavery Free Staters and pro-slavery border ruffians. Read more

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Bound For Glory: Poet-General William H. Lytle

By Roy Morris JR.

Seemingly from birth, William Haines Lytle was bound for glory. As the last surviving male offspring of one of Cincinnati’s leading pioneer families, Lytle was the prototypical golden boy. Read more