Portal:American Civil War

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Union troops in trenches at Petersburg

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a sectional rebellion against the United States of America by the Confederate States, formed of eleven southern slave states' governments which moved to secede from the Union after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. The Union's victory was eventually achieved by leveraging advantages in population, manufacturing and logistics and through a strategic naval blockade denying the Confederacy access to the world's markets.

In many ways, the conflict's central issues – the enslavement of African Americans, the role of constitutional federal government, and the rights of states – are still not completely resolved. Not surprisingly, the Confederate army's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 did little to change many Americans' attitudes toward the potential powers of central government. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution in the years immediately following the war did not change the racial prejudice prevalent among Americans of the day; and the process of Reconstruction did not heal the deeply personal wounds inflicted by four brutal years of war and more than 970,000 casualties – 3 percent of the population, including approximately 560,000 deaths. As a result, controversies affected by the war's unresolved social, political, economic and racial tensions continue to shape contemporary American thought. The causes of the war, the reasons for the outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of much discussion even today.

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Lawrence Sullivan "Sul" Ross (September 27, 1838 – January 3, 1898) was the 19th Governor of Texas, a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War, and a president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. His family settled in the Republic of Texas within a year of his birth, and much of his childhood was spent on the frontier. His family later founded the town of Waco. As a teenager, Ross attended Baylor University and Florence Wesleyan University. On one of his summer breaks he suffered severe injuries while fighting renegade Comanches. After graduation Ross became a Texas Ranger, and in 1860 led troops in the Battle of Pease River, where he rescued Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been captured by the Comanches as a child.

When Texas joined the Confederacy, Ross joined the Confederate States Army. He participated in 135 battles and skirmishes and became one of the youngest Confederate generals. Following the Civil War, Ross briefly served as sheriff of McLennan County before resigning to participate in the 1875 Texas Constitutional Convention. With the exception of a two-year term as a state senator, Ross spent the next decade focused on his farm and ranch concerns. In 1887, he became the 19th governor of Texas. During his two terms, he oversaw the dedication of the new Texas State Capitol, resolved the Jaybird-Woodpecker War, and became the only Texas governor to call a special session to deal with a treasury surplus. Despite his popularity, he refused to run for a third term as governor. Days after leaving office, Ross became president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). He is credited with saving the school from closing, and his tenure saw a large expansion in college facilities and the birth of many school traditions. After his death, the Texas legislature created Sul Ross State University in his honor.

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Critical roles played by Indiana involved manpower, supply, and transportation. Despite significant Copperhead activity in the state and southern Indiana's ancestral ties to the Southern Confederacy, it did not secede from the Union. During the course of the war, Indiana contributed approximately 210,000 soldiers to the Union and millions of dollars to equip and supply them. Residents of Indiana, Hoosiers, served in every major engagement of the war and almost every engagement in the western theater. With rich agricultural yields and being the fourth most populated Union state, Indiana's participation was critical to northern success.

On the home front, the state experienced political strife when Governor Oliver P. Morton suppressed the Democrat-controlled state legislature, leaving the state without the authority to collect taxes. The state edged near bankruptcy during 1861, but the Governor chose to use private funds rather than rely on the Indiana General Assembly. The state experienced two minor raids and one major raid in 1863, which caused a brief panic in the capitol.

The American Civil War altered Indiana's society, politics, and economics, beginning a population shift northward and leading to a decline in the southern part of the state. The wartime tariffs led to an increase in the population's standard of living and began the growth of industry in the state.

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Ely Samuel Parker (1828 – August 31, 1895), (born Hasanoanda, later known as Donehogawa) was an Iroquois of the Seneca tribe born at Indian Falls, New York (then part of the Tonawanda Reservation). During the American Civil War, he wrote the final draft of the Confederate surrender terms at Appomattox. Later in his career Parker rose to the rank of Brigadier General, a promotion which was backdated to the surrender.

Parker began his career in public service by working as a translator to the Seneca chiefs in their dealings with government agencies. In 1852 he was made sachem of the Seneca, Donehogawa, Keeper of the Western Door. Parker worked in a law firm ('read law') for the customary three years in Ellicotville, NY and then applied to take the bar examination. He was not permitted to take the examination because he was not a white man, and he then studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York and worked as a civil engineer until the Civil War.

Near the start of the Civil War, Parker tried to raise a regiment of Iroquois volunteers to fight for the Union, but was turned down by New York Governor Edwin D. Morgan. He then sought to join the Union Army as an engineer, but was told by Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he could not since he was Indian. Parker's lifelong friend Ulysses S. Grant, whose forces suffered from a shortage of engineers, intervened; Parker joined Grant at Vicksburg. He was commissioned a captain in 1863 and rose to the rank of Brigadier General. Parker became the adjutant to Ulysses S. Grant and was present when Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865. The surrender documents are in his handwriting. During this surrender, Lee mistook Parker for a black man, but apologized saying "I am glad to see one real American here." Parker purportedly responded, "We are all Americans, sir."

File:Yorktown artillery2.jpg

Credit: James F. Gibson

A battery of 13-inch mortars employed by the Union army during the Siege of Yorktown in 1862

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... that eighteen fallen Confederate soldiers were moved when the Confederate Monument in Georgetown was dedicated?
... that key donors of land to Louisville, Kentucky's 26-mile parkway system included a veteran of the Confederate Army and a notorious political boss?
... that residents of Indianapolis came to the aid of Confederate prisoners of war at Camp Morton, providing food, clothing, and nursing?