Enslaved workers constituted the backbone of the Confederate war effort. Although stories of these impressed workers and camp slaves have been erased from our popular memory of the war in favor of mythical accounts of black Confederate soldiers, their presence in the Confederate army constituted a visual reminder to every soldier —slaveowner and non-slaveowner alike—that their ultimate success in battle depended on the ownership of other human beings.
Abraham Lincoln still resonates with people throughout the world who call upon him for words of wisdom during times of conflict. His poetic prose dedicated to the principle of democracy advocated both the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery.
In the years leading up to the Civil War, when polarization over whether people should be able to own other people as property was reaching its fever pitch, a similar and related sort of division was happening.
The History of the Life of Rev. Wm. Mack Lee states that its author, William Mack Lee (1835-1932), was a body servant and cook for General Robert E. Lee during the Civil War and until the general’s death in 1870. However, this claim, like many others in W. M. Lee’s brief 1918 autobiography, has been disputed by…
MAJOR REVIVALS broke out in the Civil War armies. In the Union Army, between 100,000 and 200,000 soldiers were converted; among Confederate forces, approximately 150,000 troops converted to Christ. Perhaps 10 percent of all Civil War soldiers experienced conversions during the conflict. Abraham Lincoln, though he knew the Bible thoroughly and spoke often of an…
Report of Col. Roger W. Hanson, Second Kentucky Infantry (Confederate). Richmond, Va., August 8, 1862. On February —, in pursuance of orders, I proceeded, with my regiment upon the cars, from Russellville, Ky., to Clarksville, Tenn. When I arrived there I was ordered by General Pillow to embark immediately for Fort Donelson. I arrived there…
Midway through 1861, well-known Richmond chemists Edward T. Finch and Joseph Laidley lent their expertise to the Confederacy in a risky venture: gun powder production. Each was among the most respected in his field in Virginia, but working with highly combustible material was out of their comfort zones. Before the war, Finch boasted in the…
After nearly 10 months of stagnation outside Petersburg, a fresh offensive by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Union armies was poised to change the course of the war.
Encouraged by President Johnson’s evident intention to return to them the management of their own affairs, Southern legislators, elected by white voters, passed what came to be called Black Codes. Their very evident purpose was to reduce free blacks to a new kind of legal servitude distinguished by all the disadvantages of slavery and none…
