On this day in 1861, a telegram arrived at Brierfield, Jefferson Davis’ Mississippi plantation, informing him that on the previous day, breakaway delegates meeting in Montgomery, Ala., had chosen him as the provisional president of the newly formed Confederate States of America. The former congressman and senator from Mississippi had…

The Confederate Army had difficulty throughout the war in supplying its field officers with adequate maps.

In the early afternoon on September 17, 1862, just about 200 miles from where the Battle of Antietam was taking place, another Civil War-era tragedy occurs: Three explosions rip through the Allegheny Arsenal and kill 78 workers, mostly young women and girls.

The Revenue Act of 1861, formally cited as Act of August 5, 1861, Chap. XLV, 12 Stat. 292, included the first U.S. Federal income tax statute (see Sec.49). The Act, motivated by the need to fund the Civil War, imposed an income tax to be “levied, collected, and paid, upon the annual income of every person residing in the…

Robert Ransom Jr. (February 12, 1828 – January 14, 1892) was a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. His brother Matt W. Ransom was also a Confederate general officer and U.S. Senator. Ransom was born in Warren County, North Carolina to Robert Ransom Sr. and Priscilla Whitaker Ransom. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1850.…