U.S. Civil War Battle by Battle

By Iain MacGregor

'Just the thing for US Civil War buffs: snappily written, informative and entertaining. A cracking read.' - Saul David, bestselling author and historian

This attractively packaged gift book offers a highly illustrated introduction to some of the U.S. Civil War's most famous and important battles, from the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 to the Battle of Appomatox Court House in 1865.

The U.S. Civil War was the most cataclysmic military struggle of the late 19th century, and in four bloody years of fighting from 1861 to 1865 over 620,000 American soldiers and sailors lost their lives in more than 8,000 battles, engagements and skirmishes.

U.S. Civil War Battle by Battle tells the story of 30 of the most significant of these battles. These include some of the most famous clashes, such as the battles of Gettysburg and Fredericksburg, which resonate through American military history, but also the less well known, such as the battles of Brandy Station and Cedar Creek.

This highly illustrated introduction, packed full of colour artwork, covers every theatre of the war and details infantry, cavalry, artillery and seaborne units from both the Union and the Confederate forces to give a true sense of the scale of the War between the States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781472850096

Iain MacGregor

Iain MacGregor has been an editor and publisher of nonfiction for over twenty-five years. He is the author of The Lighthouse of Stalingrad and Checkpoint Charlie. As a history student he visited the Baltic and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s and has been captivated by Soviet history ever since. He has published books on every aspect of the Second World War on the Eastern Front 1941-45 and has visited archives in Leningrad, Moscow, and Volgograd. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Spectator and BBC History Magazine. He lives with his wife and two children in London.  

Book preview

DEDICATION

To Sharon Van Der Merwe

CONTENTS

Chronology

The Battle of Fort Sumter

The Battle of First Manassas/First Bull Run

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek/Oak Hills

The Battle of First Lexington

The Battle of Ball’s Bluff/Leesburg

The Battle of Fort Donelson

The Naval Battle of Hampton Roads

The Battle of Glorieta Pass

The Battle of Shiloh

The Battle of Gaines’ Mill—The Seven Days

The Battle of Second Manassas/Second Bull Run

The Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg

The Battle of Fredericksburg

The Battle of Chancellorsville

The Siege of Vicksburg

The Battle of Brandy Station

The Battle of Gettysburg

The Second Battle of Fort Wagner

The Battle of Chickamauga

The Battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge

The Battle of Okolona

The Battle of the Wilderness

The Battle of Cold Harbor

The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain

The Battle of the Crater—Petersburg

The Battle of Jonesborough

The Battle of Cedar Creek

The Battle of Nashville

The Battle of Bentonville

The Battle of Appomattox Court House

CHRONOLOGY

THE BATTLE OF FORT SUMTER

April 12–13, 1861

Fort Sumter, built to protect the port of Charleston, South Carolina, is best known for the role it played at the start of the Civil War. (Donato Spedaliere © Osprey Publishing)

Slavery would be the primary political issue that brought on the Civil War of 1861–65 in the United States of America. By the spring of 1861, the presidency had been decided, with the Republican and pro-abolitionist Abraham Lincoln winning by a landslide. By this point the battle lines between those cotton-producing states wishing to secede to form the Confederate States of America (CSA) and those that remained loyal to the Union were firmly in place. Fearful of their cotton-producing economies being compromised by the freeing of the 4 million slaves they required to sustain it, the 11 slave-owning states would ratify secession, a move precipitated by South Carolina on December 20, 1860 and soon followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas; by the summer, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee would follow, with both Kentucky and Missouri joining later that year but not officially ratified through their respective legislatures.

The pressure for the South to act and seize all Federal property within their borders and acquire the arsenals with which to arm their own hastily formed militias intensified. South Carolina’s state legislature now looked upon the Federal fortifications which controlled access in and out of Charleston Harbor, the state’s largest city. By April 1861, Lincoln had rejected any Confederate overtures for a peace treaty, citing them as an illegitimate government, only stoking greater tension as calls raged across the South to eject all Federal military, civilian, and judicial elements from their territory.

Fort Sumter was a formidable gun platform that dominated the entrance in and out of Charleston Harbor and was used as the headquarters of the local Federal forces in the city. Appointed in February, its new commander—Maj. Robert Anderson of the 1st U.S. Artillery Regiment, a native Kentuckian—now faced off against Maj. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard whom he had himself taught at West Point Military Academy. Anderson assessed that his small force of 85 men was best placed to defend Federal interests by evacuating their landward bases around the harbor to the safety of Fort Sumter. The Confederates quickly decided to lay siege, redirecting their batteries to best threaten the fort, as well as cut off resupply.

The siege became the first crisis of Lincoln’s new administration. The standoff became ever more aggressive as the rebellion developed, with the formation of the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis proclaimed as its first president. With Maj. Anderson informing Washington his rations were running low, Lincoln ordered supply ships to sail south to his aid and notified the city’s authorities of their arrival, the watching civilian population and press wondering who would fire first.

On April 9, Beauregard was instructed by President Davis to issue an ultimatum for the garrison’s surrender or else it would be taken by force. Aware of his precarious position—outnumbered and heavily outgunned—Anderson chose to decline the ultimatum, bidding Beauregard’s aide goodbye with the fateful words, If we never meet in this world again, God grant that we may meet in the next. The rebel bombardment began at 4:30am on April 12 as 43 guns and mortars shelled the fort continuously for 34 hours. Anderson insured none of his men were exposed to the deadly salvoes as they returned fire from the fort’s protected lower levels. The wooden outbuildings were now aflame and the masonry superstructure partially destroyed, but no federal casualties had been suffered.

The 8-inch columbiad, a