The civil war within the Confederacy is often overshadowed by the actual Civil War. The American Civil War was a titanic struggle between the overwhelming numeric and material advantages of the Union, and the tactical and leadership advantages of the states that would form the Confederate States of America. In such a large conflict many stories, unfortunately, go untold and it becomes easy to oversimplify each side. The war did not become inevitable simply because of the Republican Party...
The Christy Collection
Military Stories and Articles
Civil War – The Overland Campaign
The first few years of the Civil War did not go well for the Union. At best, the war until 1863 performance could be considered a stalemate. At worst, the Confederates were establishing themselves as a force to be reckoned with. President Abraham Lincoln was looking down the barrel at a re-election campaign he never thought he would win and a country that might permanently be split in two. Lincoln had chosen a number of generals to command the Union Army, but none of them could make any...
Civil War – From Manassas to Appomattox Court House
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election as the first Republican President on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, South Carolina legislature passed the "Ordinance of Secession," which declared that "the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states,...
Civil War – The Battle of Atlanta
In the summer of 1864, the Confederate States of America was reeling from a series of defeats that would ultimately lead to its demise. Despite the Union victory at Gettysburg in 1863 that turned the Army of Northern Virginia back and the capture of Vicksburg that gave the Union control of the Mississippi River, the outcome of the Civil War was anything but assured. After leading the Union Army at the Siege of Vicksburg and his subsequent win at Chattanooga, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted...