150 Years Ago This Week: The two-minute address at Gettysburg
Four Union divisions of Maj. Gen. William Sherman’s troops were at Bridgeport, on the Tennessee River on Sunday, Nov. 15, when Gen. Sherman went into Chattanooga to confer with Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant;...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: The battle above the clouds
On Nov. 21, Maj. Gen. William Sherman moved up his Union troops and crossed the Tennessee River at Brown’s Ferry. His objective was to recross the Tennessee and attack the north end of Missionary Ridge.
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: More fighting in Virginia and Tennessee
The major fighting at Chattanooga was over by Thursday, Nov. 26. Maj. Gen. George Thomas and Maj. Gen. William Sherman with their respective Union armies pursued Gen. Braxton Bragg’s army into north...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Lincoln’s preliminary plans for Reconstruction
Lt. Gen. James Longstreet pulled his troops out of the Knoxville area in Tennessee on Friday, Dec. 4, and, on their return to Virginia, got as far as Greenville, where they set up winter quarters.
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Spending the holidays at war
On Saturday, Dec. 19, marking the beginning of the week before Christmas, several skirmishes in Virginia and West Virginia resulted from the long-continuing Federal cavalry raids on the railroads...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Armies at rest
The Confederate Congress confirmed Sen. George Davis of North Carolina as Attorney General on Saturday, Jan. 2, 1864, allowing him to succeed Wade Keyes, who had served as interim Attorney General...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Federal troops protect a U.S. Consul
On Saturday, Jan. 9, President Jefferson Davis warned his military commanders in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi of reports that Adm. David Farragut was preparing to attack Mobile and attempt to pass...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: The Confederacy begins to unravel
Union forces under Maj. Gen. John Parke advanced on Dandridge, Tenn. on Saturday, Jan. 16, along the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, forcing Confederate troops commanded by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: A nasty war was developing
President Abraham Lincoln approved a policy on Saturday, Jan. 23, whereby plantation owners in the South would recognize the freedom of their former slaves and hire them by fair contracts to...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Mississippi again a battleground
Acting under the congressional conscription act, President Abraham Lincoln ordered that 500,000 men be drafted on March 10 to serve for three years or the duration of the war. Further, the president...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Lincoln signs his death warrant?
Federal forces commanded by Maj. Gen. William Sherman left Mississippi’s capital city at Jackson on Saturday, Feb. 6, and headed east toward their objective: The important railroad center at Meridian.
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Meridian falls and Hunley sinks
On Friday, Feb. 12, President Jefferson Davis advised Gen. Joseph Johnston that the Federal advance in Mississippi “should be met before he reaches the Gulf and establishes a base by which supplies and...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Major battle in Florida
Before the First Congress of the Confederate States adjourned its fourth session, it suspended the writ of habeas corpus until Aug. 2 to meet resistance to the conscription laws and other disloyal...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: ‘Jefferson Davis must be killed.’
Following his meeting in Washington with President Abraham Lincoln two weeks before, Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick had returned to his headquarters at Rose Hill and begun laying plans for a raid on...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Grant assumes command
On the last day of February, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln approved the congressional act reviving the grade of lieutenant general in the army — the highest rank since George Washington.
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Engagement at Bristoe Station
In an effort to learn of the intentions of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, the Federals of Maj. Gen. George Meade’s Army of the Potomac began probing the Rapidan River area of Culpeper...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Major changes in Union command
The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley sank for a second time in Charleston Harbor, S.C. in the middle of October; her inventor and namesake, Horace Lawson Hunley, and seven crew members perished in a...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Rare night battle at Wauhatchie
In an effort to supply the besieged Army of the Cumberland in the environs of Chattanooga, Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant and Maj. Gen. George Thomas conducted a personal inspection for a proposed supply line...
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: Lincoln gets an invitation
Attention at the beginning of November, 1863, turned from the mid-summer fronts on the Mississippi River and in Virginia and Pennsylvania to Tennessee, and specifically Chattanooga.
View Article150 Years Ago This Week: President Lincoln watches his assassin
In a maneuver against Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate forces in Virginia, Maj. Gen. George Meade sent Union forces across the Rappahannock River at Kelly’s Ford and Rappahannock Station, though...
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