Chronological History of the American Civil War

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Missouri and New Jersey. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, Southern Democratic Party: 18.1% won eleven slaveholding states, except for Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky in the Upper South, which went to John Bell of Tennessee, Constitutional Union Party: 12.6%. Before Lincoln's inauguration, seven Southern states declared their secession and later formed the Confederacy. Soldiers' Free Time ... A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. When they were not drilling, which made up a considerable portion of their time in camp, soldiers passed the time writing letters, playing games like checkers, dominoes and poker, drinking, smoking, whittling, making music and praying. One soldier summed it up when he wrote to his wife, “Soldiering is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror.” More athletic activities included wrestling, boxing, leapfrog, racing on foot or horseback, cricket, and—in at least one instance—bowling using cannon balls to knock down rough wooden pins. Baseball, played differently than it is today, was another popular sport. One of the more violent winter games was the snowball battle. Whole brigades would form up in lines, develop plans of attack, and set out to pummel the other side with hard missiles of snow and ice. Even officers joined in the battles, which often resulted in black eyes, bruises, and an occasional broken limb. Civil War Photography A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. Photography was a new art form when the Civil War broke out. The cameras and chemicals available at the time were too much to move and were unstable to accommodate the chaos of a battlefield. Still, a few photographs of Civil War combat do exist, including images of artillery bombardments, gunboat broadsides, and battle smoke at Nashville and Fredericksburg. During the war, dozens of photographers, both as private individuals and as employees of the Confederate and Union Governments, photographed civilians and civilian activities; military personnel, equipment, and activities; and the locations and aftermaths of battles. Because wet- plate collodion negatives required from 5 to 20 seconds exposure, there are no action photographs of the war. The name Matthew B. Brady is almost a synonym for Civil War photography. Although Brady himself may have taken only a few photographs of the war, he employed many of the other well-known photographers before and during the war. Thousands of Civil War photographs can be found online at the Library of Congress. 70% of all Civil War documentary photographs were shot as “stereo views” - the 19th Century equivalent of 3-D!!! Pony Express A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. The name Pony Express will always be a part of our history. Even though the company delivered mail only between two states, Missouri and California, with a whole lot of Indian territory in between. The Pony Express delivered messages and mail from St. Joseph, Missouri across the Great Plains, over the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada to Sacramento, California by horseback, using a series of relay stations. The distance was approximately 1,900-mile. During its 18 months of operation, it reduced the time for messages to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to about ten days. From April 3, 1860 to October 1861, it became the West's most direct means of east–west communication before the telegraph was established and was vital for tying the new state of California with the rest of the country. The telegraph would put the end to this era. William Russell, Alexander Majors and William Waddell were the three founders of the Pony Express and were already in the freighting business in the late 1850s. In 1860, they set up 184 Pony Express stations and 157 relay stations were located from 5 to 25 miles apart as the terrain would allow for apart along the Pony Express route. This was roughly the distance a horse could travel at a gallop before tiring. At each station stop, the express rider would change to a fresh horse, taking only the mail pouch with him. Each rider rode about 75 miles per day. The cost of delivering ½ ounce piece of mail was $5 (about $100