Chronological History of the American Civil War

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minute” stretch at the Battle of Cold Harbor (June 1-3, 1864) 7,000 Union soldiers fell during an assault against entrenched rebels. During one charge at Petersburg that lasted only 7 minutes the Union’s 1st Maine Heavy Artillery lost 635 men out of 900. In May 1864, the President’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln gave Grant a new nickname, “The Butcher.” When did the Civil War Really End? A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. One fact I have found hard to find a definite answer to is, “When did the Great American Civil War end?” We know it started with the Confederates attack at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, but the ending date is a little harder to define. Although, it has been taught that the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia between General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses Grant on April 9, 1865 ended the American Civil War, there were still active Confederate forces in the field across the country. Certainly, Lee's surrender was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy, but the war was not over. General Joe Johnston maintained a force of 25- 30,000 soldiers in Greensboro, North Carolina until April 26, 1865, when he surrendered his immediate army along with all active Confederate soldiers throughout the southeast (NC, SC, GA, and FL) totaling nearly 90,000 soldiers. This made the surrender at the Bennett Farm in now Durham, North Carolina the largest surrender of the entire war, and perhaps more significant than the surrender at Appomattox. Three more surrenders followed in Alabama, Louisiana, and the Oklahoma territory where not until June 23, 1865, General Stand Watie surrendered his regiment made up of American Cherokee Indians. The final surrender of the war came, November 6, 1865, when a Confederate naval vessel, the C.S.S. Shenandoah, lowered her flags to British authorities in England. Thus, the end of the American Civil War. After over four long years of fighting, it was finally over. The Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of over 620,000 Union and Confederate dead. But hostilities will continue throughout the country for another 10 years with a time known as “Reconstruction.”

The Youngest General... A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. The youngest general officer of the Great American Civil War was Brevet Major- General Galusha Pennypacker. He is to this day the youngest person to hold the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Army. He was only 17 at outset of the war, and at the age of 20, he remains the only general too young to vote for the president who appointed him. He remained too young to vote until after the war’s end.

1860 Republican Convention A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. Oddly enough now, but in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated for President at the Republican Convention in Chicago, he was not even present to accept it. This would be unimaginable today, but the normal practice then. That wasn’t the only place Lincoln was missing. Abraham Lincoln’s name was not even on many of the ballots in the Southern districts. Lincoln did not win any Southern districts during this election. The Confederacy, was a secessionist government and was established in 1861 by seven slave states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas in the Lower South. Each had declared their secession from the United States following the November 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, who ran on an anti-slavery expansion platform. Those seven states proclaimed their creation of a new nation in February 1861, before Lincoln took office in March. Medal of Honor Recipients A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. An estimated 800,000 men enlisted in the Confederate Army compared to an estimated 2.2 million men that enlisted in the Union