In July 1863, Union forces Major General Quincy Gillmore’s Army of the South landed on Morris Island outside Charleston, South Carolina. Gillmore’s objective was to take control of Charleston Harbor and eventually, Charleston itself. Charleston and vicinity was heavily defended, including Battery Wagner on Morris Island, artillery emplacements on James and Sullivan’s Islands, and Fort [...]
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Iron Brigader began its blog with a poem by Edmund Clarence Stedman, a poet from Connecticut who served as a field correspondent for the “New York World” in the early years of the Civil War. Today, we bring you a poem written by a southerner, which versifies the April 13, 1861 bombardment of the Fort, [...]
150 Years Ago in the Civil War On April 5th 1861, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles ordered a Naval expedition to proceed to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor for the purpose of resupplying the garrison there. At the end of March, President Abraham Lincoln decided that Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens at Pensacola, Florida [...]
150 Years Ago in the Civil War Late in the morning of March 4th, 1861, President elect Abraham Lincoln left Willard’s Hotel in Washington DC, boarded a carriage, and departed for the Capitol. He was accompanied by outgoing President James Buchanon. The route to the Capitol was lined with soldiers both on the ground and in the [...]
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Not to be outdone by the U.S. Mint and its offering of Civil War commemorative quarters, the U.S. Postal Service will issue two Civil War commemorative stamps per year from 2011 through 2015. The first two stamps in the series will be available on April 12th, 2011, the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the [...]
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150 Years Ago in the Civil War As the new year began, several southern states began seizing federal military installations as a precaution while the issue of secession was considered. Arsenals were seized in Alabama and Florida. Alabama took over Forts Morgan and Gaines in Mobile Bay; Georgia seized Fort Pulaski near Savannah and Florida took [...]
Continue reading about More States Secede, Confederate Government Formed: January and February 1861
