Civil War Info and Resources
By the winter of 1863, Union forces controlled the Mississippi River with the exception of the approximately 110 miles between the Confederate strongholds of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, Louisiana. Between these two points,...
In November 1862, President Abraham Lincoln promoted Major General Ambrose Burnside to commander of the Army of the Potomac, replacing Major General George McClellan. Burnside developed a plan to capture the Confederate capitol of...
In August 1864, Major General Phillip Sheridan launched a campaign to drive Confederate forces out of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan organized his Army of the Shenandoah as it was called, in the northern end...
Elon J. Farnsworth was born in Michigan in 1837. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the 8th Illinois Cavalry as a 1st lieutenant. He served as an aide to the...
Many Civil War units had mascots, but perhaps the most famous of these was Old Abe the War Eagle, the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Infantry. Old Abe was a bald eagle that not...
Belle Boyd was born in Virginia and was a spy for the Confederate States in the Civil War. While on a speaking tour after the war, she died in Wisconsin and is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Wisconsin Dells.
Wisconsin had a new governor in January 1862. Louis P. Harvey, a Republican and former Wisconsin Secretary of State, took office on January 6th. Four days later, Harvey addressed the state legislature, asking that...
After the fall of Confederate strongholds at Vicksburg. Mississippi and Port Hudson, Louisiana in July 1863, the Union commander of the Department of the Gulf, Major General Nathaniel Banks, proposed that his forces attack...
