1. The Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam examines Robert E. Lee’s 1862 invasion of Maryland and the fighting near Sharpsburg on 17 September, the bloodiest single day in American military history. Union commander George B. McClellan possessed a numerical advantage and unusually valuable intelligence after a copy of Lee’s…
2. The Battle of Atlanta
The Battle of Atlanta examines the fighting around the city in July 1864 during William T. Sherman’s campaign through Georgia. Atlanta was an important railway and industrial centre for the Confederacy, and its defence became a major objective for General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee…
3. The Battle of Chancellorsville
The Battle of Chancellorsville examines the fighting in Virginia from 30 April to 6 May 1863, when Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia confronted Joseph Hooker’s larger Army of the Potomac. Lee divided his forces in the face of superior numbers, while Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson…
4. The Battle of Chickamauga
The Battle of Chickamauga examines the major clash fought in northern Georgia on 19–20 September 1863 between William Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland and Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. Confederate reinforcements under James Longstreet helped give Bragg numerical strength at a moment when both armies were…
5. The Battle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter recounts the crisis in Charleston Harbor that turned secession into open war. After South Carolina left the Union, Major Robert Anderson moved his small federal garrison into Fort Sumter, where dwindling supplies and competing claims of sovereignty made the unfinished fort…
6. The Battle of Pea Ridge
The Battle of Pea Ridge examines the campaign that decided whether Confederate forces could regain control of Missouri in early 1862. Major General Earl Van Dorn led the Confederate Army of the West through difficult winter country in an attempt to move around Samuel Ryan Curtis’s…
7. The Battle of Second Manassas
The Second Battle of Manassas, or Second Bull Run, was fought from 28 to 30 August 1862 during Robert E. Lee’s northern Virginia campaign. Confederate forces under Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson drew John Pope’s Army of Virginia onto ground close to the battlefield of First Manassas, while…
8. The Battle of Shiloh
The Battle of Shiloh examines the violent two-day engagement fought in Tennessee on 6–7 April 1862. Confederate forces under Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard struck Ulysses S. Grant’s army near Pittsburg Landing before it could fully unite with Don Carlos Buell, hoping to…
9. The First Battle of Manassas
The First Battle of Manassas, called First Bull Run by Union forces, was fought on 21 July 1861 near Washington, D.C., and became the first major land battle of the American Civil War. Union forces under Irvin McDowell advanced into Virginia expecting to defeat the Confederate…
10. The Siege of Vicksburg
The siege of Vicksburg was the culmination of Ulysses S. Grant’s 1863 campaign to seize the Confederate stronghold overlooking the Mississippi River. After failed attempts to approach the city from the north, Grant moved his army down the western bank, crossed below Vicksburg and fought inland…