The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 1 (of 2) A Narrative and Critical History

The Mexican war and the subsequent negotiations added a vast territory to the national domain. Much of it lay south of the Missouri Compromise line, and into that part of it at...

No sooner had Lee come into command than he set out to change and reverse the existing conditions of the war. He was determined to drive McClellan away from Richmond, to put an...

The election of Mr. Lincoln filled the whole country with alarmed apprehension. At the North no less than at the South men anxiously asked of themselves and of their neighbors "...

McClellan's advance upon Richmond, in its beginnings at least, antedated the great conflict at Shiloh. But its crisis did not come until much later, nor did it in its early prog...

There is no possibility of doubt that, but for the slavery controversy, that growth of an intense national feeling which has been mentioned would have rendered the war of 1861-6...

There was still another man of splendid genius and capacity who about this time came to the front as a winner of victories for the Federal arms, and above all, as a man like Gra...

At midsummer, 1861, there occurred near Manassas Junction in Virginia a battle which must always be regarded as one of the most remarkable of conflicts whether we consider its u...

The causes of the war of 1861-65 were deeply imbedded in the history of the country, in the peculiar manner of its development, in the complex interests of men, and in those pri...

It was explained in the last chapter that Lee's first object when he took personal charge of the army defending Richmond was to raise McClellan's siege of the Confederate capita...

The events that brought about the Confederate War, the conditions and circumstances under which it occurred, and the passions and prejudices which inspired that bloody and most...

With the aid of a considerable Northern vote in Congress the South succeeded in passing the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repealing the Missouri Compromise, and under the doctrine of "S...

On the evening of the twenty-first day of July, 1861, the Confederate army at Manassas rested upon one of the completest and most spectacular victories that had ever been won by...

If matters had remained as they were, there is little room for doubt that the settlement reached in the Missouri Compromise would have endured for another generation at the leas...

The moment Virginia adopted an ordinance of secession the authorities on both sides recognized the fact that that state was destined to be the chief battle ground of the war, an...

During the autumn of 1861 the troops of both sides were pushed into the "neutral" state of Kentucky at various points and in considerable numbers. Two battles of some moment res...

We have already seen from his own reports what McClellan thought of the force he was called upon to command at and near Washington after the disastrous defeat of McDowell at Man...

Lee seemed now to be master of the situation so far at least as determining when and where the fighting should be done. Within the brief space of two months he had raised the si...

The Missouri Compromise was in effect repealed by the compromise measures of 1850 but there was as yet no formal repeal. The effect of the compromise measures of 1850 was presen...

There are not that many men in all the regular standing armies of Europe combined, even if we include the unpaid hordes of Turkey and the military myriads of the armed camp know...

When the time came to nominate candidates for the presidential election of 1860, something akin to despair had seized upon the minds of men--a despair that discouraged hopeful c...

With the secession of Virginia on the seventeenth of April, 1861, there came a final end to all hope of finding a way out. The active border states did not immediately declare t...

Lee had now accomplished the first of his two purposes. He had raised McClellan's siege of Richmond. He had not succeeded in capturing or destroying McClellan's army as he had h...

The "pepper box" policy of employing small bodies of troops everywhere for the accomplishment of ends of no strategic consequence prevailed at Washington during all those early...

It is necessary now to record what had meanwhile been going on in Virginia and elsewhere. At the beginning of November General George B. McClellan was placed in supreme command...

While the Southern army indulged in its siesta after its victory, and seemed to wait for the war to come to an end of its own accord, the North was stirred by that event into mo...

As soon as the fact was recognized that war existed between the Northern and the Southern states it was quite a matter of course and of common sense that the Federal Government...

The war of 1861-65 was in fact a revolution. Had the South succeeded in the purposes with which that war was undertaken it would have divided the American Republic into two sepa...

The failure of the Compromise of 1850 to accomplish its purpose did not at first appear in the national election returns. In fact the new Free-soil party polled fewer votes in 1...

During the long period of strange inactivity in those parts of the country where the real seat of war lay, there was a good deal of active fighting elsewhere. Some of it was sev...

This was the situation during the year 1861 and the early part of the year 1862. There were destined soon to come upon the scene two great masters of the military art--the one u...

Let us explain. The Mississippi river is exceedingly tortuous in its course. Some miles above New Madrid in Missouri, it suddenly turns northwardly and makes a great bend. At or...