Battle of Round Mountain

The Siege of Vicksburg - Assault on Fort Hill by Thure de Thulstrup

The siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate Army of Mississippi, led by Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, leading to the successful siege and Confederate surrender.

Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River; therefore, capturing it completed the second part of the Northern strategy, the Anaconda Plan. When two major assaults against the Confederate fortifications, on May 19 and 22, were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. After holding out for more than 40 days, with their supplies nearly gone, the garrison surrendered on July 4. The Vicksburg campaign's successful ending significantly degraded the Confederacy's ability to maintain its war effort. This action, combined with the surrender of the downriver Port Hudson to Major General Nathaniel P. Banks on July 9, yielded command of the Mississippi River to the Union forces, who held it for the rest of the conflict. (Full article...)

The role of Washington Territory in the American Civil War is atypical, as the territory was the most remote from the main battlefields of the conflict. The territory raised a small number of volunteers for the Union Army, who did not fight against the Confederate States Army but instead maintained defensive positions against possible foreign naval or land attacks. Although the Indian Wars in Washington were recent, there were no Indian hostilities within the area of modern Washington, unlike the rest of the western states and territories, during the Civil War. At the start of the American Civil War, modern-day Washington was part of the Washington Territory. On March 3, 1863, the Idaho Territory was formed from that territory, consisting of the entirety of modern-day Idaho, Montana, and all but southwest Wyoming, leaving the modern-day Washington as Washington Territory. (Full article...)

Thaddeus Stevens (April 4, 1792 – August 11, 1868) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, being one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party during the 1860s. A fierce opponent of slavery and discrimination against black Americans, Stevens sought to secure their rights during Reconstruction, leading the opposition to U.S. President Andrew Johnson. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the American Civil War, he played a leading role, focusing his attention on defeating the Confederacy, financing the war with new taxes and borrowing, crushing the power of slave owners, ending slavery, and securing equal rights for the freedmen.

Stevens was born in rural Vermont, in poverty, and with a club foot, which left him with a permanent limp. He moved to Pennsylvania as a young man and quickly became a successful lawyer in Gettysburg. He interested himself in municipal affairs and then in politics. He was an active leader of the Anti-Masonic Party, as a fervent believer that Freemasonry in the United States was an evil conspiracy to secretly control the republican system of government. He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he became a strong advocate of free public education. Financial setbacks in 1842 caused him to move his home and practice to the larger city of Lancaster. There, he joined the Whig Party and was elected to Congress in 1848. His activities as a lawyer and politician in opposition to slavery cost him votes, and he did not seek reelection in 1852. After a brief flirtation with the Know-Nothing Party, Stevens joined the newly formed Republican Party and was elected to Congress again in 1858. There, with fellow radicals such as Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, he opposed the expansion of slavery and concessions to the South as the war came. (Full article...)

• ... that Byron Root Pierce was Michigan's last living Civil War general?
• ... that some historians believe that Steele's Greenville expedition marked a shift in the Union's war policy?
• ... that S. Isaac, Campbell & Company, a British firm, was a major supplier of arms to the Confederacy during the American Civil War?
• ... that Francis Orray Ticknor was a country doctor whose fame as a poet relies on "Little Giffen", a poem about one of his patients who died in the American Civil War?
• ... that Justus H. Rathbone, founder of the Knights of Pythias, served as a hospital steward during the American Civil War?
• ... that the Battle of Saint Charles featured what is known as the deadliest shot of the American Civil War?