Browse Topics - C

The Carolinas Campaign

North Carolina’s interior was spared the harsh realities of war until the spring of 1865 when Sherman’s…

Causes of the Civil War

Without the presence of slavery, disunion and war would not have taken place. But did slavery's presence…

The Evolution of Union Cavalry 1861-1865

The story of the Federal cavalry during the Civil War is not only the story of the development of raw…

The Battle of Cedar Creek

The Battle of Cedar Creek was the culmination of Sheridan's 1864 Valley Campaign

The Battle of Cedar Mountain

The Union forces posed a threat across Virginia in three fronts in the summer of 1862. The Army of the…

The Civil War Centennial 1961-1965

The Civil War Centennial had its share of controversy but did leave a positive legacy.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Biography of Union General and hero of The Little Round Top Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Stuart's Chambersburg Raid

Stuart’s Chambersburg Raid, October 9 – 12, 1862 was one of the final nails in the coffin for the military…

Chancellorsville

Lee's brilliant victory over Hooker at Chancellorsville, won at the cost of the death of Stonewall Jackson,…

Chaplains in the Civil War

The work and impact of chaplains during the Civil War.

Mary Chesnut

Mary Chesnut was a diarist whose writings were never published during her lifetime, but whose “diary”…

The Battle of Chickamauga

Children in the Civil War

Civil Liberties During the Civil War

Civil Liberties During the Civil War

Class Conflict in the Union and the Confederacy

The Civil War was a conflict that pitted an industrializing, free labor North against a rural, slaveholding…

Cold Harbor and the Advance to Petersburg

In early May, 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant launched a campaign to crush General Robert E.…

Lincoln and Colonization

Abraham Lincoln was a proponent of colonization (funding the removal of freed African Americans to Africa…

Lincoln and Davis as Commanders in Chief

Abraham Lincoln Commander in Chief | Jefferson Davis Commander in Chief | Civil War Leaders

Command Frictions

Command Frictions | Fog of Uncertainty | Chain of Command | Spheres of Command | Continuity of Leadership…

Communications in the Civil War

A communication revolution saw the movement of messages across the continent in ten days by Wagon train…

The Compromise of 1850

Whether the territories acquired in the Mexican-American War would be free or slave threatened the Union…

Confederate Commerce Raiders and Privateers

Arguably the Confederacy’s maritime efforts rank among its greatest wartime successes. Starting literally…

The Confederate Constitution

After a Confederate Provisional Constitution was drafted in early 1861, the Confederate Permanent Constitution…

Confederate Diaspora

In the wake of the US Civil War, approximately ten thousand Confederates expats left the geographic space…

Confederate Government

Structure and Operation of the Confederate Government

Confederate Nationalism

Confederate nationalism gave Confederates a coherent set of ideas to explain and justify their independence.

Confederate Veterans' Associations

Confederate veteran groups began forming as early as 1865. The premier Confederate veterans’ organization,…

Conscription

Systems of conscription operated in the North and South

Copperheads

Copperheads, or Peace Democrats, opposed the Civil War because they believed it was unjustified and being…

Cotton

At the time of the Civil War, cotton had become the most valuable crop of the South and comprised 59%…

Jacob Dolson Cox

The wrenching and unexpected events of the mid-nineteenth century led Jacob Dolson Cox from a tranquil…

The Battle of the Crater

The Battle of the Crater ended with what may have been the worst racial massacre on any Civil War battlefield.

George Armstrong Custer

In his time George Armstrong Custer was a national hero and one of the most popular figures in the country…

Cycloramas

The new technology of cycloramas brought Civil War battlefields to life for 19th century audiences.

Camp Life

The vast majority of Civil War soldiers’ military service was spent in army encampments waging a daily…

Cavalry Raids

More so than infantrymen, Civil War cavalrymen displayed the nineteenth-century values of glamor, adventure,…

American Cities in the Civil War

When the Civil War began America was an overwhelmingly rural society, but its growing cities mattered…