. The events of 1850-1877 form the central drama in the history of American politics, a sequence of riveting episodes enacted by a cast of colorful characters and featuring astonishing twists of plot with profound implications. Although the major events...

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Americans were among the most optimistic people on earth. Economic growth and territorial expansion all contributed to a sense of apparently boundless opportunity. Dedicated to individualism,...

. Observers of American law during 1850-1877 frequently remarked on the passing of a heroic era of legal creativity. By 1860 nobody in the country associated with the law enjoyed the stature that had been shared by a dozen figures a generation earlier....

By 1850 American educational reformers, led by Horace Mann, had succeeded in convincing many leading citizens of the merits of establishing a system of publicly supported "common schools." Inspired by newly developed European models of public...

The 1850s were a watershed decade for American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) are widely acknowledged as the first true masterpieces of the American novel. Henry David Thoreau's...

In comparison to other nineteenth-century conflicts, the American Civil War was a modern war. This is not surprising for, as historian James McPherson states, "every war is more modern than the previous one." Before 1861, wars, especially in Europe,...

Science, technology, and medicine went through important changes between 1850 and 1877. New findings in these fields, especially in technology, helped to give shape to a modernizing, industrializing nation; at the same time, the economic and social...

Clothing in the East communicates a wide range of personal and collective information about religious practice. A Buddhist monk's tonsure and saffron robes or a Hindu guru's choice not to wear any clothing are religiously sanctioned...

The traditions of the past still defined recreations of most Americans in the 1850s through the 1870s, particularly in the years before the Civil War. Americans were flocking to cities, but in 1860 only six million, or one in five, lived in an urban...

During the first half of 1863, doubts about the Federal army's ability to defeat the Confederate forces mounted across the North. And when Confederate general Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) led his troops to a spectacular victory at...

The second year of the Civil War started quietly, as the North concentrated on training and organizing its inexperienced troops and the South elected to conserve its strength for the coming spring. Once the winter of 1861–62 was over, though,...

In early 1864, the Federal Army made plans to destroy the Confederate military once and for all. Union armies led by Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) and William T. Sherman (1820–1891) launched offensives deep into Confederate territory with...

At the time of the Civil War, the primary means of communication for most Americans was through personal contact. There were less than one-fifth as many people in the United States as there are today, and only one-fourth of them lived in cities. Most...

As both the Union and the Confederacy began to build their armies for the coming conflict, a strange mood of excitement rippled across the divided nation. People in the North and the South had been struggling against each other for so long that it...

Black people from both the North and the South participated in the Civil War in a variety of ways. Free blacks from the North tried to join the fight as soldiers from the earliest days of the conflict. These men not only wanted to help free the slaves...

The North continued to roll toward victory during the first months of 1865. Exhausted by the long war, the South's military and civilian population proved powerless to stop the Union forces as they moved across the Confederate countryside. In...

1850-1864— T'aiping Rebellion 1852— Second British-Burmese War 1853-1856— Crimean War 1859— Franco-Austrian War 1863-1864— Second Polish Revolution 1866— Austrian Seven Weeks' War against Italy, Germany,...

"The Surrender at Appomattox Court House"; excerpt from Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Covering events from April 1865; published in 1887 An eyewitness account of Lee's surrender to Grant "The terms I propose are those...

In the spring of 1778, William Howe (1729–1814) received word that his resignation as commander in chief of British forces in America had been accepted. He would be able to return to England as soon as his replacement, Henry Clinton...

Religion was central to the American Civil War experience. It gave Americans at war a vocabulary through which to understand life and death, a rationale for fighting (or not fighting) for one's country, a moral compass, and an institutional...

The election of 1860 attracted enormous attention across the nation. All four presidential candidates were men of good intentions but with very different solutions for the crisis America faced. The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln. A...

The Civil War used the advances of the Industrial Revolution to foster great changes in industrial and technological development. Both the North and the South made use of advances in railroad and riverine transportation. The Union, however, was far...

The outbreak of the Civil War on April 12, 1861, created a major civil liberties crisis. Although President Abraham Lincoln never formally declared war, he used his authority as commander in chief to expand the powers of the presidency. Even before...

Gender relationships and sexual behavior were well prescribed throughout much of the nineteenth century. White men controlled the economic, legal, and political structure of the nation. Women could not vote; their educational opportunities were...

Scholars debate how much influence the Civil War had on clothing and how much impact clothing had on the Civil War. One argument contends that women's participation in the war effort stimulated reform in their apparel; another insists, with some...

The Civil War lent excitement to the lives of Northern children, imposed hardships and limitations on Southern white children, and changed the lives of African-American children forever. Although there were, of course, numerous large and small...

War has affected American society and culture in many ways. In particular the Civil War (1861–1865) was a conflict over a theory of government as well as a war to end slavery. The South ascribed to the theory that the states were supreme and...

Despite the modern image of the patriotic volunteer in the Civil War, not all men fought for the Union or the Confederacy. Between 1861 and 1865 thousands of eligible men refused to serve. Some were draft dodgers and others were conscientious...

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war between the United States of America (the "Union") and the Southern slave states of the newly-formed Confederate States of America under Jefferson Davis. The Union included all of the free states...