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Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau played host to some of the most dramatic military maneuvering of the Civil War. Straddling the entire state of Tennessee, the formidable tableland proved to be a maze of topographical pitfalls and a morass of divided loyalties. As Federal forces sought to capitalize on the capture of Nashville, they moved into a region split by the most vicious guerrilla warfare outside Missouri, including the colorful and intensely...
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Carnton Plantation, 1894: Carrie McGavock is an old woman who tends the graves of the almor 1,500 soldiers buried here. As she walks among the dead, an elderly man appears -- the same soldier she met that fateful day long ago. Today, he asks if the cemetery has room for one more...
7) Fort Pillow
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In April 1864, the Union garrison at Fort Pillow was composed of almost 600 troops, about half of them black. The Confederacy, incensed by what it saw as a crime against nature, sent its fiercest cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, to attack the fort with about 1,500 men. The Confederates overran the fort and drove the Federals into a deadly crossfire. Only sixty-two of the colored Union troops survived the fight unwounded. Many accused the...
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In 1862, Ulysses S. Grant achieved what President Lincoln had sought since the start of the War: the first decisive Union victory. Fought on the western edge of the theater, the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign was a gruesome omen of what was to come.
Grant, until then an obscure brigadier general with a reputation for drink, became the fighting man of the hour, earning the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant for his relentless pounding
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The Civil War began as a means of preserving the Union. But to nearly four million African Americans, it held a much more personal promise. As Northern armies swept south, self-emancipated slaves sought refuge behind Union lines. Determined to claim basic human rights, former slaves turned soldiers helped defeat their oppressors. But the road to freedom would be a rocky one. Despite continued oppression and violence, African Americans worked tirelessly...