For the past month, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, en route to the Confederate capital of Virginia, has besieged Yorktown, Virginia. McClellan’s drive to Richmond, known as the Peninsula campaign (having begun March 17), has not proceeded as planned. Caution on the part of McClellan, the logistics of moving a…
During the war, many white Southerners repeatedly refer to the “Cause” of the South, a reference (sometimes blatant, and at other times thinly-veiled) to the preservation of African slavery, the economic and social foundation of the Confederacy. Many white Christians of the South insist that the Southern “Cause” is the will of God, a view…
Nashville has now been a Union-occupied city for two months, and will remain occupied for the remainder of the war. A mixture of southerners (those who chose not to evacuate), northern soldiers and freed slaves, the city lives in daily tension. Former African slaves roam the city with freedom, although a curfew is in effect…