St. Augustine, Florida has been under Union control since March 1862. Along with Beaufort, South Carolina and environs, St. Augustine serves as a Northern-controlled freemen’s colony, providing opportunities for former slaves — or contrabands (the wartime term for slaves freed by the Union Army) — to receive basic education, learn trades and acquire farming skills. Leading…
Atlanta is not the only thing on Union General William T. Sherman‘s mind. While capturing the strategic city is his uppermost objective, Sherman’s thoughts also drift further southward. In particular, the general is troubled at the reports he is hearing out of Andersonville Prison, an open air prison camp in southwest Georgia housing nearly 30,000…
Fredericksburg, a Virgina city on the banks of the Rappahannock River, has served as a crossroads for both Confederate and Union armies. Confederate forces controlled the city early in the war, only to give way to Union forces in the spring and summer of 1862. The four months of Union occupation were tenuous, leading federal…