Civil War Documents

Date:1860 Annotation: During the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party promised to prohibit slavery. They also proposed free-homestead legislation, the establishment of a daily mail service, a transcontinental railroad, and support of the protective…

Date:1860 Annotation: John C. Breckinridge served as President Buchanan’s vice president. Later, he became the presidential candidate in the 1860 election, after the Democratic Party split into three factions. He represented the Southern faction in…

Date:1860 Annotation: The slavery dispute dominated the election of 1860. The emphasis placed on the Dred Scott decision (that Scott remain a slave) splintered the Democratic Party into three factions: Most Northern Democrats supported Stephen…

Author:   John Crittenden Date:1860 Annotation: The Crittenden Compromise, written by Kentucky Senator John Crittenden, was seen as a desperate attempt to resolve the secession crisis of 1860-61 by political negotiation. The Compromise addressed the…

Date:1860 Document: South Carolina Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the…

Date:1861 Annotation: The seceded states drafted the following ordinances of secession that severed their connection with the Federal Union in an attempt to preserve state rights and their different cultures. Document: The Secession Acts of…

Date:1861 Document: Mississippi A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving…

Date:1861 Document: Georgia The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the…

Author:   Julia Ward Howe Date:1861 Annotation: This is the text of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Julia Ward Howe wrote this original version of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861. This…

Date:1861 Annotation: The Secession Convention spelled out the reasons why Texas should leave the Union. Beginning with South Carolina in December 1860, a month after Abraham Lincoln’s election, six states in the deep South seceded…

Date:1861 Annotation: Upon learning of Lincoln’s plan, Jefferson Davis ordered General Pierre G.T. Beauregard (1818-1893) to force Fort Sumter’s surrender before the supply mission could arrive. At 4:30 a.m. April 12, Confederate guns began firing…

Author:   Robert E. Lee Date:1861 Annotation: Lincoln was convinced that the Confederate states had seceded from the Union for the sole purpose of maintaining slavery. Like President Jackson before him, he considered the Union…

Author:   Frederic Pearce Date:1861 Annotation: Many Northerners felt confident of a quick victory. In 1861, the Union states had 22.5 million people, compared to just 9 million in the Confederate states (including 3.7 million…

Author:   James R. Kelly Date:1861 Annotation: The Civil War was the deadliest war in American history. Altogether, over 600,000 died in the conflict, more than World War I and World War II combined. A…

Author:   John Jay III Date:1861 Annotation: In July 1861, Congress adopted a resolution by a vote of 117 to 2 in the House and 30 to 5 in the Senate that read: “This war…

Author:   David Hopkins Date:1861 Annotation: In its analysis of the Civil War’s causes, the London Times rejected the notion that this was a war about slavery. It argued that the conflict had the same…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1861 Annotation: The initial Union strategy involved blockading Confederate ports to cut off cotton exports and prevent the import of manufactured goods; and using ground and naval forces to divide the…

Preamble We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of…

Author:   Mansfield Lovell Date:1862 Annotation: In a letter to his son, Confederate Major General Mansfield Lovell (1822-1884) predicts that Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation “will produce dissensions and troubles at the North and…thus indirectly benefit our…

Date:1862 Annotation: The California Supreme Court rules that a Chinese witness could not testify against a white man accused of murder. After George Hall was convicted of the murder of Ling Sing, based on the…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1862 Annotation: Early in the war, Lincoln handled the slavery issue cautiously to avoid losing the support of the border states. He did, however, take a major symbolic step when he…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1862 Annotation: In August 1862, Lincoln stated: “If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the…

Author:   Edgar Pearce Date:1862 Annotation: Under the Anaconda Plan, Union forces in the West were to seize control of the Mississippi River while Union forces in the East tried to capture the new Confederate…

Author:   Ellen Greene Date:1862 Annotation: In 1862, the California legislature approved an act to discourage Chinese immigration and protect white workers against competition with Chinese laborers. Document: April 26, 1862 The People of the…

Author:   General Pierre G.T. Beauregard Date:1862 Annotation: The Civil War witnessed a will to destroy and a spirit of intolerance that conflicted with Americans’ self-image as a tolerant people committed to compromise. Not only…

Author:   Jefferson Davis Date:1862 Annotation: In the eastern theater, Union General George McClellan’s plan was to land northern forces on a peninsula between the York and James rivers southeast of Richmond and then march…

Author:   John Ross Date:1862 Annotation: In 1861, many Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles decided to join the Confederacy, in part because some of the tribes’ members owned slaves. In return, the Confederate states…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1862 Annotation: On September 22, 1862, less than a week after the Battle of Antietam, President Lincoln met with his cabinet. As one cabinet member, Samuel P. Chase, recorded in his…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1862 Annotation: The United States achieved independence in part because foreign countries such as France and Spain, entered the war against Britain on the American side. The Confederacy, too, hoped for…

Author:   David V.M. Smith Date:1862 Annotation: The Civil War separated families in unprecedented numbers and freed women to assume many new roles. With the departure of many men into the military, women entered many…

Author:   George C. Burling Date:1862 Annotation: Almost as many soldiers died during the Civil War as in all other American wars combined. Union combat deaths totalled 111,904; another 197,388 died of disease, 30,192 in…

Annotation: Congressional act to establish land grant colleges. The Morrill Act was introduced by Congressman Justin Morrill of Vermont. Under the act, each state that had remained in the Union received 30,000 acres of federal…

Author:   Josiah C. Fuller Date:1863 Annotation: When his forces drove northward into Pennsylvania, Lee assumed, mistakenly, that Union forces were still in Virgina. When he suddenly realized that Union forces were in close pursuit,…

Author:   Rufus Blanchard Date:1863 Annotation: In recent years, it has sometimes been charged that Lincoln’s proclamation did not free any slaves, since it applied only to areas that were in a state of rebellion…

Author:   Amos Lewis Date:1863 Annotation: A Northerner reflects on the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect sixteen days before this letter was written. Document: The partial Proclamation has gone forth from…

Author:   A soldier in the 12th Vermont Militia Date:1863 Annotation: There can be no doubt that some northern soldiers who were willing to fight to preserve the Union were unwilling to fight to abolish…

Author:   Samuel P. Chase Date:1863 Annotation: During the war, the Republican-controlled Congress enacted a series of measures which carried long-term consequences for the future. The Homestead Act of 1862 provided public land free to…

Author:   Daniel H. Hill Date:1863 Annotation: By early 1863, the Civil War had begun to cause severe hardship on the southern homefront. Not only was most of the fighting taking place in the South,…

Author:   William Tecumseh Sherman Date:1863 Annotation: As the war dragged on, enthusiasm faded and class tensions flared. In the North, the worst mob violence in American history took place in New York City in…

Author:   Joseph M. Maitland Date:1863 Annotation: By early 1863, voluntary enlistments in the Union army had fallen so sharply that the federal government instituted an unpopular military draft and decided to enroll black, as…

Author: Samuel Shenk Date: 1863 Annotation: After the Battle of Antietam, Lee’s forces retreated into Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley with almost no interference. Frustrated by McClellan’s lack of aggressiveness, Lincoln replaced him with General Ambrose E….

Author:   Christian M. Epperly Date:1863 Annotation: The four days between July 1 and July 4, 1863 marked a major turning point of the Civil War. Beginning in mid-May, Ulysses S. Grant’s troops had begun…

Author:   Abram Bogart Date:1863 Annotation: Black soldiers participated in the war at great threat to their lives. The Confederate government threatened to summarily execute or sell into slavery any captured black Union soldiers–and did…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1863 Annotation: President Abraham Lincoln frees slaves in areas in rebellion against the United States. The nation was embroiled in the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation…

Author:   George Bonga Date:1863 Annotation: In the midst of the Civil War, a thirty-year conflict began as the federal government sought to concentrate the Plains Indians on reservations. Violence erupted first in Minnesota, where,…

Author:   James E. Yeatman Date:1863 Annotation: In a letter to President Lincoln, aid workers offer a graphic portrait of the plight of wartime refugees. Document: The undersigned, members of the Western Sanitary Commission, most…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1863 Annotation: The Gettysburg Address was delivered on November 19, 1863, several months after the Union defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln described the Civil War as a…

Between 160 and 190 men and teenage boys, all civilians and many unarmed, were murdered by Confederate guerillas in a day-long raid that also witnessed the destruction and looting of the town. The man who…

Author:   Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War Date:1864 Annotation: A joint congressional committee conducted an investigation of the Sand Creek massacre and issued its report in 1864. This extract describes the events…

Date:1864 Annotation: Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, the lone American Indian in Congress, called it “one of the most disgraceful moments in American history.” About 700 U.S. army volunteers stormed through an Indian encampment…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1864 Annotation: For much of his political career, Lincoln, like his political idol Henry Clay, was an advocate of colonization, based on his belief that “the great mass of white people”…

Author:   Congress of the United States Date:1864 Annotation: The Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves in states still at war. As a wartime order, it could subsequently be reversed by presidential degree or congressional…

Author:   John McKinley Gibson Date:1864 Annotation: Initially, Lincoln and his generals anticipated a conventional war in which Union soldiers would respect civilians’ property. Convinced that there was residual unionist support in the South, they…

Author:   Tobias Gibson Date:1864 Annotation: A supporter of the Confederacy criticizes the Union army of occupation. Document: I know you have reason to conclude that I have almost forgotten you, to judge by the…

Author:   Christian M. Epperly Date:1864 Annotation: Military desertions were treated harshly. A Confederate soldier describes the fate of men who tried to leave their companies and were recaptured. Document: I haven’t any news to…

Author:   Tobias Gibson Date:1864 Annotation: Slaves played a critical role in their own liberation. Southern slaves deserted plantations and fled to Union lines. Slaves also staged a few small insurrections during the war as…

Author:   National Union Free Convention Date:1864 Annotation: As their presidential nominee, the Democrats chose General George B. McClellan, who opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and who ran on a platform which condemned Lincoln for “four…

Author:   Andrew Knox Date:1864 Annotation: A Union lieutenant in the 1st Connecticut Artillery offers his opinion of General George McClellan’s presidential campaign. Document: …Reinforcements are coming to this army daily so active times will…

Author:   Samuel Thomas Date:1865 Annotation: Col. Samuel Thomas, a Freedmen’s Bureau official, describes the attitude of ex- Confederates toward the former slaves. Document: Wherever I go — the street, the shop, the house, or…

Date:1865 Annotation: Twenty African-American men met African descent met with Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, and Major-Gen. Sherman, to discuss matters relating to the freedmen of the State of Georgia. Document: [New York, N.Y….

Author:   Mary Y. Prentiss Date:1865 Annotation: The 1864 presidential election was one of the most critical in American history. At stake was whether the war would end in unconditional surrender or a negotiated settlement,…

Author:   A.R. Lord Date:1865 Annotation: In March 1864, Lincoln gave Ulysses S. Grant command of all Union armies. Vowing to end the war within a year, Grant launched three major offenses. General Philip E….

Author:   Robert E. Lee Date:1865 Annotation: By April 1865, Grant’s army had cut off Lee’s supply lines, forcing Confederate forces to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond. Lee and his men retreated westward, but Grant’s troops…

Author:   J.B. Stonehouse Date:1865 Annotation: At noon on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Major General Robert Anderson raised the U.S. flag over Fort Sumter. It was the same flag that he had surrendered four…

Author:   W. Henry Pearce Date:1865 Annotation: Following the shooting, Booth fled to Maryland on horseback. A friend then helped him escape to Virginia. On April 26, two weeks after he had shot Lincoln, the…

Date:1865 Annotation: Lincoln’s assassination was part of a larger plot to murder other government officials, including Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and General Ulysses S. Grant. Only Lincoln was killed….

Author:   Edwin H. McCaleb Date:1865 Annotation: As a result of the Civil War, the South lost a fourth of its white male population of military age, a third of its livestock, half of its…

Date:1865 Annotation: Many slaves in Texas did not formally hear about freedom until June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger and 1800 Union troops arrived in Galveston and issued a proclamation declaring all slaves in…

Author:   Abraham Lincoln Date:1865 Annotation: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address. On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address. Eerily, John Wilkes Booth and other conspirators involved in his assassination attended the…

Date:1866 Annotation: Supreme Court ruling on the power of the federal government to institute martial law. During the Civil War, President Lincoln, concerned that Southern sympathizers might weaken the war effort in the North, instituted…

Author:   Rufus Saxon Date:1866 Annotation: Major General Rufus Saxton commanded the area that included Georgia’s Sea Islands and later became the Freedmen’s Bureau’s assistant commissioner for Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. This selection, from…

Author:   Big Eagle Date:1894 Annotation: During the summer of 1862, Indian warfare broke out in southern Minnesota that left between 400 and 800 settlers and soldiers dead, and provoked military action against the Sioux…

Document: Let us now trace the apostle’s reasoning in favor of submission to the higher powers, a little more particularly and exactly. For by this it will appear, on one hand, how good and conclusive…

Author: King George III Date:1763 Annotation: In 1773, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) published a brief history of the British government’s actions during the preceding decade. Its title: Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced…

Date: 1764 Annotation: To maintain the army and repay war debts, Parliament decided to impose charges on colonial trade. It passed the Sugar Act, imposed duties on foreign wines, coffee, textiles, and indigo imported into…

Date:1764 Annotation: The Currency Act prohibited colonial governments from issuing paper money and required all taxes and debts to British merchants to be paid in British currency. Document: WHEREAS great quantities of paper bills of credit have…

Date:1765 Annotation: Parliament approved the Quartering Act, requiring colonial governments to put up British soldiers in unoccupied buildings and provide them with candles, bedding, and beverages. When the New York Assembly resisted, the British governor suspended…

Annotation: This dissertation, written by John Adams, included one of the first arguments to make informed citizens become a check for government. Document: “Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.” This…

Date:1765 Annotation: To increase revenues to pay the cost of militarily defending the colonies, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which required a tax stamp on legal documents, almanacs, newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards. This was the…

Author:   Archibald Hinschelwood Date:1765 Annotation: Eleven years before the Declaration of Independence, a crisis took place that defined the issue that would help provoke the American Revolution: taxation without representation. In order to raise…

Date:1765 Annotation: The Continental Congress’ Declaration of Rights and Grievances. Document: We have several times promised to treat our readers with a correct copy of this venerable manuscript, detailing the first movements of the friends of freedom…

Date:1765 Annotation: Resolutions on the Stamp Act, Massachusetts Assembly Document: WHEREAS the just rights of his majesty’s subjects of this province, derived to them from the British constitution as well as the royal charter, have been lately…

Author:   Benjamin Franklin Date:1766 Annotation: His is one of the most remarkable success stories in American history. The eighteenth child of a Boston candlemaker and soapmaker, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was apprenticed to his brother,…

Date:1766 Annotation: Examination of Dr. Benjamin Franklin In the House of Commons in 1766. Document: Q. What is your name, and place of abode? — Franklin, of Philadelphia. Q. Do the Americans pay any considerable taxes among…

Date:1766 Annotation: The Declaratory Act of 1766stated that the British Parliament’s taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. Document: An act for the better securing the dependency of his majesty’s dominions in America…

Date:1767 Annotation: Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend, imposed new duties on imports of glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea to the colonies. The Townshend Acts also expanded the customs service. Revenue from the acts paid…

Author:   John Hancock Date:1768 Annotation: Based in part on Benjamin Franklin’s arguments before Parliament, Charles Townshend (1725-1767), the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, believed that the colonists would find a duty on imported goods…

Author:   John Easson Date:1769 Annotation: In this selection, James Otis (1725-1783), one of the early leaders in the colonists’ struggle for independence, informs Catharine Macaulay (1731-1791), an English liberal sympathetic to the colonies’ cause,…

Date:1769 Annotation: The North Carolina Regulators was a popular movement in the 1760s that challenged the colonial government, the powerful landowners, and the officials that dominated its offices. The Regulators were infuriated by the rising taxes,…

Author:   Charles Thomson Date:1769 Annotation: Born in Ulster, Charles Thomson (1729-1824) came to Philadelphia as a young schoolmaster. During the 1765 Stamp Act Crisis, Thomson became a significant figure in local politics, orchestrating resistance…

Date:1770 Annotation: On March 5, 1770, a 16-year-old barber’s apprentice named Edward Garrick insulted Hugh White, a soldier of the 29th Regiment on sentry duty in front of Boston’s Customs House. The sentry gave the apprentice…

Date:1770 Annotation: An anonymous account of the Boston Massacre on the evening of March 5, 1770. Document: It may be a proper introduction to this narrative, briefly to represent the state of things for some time previous…

Author:   Deacon John Tudor Date:1770 Annotation: By the beginning of 1770 there were four thousand British soldiers in Boston, a seaport with only 15,000 inhabitants. On the evening of March 5, crowds of day…

Date:1770 Annotation: The leader of the British 29th regiment, Preston was defended by John Adams for his role in the massacre and was acquitted of all charges. Document: It is [a] matter of too great notoriety to…

Author:   Thomas Preston Date:1770 Annotation: Captain Thomas Preston’s account of the Boston Massacre. Document: It is [a] matter of too great notoriety to need any proofs that the arrival of his Majesty’s troops in Boston was…

Author:   John Dickinson Date:1770 Annotation: The escalating conflict with Britain after 1763 forced the colonists to define their identity as well as the nature of sovereignty and authority through practical action and philosophic reflection….

Author:   Benjamin Franklin Date:1770 Annotation: As late as 1775, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was convinced that the issues dividing Britain and the colonies were “a Matter of Punctilio, which Two or three reasonable People might…

Author:   Richard H. Lee Date:1771 Annotation: Even as tension between the colonies and Britain was rising, disputes among colonists continued. In western North Carolina, many farmers, known as Regulators, rose up against wealthy lawyers…

Author:   Samuel Adams Date:1772 Annotation: As one of the chief organizers of protests against the imperial policies adopted by Britain after the Seven Years War, Samuel Adams (1722-1803) was, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “truly…

Author:   George Robert Twelve Hewes Date:1773 Annotation: George Robert Twelve Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who later fought in the Revolution as a common soldier and sailor, was present at the Boston Massacre and served as…