The Battle of Antietam has been called the bloodiest single day in American History. By the end of the evening, 17 September 1862, an estimated 4,000 American soldiers had been killed and over 18,000 wounded in and around the small farming community of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Emory Upton, then a captain with the Union artillery battery, later wrote, “I have heard of ‘the dead lying in heaps,’ but never saw it till this battle. Whole ranks fell together.” The battle had been a day of confusion, tactical blunders, individual heroics, and the effects of just plain luck. It brought to an end a Confederate campaign to “liberate” the border state of Maryland and possibly to take the war into Pennsylvania. A little more than one hundred and forty years later, the Antietam battlefield is one of the best-preserved Civil War battlefields in the National Park System.

When Joseph Hooker had relieved Ambrose Burnside after the disastrous Fredericksburg campaign, he found the Army of the Potomac in a low state of morale. Desertion was increasing, and the army's own interior administration - never good - had deteriorated.

The battle of Chickamauga, fought on 19-20 September 1863, was the bloodiest battle in the western theater during the American Civil War. Along the banks of Chickamauga Creek in Northwest Georgia, less than a day's march south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Union Army of the Cumberland led by Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans clashed with Confederate General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee in a two day mêlée that left almost 35,000 men dead, wounded, or missing.

Cheers rang out in the streets of Washington on July 16, 1861 as Gen. Irvin McDowell’s Federal army, 35,000 strong, marched out to begin the long-awaited campaign to capture Richmond and end the war. It was an army of green recruits, few of whom had the faintest idea of the magnitude of the task facing them.

McDowell’s lumbering columns were headed for the vital railroad junction at Manassas. Here the Orange and Alexandria Railroad met the Manassas Gap Railroad, which led west to the Shenandoah Valley. If McDowell could seize this junction, he would stand astride the best overland approach to the Confederate capital.

On July 18, McDowell’s army reached Centreville. Five miles ahead a small meandering stream named Bull Run crossed the route of the Union advance. Guarding the fords from Union Mills to the Stone Bridge were 22,000 Southern troops under the command of Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard. McDowell first attempted to move toward the Confederate right flank, but his troops were checked at Blackburn’s Ford. He then spent the next two days scouting the Southern left flank. In the meantime, Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army, stationed in the Shenandoah Valley with 10,000 Confederate troops, were ordered to support Beauregard. Johnston gave an opposing Union army the slip and, employing the Manassas Gap Railroad, started his brigades toward Manassas Junction, with most arriving July 20 and 21.

At the start of the Fredericksburg Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac managed to steal a march on the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. But owing to the failure of the Federals' pontoon bridge equipment to arrive at the crossing of the Rappahannock River as scheduled, the Southerners were able to block the road to Richmond. The Union commander, General Burnside, decided to launch a frontal assault against the Confederate position at Fredericksburg, resulting in one of the Union Army's most lopsided tactical defeats of the Civil War.

n late June 1863, more than two years into the American Civil War, Union and Confederate military forces converged on the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After a series of military successes, Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia into Union territory in his second invasion of the North. He hoped that a Confederate victory in Pennsylvania would convince Northern politicians to abandon the war. The Union Army of the Potomac, led initially by General Joseph Hooker and then General George Meade, crossed the Potomac River to pursue Lee’s forces.

Note: The following text is a transcription of the enrolled original of the Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the Bill of Rights, which is on permanent display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum. The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.

Covers from ancient America before 1492 to Modern America in the 21st Century. Courseware includes resources copyrighted and openly licensed by third parties under a Creative Commons license. Click "Licenses and Attributions" at the bottom of each page for copyright information and license specific to the material on that page.

This textbook introduces aspects of the history of Canada since Confederation. “Canada” in this context includes Newfoundland and all the other parts that come to be aggregated into the Dominion after 1867. Much of this text follows thematic lines. Each chapter moves chronologically but with alternative narratives in mind. What Aboriginal accounts must we place in the foreground? Which structures (economic or social) determine the range of choices available to human agents of history? What environmental questions need to be raised to gain a more complete understanding of choices made in the past and their ramifications? Each chapter is comprised of several sections and some of those are further divided. In many instances you will encounter original material that has been contributed by other university historians from across Canada who are leaders in their respective fields. They provide a diversity of voices on the subject of the nation’s history and, thus, an opportunity to experience some of the complexities of understanding and approaching the past. Canadian History: Post-Confederation includes Learning Objectives and Key Points in most chapter sections, intended to help identify issues of over-arching importance. Recent interviews with historians from across Canada have been captured in video clips that are embedded throughout the web version of the book. At the end of each chapter, the Summary section includes additional features: Key Terms, Short Answer Exercises, and Suggested Readings. The key terms are bolded in the text, and collected in a Glossary in the appendix.

Canadian History: Pre-Confederation is a survey text that introduces undergraduate students to important themes in North American history to 1867. It provides room for Aboriginal and European agendas and narratives, explores the connections between the territory that coalesces into the shape of modern Canada and the larger continent and world in which it operates, and engages with emergent issues in the field. The material is pursued in a largely chronological manner to the early 19th century, at which point social, economic, and political change are dissected. Canadian History: Pre-Confederation provides, as well, a reconnaissance of historical methodology and debates in the field, exercises for students, Key Terms and a Glossary, and section-by-section Key Points. Although this text can be modified, expanded, reduced, and reorganized to suit the needs of the instructor, it is organized so as to support learning, to broaden (and sometimes provoke) debate, and to engage students in thinking like historians. Written and reviewed by subject experts drawn from colleges and universities, this is the first open textbook on the topic of Canadian history.

The Virtual Tour for the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in St. Augustine, Florida. Photos, maps, podcasts, and more!

For 400 years, playwrights and moviemakers, painters and sculptors, toy manufacturers and tobacco sellers have portrayed Pocahontas, shaping her appearance and narrative to suit their own purposes. To explore these depictions and compare myth to verifiable history, the Virginia Historical Society, led by curators William Rasmussen and Robert Tilton, assembled more than 40 paintings, prints, drawings, sheet music, and other objects. In this slide show, see a sampling of their remarkable exhibit.

Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman's Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first time in one place.

Archives Specialist Rebecca Sharp will discuss The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. This published source contains information about Civil War medical and surgical procedures as well as case studies.

Between 1861 and 1865, the Union and Confederate navies fought for control over inland and coastal waterways. Through four years of war, the United States Navy rose to the challenge of blockading more than 3,500 miles of coastline, coordinating amphibious attacks, and bombarding coastal fortifications held by the Confederate armed forces. The ingenuity and self-sacrifice of those who served U.S. Navy throughout the Civil War ultimately ensured victory for the Union.

Eastern National is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War with electronic editions of eParks' National Park Civil War Series of books. Read them online or own your own paper edition by visiting our Civil War Series store.

In the overland campaign of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant with the Army of the Potomac battled General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia for six weeks across central Virginia. At the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna and Totopotomoy Creek, Lee repeatedly stalled, but failed to stop, Grant's southward progress toward Richmond. The next logical military objective for Grant was the crossroads styled by locals Old Cold Harbor.

The Compromise of 1850 was a series of acts that dealt with issues related to slavery and territorial expansion. This guide contains Library of Congress digital materials, external websites, and a print bibliography.