Civil War-Union
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 Ulysses S. Grant At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers. Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Grant directed Sherman to drive through the South while he himself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned down Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials. |
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Philip Sheridan When Grant went to the East, he placed Sheridan in command of the Army of the Potomac's mounted arm. Against J.E.B Stuart's depleted horsemen Sheridan met with mixed success in the Overland Campaign but did manage to mortally wound the Confederate cavalryman at Yellow Tavern. Philip H. Sheridan earned the enmity of many Virginians for laying waste to the Shenandoah Valley. It was his cavalry command, backed by infantry, which finally blocked Lee's escape at Appomattox. His role in the final campaign even eclipsed that of army commander Meade. |
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William Tecumseh Sherman William T. Sherman is the second best known of Northern commanders. Sherman was the only man to twice receive the Thanks of Congress during the Civil War-first for Chattanooga and second for Atlanta and Savannah. After the war he remained in the service, and was promoted to full general, replacing Grant as commander-in-chief. One of his most important contributions after the war, was the establishment of the Command School at Ft. Leavenworth. |
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Joseph Hooker One of the most immodest and immoral of the high Union commanders, "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Hooker's headquarters were roundly criticized by many as a combination of bar and brothel. When he launched his campaign against Lee |
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Ambrose Everett Burnside Burnside organized the 1st Rhode Island Infantry at the outbreak of the Civil War and commanded a brigade at the First Manassas. On August 6, 1862, he was promoted to major general of volunteers. Burnside commanded troops at Antietam, but was criticized for ineffectiveness when his delay caused a loss of opportunity for Union troops. In November 1862, Burnside, under his own protests, replaced George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac. The following month in Fredericksburg, Burnside lost over 12,500 troops and was replaced January 25, 1863, by General Joseph Hooker. Burnside was assigned to command the Department of the Ohio in March 1863. In November, his troops defeated Confederate General James Longstreet at Knoxville. He and his IX Corps participated in the Overland Campaign and the siege of Petersburg with General U. S. Grant. At the battle of Crater in July 1864, a federal mine exploded causing a fifty-yard gap in the Confederate line. Burnside failed to take advantage of the situation, a mistake that would end with his resignation from the service on April 15, 1865. |
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Abraham Lincoln Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun. |
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George Armstrong Custer In 1861, Custer had graduated from West Point just in time to participate in the First Battle of Manassas. He later served on the staffs of Generals McClellan and Pleasanton. He had a distinguished military career in the Civil War. |
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Robert Gould Shaw Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the part he played with African Americans serving in the civil war received the Medal of Honor. During nearly two years of service in the Second, in which he rose to the rank of captain, Shaw was wounded at Antietam and saw some of his closest comrades fall in battle. But his resolve grew only firmer with each fight. In February 1863, Francis Shaw personally delivered Governor John Andrew's offer of command of the new Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment to his son Robert, then at Stafford Court House, Virginia. Shaw died at age 26 with his troops on the parapet of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863. |
