The American Civil War - Chronologically

October 16-18, 1859  John Brown's Raid  Harper's Ferry, WV * If I've said it once I've said it a thousand time: the Civil War began in [what is now] West Virginia. The first major battlefield I ever  deliberately visited [this was 8/10/21; ignore the "Published on" dates] was, appropriately enough, the five scattered locations that make up the Harpers Ferry battlefield. Of course, John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, which tragically ended in this building, preceded the war. So too did the attempt by some local militias to also capture the garrison and weapons factory there. It could have been the opening shots of the war, but the Union troops just set the armory on fire to keep it from falling into rebel hands and left, so there was no battle. Yet. Control of Harpers Ferry changed hands many times during the war. [It gets several additional entries in this blog.] https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=4420 Here is a building with a curious past. Since its constructi...

Welcome, please allow me to explain what's going on here.  First off, this blog is arranged chronologically by date; the "published on" dates are fabricated and meaningless. The top of the blog will always be the end of the Civil War; scroll through the whole thing backwards for the start of the war at the bottom.  I started off trying to visit each Civil War battlefield in the Eastern Theatre in the order they occurred. That quickly spiraled out of control. Now, I'm just visiting every Civil War-related site I can, with an emphasis on the East (and especially my home state of Maryland), and then assembling my observations in chronological order. I try to minimize editorializing, and tend to just copypasta information directly from the sources I encounter and credit. Sometimes though, I can't help it. My acute interest is compounded by the fact that my neighbors and I still live on sacred ground soaked with the blood of the American Revolution and Civil War. These...