Biographies
Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States of America. He fought to preserve the Union and the abolition of slavery. Shortly after the end of the war and the passing of the thirteenth amendment, which ended slavery, Lincoln was assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth.
Jefferson DavisJefferson Davis was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. After a distinguished career in national politics as Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce, Davis served as a congressman and then as a Mississippi senator. After the South's defeat in the Civil War, he was stripped of his citizenship and took refuge in Europe, returning to the United States after a treason case against him was dropped. He died in New Orleans in 1889, and Congress posthumously reinstated his American citizenship in 1978.
|
General Robert LeeRobert E. Lee was one of the most talented and successful generals of the Civil War. After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1846, Lee fought in the Mexican-American War. Though he was against secession, he declined Lincoln's offer to command the Union Army, instead declaring his allegiance to his home state of Virginia. Lee commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia until his surrender to General Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
General Ulysses GrantUlysses S. Grant served as commander in chief of the Union army during the Civil War, leading the North to victory over the Confederacy. Grant later became the eighteenth President of the United States, serving from 1869-77. After fighting in the Mexican-American War, Grant left the army, only to rejoin at the outbreak of the Civil War. His victories at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Vicksburg and Chattanooga convinced Lincoln to promote him to head all Union armies. After a bloody campaign in Virginia, Grant accepted Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender on 9 April 1865.
|
GRobert Gould ShawRobert Gould Shaw was the white colonel in charge of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first all-black units to fight for the Union during the Civil War. He was killed while storming a Confederate battery at Fort Wagner in Charleston on 18 July 1863. Shaw is remembered for his leadership of African-American troops and the over two hundred letters he wrote to his family from the front. The Shaw neighborhood in Washington, D.C., a center of black cultural expression during the first half of the twentieth century, is named for him.
Harriet Beecher StoweHarriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and novelist who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the most influential books in American history. Her father was Lyman Beecher, pastor of the Congregational Church in Litchfield, and her brother was the famous Congregational preacher Henry Ward Beecher. After the death of one of her children made her contemplate the pain slaves must endure when family members are sold away, she decided to write a book about slavery. With the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852, she became a national celebrity, and went on to write several more books on the topic, many of them in response to southern critiques of the original.
|