The Unsorted BBS Collection/thegreatunsorted.tar/thegreatunsorted/texts/term_papers/civilw.txt

Text File | 1996-04-07 | 15KB | 380 lines

Ullysses S. Grant
    Ulysses Simpson Grant served effectively with Zachary Taylor's army at
Monterey during the Mexican war. Right when the war began Grant obtained
a position on the staff of General George McClellan. During the war he
showed courage in both physically and morally manners. In February 1862
Grant captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson with help from the Federal
navy. In October he was appointed commander of the Department of
Tennessee, and told to take Vicksburg, Mississippi. Earl Van Dorn captured
Grant's base at Holly Springs and he had to retreat. In 1864 Grant was
promoted to lieutenant general and named general in chief of all federal
armies. In April 1865 Grant forced Lee to surrender after an 88 mile pursuit.
Grant was elected president in 1868 and served two terms.



Robert E. Lee
    During the Mexican war Lee was an engineering officer with Winfield
Scott's force. Jefferson Davis appointed Lee a general in the southern army in
1861. He was not successful in preventing an invasion of western Virginia,
so he was sent to the Atlantic Coastal defense. In 1862 when Joseph E.
Johnston was wounded, Lee became commander of the confederate army in
Virginia. In Richmond Lee drove the unionist away from the capital in the
Seven Days' Battles. In August he defeated the Northern army in the second
Battle of Bull Run. In May 1863 Lee won his greatest victory but also
suffered his worst loss in life. The Unionist were driven back with heavy
casualties. The following year Lee led his army against a series of bloody
attacks against the Northern Army commanded by Ulysses S. Grant. Robert
Lee was one of the best commanders during the Civil War and was an
American hero.








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Stonewall Jackson
    Stonewall Jackson was a confederate general in the American Civil War.
He joined the Confederate army in 1861 and later fought in the first battle of
Bull Run. There he earned his nickname, "like a stone wall". In 1863 Jackson
commanded a Confederate army in the Shenandoah Valley, and he defeated
Federal generals whose strength was several times his own. In May of 1863
Jackson was in command of more than half of all the Confederate army and
made an attack on the Federal army. After returning one night  he was
accidentally shot by some of his own men.



J.E.B. Stuart
    James Ewell Brown Stuart was a Confederate officer in the Civil War. He
is probably the most famous soldier in Robert E. Lee's Army. In the
Gettysburg campaign, Stuart went on a controversial raid around the Federal
army when Lee most needed him to gather intelligence. He arrived after the
Battle of Gettysburg was over. A number of people think that the Confederate
defeat was mainly Stuart's fault. On May 11, 1864 Stuart was badly
wounded. He died the next day.















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Joseph Hooker
    Hooker was named a general in 1861 an was known as fighting Joe.
During the Mexican War he received three brevets for bravery. He
commanded the army of the Potomac at the Battle of Chancellorsville, he lost
and was replaced before Gettysburg. In November 1863 he won the Battle of
Lookout Mountain at Chattanooga. In 1864 Hooker served under William
Sherman in Georgia. He resigned because he wasn't promoted after he served
in Georgia.



George E. Pickett
    George Pickett was a Confederate general during the Civil War. He is
most remembered for Pickett's charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. Pickett
graduated from West Point in 1846 and remained in the U.S. Army until
1861, when he joined the Confederate army. On July 3, 1863 he led his
troops on a spearhead attack on Cemetery Ridge that was supposed to break
through the center of the union line. This has been called the Confederacy's
"high-water mark".
















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Harriet Tubman
    Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist and a fugitive slave. She was born to
slave parents and escaped to freedom. In the 1850's she made many journeys
to free slaves through the Underground Railroad. She was aided by
abolitionists and Quakers, and John Brown who consulted with her for the
Harpers Ferry raid in 1859. During the Civil War she served as an army
cook, a nurse, and became a spy for Maryland and Virginia. After the war
she ran a home for elderly blacks until her death.


Clara Barton
    Clara Barton is most remembered for organizing the American Red Cross
Society. As a young girl she was shy, but she overcame her timid nature to
become a very influential women during the Civil War. She was a nurse
during the Civil War and cared for the wounded. After the war she began a
search for missing soldiers. In 1881 Barton established the American Red
Cross Society and has it become a life saving organization for the past 100
years that has saved countless numbers of lives. They help disaster victims
and casualties during wars. Clara Barton excelled in several careers in a time
when women were expected to be just wives and mothers. She was also an
advisor to politicians including senators and the president.















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William Garrison
    William Garrison played a major role in the American Abolitionist
movement. He published a paper called the Liberator which said that slavery
was wrong and we needed change immediately. In 1833 Garrison was head
of a meeting that organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison's
opinions were used throughout the existence of the society. Garrison
cooperated easily with other major abolitionists until the 1840s when he met
people like James Birney and Elizer Wright, Jr. Some of his beliefs drove
these people from the society. Garrison didn't want slavery to be ended
violently, but in the 1850s he used violent resistance to the 1850 Fugitive
Slave Law. After the Civil War Garrison worked to help black equality.



John Brown
    John Brown was an abolitionist and is remembered mainly for his raid for
the military weapons at Harpers Ferry. During most of Brown's adult years he
wandered from job to job, but in the 1850's he was in command of the local
Free-Soil militia in Kansas. Within a year Brown had to retaliate because
proslavery forces sacked the town of Lawrence. Brown, four of his sons, and
two other people killed five helpless settlers in May of 1856 in the
Pottawatomie River Country. He took full responsibility even though he
wasn't caught. In 1859 Brown gathered 21 men and occupied the federal
weapons. The next day when Lee's army arrived, ten of Brown's men were
killed. Brown was arrested and charged with treason.











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William Tecumseh Sherman
    William Sherman was undisciplined and graduated sixth in his class at
West Point in 1840. During the Mexican War he won honors for excellent
service. Sherman rejoined the army at the beginning of the Civil War and
was in command of an army at the First Battle of Bull Run. At the Battle of
Shiloh, he was in charge of a division in Ulysses Grant's army. The
confederate army made a surprise attack and almost defeated Sherman. He
became in command of about 100,000 men after Grant became general in
Chief. After a long series of attacks, Sherman captured Atlanta in September
1864. Sherman was an expert in planning long marches. In late 1864 he
spread out his men 50 miles wide and attacked the Confederacy on the
unprotected Georgia countryside. It resulted in the capture of Savannah. In
1881 Sherman established the famous school at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
and he died in 1891.



Frederick Douglass
    Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Maryland in 1817. In 1838 he
obtained seaman's papers from a free black and escaped to New Bedford. In
1841 he joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. With Douglass's
great speeches, people didn't believe that he used to be a slave. Douglass
wrote a book called Life and Times of Frederick Douglass to tell people
about his life when he was a slave. After 2 years of living in the British Isles,
some of his friends bought his legal freedom for 150 ponds and he came back
to the United States. During the Civil War Douglass fought for black people
to be able to fight for the Union. Before he died in 1895, he stayed an active
part of the United States.








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Harriet Beecher Stowe
    Harriet Stowe was the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, an anti-slavery novel
that is sometimes thought of as one of the causes of the Civil War. Stowe's
first publication was The Mayflower, which were sketches of scenes and
characters of the descendants of the Pilgrims. When she and her husband
moved to Maine in 1850, she wrote The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin and
Dred: A Tale of Great Dismal Swamp. All of her novels were written because
of her hatred for slavery. She still wrote novels, essays, and poetry after the
Civil War about New England scenes. Harriet Stowe is one of America's
most recognized writers.


Sojourner Truth
    Sojourner Truth was an American preacher and abolitionist. She was born
into slavery and given the name Isabella Baumfree. Sojourner ran away after
New York's emancipation act of 1827. Her master didn't pay attention to it.
When she got to New York City she joined a religious cult, but left in 1843
because she didn't know what the cult did. She struggled for black
emancipation and women's suffrage during the Civil War. She continued to
work after the war for equal rights for women of all colors.
















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Abraham Lincoln
    Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky in a
log cabin. In 1830 the Lincolns moved from Indiana to Illinois. Lincoln was
elected to the Illinois lower house in 1834 and served four terms until 1841.
Lincoln became a lawyer and moved to Springfield the following year. There
he met Mary Todd and they married in 1842 and had four sons. Lincoln
served one term in the House of Representatives from 1847 to 1849. In 1860
he won the presidential election. By the time of his inauguration 7 states had
seceded from the Union. The Civil War began when South Carolina fired on
Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Lincoln gave command to Ulysses Grant
during the Civil War. A couple of years later he allowed blacks to fight in the
army. Lincoln signed the 13th amendment in 1864 that abolished slavery. On
April 14, 1865 Lincoln was shot while attending a performance at
Appomattox Court House by John Booth.



Thaddeus Stevens
    Thaddeus Stevens was one of the most influential Republican leaders
during the reconstruction era. In 1861 he became chairman of the House of
Representatives. He played an important role in the printing of paper money
during the Civil War. His greatest development was the Reconstruction
policy. During the Civil War he fought for antislavery measures and stricter
terms for Reconstruction. After the Confederate surrender, Stevens didn't
agree with President Johnson's Reconstruction plan and wanted a more
effective policy. In 1868 Stevens was a prosecutor in the president's
impeachment trial.










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Jefferson Davis
    Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederate States of
America. He struggled to lead the Confederacy to freedom during the United
States Civil War. Davis wanted Mississippi to leave the Union and he wanted
to be the commander of the southern army. Instead he was elected president
of the Confederacy. For the four years he was in office he gave his complete
dedication to the country. Even though he tried hard, he wasn't a very good
president. He kept friends in office that weren't trained and he wasted some
of his time on unimportant matters. His greatest weakness was that he
couldn't work well with other people. Because of these things, he gradually
became unpopular as the war continued. In 1865, when the Confederacy was
losing, Davis fled from Richmond and hoped to continue the war from the
deep south or the west of the Mississippi River. When he retired he wrote
books about the defense of the South and about himself.


John Coldwell Calhoun
    John Calhoun was the vice-president of the United States and worked for
Southern rights. He also served in the state legislature and Congress. In
Congress he was a war hawk. James Monroe appointed Calhoun as his
Secretary of War in 1817. In 1828 he wrote the "South Carolina Exposition
and Protest" which stated that the state should have the power to nullify
federal laws. In 1828 Calhoun was reelected vice-president when Andrew
Jackson was president. When Jackson didn't like South Carolina's efforts to
nullify the tariff, he resigned from vice-president. Calhoun then served in the
Senate and was a good spokesman for slavery and Southern rights. For the
last years of his life he defended the right of slavery to go into federal
territories. He died on March 31, 1850.








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Henry Clay
    Henry Clay was a key figure in U.S. politics in the early 19th century. He
was elected to the House of Representatives in 1811. Clay was the leader of
the "War Hawks" in Congress who wanted to go to war against Great Britain.
In 1815 he made a program that would build roads linking the East and the
West. Clay ran for president in 1824, but when no candidate won a majority,
Clay supported John Adams. When Adam's won, Clay was named Secretary
of State. In the 1840's he help to guide a new tariff law and a national bank to
Congress. Clay helped persuade congress to accept the Compromise of 1850,
which saved the Union for a decade.


Andrew Johnson
    Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on Dec. 29, 1808 and when
his family moved to Tennessee he opened a tailor shop in Greeneville. Before
Johnson became vice-president he was an alderman, mayor, state
representative, senator, congressman, and a governor. When the Union
occupied part of Tennessee in 1862, Lincoln chose Johnson for the military
governor. In 1865 He was elected vice-president with Lincoln as president.
When Lincoln was shot Johnson became the president of the United States.
He was a Southerner and he believed that whites should have control over
government and society. He also believed that Congress didn't have the
power to interfere with the southern states. When Congress passed the Tenure
of Office Act and Johnson vetoed it, he tried to fire his secretary of war.
Congress decided to impeach the president for misdemeanors. The Senate
decided that he wasn't guilty. He died on July 31, 1875.