Biographies

Union Lieutenant George E. Davis received the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions at the Battle of Monocacy.

With no formal military training, Nelson Miles enlisted in the Union army at the outbreak of the Civil War, beginning a military career that would see service through the Spanish-American War and see him rise to the rank of Lieutenant General.

Gouverneur Warren was a skilled engineer and map maker who became a senior officer in the Union army during the Civil War. He is best remembered for ordering the seizure of Little Round Top on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, an action which saved the Union left flank from envelopment.

John Parke was a surveyor and career U.S. Army officer who served as a senior officer in IX Corps and as XXII Corps Commander during Civil War. Following the war, Parke returned to the American west and resumed his surveying career for the regular army.

August Kautz was a German immigrant and major general of Union forces in the American Civil War whose division of United States Colored Troops was one of the first to occupy Richmond, Virginia in April 1865.

Lewis Harris served with the USCT, 10th Cavalry, and 24th Infantry during his long military career. He fought in the Civil War, "Indian Wars," and Spanish American War before retiring in 1901.

Ulysses S. Grant was one of the most important figures of 19th century America. He was a quiet family man who had worked as a farmer in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a store clerk in Galena, Illinois, before the Civil War. He rose to become President Lincoln's trusted general in charge of the entire U.S. Army during the war and later a two-term president.

Samuel W. Crawford, a surgeon and Union general during the Civil War, was one of the few men present at the outbreak of the war at Fort Sumter and also at its dramatic effective end at Appomattox Court House.

George Meade was appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac just three days before his force collided with Robert E. Lee's army at Gettysburg in July 1863. Although criticized for his failure to pursue Lee after the battle, Meade remained in command of the Army of the Potomac for the remainder of the war.

Ambrose Burnside was a Union General who fought many battles in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, including First Bull Run, the Battle of Roanoke Island, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. He served briefly as Commander of the Army of the Potomac before being transferred to the Western Theater after a disastrous charge at Fredericksburg, Virginia. After another failure at the Battle of the Crater, he was relived of duty and eventually retired from service.

West Point instructor and Mexican War veteran Cadmus Wilcox was a Major General in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. He was particularly distinguished in the fighting at Salem Church near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in May of 1863, where his division kept reinforcements from joining Union Gen. Joseph Hooker's army, thereby enabling Hooker's defeat by Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson.

George Pickett is one of three Confederate generals who led a force of 12,500 infantry against well emplaced Federals at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1863 in a fateful charge that still bears his name.

Bushrod Johnson was born in Belmont County Ohio, on October 7, 1817 into a family of Quakers, pacifists and abolitionists and contributed, at an early age, to the escape of runaway slaves. Still, upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Johnson accepted a commission in the Confederate Army and eventually rose to the rank of major general.

P.G.T. Beauregard, the victor of the Battle for Fort Sumter and the Battle of First Manassas, later commanded Confederate armies in the Western Theater at the Battle of Shiloh and the Siege of Corinth. A vocal critic of President Jefferson Davis, he was reassigned to the defense of Charleston in 1863. After the Civil War, Beauregard experienced success in the field of business.

Though he had no prior military training or experience before the Civil War, John Brown Gordon became one of the most successful commanders in Robert E. Lee's army.

A. P. Hill seemed to have issues with the Confederate Generals during the Maryland Campaign

After stopping McClellan's push toward Richmond and sending the Army of the Potomac retreating toward Washington, Lee turned his attention to John Pope's total war on the people of Northern Virginia, which had devastated the region between Culpepper and the railroad junction at Manassas.

"Billy" Mahone was a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. His Virginia brigade was instrumental in driving Union forces back in the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg in June of 1864. After the war, he resumed his career as a railroad executive, and became governor and U.S. senator from Virginia.

This Union nurse was told that by Dorothea Dix that she was too young and pretty to be a nurse, but her determination soon proved Dix and others wrong.

Arguably the most famous Civil War nurse, Clara Barton went to great lengths to see after the sick and wounded and to ensure that they were treated both expediently and humanely. Her work in the war led her to found the American Red Cross, an organization that would provide humanitarian relief for a wide variety of crises.

As president of the Confederacy, Davis proved unable to find a strategy to defeat the better organized and more industrially developed North. Perhaps his most successful military move came in June 1862, with the appointment of Robert E. Lee to lead the Army of Northern Virginia.

President Lincoln's leadership of the United States of America through the cataclysm of the Civil War ranks as one of the finest presidencies in American history.