Virginia leaves the Union
On April 17, 1861, delegates to a special convention of the Commonwealth of Virginia voted to repeal its ratification of the United States Constitution. Virginia was...
Virginians fear Union raiders
Virginia and Tennessee both joined the Confederacy. And both states held sizable numbers of Union supporters, especially in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and...
Volunteer for the U.S. Navy!
The Navy created this recruiting poster in 1863, hoping to encourage men to volunteer. The Navy offered wages ranging from $12 to 18 a month for the lowest ranks,...
West Virginia admitted
When the Civil War began, Virginia rejected the Federal Constitution and the Union and joined the Confederacy of the South. West Virginians preferred to remain within...
Who were they?
We know little about the three Confederate soldiers listed on this 1862 coffin receipt. Pvt. John Y. Pitts was mustered into Captain Barnes’s Company of the...
Why not let women fight?
By late 1864 the Confederacy was finding it increasingly difficult to find men for its army. A group of women from Harrisonburg, Virginia, wrote to Confederate...
William Starke Rosecrans
After success in the battles of Second Corinth, Stones River, and Tullahoma, Rosecrans was relieved of command after he lost at Chickamauga.