Here’s our round-up of the 10 most visit-worthy American Civil War sites, all of which have been preserved for future generations. But away from the classroom, nothing beats walking in the footsteps of heroes and seeing firsthand the scenes of struggle and sacrifice where an estimated 625,000 men lost their lives. Over 150 years later, this most devastating of conflicts continues to play a critical role in America's military, social, political, and human history (although how it is systematically taught to schoolchildren varies enormously from state to state). The North triumphed, and the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution - “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” - was ratified on 6 December 1865. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. Triggered by the election of Abraham Lincoln, it began on 12 April 1861 when Confederate forces attacked a US Union military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and ended on 9 April 1865 when General Robert E. His daughter, Louisa Porter (Gilmer) Minis donated sixty-three to the society in 1911, the other four came into the collection by other means.The bloodiest and most brutal battle on American soil, the American Civil War was fought between the North (Union states) and the South (Confederate states). The bulk of the society's collection of sixty-seven of these so-called "Gilmer Maps" are among those salvaged by the general himself. Gilmer saved a number of the maps produced under his supervision from the flames that destroyed a large portion of Richmond in 1865. In addition to the supervision of wartime construction projects, including bridge construction and harbor fortification, Gilmer oversaw the production of maps for use by the Confederate military. Army, Jeremy Francis Gilmer was chief of the engineer bureau of the Confederate War Department in September 1862 and held the position through the end of the war, rising to the rank of major general. West Point graduate and engineer in the prewar U.S. Among them is a collection of maps produced by the engineer bureau of the Confederate States War Department. In 2005, we announced several new additions to American Memory's online Civil War map database.
These maps provide extraordinary and detailed perspectives on battlefields in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Maryland, and other states. Sneden, are now available on the Library of Congress's American Memory web site.
More than 300 maps, painted in watercolor by Union private Robert K.
Sneden's life and work can be explored further in The Sneden Civil War Collection. Illustrations from Sneden's diary (Mss5:1 Sn237:1) can be browsed using the online finding aid. Some of his artwork was published in two volumes: Eye of the Storm (2000) and Images from the Storm (2001). Sneden also painted hundreds of watercolors based on wartime sketches and paintings. After the war he wrote a lengthy memoir based on his wartime diaries. He was in Confederate prison camps for thirteen months. Private Robert Knox Sneden was a mapmaker in the Union army in Virginia until his capture in 1863. Search either the American Memory website for Civil War maps from our collections, or access records from the VMHC Online Catalogs. With generous support of former trustee Alan Voorhees, the VMHC provided images of 400 maps to the project. Researchers can also purchase reproductions. Featuring introductory text and detailed descriptions of each map, the site allows researchers from across the globe to study maps from the period of that great American conflict. This collection is open to researchers through the Library of Congress's American Memory website. In 2001, the VMHC partnered with the Library of Congress and the Library of Virginia to provide online access to Civil War maps.