Sergeant Thomas H. "Boston" Corbett was an English-born American soldier and milliner who killed John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln on April 26, 1865. Known for his devout religious beliefs and eccentric behavior, Corbett was reportedly a good soldier and had been a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. Corbett shot and mortally wounded Booth when his regiment surrounded the barn Booth was hiding in. For his actions, the American media and public largely considered Corbett a hero.
The postage stamps and postal system of the Confederate States of America carried the mail of the Confederacy for a brief period in U.S. history. Early in 1861 when South Carolina no longer considered itself part of the Union and demanded that the U.S. Army abandon Fort Sumter, plans for a Confederate postal system were already underway. Indeed, the Confederate Post Office was established on February 21, 1861; and it was not until April 12 that the American Civil War officially began, when the Confederate Army fired upon U.S. soldiers who had refused to abandon the fort. However, the United States Post Office Department continued to handle the mail of the seceded states as usual during the first weeks of the war. It was not until June 1 that the Confederate Post Office took over collection and delivery, now faced with the task of providing postage stamps and mail services for its citizens.
Libby Prison was a Confederate prison at Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. In 1862 it was designated to hold officer prisoners from the Union Army, taking in numbers from the nearby Seven Days battles and other conflicts of the Union's Peninsular campaign to take Richmond and end the war only a year after it had begun. As the conflict wore on the prison gained an infamous reputation for the overcrowded and harsh conditions. Prisoners suffered high mortality from disease and malnutrition. By 1863, one thousand prisoners were crowded into large open rooms on two floors, with open, barred windows leaving them exposed to weather and temperature extremes.
Henry Wirz was a Swiss-American convicted war criminal who served as a Confederate Army officer during the American Civil War. He was the commandant of Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 Union Army prisoners of war died as a result of inhumane conditions. After the war, Wirz was tried and executed for conspiracy and murder relating to his command of the camp; this made the captain the highest-ranking soldier and only officer of the Confederate Army to be sentenced to death for crimes during their service. Since his execution, Wirz has become a controversial figure due to debate about his guilt and reputation, including criticism over his personal responsibility for Andersonville Prison's conditions and the quality of his post-war trial.
The Andersonville National Historic Site, located near Andersonville, Georgia, preserves the former Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during the final fourteen months of the American Civil War. Most of the site lies in southwestern Macon County, adjacent to the east side of the town of Andersonville. The site also contains the Andersonville National Cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum. The prison was created in February 1864 and served until April 1865.
The Dahlgren affair was an incident during the American Civil War which stemmed from a failed Union raid on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia in March 1864. Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and Colonel Ulric Dahlgren led an attack on Richmond to free Union prisoners from Belle Isle and damage Confederate infrastructure.
Ulric Dahlgren was a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was the son of Union Navy Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren and nephew to Confederate Brigadier General Charles G. Dahlgren.
The 52nd Pennsylvania Infantry was a volunteer infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Lucius Eugene Chittenden was an American author, banker, lawyer, politician and peace advocate who served as Register of the Treasury during the Lincoln administration.
Richmond, Virginia, served as the capital of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War from May 8, 1861, before that date the capital had been Montgomery, Alabama. Besides its political status, it was a vital source of weapons and supplies for the war effort, as well as the terminus of five railroads, and as such would have been defended by the Confederate States Army at all costs.
Abram Fulkerson was a Confederate officer during the American Civil War, and a Virginia lawyer and politician who helped form the short-lived Virginia Readjuster Party. He served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, as well as the U.S. House of Representatives, after which he published accounts of his wartime exploits and captivity.
Galvanized Yankees was a term from the American Civil War denoting former Confederate prisoners of war who swore allegiance to the United States and joined the Union Army. Approximately 5,600 former Confederate soldiers enlisted in the United States Volunteers, organized into six regiments of infantry between January 1864 and November 1866. Of those, more than 250 had begun their service as Union soldiers, were captured in battle, then enlisted in prison to join a regiment of the Confederate States Army. They surrendered to Union forces in December 1864 and were held by the United States as deserters, but were saved from prosecution by being enlisted in the 5th and 6th U.S. Volunteers. An additional 800 former Confederates served in volunteer regiments raised by the states, forming ten companies. Four of those companies saw combat in the Western Theater against the Confederate Army, two served on the western frontier, and one became an independent company of U.S. Volunteers, serving in Minnesota.
John Henry Winder was a career United States Army officer who served with distinction during the Mexican–American War. He later served as a Confederate general officer during the American Civil War.
The Andersonville Raiders were a prison gang of Union POWs incarcerated at the Confederate Andersonville Prison during the American Civil War. Led by their chieftains – Charles Curtis, John Sarsfield, Patrick Delaney, Teri Sullivan, William Collins, and Alvin T. Munn – these soldiers terrorized their fellow POWs, stealing their possessions and sometimes even committing murder.
Dorence Atwater was a Union Army soldier and later a businessman and diplomat who served as the United States Consul to Tahiti.
John Yates Beall was a Confederate privateer in the American Civil War who was arrested as a spy in New York and executed at Fort Columbus on Governors Island.
Father Peter Whelan was an Irish-born Catholic priest who was a chaplain for both Confederate troops and Union prisoners of war during the American Civil War. Whelan previously served as a missionary in North Carolina and pastor of Georgia's first Catholic parish, and twice served as administrator of the entire Diocese of Savannah.
Between 1861 and 1865, American Civil War prison camps were operated by the Union and the Confederacy to detain over 400,000 captured soldiers. From the start of the Civil War through to 1863 a parole exchange system saw most prisoners of war swapped relatively quickly. However, from 1863 this broke down following the Confederacy's refusal to treat black and white Union prisoners equally, leading to soaring numbers held on both sides.
The Battle of Smithfield was a relatively small skirmish during the American Civil War – taking place on from January 31 to February 1, 1864, in Smithfield, Virginia.
The 100th New York Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
