The life of a soldier in the 1860's was a arduous one and for the thousands of young Americans who left home to fight for their cause, it was an experience none of them would ever forget. Military service meant many months away from home and loved ones, long hours of drill, often inadequate food or shelter, disease, and many days spent marching on hot, dusty roads or in a driving rainstorm burdened with everything a man needed to be a soldier as well as baggage enough to make his life as comfortable as possible.

The first record of African slavery in Colonial America occurred in 1619. A Dutch ship, the White Lion, had captured 20 enslaved Africans in a battle with a Spanish ship bound for Mexico. The Dutch ship had been damaged first by the battle and then more severely in a great storm during the late summer when it came ashore at Jamestown.

Results of the 1860 Census including Total Population, Slave Population, Slaveholding Families and associated percentages.

The Battle Flag, also known as the Southern Cross, was never an official flag of the Confederate Government. The banner solely represented the soldiers who fought and died for the South on her many battlefields. It was carried by Confederate troops in the field which were the vast majority of forces under the Confederacy. The Stars represented the 11 states actually in the Confederacy plus Kentucky and Missouri. Below, you will find the official flags of the Confederate Government and their period of use.

To properly bury the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg, a "Soldiers Cemetery" was established on the battleground near the center of the Union line. Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin supported the proposal with state funds to purchase the cemetery grounds and pay for the reinterment of Union dead from inadequate grave sites that covered the battlefield. It was here during the dedication ceremony on November 19, 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln spoke of "these honored dead..." and renewed the Union cause to reunite the war-torn nation with his most famous speech, the "Gettysburg Address". The cemetery was landscaped by William Saunders, founder of the National Grange. The Cemetery was completed by 1872, and turned over to the care of the Federal government. In 1933 responsibility of the cemetery was transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service.

One of the distinct types of writing paper that I have looked is patriotic stationery. The patriotic stationery comes with literally hundreds of different patriotic cartoons. This stationery also had matching envelopes. The stationery I have seen is folded like a greeting card, with the fold on the left side. The finished, folded size approximates 8 inches high by 5 inches wide. This concurs with 19th century definitions of folio size. The stationery is lined, front and back with fine blue lines that tend to be about 3/8 of an inch apart.

At 2am on April 27th 1865, seven miles upstream from Memphis, the side-paddle steamer Sultana was slowly making way against a strong spring current when a large explosion occurred followed quickly by two more. A column of fire and steam shot up almost cutting the boat in two; within minutes the boat was a blazing wreck. This resulted in the deaths of at least 1,700 people, mostly paroled prisoners returning north as the war was ending. The sinking remains to this day the United States worst civilian boat disaster.

The ante-bellum economy operated on the barter system and a system of hard money. For most folks (not all), it was rare that they would ever have more than several dollars in their hands at one time. Think of it this way. How many of us today routinely carry over $1000 in cash around with us? We don't need it, because most of our purchases when conducting our normal business are relatively small. The barter system was helped along by limited issues of bank notes. Paper money in the form of bank notes was issued by private and state banks, and was also used as a medium of exchange. It had no intrinsic value, and was only redeemable for hard money at the place of issue, i.e. the bank that had it printed. So bank note paper money had a very limited distribution, and was mainly used locally. Exceptions to this rule would be money from trade centers such as New Orleans and some eastern cities. Some folks claim that the word Dixie, meaning the South, comes from New Orleans money.