- Joined
- Apr 1, 1999
- Location
- Martinsburg, WV
The American Civil War was fought between the rebelling Confederate States (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina), and the loyal states of the United States of America (California, Connecticut, Delaware*, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky*, Maine, Maryland*, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri*, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia*, and Wisconsin).
Answering the question "Who was in the Civil War?" is not an easy one to answer. Many individuals participated in the American Civil War, as many as 3,164,000 men (and women) played military roles during this wartime period, and the nation (U.S.A./C.S.A. combined) had a population of 31,443,321 as a whole in 1860.
Below is a listing of the most prominent individuals to participate in this struggle.
The Union (United States of America)
[Lincoln, Johnson, McClellan, Grant, Meade]
[Davis, Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Beauregard]
Answering the question "Who was in the Civil War?" is not an easy one to answer. Many individuals participated in the American Civil War, as many as 3,164,000 men (and women) played military roles during this wartime period, and the nation (U.S.A./C.S.A. combined) had a population of 31,443,321 as a whole in 1860.
Below is a listing of the most prominent individuals to participate in this struggle.
The Union (United States of America)
[Lincoln, Johnson, McClellan, Grant, Meade]
Civilian Leadership
- Montgomery Blair - U.S. Postmaster General
- Gustavus V. Fox - Assistant Secretary of the Navy
- Hannibal Hamlin - 1st Term Vice President of Abraham Lincoln
- Andrew Johnson - 2nd Term Vice President of Abraham Lincoln, Future U.S. President
- William H. Seward - Secretary of State
- Edwin M. Stanton - Secretary of War
- Thaddeus Stevens - Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania
- Benjamin Wade - United States Senator from Ohio
- Gideon Welles - Secretary of the Navy
Military Leadership
- George B. McClellan - Major General
- Ulysses S. Grant - Lieutenant General, and Future U.S. President
- Robert Anderson - Major, commander of Fort Sumter, promoted to Brigadier General
- Don Carlos Buell - Major General
- Benjamin Butler - Major General
- Ambrose Burnside - Major General
- John A. B. Dahlgren - Rear Admiral
- Samuel Francis Du Pont - Rear Admiral
- David Farragut - Admiral
- Andrew Hull Foote - Rear Admiral
- John C. Frémont - Major General
- Henry Halleck - Major General
- Herman Haupt - Brigadier General, railroad engineer
- Joseph Hooker - Major General
- Henry Jackson Hunt - Chief of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac, Brevet Major General
- Samuel Phillips Lee - Rear Admiral
- Irvin McDowell - Major General
- George Meade - Major General
- Montgomery C. Meigs - Brigadier General, Brevet Major General
- John Pope - Major General
- David Dixon Porter - Admiral
- William Rosecrans - Major General
- Winfield Scott - Brevet Lieutenant General
- Philip Sheridan - Major General
- William Tecumseh Sherman - Major General
- Daniel E. Sickles - Major General
- George Henry Thomas - Major General
- John L. Worden - Lieutenant in command of the U.S.S. Monitor at Hampton Roads
Other Notable Persons
- Hiram Berdan - Inventor of the repeating rifle and received patent for musket ball
- John Brown - Abolitionist, unsuccessfully raided Harper's Ferry in 1859
- Samuel Colt - developed the first viable mass-produced revolvers prior to the Civil War
- Frederick Douglass - former slave, orator, writer, and leader of the abolitionist movement
- John Ericsson - inventor and engineer, designed the USS Monitor
- William Lloyd Garrison - Abolitionist, editor of the newspaper, The Liberator
- Horace Greeley - publisher and editor of the New York Tribune, opponent to slavery
- Benjamin Tyler Henry - gunsmith and manufacturer, inventor of the Henry Rifle
- William Mason - significant supplier of locomotives and rifles for the Union Army
- Samuel Morse - co-inventor of the single line telegraph system and Morse Code
- Robert Parker Parrott - soldier & inventor of military ordnance at West Point Foundry
- Allan Pinkerton - head of the Union Intelligence Service, detective and spy
[Davis, Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Beauregard]
Civilian Leadership
- Alexander Stephens - Vice President of the C.S.A.
- Judah P. Benjamin - 1st Attorney General, 2nd Secretary of War, 3rd Secretary of State
- Thomas Bragg - 2nd Attorney General
- John C. Breckinridge - 5th Secretary of War
- George Davis - 4th Attorney General
- Robert Hunter - 2nd Secretary of State
- Stephen Mallory - Secretary of the Navy
- Christopher Memminger - Secretary of the Treasury
- Francis W. Pickens - Secessionist Governor of South Carolina
- George Randolph - 3rd Secretary of War
- John Reagan - Postmaster General
- James Seddon - 4th Secretary of War
- Robert Tombs - 1st Secretary of State
- LeRoy Pope Walker - 1st Secretary of War
- Thomas Hill Watts 3rd Attorney General
Military Leadership
- Edward Porter Alexander - General, Longstreet's Chief of Artillery
- Joseph Reid Anderson - Brigadier General, owner of Tredegar Iron Works
- Richard H. Anderson - Lieutenant General
- P. G. T. Beauregard - General, commanded firing on Fort Sumter
- Braxton Bragg - Lieutenant General
- Franklin Buchanan - Captain of the C.S.S. Virginia, Admiral on board the C.S.S. Tennessee
- Patrick R. Cleburne - Major General
- Samuel Cooper - Full General, highest ranking Confederate general during the war
- Jubal Early - Lieutenant General
- Richard S. Ewell - Lieutenant General, senior commander under Jackson and Lee
- Nathan Bedford Forrest - Cavalry General
- Josiah Gorgas - Chief of Ordnance for the Confederate Army
- Wade Hampton III - Lieutenant General
- Ambrose Powell Hill - Lieutenant General
- John Bell Hood - Lieutenant General
- Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson - Lieutenant General
- Albert Sidney Johnston - General, killed at Shiloh
- Joseph E. Johnston - Full General
- James Longstreet - Lieutenant General
- John Hunt Morgan - Brigadier General
- John S. Mosby - Colonel, guerrilla leader
- Sterling Price - Major General
- William Quantrill - leader of Quantrill's Raiders
- Raphael Semmes - Admiral, Captain of CSS Alabama
- Edmund Kirby Smith - General
- James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart - Major General, cavalry
- Richard Taylor - Lieutenant General
- Stand Watie - Brigadier General
- Joseph Wheeler - Major General
Other Notable Persons
- John Wilkes Booth - famous stage actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre
- Jedediah Hotchkiss - famous cartographer and topographer
- Jean Alexandre LeMat - New Orleans physician and inventor of the LeMat Revolver
- Samuel A. Mudd - physician, assisted John Wilkes Booth
- Sir Joseph Whitworth - English engineer and inventor, designed the Whitworth Rifle
- Please see: Women of the Civil War
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