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On February 17th, 1865, Union forces under Major General William Tecumseh Sherman entered Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, as part of the Carolinas campaign that followed the March to the Sea. Confederate defenses had crumbled, and the city’s fall carried heavy symbolic weight because South Carolina had led secession. That night, fires swept across large sections of Columbia.
In late May of 1754, a young Virginia officer named George Washington led colonial troops and Native allies through the forests of the Ohio Country. Near a small encampment of French soldiers at a place later called Jumonville Glen, his party launched a surprise attack that killed or captured most of the detachment, including its commander.
In the tense weeks after South Carolina seceded, a small Union relief ship named Star of the West steamed toward Charleston Harbor. Its mission was to bring supplies and reinforcements to Major Robert Anderson’s garrison at Fort Sumter. On January 9th, 1861, as the ship approached the harbor’s defenses, shore batteries manned in part by South Carolina forces and cadets from the state’s military academy opened fire.
In a small Virginia village, General Robert E. Lee met General Ulysses S. Grant to discuss terms, bringing the main Confederate field army in Virginia to surrender. Lee’s forces had been worn down by siege, shortages, and constant pressure, and the attempt to slip westward had been cut off by Union pursuit.
As the Civil War drew to a close, one of the largest remaining Confederate armies faced hard realities in the Carolinas. Near a small farm called Bennett Place, outside Durham Station in North Carolina, General Joseph E. Johnston met repeatedly with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. After the shock of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination complicated negotiations, the two commanders eventually agreed on new
On February 16th, 1862, Confederate forces at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River surrendered to Union troops under Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant, marking one of the first major Union victories in the Western Theater of the Civil War. The campaign had begun with the capture of nearby Fort Henry earlier that month, opening the Tennessee River and rattling Confederate defenses in the region.
After a long siege, one of the young republic’s worst defeats unfolds as Major General Benjamin Lincoln surrenders Charleston, South Carolina, to British forces under Sir Henry Clinton. Thousands of Continental soldiers and militia lay down their arms, along with warships and supplies inside the vital port. With Charleston in hand, British leaders hope to rally Loyalists, crush resistance in the South, and then roll
In the early months of the Second World War, American and Filipino defenders fought a desperate holding action in the Philippines as Japanese forces pressed south across the Pacific. While Bataan fell in April, the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay continued to resist under constant bombardment, its tunnels crowded with wounded, staff, and the last reserves of ammunition.
On August 16th, 1812, early in the War of 1812, Brigadier General William Hull surrendered the American post at Detroit to a smaller British force under Major General Isaac Brock. Hull had crossed into Canada weeks earlier with an army of regulars and militia but retreated after supply problems, poor coordination, and concerns about Native American allies fighting alongside the British.
In the closing weeks of the Civil War, most Confederate field armies had already stacked their arms when Brigadier General Stand Watie, a Cherokee leader, finally agreed to terms in Indian Territory. Watie had commanded Confederate Indian units in the Trans-Mississippi theater, where fighting mixed conventional campaigns with raids, guerrilla strikes, and bitter internal divisions among Native nations.
While history often remembers the April surrender at Appomattox Court House as the Civil War’s end, organized Confederate resistance lingered west of the Mississippi River. On May 26th, 1865, officials representing General Edmund Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Department agreed to terms that effectively surrendered the last large Confederate field command.
While the guns still cooled at Gettysburg, another decisive event unfolded on the Mississippi River. On July 4th, 1863, after weeks of siege, Confederate Lieutenant General John Pemberton surrendered the fortress city of Vicksburg and its garrison to Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant. The fall of Vicksburg gave the Union complete control of the Mississippi River, severing the Confederacy’s trans-Mississippi region
A Medal of Honor story of courage under fire and stubborn defense in the Pacific war.
It is the early hours of 10 March 1945 on Luzon in the Philippine Islands. The jungle around the Villa Verde Trail is black and close, broken only by a thin ridge that juts out from a larger hill. On that ridge, just ahead of the main American perimeter, three foxholes scrape a shallow line in the earth. In one of them lies Private First Class Thomas Eugene “Gene” Atkins of Company A, 127th Infantry. His job is simpl
On January 31st, 1950, President Harry Truman announced that the United States would move ahead with development of a thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb. The decision followed the Soviet Union’s first atomic test and intense debate among scientists, soldiers, and policymakers about the future of nuclear weapons. A hydrogen bomb promised yields far beyond earlier fission devices, raising questions about strategy, morality
Two days after the invasion began, President Harry Truman announced that he had ordered American air and naval forces to support South Korea and directed the Seventh Fleet to the waters near Taiwan. The decision, made without a formal congressional declaration of war, marked one of the earliest and most consequential uses of presidential authority to commit U.S. forces in the emerging Cold War.
Five days after North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, President Harry Truman took a decisive step. On June 30th, 1950, he authorized the deployment of United States ground combat units to support South Korean forces already reeling under the assault. Air and naval power had been committed earlier, but this order meant American soldiers would again fight on the ground in Asia.
During the Korean War, President Harry Truman made a decision that highlighted the core American principle of civilian control over the military. General Douglas MacArthur, widely respected for his leadership in the Pacific during the Second World War and early operations in Korea, had increasingly clashed with Truman and other civilian leaders over war aims and public statements.