This portion of "The Home of The American Civil War" site contains biographies of some of the major personalities, both North and South, involved in the American Civil War. These biographies are accompanied by an image of the individual where possible. However, they make no attempt to provide information concerning the individuals entire life, merely their contribution to the Civil War. Just click on the name.
ADAMS, Charles Francis, congressman, diplomat, was born in Boston on August 18, 1807. In 1809, his father, John Quincy Adams, accepted the appointment as U.S. minister to Russia and moved his family to St. Petersburg. After his father returned to Washington in 1817, Charles Francis attended the Boston Latin School, then graduated from Harvard University in 1825. For two years during his father's presidency he resided in the White House, after which he returned to Boston to devote the next ten years to study, writing, and management of his father's financial affairs. He sat on the Massachusetts General Court (1840-1845) and edited the Boston Whig (1846-1848).
During the Mexican War, Adams became a Conscience Whig, then bolted the party in 1848 and presided at the Buffalo convention that founded the Free Soil party. That convention nominated Martin Van Buren for the presidency and Adams for the vice presidency. With other Conscience Whigs he drifted into the Republican party, and as a Republican he entered the House of Representatives in 1859. He represented Massachusetts on the House Committee of Thirty-three, formed to deal with the secession crisis. At the request of the committee chairman, Thomas Corwin (q.v.), Adams introduced the committee's resolution to protect slavery, where it existed, by constitutional amendment.
Abraham Lincoln (q.v.), acting on the advice of Secretary of State William H. Seward (q.v.), appointed Adams minister to Great Britain; he resigned his congressional seat on May 1, 1861. His arrival in London later that month coincided with the Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality toward the American Civil War. Adams conveyed to the London government Seward's forceful admonitions against British recognition of the Confederacy, fortunately without damaging U.S. — British relations. When, in 1862, he could not prevent the departure of the Florida, the Alabama, and other Confederate raiders built in British shipyards, he warned the London government that it would be held liable for the damages inflicted on Northern shipping by Confederate commerce destroyers. In April 1863 British officials, conscious of the mounting Confederate toll on the high seas, prevented the sailing of the Alexandra. Adams's efforts were finally successful when, in September 1863, the British government seized the two ironclad Laird rams being built at Liverpool for the Confederates. Adams did not leave England until May 1868. In 1871-1872, he sat on the tribunal in Geneva that settled the Alabama Claims. He died in Boston on November 21, 1886. Duberman, Charles Francis Adams.
Norman A. Graebner
Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.
Henry Brooks Adams, a historian and writer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 16, 1838. He was the third son of Frances Adams Sr. and Abigail Brooks Adams. As the grandson of President John Adams and the great grandson of John Quincy Adams, Henry enjoyed a privileged childhood, but he bore the burden of high expectations. He attended private school in Boston and graduated from Harvard in 1858. He began writing during his years at Harvard, publishing his first stories in Harvard Magazine. He studied law at the University of Berlin and the University of Dresden, but did not complete a degree, choosing instead to travel through Europe.
Adams returned to Boston late in 1860 and went to work as his father's secretary during the elder Adams' second congressional term. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, his father was appointed minister to England and Henry accompanied him to London, serving as his personal secretary until his father's resignation in 1868. Also working as London correspondent to the New York Times during 1861-1862, Henry Adams wrote of Britain's reaction to the Civil War.
After returning to Washington, Adams writing financial and political articles for New York newspapers. After another brief trip to Europe, his family pressed him into taking a job as associate professor at Harvard, a position he held from 1870 through 1877. A gifted teacher, he preferred the other position he held concurrently as editor of the North American Review. In 1876 he was awarded his Ph.D. from Harvard.
On June 27, 1872 Adams married Marian Hooper and embarked on a year-long trip through Europe. The couple had no children.
In 1878 Adams began writing full time. His first two books, biographies of Albert Gallatin, published in 1879, and John Randolph, published in 1882, gained him a reputation as a serious historian. In 1880, he caused a stir with Democracy: An American Novel, an expose of political corruption in Washington, which he published anonymously and did not recognize during his lifetime.
In 1885, following the suicide of his beloved wife, he embarked on a long journey to Japan, returning to Washington to finish his nine-volume History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, published in 1889-1891. During the next few years, he traveled extensively. He received an honorary LL.D. from Western Reserve University, and served as president of the American Historical Association.
Feeling that his books were unappreciated, Adams retired from political life to pursue an interest in Medieval studies. From this period came the books Mont Saint Michel and Chartres published in 1904, widely recognized as one of the best studies of Medieval thought, and, in 1906 his greatest book, The Education of Henry Adams, a reflection on his own place in society. In it he proposes theories that are credited with revolutionizing historical thought.
Adams died in Washington on March 27, 1918. In 1919 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for The Education of Henry Adams
Source: Henry Brooks Adams The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An encyclopedia in eighteen volumes, edited by A.W. Ward, A.R. Waller, W.P. Trent, J. Erskine, S.P. Sherman, and C. Van Doren. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons; Cambridge, England: University Press, 1907–21. Published online by Bartleby.com (January, 2000); Henry Brooks Adams The Learning Network Inc. (2000-2002); Henry Brooks Adams English Department, Vienna University.
Louisa May Alcott was a prolific author best known for her classic children's book, Little Women.
Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832 to Bronson and Abigail May Alcott. Her father was a teacher, philosopher, and the vanguard of the Transcendentalist movement. She lived in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts for most of her life, and grew up surrounded by intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She was educated at home and at her father's experimental Temple School in Boston.
Alcott became concerned about her father's ability to financially provide for the family after the failure of Fruitlands, a utopian community he founded. Her mother, called Abba, worked hard to add extra money to the family's meager coffers, and Louisa joined in this effort by teaching, sewing, working as a servant, and writing. During a stint as a Civil War nurse in Washington, D.C., Alcott contracted typhoid. She wrote about her experiences in the 1863 book Hospital Sketches. She also wrote poetry, short stories, and novellas. While churning out potboilers (often under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard), Louisa completed a more serious piece of fiction, Moods, which enjoyed a short-lived flurry of sales after its publication in 1864.
In 1865, Alcott traveled to Europe as the companion of Anna Weld. She wrote a number of travel pieces, and upon her return, became more involved in children's fiction. She was named editor of Merry's Museum, a girls' magazine, in January 1868. Later that year, a publisher from Roberts Brothers urged her to wrote a book for girls, and Alcott began a novel based on her own family. The first part of Little Women was published in September 1868, the second in April 1869. This novel's success surpassed everyone's expectations, and the publishing company found itself struggling to keep up with the orders. In 1870, while on a much more luxurious European tour, Alcott was delighted to find out that her follow-up, An Old-Fashioned Girl, was also selling well, and that Moods had been reissued.
Little Women made its author famous; Alcott's work was hugely in demand, and she responded to the public's interest with books like Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom. Her celebrity status caused her some discomfort, however, and she struggled with exhaustion, depression, and a variety of ailments for which she consulted many doctors.
In the late 1870s, Alcott became an activist. She tried to galvanize women in her community about voting rights, and became the first woman to register in Concord, Massachusetts when the state gave women school, tax, and bond suffrage. She also helped establish a temperance society for Concord in 1882. On March 4, 1888, Alcott visited with her dying father. The next morning, she lost consciousness from a condition that was either spinal meningitis, apoplexy, or a combination. On March 6, the same day as her father's funeral, she passed away, and was buried next to her parents at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, online edition; James, James and Boyer's Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary
Blanche Butler Ames was born on March 2, 1847 in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her mother, Sarah Hildreth Butler, had been a Shakespearean actress before marrying Blanche's father, Benjamin Butler, a Massachussetts politician who became a controversial Civil War general.
Blanche attended local public school until at age 13 she was sent to be educated at at the Academy of the Visitation in Washington, DC where she described the sectional tension affecting northern and southern students at the eve of the Civil War.
After the war Blanche and her family resided in Washington and Massachusetts, and she became acquainted with Civil War general Adelbert Ames, who had served with her father. They married on July 21, 1870. Her husband was governor of Mississippi from 1874-1876, and her letters to her family detail the first-hand experiences of life as a Northern woman living in the South during the Reconstruction.
In 1871, Blanche gave birth to a son Butler, the family eventually growing to six children, one of whom, Blanche Ames (1878-1969), later became a prominent suffrage activist.
Blanche Butler Ames died in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1939.
Source: Chronicles from the Nineteenth Century: Family Letters of Blanche Butler and Adelbert Ames Married July 21st, 1870, vol. 1., Clinton, MA, 1957; Ames Family History Mass.gov (June 04, 2003)
ANDERSON, Robert, general, was born on June 14, 1805, near Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating from West Point in 1825, he served with distinction in the Seminole and Mexican wars and became one of the leading artillery specialists in the army, attaining the rank of major in 1857. In November 1860 the War Department appointed him commander of the garrison at Charleston, South Carolina, hoping that because he was a Southerner and a slave owner, his presence would soothe the South Carolinians. Although he was loyal to the Union, Anderson opposed using force to keep the South from seceding and desired to avoid a clash that might lead to war. Hence, on learning that the South Carolinians planned to seize Fort Moultrie, where most of his garrison was stationed and that was defenseless against land attack, he transferred the garrison to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on the night of December 26, 1860. In January, President James Buchanan (q.v.) sent the Star of the West to resupply Anderson's garrison, but the ship turned back when South Carolina batteries opened fire and when Anderson — still seeking to avoid war — refrained from answering their fire.
Early in April, President Abraham Lincoln (q.v.) ordered another relief expedition to Fort Sumter. The Confederates called upon Anderson to surrender. He refused but stated that he would have to abandon the fort if it was not supplied soon. The Confederates, wishing to force the issue of Southern independence, began bombarding Sumter on the morning of April 12. Anderson returned their fire, and the civil war he had hoped to prevent was under way. On April 14, further resistance being pointless, Anderson surrendered the fort and the Confederates allowed him and his troops to proceed to the North, where they were greeted as heroes. Lincoln placed Anderson, promoted to brigadier general, in command of Kentucky, which vital state he helped save for the Union. In October 1861 Anderson retired from active service for reasons of health. On April 14, 1865, he returned to Fort Sumter and raised the same flag he had lowered four years before. On October 26, 1871, he died in Nice, France. Crawford, History of Fort Sumter; Swanberg, First Blood.
Albert Castel
Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.
ANDREW, John Albion, governor, was born on May 31, 1818, in Windham, Maine. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1837 and moved to Boston, where he was admitted to the bar in 1840. His attachment to antislavery began early in life and deepened through constant association with Boston abolitionists. He participated in several fugitive slave cases in the 1840s and 1850s, and he helped raise money for John Brown's (q.v.) legal defense and for the support of the Brown family following the Harpers Ferry raid.
Andrew entered politics during the Mexican War, gravitating toward the Conscience Whigs and into the orbit of Charles Sumner (q.v.); in 1848 he joined the Free Soil party. Active in the formation of the Massachusetts Republican party, he won a seat in the lower house of the state legislature in 1857. On the strength of his oratory, his forceful yet sociable personality, and most of all his skillful resistance to the conservative, Know-Nothing element in the party, Andrew quickly rose to prominence among Bay State Radical Republicans. In 1860, he chaired the Massachusetts delegation to the Republican National Convention, and later that year he was elected governor, the first of five consecutive terms.
In his tireless devotion to total victory, emancipation, and the welfare of black troops, Andrew was without equal among war governors. Even before delivering his first inaugural address, he had taken steps to place Massachusetts upon a war footing, and he was able to dispatch 3,000 troops to the Federal government immediately after Abraham Lincoln (q.v.) called out the militia on April 15, 1861. Andrew was effectively the unofficial war minister for New England. directing and assisting governors of neighboring states at the same time that he undertook to raise money, purchase ships, and organize and equip his own state troops. He was equally energetic in urging official Washington to prosecute the war with more vigor and to embrace emancipation as a war aim.
Among the most vocal of the state executives calling for the removal of General George B. McClellan (q.v.) following the Peninsula campaign, Andrew was also instrumental in calling the Altoona conference of governors, which assembled in September 1862 to revive Northern war enthusiasm. By January 1863, having finally won official authorization for his long campaign to enlist black soldiers, he was wholeheartedly engaged in raising the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, which he took special pains to turn into a showcase unit. He also fought for the rights of black soldiers to receive equal pay and to serve as officers.
In general agreement that Andrew was the most energetic and radical of Northern war governors, historians have debated whether he was responsible or reckless in his efforts to influence war policy. A fair judge would account him restrained in his conduct, for by his own admission Andrew was radical in principles but conservative in measures. He worked hard for Lincoln's reelection despite having opposed his renomination, and he refrained from openly criticizing Andrew Johnson (q.v.) even when Johnson's Reconstruction policy diverged sharply from his own. Indeed, Andrew's famous Valedictory Address, delivered in January 1866 upon his leaving office, was a moderate plea for enfranchising the former Confederates but not all of the former slaves. After he resumed his law practice, Andrew directed much of his energy toward channeling Northern capital into the agricultural South. He died in Boston on October 30, 1867. Hesseltine, Lincoln's War Governors; Pearson, Life of John A. Andrew.
Lawrence N. Powell
Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.
ANDREWS, George Leonard, general, was born on August 31, 1828, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He graduated from West Point in 1851, first in his class. Andrews served with the Corps of Engineers on the construction of Fort Warren in Boston Harbor and as an instructor in civil and military engineering. In 1855 he resigned his commission to take a position with a manufacturing company in Manchester, New Hampshire, and in 1857 became a civil engineer with the Federal government. With the outbreak of war, he became lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteers and commanded the regiment during the Federal retreat from Strasburg to Winchester during General Nathaniel P. Banks's (q.v.) Shenandoah Valley campaign. Promoted to colonel on June 13, 1862, Andrews became a brigadier general of Volunteers in November 1862 and was commended for his service at Winchester, Cedar Mountain, and Antietam.
Ordered to the Department of the Gulf, Andrews commanded the defenses around New Orleans (2nd Division, XIX Corps) and, as Banks's chief of staff, fought at Fort Bisland and Port Hudson. His assignments also included command of the military district of Baton Rouge and Port Hudson. He later became provost marshal general for the Army of the Gulf, and was present during the Mobile campaign. Andrews concluded his wartime duties as General Edward R.S. Canby's (q.v.) chief of staff. As a cap to his service, he was promoted to brevet major general of Volunteers. Andrews's record seems unimpeachable. He fought in eighteen battles and several minor actions, and his steady rise in rank demonstrates that his superiors recognized his abilities.
From 1865 until 1867, Andrews was a planter in Washington County, Mississippi. In 1867, he became the U.S. marshal for Massachusetts. He held that post until February 1871, when President Ulysses S. Grant (q.v.) appointed him professor of French at West Point. Andrews retired on August 31, 1892, and spent his last years in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he died on April 4, 1899. Hewitt, Port Hudson; Sears, Landscape Turned Red.
Frank J. Wetta
Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.
Susan Brownell Anthony was an advocate for women's rights and suffrage. She also championed the causes of abolition, labor and education reform, and temperance. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father was a Quaker abolitionist and a cotton manufacturer. He believed girls should be educated, and sent her to a Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Anthony taught school for fifteen years. In her first paid position, she headed the girls' department at the Canajoharie Academy. It was there that she joined the Daughters of Temperance, and delivered her first public address before that group in 1848. Anthony, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, would later be asked to resign from the Women's State Temperance Society, a group she'd founded, for focusing too much on women's issues.
Anthony began campaigning on behalf of women's rights in 1853. She lobbied for women's property rights in New York State, and the New York State Married Women's Property Bill resulted in 1860. She and Stanton also campaigned for more enlightened divorce laws in New York. At teachers' conventions in the 1850s, Anthony spoke out on behalf of women. She argued that female teachers should be better compensated for their work, declared that women should be allowed to pursue more professions, and championed coeducation, pointing out that women were as intelligent as men. She also requested more representation for women at the conventions, and on committees. In the 1890s, she fought for coeducation as a member of the board of trustees for Rochester, New York's State Industrial School . She also raised $50,000 to enable women to attend the University of Rochester. They were first admitted, thanks to her efforts, in 1900.
An abolitionist, Anthony urged schools and institutions of higher learning to admit ex-slaves, and pointed out that children of ex-slaves should be able to attend public schools. She became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1856, and actively supported the crusade to give Blacks and women full citizenship and voting rights.
Anthony's work in the temperance movement gave her the political experience she needed as the fight for women's suffrage began to crystallize. After the Civil War, she and other supporters of women's suffrage were disappointed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which made former slaves citizens and gave Black men the right to vote, but excluded women. In 1869, the suffrage movement was divided over the Fifteenth Amendment. Anthony and Stanton, who opposed it, organized the National Woman Suffrage Association, while Lucy Stone, whose politics were more moderate, founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. Stone's association focused on suffrage locally and at the state level, while Stanton and Anthony fought for a federal suffrage amendment. The two groups would work separately until 1887, when they merged as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. During her presidency at the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the 1890s, Anthony diversified her activism by reaching out to members of the organized labor movement.
In 1872, Anthony was arrested in Rochester, New York for attempting to cast a vote. She was found guilty without discussion in 1873. In 1877, members of Congress scoffed at the 10,000-signature petition she had collected from 26 states. She spoke before each congress from 1869 to 1906 on behalf of a suffrage amendment.
Anthony died in 1906 at the age of 86. In 1920, women were finally enfranchised by the Nineteenth Amendment, which was also referred to as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.
Source: Lynda G. Adamson's Notable Women in American History; Susan B. Anthony House ; "Women's Suffrage" by Miriam Sagan
ARNOLD, Isaac Newton, congressman, was born on November 30, 1815, in Hartwick, New York. He attended local schools and the Hartwick Seminary. In 1835, he was admitted to the bar after studying with Judge E. B. Morehouse and Richard Cooper, a nephew of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper. In 1836, Arnold moved to Chicago and, from 1842 to 1846, served in the Illinois state legislature as a Democrat. He joined the Free Soil movement in 1848 and eventually the Republican party. In 1860, Arnold was elected to the 37th Congress and in 1862 was reelected to the 38th Congress. He served on the Committee on Defenses and Fortifications of the Great Lakes and Rivers, the Committee on Manufactures, and the Committee on Roads and Canals. He voted to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, supported various confiscation measures, and urged that the Constitution be amended to end slavery.
Despite his record, Arnold frequently broke ranks with other Radical Republicans to give unequivocal support to President Abraham Lincoln's (q.v.) policies. His support of the President did not waver in the 38th Congress; on one occasion, Thaddeus Stevens (q.v.) singled out Arnold as the only Lincoln Republican left in the House of Representatives. Lincoln may have depended on Arnold to initiate certain controversial measures. For example, Arnold suggested in the closing minutes of the 37th Congress that the $300 exemption fee in the national draft bill that had just passed Congress be repealed. He renewed this proposal in the opening minutes of the 38th Congress. Regardless of whether Lincoln had a role in these related actions, Arnold represented the sentiments of Midwestern congressmen generally that their region carried a disproportionate burden in furnishing troops for the Union Army.
Arnold also was instrumental in lifting the ban that had been imposed on the publishing of the Chicago Times in June 1863. He returned to his law practice in 1865 and briefly served as auditor of the treasury for the Post Office Department. His greatest accomplishment in later life was the publication of History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery (1866), which was revised and posthumously published as The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1885). Arnold died on April 24, 1884, in Chicago. Bogue, Congressman's Civil War; Curry, Blueprint for Modern America; Geary, We Need Men.
Thomas F. Schwartz
Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.
AVERELL, William Woods, general, was born in Bath, New York, on November 5, 1832. He graduated from West Point in 1855, was commissioned in the cavalry, and was engaged in operations (in one of which he was severely wounded) against the Indians in the Southwest. Averell's Civil War career began with his appointment on August 23, 1861, as colonel of the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry. As the head of an untrained, undisciplined regiment, Averell instituted drills in horsemanship and in such basic cavalry duties as picketing, scouting, and acting as rear guard. In his first five months with the regiment, he forced the resignation of sixteen officers he considered incompetent. His was one of eight regiments of cavalry in the Peninsula campaign, in which it was joined to the III Corps.
Averell was promoted to brigadier general of Volunteers in September 1862, and upon General Joseph Hooker's (q.v.) grouping of the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac into brigades and divisions, he was given command of the 2nd Cavalry Division. He led 2,100 of his men in a fight against Confederate cavalry at Kelly's Ford on March 17, 1863, an inconclusive affair that received far more postwar glorification than it deserved. Transferred to West Virginia on May 8, 1863, presumably because in Hooker's opinion he had not measured up to the requirements of high command, Averell was placed at the head of the Fourth Separate Brigade of cavalry and mounted infantry, and later of the 2nd Division. He engaged in numerous skirmishes and in two major efforts to break the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad in order to disrupt General James Longstreet's communications with the eastern seaboard.
In the spring of 1864, Averell defeated the Confederate cavalry that had burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, an action for which he was breveted major general in the Regular Army. On August 7, 1864, Philip Sheridan (q.v.) was given the Shenandoah Valley command. Included in his forces were four divisions and an extra brigade of cavalry, overall command of which, for reasons not to be found in the records, was given not to Averell but to the modestly competent Alfred T.A. Torbert (q.v.), his junior in rank. In the operations preceding the battle of the Opequon, Averell incurred Sheridan's ill will by an apparent misunderstanding of orders, but he played a creditable role in the battle itself. Still, he had given Sheridan reason to think that the elevation of Torbert over him had made Averell a balky, unreliable subordinate.
Following the Union victory at Fisher's Hill, on September 22, and acting without orders, Averell halted his division's pursuit of the beaten and demoralized enemy. He and Sheridan quarreled over Averell's apparent lack of energy in pressing the enemy retreat. Later that day Sheridan learned that Averell, again acting without orders, had gone into camp, and at once relieved him of his command. For the remaining months of the war, Averell remained unemployed, and he resigned from the army in May 1865. He died in Bath on February 3, 1900. Starr, Union Cavalry, vols. 1, 2.
Stephen Z. Starr
Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.