Troop engagements of the American Civil War, 1861 Troop engagements of the American Civil War, 1861 The following is a list of engagements that took place in 1861 during the American Civil War. The war started on April 12 when Confederate forces commanded by General P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; after a thirty-four-hour bombardment, the Union garrison surrendered. There had been no casualties during the bombardment; but the following day while the Union garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, was firing a fifty-gun salute, there was an explosion that resulted in one man being
Photography in the United States would admire and study the images for the signs of the distinction, substance, and character that they felt the subjects of the portraits represented. On April 15, 1861, Abraham Lincoln called up 75,000 militiamen to put down an insurrection of southern states after Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter on April 12–14, 1861. Mathew B. Brady, one of the preeminent photographers of the day, secured permission from President Lincoln to follow the troops, for what everyone thought would be a short and glorious war. He only saw the first major engagement, The First Battle of Bull Run, and lost his wagons