Important Historical Civil War Figures

Abraham Lincoln

He was the sixteenth president of the United States. He made a lot of decisions that effected the Civil War, like stopped shipping to the confederate, and kept a heavy line of troops on the boarders to stop it from flowing into the North.  He identified fully with the northern cause.  He was the war leader for the North, he planned to keep pressure on both Virginia and going down the Mississippi River.  He later won the war and started the Reconstruction Era.

Jefferson Davis

He was the president for the confederate during the war.  He could not figure out a strategy that would make it possible to defeat a larger, more powerful army.  He tried to ask other countries to help but to no prevail.  

Stephen Douglas

He was born in Illinois and created the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  He was a senator and a democrat and lost to Lincoln.

Frederick Douglass

He was a social reformer, orator, and statesman.  He was an escape slave and was  a great example that slaves could learn to read and write and hold office.  After the war he continued to fight for "the land of the free" 

John Brown

He believed that the only way to stop slavery was armed insurrection.  He was in Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie and Pottawatomie and tried to raid Harpers Ferry.

George McClellan

He was an union major general that organized the Army of Potomac.   After the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln demoted him because of his strategy.

Robert E. Lee

He was the lead officer of the confederate army.  He was nicknamed "Light Horse Harry."  When Virginia seceded from the union Lee decided to stay with his home town and because he was a general before he knew strategies and  tactics for the war.

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

He was a confederate general during the war.  His military career included the Valley Campaign and serving under Lee in the Army of Virginia.  He got his name of Stonewall from when general Bernard Bee "Look, men! There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!"

P.G.T. Beauregard

His name was Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, he was born on May 28, 1818 in Louisiana.  He worked as a politican, inventor, writer, civil servant, military officer, and a first general of the confederate army.  He commanded the troops at Fort Sumter and then won the battle of bull run.  Overall he was very helpful for the confederate side of the war.

Ulysses S. Grant

He was born on April 27, 1822.  He was the commander of the union army, and under him they defeated the confederate army.  He was an aggressive commander.  Because of how great he was, Lincoln promoted him to higher commander.  He was a military genius and later became the president and served two terms.

William Tecumseh Sherman

He was born on February 8, 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio.  He was a business man, educator, author, and a Union General during the civil war.  He did serve under Ulysses S. Grant, but then became his successor.

Thaddeus Stevens

He was in the House of Representatives and head of the Radical Republican.  He was strongly against discrimination against the blacks and opposed slavery.  He was the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which was a tax writing committee and would help fund the Civil War.  He becomes a lawyer, then joined the House of Representatives.  When Lincoln did not move faster on ending slavery, Stevens got angry.

Rutherford B. Hayes

He was the 19th president of the United States.  He saw the end of Reconstruction, and created civil service reforms. He became a major general in the union army, because of his bravery in combat where he got wounded four times.  A big reason he became president was because of the Compromise of 1877 he made.

This compromise stopped the federal army from interfering with the South's caused the fall of a Republican government and this caused a very Democratic South.  He believed in a fair economy, and improved education for all.  Made modest civil service reforms that will be the bases

Benjamin Wade

He was a reconstruction era senator.  He was a lead role in the Radical Republicans.  He also had Jackson impeached and then guilty on trial and then he became the 18th president of the United States.

John Wilkes Booth

He was an american stage performer and assassinated President Lincoln.  Him and other confederate soldiers made a plan to kidnap Lincoln but then changed it to just kill him.  Booth was the only one to successfully follow through with his part of the plan.  He shot Lincoln in the back of the head at Ford's Theatre, in Washington D.C. on April 14, 1865  then hit in Maryland where he hid in a barn.  He was shot when they lit the barn on fire.

Ku Klux Klan

Also known as the KKK.  They were a group that were for white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration.  They targeted anyone who wasn't white, most people hear mainly about them targeting blacks.  They would show this through terrorism, and would kill many of them.  They flourished in the South and wore all white, robes, masks, and conical hats, these were designed to be out of the ordinary and to hide their identities.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHn_LByyG-U