The American Civil War, fought from 1861 to 1865, was a conflict between the Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states that seceded to form the Confederacy. The primary issues at stake were slavery, states' rights, and economic differences.
The war began after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Key battles included Antietam, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg, with significant figures like President Abraham Lincoln, General Ulysses S. Grant, and General Robert E. Lee playing pivotal roles.
The conflict resulted in immense casualties and destruction, ultimately leading to the defeat of the Confederacy. The war ended in April 1865, and the subsequent Reconstruction era sought to integrate formerly enslaved people into society and rebuild the South. The Civil War fundamentally transformed the nation, leading to the abolition of slavery and setting the stage for ongoing struggles for civil rights.
On September 16, 1862, William Child, a young assistant surgeon in the 5th New Hampshire Infantry, sat down along the banks of Antietam Creek and pulled out a pen and paper. Child had been on the march through Maryland with the rest of the Army of the Potomac for nearly two weeks and had crossed through the South Mountain battlefield the day before. It was Child’s first brush with the horrors of war.
At that moment, a Confederate battery on the other side of Antietam Creek opened fire, sending shells hurtling toward the Army of the Potomac. A terrified Child threw aside his letter and scrambled for cover. But as the shelling continued with no apparent threat to the 5th New Hampshire’s position, the young doctor picked up his pen again, writing – in a somewhat shakier hand – of the experience.
Child ironically seems to have found it easier to explain his situation to his three-year-old son, Clinton. In one letter, Child wrote that he had seen “many sick folks” and that his work required him to sometimes “[make] much blood.” He also saw “much dead folk,” but assured Clinton that it always made him sick to see the deceased. “Out here men try to make other men ‘all dead’,” Child explained, but comforted him in writing that “they will not hurt papa.”
https://www.civilwarmed.org/child/The story of Spotswood Rice illustrates the Civil War experience of one such slave and his personal battle to liberate himself and his family.
Spotswood Rice was born into slavery in Virginia on November 20, 1819, and moved with his family to Missouri when he was quite young. He lived on the plantation of Benjamin Lewis, where he worked as a tobacco roller. In 1852, Spotswood married Orry Ferguson and together they had seven children. Orry and her children were owned by members of the Diggs family in Glasgow, Missouri. For the first 12 years of their marriage, they lived apart, as was common with Missouri slave couples. As a result, Spotswood was only allowed to visit his family two nights each week. The abuse Spotswood suffered from the slave driver on Benjamin Lewis’s plantation drove him to run away on several occasions in an attempt to reach “Free Kansas.”
In February 1864 he finally gained his freedom by enlisting in the 67th Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry. Unfortunately, since slaves in the slaveholding border states had not been freed, Rice’s family, like the families of many African American soldiers, continued in bondage after his enlistment. At the same time, Spotswood wrote a letter filled with threats of retribution to Kittey Diggs, who owned his daughter Mary. Miss Diggs’s brother, F. W. Diggs, the postmaster of Glasgow, owned Rice’s daughter, Cora. Angered by Rice’s threats against his sister, Diggs forwarded the letters to General Rosecrans, Commander of the Department of the Missouri, demanding that Rice be sent out of the state. Rice was successful in his efforts is evidenced by the 1880 Census, which reported Rice and Orry living in St. Louis with their children, including Cora and Mary.
https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/rice-spotswood#:~:text=After%20leaving%20the%20army%20in,for%20himself%20and%20his%20family.