What is the purpose of this blog?
I am trying to present a big picture of the Civil War. Most books cover a person or an event. Very few books cover the entire war as Shelby Foote did with his trilogy Civil War Volumes 1-3 Box Set.
One of my goals is to present the war as a list of events where the viewer can see what is happening all around the world. Abraham Lincoln and his team had to do this for the North. Jefferson Davis and his team had to do the same for the South. Based on the concept nothing happens in isolation, I will try to show users all the related events that happened around the world leading up to big decisions.
This website started as a research project to give me the facts I needed to debate my fellow Civil War historians over the cause(s) of the Civil War. In South Carolina, where I was born and raised and have decided to retire, I often hear, "the civil war was not about slavery." This statement did not line up with my understanding, so I started reading books about the lead-up to the Civil War. As I read about an event, I would document it for future reference. After I started collecting lots of facts, I decided to create a database to record the events along with the date, location, people involved, etc. This website is the result of my documentation of events.
Keep in mind it is continuously growing. With your help, I hope to record every significant event that happened. You can tell me about an event using this link or the menu option at the top of this page.