Civil War Events |
After the July 11 assault on Fort Wagner failed, Gillmore reinforced his beachhead on Morris Island. At dusk July 18, Gillmore launched an attack spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, a black regiment. The unit’s colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, was killed. Members of the brigade scaled the parapet but after brutal hand-to-hand combat were driven out with heavy casualties. The Federals resorted to siege operations to reduce the fort. This was the fourth time in the war that black troops played a crucial combat role, proving to skeptics that they would fight bravely if only given the chance.
victory by General Ulysses Grant despite the presence of daunting Confederate gun batteries on the walls surrounding the city overlooking the Mississippi River. Grant tried five different plants (including diverting the Mississippi River itself) before he found one that worked. It was the simplest but riskiest of all: run the gantlet of Confederate gun batteries and land on the eastern shore of the Mississippi right below Vicksburg. From there, Grant set up trenches and settled in for a siege, which proved most effective. In one of the quirks of history, Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, commanding the troops in Vicksburg, surrendered to Grant at almost the same time that General George Pickett was leading his charge into the Union batteries on Cemetery Ridge.
this battle occurred on march 8th and 9th on the Chesapeake bay. it was a battle fought by two ironclad ships called the Monitor and the Merrimack. an ironclad was a new warship introduced in the civil war and were very difficult to sink with cannon balls. on march 8th 1862 the Merrimack battled with wooden ships at Hampton roads. The Union fired at the Merrimack but nothing happened, The Merrimack ramed into the USS Cumberland and sunk it immediatley and proceeded to take down the rest of the ships and later retiring to Norfolk that night. The battle continued the next day , but the Union's Ironclad, The monitor, was introduced and the two ironclads fought for hours but eventually both ships left unable to sink.