The American Civil War, 1861–1865: Front Lines, Battles and Casualties

A House Divided

Abraham Lincoln won the presidency on 6 November 1860 with about 40% of the popular vote and not a single electoral vote from the slave states. Six weeks later, on 20 December, a convention in Charleston took South Carolina out of the Union. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed by 1 February 1861, and on 8 February their delegates founded the Confederate States of America at Montgomery, Alabama, with Jefferson Davis as president.

On 12 April 1861 Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. When Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers three days later, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina left the Union too, and the Confederate capital moved to Richmond. Kentucky declared itself neutral; Missouri, Maryland and Delaware, slave states all three, stayed in the Union. The map follows the war county by county, from election day to the abolition of slavery.

1861–1862: The Border States, the Rivers and the Road to Richmond

The first year decided the border. George B. McClellan cleared northwestern Virginia at Philippi and Rich Mountain, where Unionists set up a loyal government at Wheeling; the region became the state of West Virginia on 20 June 1863. In Missouri, Nathaniel Lyon took Jefferson City in June and was killed at Wilson's Creek in August, and Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard went on to capture Lexington. Kentucky's neutrality ended in September 1861, when Confederate troops under Leonidas Polk seized Columbus on the Mississippi. In the east the Confederates won the First Battle of Bull Run on 21 July, and in November a Union fleet took Port Royal Sound in South Carolina.

In 1862 the Union went up the rivers. Ulysses S. Grant took Fort Henry and then Fort Donelson on 16 February, capturing some 12,000 Confederate soldiers, and Nashville became the first Confederate state capital to fall. Pea Ridge (March) secured Missouri, Glorieta Pass (March) ended the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, and Shiloh (6–7 April), with almost 24,000 casualties, showed how bloody the war would be. David Farragut's fleet took New Orleans at the end of April, and Memphis fell on 6 June.

In Virginia, McClellan brought the Army of the Potomac up the Peninsula almost to Richmond, but Robert E. Lee, in command after Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Seven Pines, drove him back in the Seven Days battles. Lee beat John Pope at Second Bull Run and crossed into Maryland, where the battle of Antietam on 17 September became the bloodiest day in American history. Five days later Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In the west, Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith invaded Kentucky and were turned back at Perryville. The year ended with a Union disaster at Fredericksburg and the battle of Stones River at Murfreesboro.

1863: Emancipation and the Turning Point

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on 1 January 1863: from now on the Union armies freed enslaved people wherever they went, and about 180,000 Black soldiers would serve in them. Lee won his greatest victory at Chancellorsville in May but lost Stonewall Jackson, and in June he marched into Pennsylvania. The map shows the Confederate army's ground in Maryland and Pennsylvania in late June, until the three days of Gettysburg (1–3 July), the battle with the most casualties of the war.

On 4 July, the day after Pickett's Charge, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant with some 29,500 men, and when Port Hudson fell on 9 July the Mississippi was in Union hands from source to mouth, cutting off Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. William Rosecrans drove Bragg out of Middle Tennessee, Union troops entered Knoxville, Chattanooga and Little Rock in September, and although the Confederates won at Chickamauga (18–20 September), Grant broke their siege of Chattanooga at Missionary Ridge on 25 November. Six days earlier Lincoln had given the Gettysburg Address.

1864: Grant, Sherman and the Hard War

Grant, now commanding all Union armies, went after Lee in Virginia while William T. Sherman marched on Atlanta. The Overland Campaign (the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor) cost both armies dearly in six weeks and ended in the siege of Petersburg, which lasted until April 1865. Jubal Early's raid reached the outskirts of Washington in July, but Philip Sheridan crushed him in the Shenandoah Valley in the autumn. Farragut forced his way into Mobile Bay on 5 August, and Atlanta fell on 2 September.

Those victories helped Lincoln to re-election on 8 November. A week later Sherman left Atlanta in ruins and marched to the sea, reaching Savannah on 21 December. His columns appear on the map as arrows: they cut a swath up to sixty miles wide but held none of it once they had passed. John Bell Hood's attempt to retake Tennessee ended in the slaughter at Franklin on 30 November and the rout at Nashville on 15–16 December. West of the Mississippi, the Red River campaign failed and Sterling Price's last raid through Missouri was broken at Westport.

1865: Collapse and Surrender

Fort Fisher fell on 15 January, closing Wilmington, the Confederacy's last major port. Sherman marched north through the Carolinas, Columbia burned on 17 February and Charleston was given up the next day. On 1 April Sheridan broke Lee's line at Five Forks, Petersburg and Richmond fell, and on 9 April Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Five days later Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre.

The rest of the Confederacy came apart in weeks. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place on 26 April, Richard Taylor at Citronelle on 4 May, and Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia on 10 May. The last battle, at Palmito Ranch in Texas on 12–13 May, was a Confederate victory. Edmund Kirby Smith signed away the Trans-Mississippi on 2 June, Gordon Granger read the order freeing the enslaved people of Texas at Galveston on 19 June (Juneteenth), and Stand Watie surrendered on 23 June. On 6 December 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States.

Counting the Casualties

The bar at the top of the map adds up the casualties of each battle as it is fought: killed, wounded, missing and captured, Union on the left and Confederate on the right. It counts 454 battles between the two sides. By the end of 1861 the two sides together count fewer than 20,000; by July 1863, after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, about 225,000 on each side; and by the end of the war about 462,500 Union and 445,000 Confederate. The lighter band shows how far the sources disagree, from about 437,000 to 477,000 for the Union and 408,000 to 486,000 for the Confederacy.

1864, the year of the Overland and Atlanta campaigns, cost the Union most: about 175,000 battle casualties. 1863 cost the Confederacy most, almost 150,000, a fifth of them the garrison captured at Vicksburg. Men captured in battles and sieges count; the paroles at the very end of the war (28,356 men at Appomattox alone) do not. The counter does not include disease, which killed about twice as many soldiers as combat did. Estimates of the total dead run from about 620,000 to 750,000.

How to Read the Map

Dark blue is the Union and light blue is Confederate ground held by Union armies. Red is the Confederacy, salmon is Union ground that Confederate armies held for a while (southern Kentucky in 1861–62, Lee in Maryland and Pennsylvania, Confederate Arizona), and tan is the Indian Territory nations allied with the Confederacy. Neutral Kentucky is yellow in the summer of 1861 and the western territories are pale blue. Dark blue and dark red arrows are the campaigns and raids of each side.

Every dot is a battle: blue for a Union victory, red for a Confederate victory and grey for an inconclusive one. Click it for the dates, commanders and casualties. The 46 battles the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission rated as decisive pause the animation; the others are small dots that you can hover.

Control is drawn by county: "Union-held" means the garrisons, the ground around them and the ground behind the front lines. Guerrilla war inside that ground (Missouri and Kentucky had plenty) is not shown. Forts and beachheads smaller than about 150 km² are too small to draw at this scale and appear only as markers.

How the Map Was Made

The territory comes from 379 dated control rules, researched region by region (the Eastern theater, the heartland from Kentucky to Georgia, the Trans-Mississippi and the Atlantic and Gulf coasts) from campaign histories, National Park Service battle summaries and the state encyclopedias of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana. Every rule was checked against more than 4,500 test places: which side held a given town on a given date. County boundaries are the Census Bureau's modern ones.

The battles are the 384 principal battles identified by the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission plus about 80 other Union–Confederate engagements. Their casualties come from the battle articles on Wikipedia, which mostly cite Eicher, Livermore and the Official Records, and were checked against Kennedy's Civil War Battlefield Guide, the National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust. Where those sources differ, the band shows the range.

Some calls are judgement: West Tennessee stays Union-held after the Union pulled its inland garrisons in 1863, Lee's ground in Pennsylvania is drawn county by county from the towns his army entered, and short raids such as Early's march on Washington or Price's 1864 raid are drawn as arrows because they held no ground for long.

Chronological Timeline

• 6 November 1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected president
• 20 December 1860: South Carolina secedes
• January–1 February 1861: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas secede
• 8 February 1861: the Confederate States of America are founded at Montgomery
• 12–13 April 1861: Fort Sumter is bombarded and surrenders
• April–May 1861: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina secede; Kentucky declares neutrality
• 21 July 1861: First Battle of Bull Run
• September 1861: Confederate troops seize Columbus; Kentucky's neutrality ends
• 16 February 1862: Fort Donelson surrenders
• 6–7 April 1862: Battle of Shiloh
• Late April 1862: New Orleans falls
• 25 June–1 July 1862: the Seven Days battles
• 28–30 August 1862: Second Battle of Bull Run
• 17 September 1862: Battle of Antietam
• 13 December 1862: Battle of Fredericksburg
• 1 January 1863: the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect
• 30 April–6 May 1863: Battle of Chancellorsville
• 1–3 July 1863: Battle of Gettysburg
• 4 July 1863: Vicksburg surrenders
• 9 July 1863: Port Hudson surrenders; the Mississippi is in Union hands
• 18–20 September 1863: Battle of Chickamauga
• 19 November 1863: the Gettysburg Address
• 5 May–12 June 1864: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor
• June 1864: the siege of Petersburg begins
• 5 August 1864: Battle of Mobile Bay
• 2 September 1864: Atlanta falls
• 8 November 1864: Lincoln is re-elected
• 15 November–21 December 1864: Sherman's March to the Sea
• 30 November and 15–16 December 1864: Battles of Franklin and Nashville
• 15 January 1865: Fort Fisher falls
• 2–3 April 1865: Petersburg and Richmond fall
• 9 April 1865: Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House
• 14–15 April 1865: Lincoln is assassinated
• 26 April 1865: Johnston surrenders at Bennett Place
• 10 May 1865: Jefferson Davis is captured
• 19 June 1865: Juneteenth: freedom proclaimed in Texas
• 23 June 1865: Stand Watie surrenders
• 6 December 1865: the Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery