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Feb 9, 2023 · The American Civil War continues to be debated in Virginia—in arguments over the Lost Cause, slavery, and states’ rights; in novels from The Fathers (1938) and Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) to The Known World (2003); and in discussions of how best to remember the era, either during the Civil War Centennial (1961–1965) or, later, the ...
An American Turning Point: The Civil War in Virginia is divided into two parts that pose a series of questions. Waging War examines how the conflict was fought and Surviving War measures the impact of the war on civilian life.
In this history, author Helen C. Roundtree traces events that shaped the lives of the Powhatan Indians of Virginia, from their first encounter with English colonists, in 1607, to their present-day way of life and relationship to the state of Virginia and the federal government.
- An Old Feud ‘Burst Forth in All Its Fury’
- Three Different Factions Take Up Arms
- The Union-Backed Home Guard Invades from The North, Seizes Ross
- Confederate Guerrillas Ravage Cherokee Communities
- Reconciliation at Last
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Indian Territory encompassed most of the area now occupied by the state of Oklahoma. Ancestral home to tribal nations including Osage, Quapaw, Seneca and Shawnee, it had also become the mandated home for the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations (known as the Five Civilized Tribes). Between 1...
In October of 1861, Ross relented to growing pressure and signed a treaty with the Confederate States of America, which promised the Cherokee nation protection, food and other resources in exchange for several regiments’ worth of soldiers and access into their territory for building roads and forts. Unpopular with most Cherokees, the treaty allowed...
By spring of 1862, James G. Blunt, brigadier general of the Kansas Union forces, wanted to raise an Indian expeditionary force to infiltrate Confederate-ridden Indian Territory. Intel had encouraged his belief that the Cherokee’s Principal Chief Ross was not only sympathetic to the North, but could be persuaded to abandon his Confederate alliance. ...
After the Home Guard withdrew, Watie’s regiment of nearly 700 strong began reprisals that ravaged Cherokee society. The war in and around Indian Territory raged through the fall and winter of 1862, with the Indian Home Guard regiments redeployed in Kansas and Missouri, then moving back into Indian Territory to serve as a crucial fighting force in a...
General Stand Watie, the persistent nemesis of the Ross Party and the Union Indian Home Guard, was the last Confederate general to surrender on June 23, 1865. And Principal Chief John Ross died on August 1, 1866, in Washington, D.C., still negotiating a Cherokee Nation treaty with the United States. Reconciliation did eventually emerge. “The legacy...
- Bryan Pollard
- 3 min
The war exacted a terrible toll on Indigenous people. One-third of all Cherokees and Seminoles in Indian Territory died from violence, starvation, and war-related illness. Despite their sacrifice, American Indians would discover that their tribal lands were even less secure after the war.
Pro-union Lumbee families were conscripted to help build Confederate Fort Fisher. The Lowry War arising from the murder of an Indian community leader saw a campaign of revenge that gave Lumbees a new kind of interaction with non-Natives and resulted in new Native institutions and political leverage.
