Герои гражданской войны США

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Bragg, Braxton (1817-1876), American soldier, born in Warren County, North Carolina, and educated at the United States Military Academy. He served in the Second Seminole War and won several promotions for gallant and distinguished conduct during the Mexican-American War. He resigned his commission in 1859 to enter private enterprise. In the American Civil War he served in the Confederate army as a brigadier general. Soon promoted to the rank of major general, then full general, he replaced General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard as commander of the Army of the Tennessee in June 1862. Invading Kentucky in August 1862, he nearly succeeded in taking Louisville but was compelled to withdraw into Tennessee. At the Battle of Murfreesboro, or Stones River, he fought Union forces under General William Starke Rosecrans to a draw, but then withdrew his army. In September 1863, however, he inflicted a decisive defeat on Rosecrans in the Battle of Chickamauga. Soon afterwards he was defeated by General Ulysses S. Grant in the three-day Battle of Chattanooga. In February 1864 he was summoned to Richmond and made military adviser to the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Bragg was placed in command of the Department of North Carolina in November and led an unsuccessful expedition into Georgia against General William Tecumseh Sherman. In February 1865 he was assigned to duty with the Army of the Tennessee again and remained with that army until it surrendered. After the war Bragg was for some time chief engineer for the state of Alabama.

Grant, Ulysses S(impson) (1822-1885), American general and 18th president of the United States (1869-1877). Grant was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822, the son of Hannah Simpson and Jesse Grant, the owner of a tannery. Taken to nearby Georgetown at the age of one, he was educated in local and boarding schools. In 1839, under the name of Ulysses Simpson instead of his original Hiram Ulysses, he was appointed to West Point. Graduating 21st in a class of 39 in 1843, he was assigned to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. There he met Julia Dent, a local planter's daughter, whom he married after the Mexican-American War.

During the Mexican-American War, Grant served under both General Zachary Taylor and General Winfield Scott and distinguished himself, particularly at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. After his return and tours of duty in the North, he was sent to the Far West. In 1854, while stationed at Fort Humboldt, California, Grant resigned his commission because of loneliness and drinking problems, and in the following years he engaged in generally unsuccessful farming and business ventures in Missouri. He moved to Galena, Illinois, in 1860, where he became a clerk in his father's leather store.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Grant was appointed colonel, and soon afterwards brigadier general, of the Illinois Volunteers, and in September 1861 he seized Paducah, Kentucky. After an inconclusive raid on Belmont, Missouri, he gained fame when in February 1862, in conjunction with the navy, he succeeded in reducing Forts Henry and Donelson, Tennessee, forcing General Simon B. Buckner to accept unconditional surrender. The Confederates surprised Grant at Shiloh (April 1862), but he held his ground and then moved on to Corinth. In 1863 he established his reputation as a strategist in the brilliant campaign against Vicksburg, Mississippi, which capitulated on July 4. After being appointed commander in the West, he defeated Braxton Bragg at Chattanooga (November 1863). Grant's victories made him so prominent that he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and in March 1864 was given command of all Union armies.

Grant's subsequent campaigns revealed his determination to apply relentless pressure against the Confederacy by coordinating the Union armies and exploiting the economic strength of the North. While Grant accompanied the Army of the Potomac in its overland assault on Richmond, Virginia, General Benjamin F. Butler was to attack the city by water, General William T. Sherman to move into Georgia, and General Franz Sigel to clear the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Despite the failure of Butler and Sigel and heavy losses at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, Grant continued to press the drive against the army of General Robert E. Lee. After Sherman's success in Georgia and the conquest of the Shenandoah Valley by General Philip H. Sheridan, Grant forced Lee to abandon Petersburg and Richmond (April 2, 1865) and to surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9.

Burnside, Ambrose Everett (1824-1881), American general and politician, born in Liberty, Indiana, and educated at the US Military Academy. He served in the Mexican-American War and in several campaigns against the Native Americans; at the outbreak of the American Civil War he accepted command of a Union regiment, which he led in the First Battle of Bull Run. Promoted to brigadier general in August 1861, he took part in the capture of Roanoke Island and Fort Macon in North Carolina. In September 1862, by now a major general, he fought in the Battle of Antietam under General George B. McClellan, whom he succeeded in November as a commander of the Army of the Potomac; a month later his forces were decisively defeated by Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Burnside was then transferred to the Army of Ohio and successfully resisted the Confederate siege of Knoxville, Tennessee in 1863. He served under Generals George G. Meade and Ulysses S. Grant the following year at the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, but was held responsible for heavy Union losses and relieved of command. After the war Burnside was Governor of Rhode Island (1866-1869) and a US senator (1875-1881).

Sherman, William Tecumseh (1820-1891), United States general in the American Civil War; his successful campaign in Georgia in 1864 split the Confederacy in two and made an important contribution to the Union victory.

Sherman was born on May 8, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, and educated at the United States Military Academy. After an undistinguished military career he resigned from the army in 1853 to become a partner in a banking firm in San Francisco. He was president of a military college in Alexandria, Louisiana (now Louisiana State University) from 1859 to the beginning of 1861, when Louisiana seceded from the Union. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he offered his services to the Union army and was put in command of a volunteer infantry regiment, becoming a brigadier general of volunteers after the first Battle of Bull Run. Sherman led a division at the Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) and was rewarded for his part in the victory by being promoted to major general of volunteers. Later that year he failed in an attempt (December 27-29) to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, but in 1863 he fought under General Ulysses S. Grant in the campaign that ended in the capture of that city in July. He was given command of the Army of the Tennessee in the fall of 1863 and fought in the Battle of Chattanooga.

In 1864 Sherman was made supreme commander of the armies in the West and was ordered to move against Atlanta, Georgia. During the opening months of the campaign, he lost the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain; he did not capture Atlanta until almost three months later, on September 1. After ordering the burning of the military resources of the city, he launched his most celebrated military action, known as Sherman's march to the sea, in which, with about 60,000 picked men, he marched from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, on the Atlantic coast. Along the way the men laid waste the intervening territory and severed the Confederate government at Richmond, Virginia, from its western states. Sherman next set out to join forces with Grant, who was moving southward towards Richmond. After three months of fighting, Sherman reached Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was in a position to complete the encirclement of Richmond and its defending forces, led by the Confederate commander in chief Robert E. Lee. Following Lee's surrender on April 9, the Confederate army confronting Sherman surrendered to him at Raleigh, on April 17.

After the war Sherman was commissioned lieutenant general in the regular army and, following Grant's election to the presidency in 1868, he was promoted to the rank of full general and given command of the entire US Army. He published his Memoirs in 1875 and retired in 1883. The famous phrase “war is hell” is attributed to Sherman.

Sheridan, Philip Henry (1831-1888), American army commander, who distinguished himself in the American Civil War.

Sheridan was born on March 6, 1831, in Albany, New York, and was educated at the United States Military Academy. He entered the Civil War in 1861 as a captain in the Union army and a year later was a major general of volunteers. His able leadership of campaigns in Tennessee caused General Ulysses S. Grant, commander in chief of the Union forces, to appoint (1864) Sheridan commander of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac. During May 1864, Sheridan's cavalry cut rail communications about the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. From August to October, as commander of the Army of the Shenandoah, Sheridan drove the Confederate forces in Virginia out of the Shenandoah Valley; he then devastated the region to prevent it from being used to supply food for the Confederates. During the Shenandoah campaign he defeated forces under General Jubal Anderson Early at Winchester, Fisher's Mill, and Cedar Creek.

Sheridan became a major general in the