Deyoung09's List: Georgia

On April 10, 1861, knowing that resupplies were on their way from the North to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, provisional Confederate forces in the city demanded the fort’s surrender. The fort’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, refused. On April 12, the Confederates opened fire with cannon. At 2:30 p.m. the following day, Major Anderson surrendered.

 

On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the Southern rebellion, a move that prompted Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina to reverse themselves and vote in favor of session. (Most of the western section of Virginia rejected the session vote and broke away, ultimately forming a new, Union-loyal state, West Virginia.)
  
 The United States had always maintained only a small professional army; the nation’s founders had feared a Napoleon might rise up and use a large army to overthrow the government and make himself a dictator. Many graduates of the U.S. Army’s military academy, West Point, resigned their commissions in order to fight for the South—this was especially true in the cavalry arm, but no members of the artillery "went South." The Lincoln Administration had to rely on large numbers of volunteers from the states and territories.
  
 In Richmond, Virginia, the President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, faced a similar problem in raising and equipping armies. Neither side expected a war of long duration. Volunteers were asked to serve for 90 days. "One big battle, and it’ll be over," was the commonly expressed belief on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Southerners thought Northerners too weak and cowardly to fight. Northerners thought a dependence upon slave labor had rendered Southerners too weak both physically and morally to present a serious battlefield threat. Both sides were due for a rude awakening.

Georgia's Civil War history is remarkable for its richness and variety. Not   only is Georgia the site of the second-bloodiest battle of the Civil War —   Chickamauga   — but it is also the site of many significant and varied historic events   and developments in the Civil War. In Georgia, the Civil War buff can visit   the bloody grounds of the Atlanta   Campaign, where huge armies of the North and South fought in what many call   the final turning point of the war. One can reexperience the horror of the most   notorious prison camp in the War at Andersonville,   or retrace the "Great   Locomotive Chase," the most famous and daring raid of the war. One   can follow the path Sherman   took on his famous "March   to the Sea" or study improvements in the art of war at Fort   Pulaski near Savannah, where the rifled cannon made the brick fort obsolete.   One can examine Confederate ironclads at the Columbus Confederate   Naval Museum or improvements in military communication at the Signal   Corps Museum near Augusta. Georgia is where the defiant Confederate president   Jefferson Davis fled and was captured by Union pursuers.