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“Brother Against Brother”
Convention Theme – HISTORICON 2011 (July 7th – 10th)
Valley Forge Convention Plaza
– Valley Forge, Pennsylvania USA
40mm Sash and Saber Diorama Kit
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."
– Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, December 1862
"I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dissolution of the Union.
It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of,
and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation."
– Col. Robert E. Lee, before resigning from the U.S. Army, in a letter to his son Custis, 23 January 1861
American Civil War photo used with permission from Wargames Illustrated magazine
More Americans died during the four-year conflict called "The War of the Rebellion" and the
"War Between the States" than in all of America's other wars combined. The United States became
divided before the war due to sectional differences stemming from southern states' desire to maintain slavery,
economically essential to the largely agrarian South, and attempts to maintain a slave-state / free-state balance
in the United States Congress by spreading slavery to an equal number of new states being created from western
territories. When Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party was elected president in 1860,
seven southern states voted to secede from the Union and seized U.S. arsenals and forts in the South. Lincoln
called for 75,000 militia to put down the rebellion, and four more southern states seceded.
Under direction of its president, Jefferson Davis, the new Confederate States of America hoped to either
negotiate a permanent separation from the U.S.A., or achieve official recognition and support from powerful
countries such as Great Britain and France that depended on the South's major export, cotton, or through
battlefield victories prevent Federal troops from occupying southern cities and key areas and thereby induce
war weariness on the North so that Lincoln's party and Lincoln himself might be turned out in the elections
of 1862 and 1864.
This strategy nearly succeeded as America's most brilliant soldier, Robert E. Lee of Virginia, led his
Confederate soldiers to numerous victories over Union forces in the East where both capital cities –
Washington and Richmond – and most of the population was located, and where the largest circulation
and most influential newspapers focused attention.
The largest battle ever fought in North America saw more than 60,000 soldiers in blue and gray engaged at the
small Virginia railroad junction of Manassas (Bull Run) in July 1861. This Confederate victory did not end
the war quickly as many people hoped. Instead, the shocking defeat motivated the North to start utilizing
its much larger population and huge industrial capacity to field hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors
and weapons to slowly strangle the South economically with a blockade of its ports, and launch numerous
offensives into southern states. Only after four bloody years of see-saw military fighting and political
intrigue would this famous period of American history end with the C.S.A. destroyed and the entire country
once again united in one Union.
Games
American Civil War photo used with permission from Wargames Illustrated magazine
“The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is.
Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”
– General Ulysses S. Grant, Union Army
The American Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships,
and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The practices of total war, developed by Union General
Sherman in Georgia, and of trench warfare around Petersburg foreshadowed World War I in Europe. It remains
the deadliest war in American history, which saw some of the fiercest fighting ever seen on the North American continent.
Those four years of fiercely fought campaigns and battles – on land, on the rivers, and at sea –
that reflect the entire American Civil War period are the focus of this year's HISTORICON events and games.
The ACW is a popular period of American history for the wargamer, and should be equally at this year’s
convention.
Special Guests
American Civil War photo used with permission from Wargames Illustrated magazine
“Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.
There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians.”
Confederate Gen. Bernard Elliott Bee at the First Battle of Bull Run,
in a comment that gave Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson the nickname “Stonewall” (21 July 1861)
It is too early to determine who might be invited, but the Convention Committee is already working
on this! The War College will have a bevy of speakers to represent the American Civil War theme in
general, as well as seminars on other military periods and wargaming – not to be missed!
Links
American Civil War photo used with permission from Wargames Illustrated magazine
While a myriad of links could be listed below, but simply do a web search for different aspects of the
American Civil War (besides information found in the library!) However, for a timeline and chronology of
the war, the following links should be very helpful.
American Civil War photo used with permission from Wargames Illustrated magazine
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American Civil War photo used with permission from Wargames Illustrated magazine
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