Civil War Combat: America's Bloodiest Battles

In the winter of 1862, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant marched into Southern Tennessee to secure the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers and provide troop reinforcements. Aware of Grant's plans, Confederate General Albert S. Johnston attacked, catching Grant by surprise near Shiloh Church. The battle peaked along an abandoned wagon road later named 'The Hornets' Nest' for the intensity of the fighting there.

In September of 1862, Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee invaded the North for the first time. His advance was blocked by Union troops in a battle fought near a small Maryland stream called Antietam Creek. The resulting loss of men on both sides would make this the bloodiest single day in American military history.

Determined to bring the fighting to the North, General Robert E. Lee launched an attack on the Union in Pennsylvania. When the two armies clashed near Gettysburg, the battle of 'The Wheatfield' saw soldiers fighting literally hand-to-hand. This battle remains one of the most dramatic scenes in American military history.

Relentlessly pursuing Lee's forces, Grant finally caught up with him outside of Richmond, Virginia, and sent his troops into what some called a suicidal assault against the well-entrenched Confederate armies. Ultimately, the Union paid the price with over seven thousand lives lost in just twenty minutes. According to one Rebel officer observing the slaughter, 'It wasn't war. It was murder.'

In 1861, the first major battle of the Civil War was fought. 35,000 Northerners marched to Manassas, Virginia to challenge 20,000 Southerners. By the next day, 5,000 men were dead and Confederate General Stonewall Jackson earned his legendary nickname.

On December 13, 1862, Union General Ambrose Burnside mounted a massive but futile frontal assault on Confederate troops outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia that became one of the Union Army's worst defeats.

In May 1863, in the wilderness of Virginia, the Union Army launched a massive assault on the Confederates. But what seemed a certain Union victory was upended by a surprise attack led by General "Stonewall" Jackson.

Gettysburg climaxes on a rocky hillside known as Little Round Top. Heroes born of the bloody battle include Strong Vincent, Patrick O'Roarke, Gouverneur K. Warren, and Joshua Chamberlain.

In one of the most crucial engagements of the Civil War, Confederates struggle to gain control of Culp's Hill, a critical Union position that if lost could turn the tide of the war itself.

The Union Army wages a bloody campaign at Chickamauga on their path to capture the key railroad hub of Chattanooga.

As Lee and Grant face off outside Petersburg, the Union Army lauches an audacious—and doomed—plan to dig a crater beneath Confederate forces.

Confederate forces under John Bell Hood launch a series of failed assaults on Franklin, Tennessee, leading to one of the worst Confederate loses of the war.