12 profiles. Use the buttons to show one group at a time.
UnionAbraham Lincoln
1809–1865 · President of the United States, 1861–1865
A Republican from Illinois, Lincoln was elected in 1860 on a promise to stop slavery from spreading into the western territories. He held the border states in the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation (effective January 1, 1863), backed the enlistment of Black soldiers, and pushed the 13th Amendment through Congress in January 1865. He was shot on April 14, 1865, and died the next morning.
How historians weigh it
Historians rank him among the greatest presidents, but they argue about his pace on emancipation. Some stress that he moved carefully to keep the border states and Northern opinion behind the war; others stress that enslaved people, abolitionists and Black soldiers pushed him to act.
UnionUlysses S. Grant
1822–1885 · Union general; general-in-chief from March 1864
Grant won the first big Union victories in the West at Forts Henry and Donelson (February 1862) and took Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, giving the Union the Mississippi River. As general-in-chief he pressed Lee’s army without letup in 1864–65 and accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. He was president from 1869 to 1877 and used federal power against the Ku Klux Klan.
How historians weigh it
Lost Cause writers called him a “butcher” who won only by numbers. Most historians now see him as the war’s most able general, who understood that the Union had to fight on every front at once.
UnionWilliam T. Sherman
1820–1891 · Union general
Sherman served under Grant at Shiloh and Vicksburg, captured Atlanta on September 2, 1864, which helped Lincoln win reelection, and then marched from Atlanta to Savannah (November–December 1864), destroying railroads, crops and supplies. In January 1865 he issued Special Field Order No. 15, setting aside coastal land for freed families.
How historians weigh it
His “hard war” against the South’s resources still divides people. Historians point out that his armies mostly destroyed property rather than targeting civilians’ lives, but the damage and hardship were real, and many Southerners remembered it bitterly for generations.
UnionGeorge B. McClellan
1826–1885 · Commander of the Army of the Potomac, 1861–1862
McClellan built the Army of the Potomac into a trained, well-supplied force, but he often overestimated enemy numbers. His 1862 Peninsula Campaign stalled near Richmond. At Antietam (September 17, 1862) he stopped Lee’s invasion of Maryland but did not pursue, and Lincoln removed him that November. He ran against Lincoln as the Democratic candidate in 1864 and lost.
How historians weigh it
Historians credit his organizing skill and blame his caution. He also opposed making emancipation a war aim.
UnionRobert Smalls
1839–1915 · Pilot, U.S. Navy and Army service; later congressman
Born enslaved in Beaufort, South Carolina, Smalls worked as a pilot on the Confederate steamer Planter. Before dawn on May 13, 1862, he and other enslaved crew members took the ship out of Charleston harbor, past Confederate forts, and handed it to the Union navy, carrying their families to freedom. He then served the Union as a pilot. After the war he served five terms in Congress from South Carolina.
How historians weigh it
His escape was front-page news in the North and helped persuade the government to accept Black men into military service.
UnionRobert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts
Shaw: 1837–1863 · Colonel of one of the first Black regiments raised in the North
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry was organized in early 1863. Its enlisted men were Black volunteers from many states, including two of Frederick Douglass’s sons; its officers, including Colonel Shaw, were white. On July 18, 1863, the regiment led the assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston. Shaw and many of his men were killed. Sergeant William H. Carney saved the flag despite his wounds and later received the Medal of Honor. The men also protested for months against being paid less than white soldiers until Congress equalized pay in 1864.
How historians weigh it
Fort Wagner was a defeat, but it showed Northern doubters that Black soldiers would fight. About 180,000 Black men served in the Union army by the war’s end.
Civilian / ActivistFrederick Douglass
c. 1818–1895 · Abolitionist, writer and speaker
Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland in 1838 and became the most famous Black abolitionist in America. From the start of the war he argued that the Union must free enslaved people and let Black men fight. In 1863 he recruited soldiers for the 54th Massachusetts, and that August he met Lincoln at the White House to protest unequal pay and treatment of Black troops.
How historians weigh it
He was both a critic and an ally of Lincoln, which makes his writings one of the best ways to see how the war looked to Black Americans as it happened.
Civilian / ActivistHarriet Tubman
c. 1822–1913 · Freedom seeker, Underground Railroad conductor, Union scout
Tubman escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and went back many times to guide others north. During the war she worked for the Union army in South Carolina as a nurse, scout and spy. On June 1–2, 1863, she helped guide Union gunboats up the Combahee River in a raid that freed more than 700 enslaved people.
How historians weigh it
She was one of the first women to help lead an armed raid in U.S. history. She waited decades for a government pension for her service.
Civilian / ActivistClara Barton
1821–1912 · Battlefield nurse and relief organizer
Barton, a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, began collecting and delivering supplies to wounded soldiers in 1861 and worked close to the front at battles including Antietam. After the war she ran the Office of Missing Soldiers, which helped families learn the fate of thousands of men. In 1881 she founded the American Red Cross.
How historians weigh it
Barton is one of many women, Black and white, who nursed, organized and raised money for the war effort. Their work changed what people thought women could do in public life.
ConfederateJefferson Davis
1808–1889 · President of the Confederate States, 1861–1865
A Mississippi planter who enslaved more than 100 people, Davis had been a U.S. senator and secretary of war. As Confederate president he defended secession as a way to protect slavery, and he fought with his own generals and with governors who resisted central control. Union cavalry captured him in Georgia on May 10, 1865. He was held for two years at Fort Monroe and released, and he was never tried for treason.
How historians weigh it
Most historians judge him a weak war leader who could not hold his new nation together. After the war he wrote one of the main books of the Lost Cause.
ConfederateRobert E. Lee
1807–1870 · Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, 1862–1865
A U.S. Army officer for more than 30 years, Lee resigned in April 1861 when Virginia seceded and took command in the Confederate army. He won battles at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, but his two invasions of the North ended in retreat at Antietam (1862) and Gettysburg (1863). He surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. From 1857 he managed the estates of his late father-in-law, where nearly 200 people were enslaved, and he asked the courts for more time than the will’s five-year limit allowed before freeing them; he freed them in December 1862. During the 1863 invasion, his army seized free Black people in Pennsylvania and sent them south into slavery.
How historians weigh it
He was a skilled tactician. He also led an army fighting to create a nation built on slavery. See “Lee and the Lost Cause” below for how his reputation was shaped after the war.
ConfederateThomas “Stonewall” Jackson
1824–1863 · Confederate general
Jackson earned his nickname at First Bull Run in July 1861. His 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign tied down much larger Union forces. On the night of May 2, 1863, at Chancellorsville, his own soldiers shot him by mistake. He died of complications on May 10.
How historians weigh it
His early death made him an even bigger figure in Lost Cause memory. Like Lee, he enslaved people and fought for a government formed to protect slavery.
Within a few years of the surrender, former Confederate officers, writers and later groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy built a story historians call the Lost Cause. It said the South had fought for states’ rights and honor, not slavery; that enslaved people had been content; and that Southern armies lost only because the North had more men and factories. Robert E. Lee became its central hero, a gentle Christian soldier above politics.
The documents from the time tell a different story. In 1860–61 the seceding states explained in their own declarations that they were leaving to protect slavery. Lee enslaved people and pursued those who escaped. His army enslaved free Black Pennsylvanians in 1863. After the war he told a congressional committee in 1866 that he opposed Black men voting. Many Confederate monuments were put up decades later, especially in the 1900s–1920s, during the Jim Crow era, when that story helped justify segregation.
None of this erases Lee’s military skill or the real suffering of Southern soldiers and families. It means that skill was used for a cause historians, and Grant himself, judged “one of the worst for which a people ever fought.”
5 short excerpts from public-domain documents, quoted as published. Ellipses (…) mark skipped text. Follow the links under Sources to read each in full.
- Border states
- Slave states that stayed in the Union: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, joined by West Virginia in 1863.
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Lincoln’s order, effective January 1, 1863, freeing enslaved people in areas still in rebellion. It also opened the Union army and navy to Black men.
- General-in-chief
- The officer in command of all the Union armies. Grant held the post from March 1864.
- Hard war
- A strategy of destroying the enemy’s railroads, crops and supplies to break its ability and will to fight, used by Sherman and Sheridan in 1864.
- United States Colored Troops (USCT)
- Black regiments organized by the federal government from 1863. About 180,000 Black men served in the Union army.
- Lost Cause
- A version of the war spread by former Confederates after 1865. It claims the South fought for states’ rights rather than slavery, that slavery was kindly, and that Confederate leaders were noble men beaten only by numbers. Historians reject it as false.
- Appomattox Court House
- The Virginia village where Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865.
- Medal of Honor
- The highest U.S. military award. Sergeant William Carney of the 54th Massachusetts received it for his actions at Fort Wagner.
10 questions on Civil War leaders. Click an answer to check it.