Résultats Éditeur "Charles River Editors" dans Guerres et conflits

The Overland Campaign that pitted Robert E. Lee against Ulysses S. Grant is one of the most famous campaigns of the Civil War, and perhaps its greatest chess match. While Grant sought to destroy Lee's Army of Northern Virginia along the way to Richmond, Lee aimed to defend his capital while staying alert for a golden opportunity to strike a decisive blow against Grant's Army of the Potomac. The result was an incredibly costly campaign that saw four major battles and near-continuous fighting in May and June, 1864.

The United States lost hundreds of ships during the course of World War II, from the deadly explosion of the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor to the sinking of John F. Kennedy's PT-109, a patrol boat with a crew of less than 15. However, few of the ships lost in the Pacific suffered a fate as gripping or tragic as the sinking of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis on July 30, 1945.

In World War II, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were killed across the world, whether in Japanese jungles, North African deserts, or European beaches. Given that backdrop and the sheer magnitude of the war, people understandably became desensitized to incidents and tragedies that cost hundreds of lives. This was undoubtedly the case with the notorious Port Chicago disaster, a munitions explosion in July 1944 that killed over 300 people and injured over 300 more, many of them navy sailors.

The policy of manifest destiny increased tensions with Mexico in the 1840s. Mexico's northern half formed the western border of the territory bought in the Louisiana Purchase. Naturally, notions of the United States expanding to the Pacific Ocean alarmed Mexico, which held what is today the west coast of the United States. However, Mexico first came to regard American expansion as a serious problem with the immigration of Americans into its northeastern territory.

The Guadalcanal Campaign, which ran from August 1942 to February 1943, was a bitter and protracted struggle that also happened to be a strange and transitional confrontation quite unlike any other in the long Pacific War. In conjunction with the American victory at the Battle of Midway, Guadalcanal represented the crucial moment when the balance of power in the Pacific tipped in favor of the Allies, but the idea that Guadalcanal would be such a significant battle would have come as a surprise to military strategists and planners on both sides.

As far as skirmishes go, Fort Pillow was a completely unremarkable fight. Before attacking, Forrest demanded the unconditional surrender of the Union garrison, a normal custom of his, and he warned the Union commanding officer that he would not be responsible for his soldiers' actions if the warning went unheeded. What made Fort Pillow markedly different was that a sizable amount of the Union garrison defending the Fort was comprised of black soldiers, which particularly enraged Confederate soldiers.

The Army of the Potomac had pushed Robert E. Lee's army out of Maryland in September 1862 after the Battle of Antietam, but President Lincoln and his War Department wanted the army to continue going after the Army of Northern Virginia after it retreated back into Virginia. When George B. McClellan refused to do it, Lincoln fired him and installed Ambrose E. Burnside as the new commander.

Until April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors of his time. That night, Booth became one of history's most infamous assassins when he assassinated President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. By the 1860s, Booth was a well-known actor, but he was also a confederate sympathizer who dabbled in espionage. He and his group of conspirators plotted to kill Lincoln and other top officials in a bid to decapitate the federal government and help the South.

Cemeteries are by their very nature tragic places, as they would never exist were it not for the inevitably cold hand of death that will certainly take out each person eventually. Given that fact, each bears its own unique history, whether it be the Valley of the Kings in Egypt or a small family plot in rural Georgia. Naturally, Arlington National Cemetery, sitting as it does on the very edge of the nation's capital upon a hill across the Potomac River, bears its own tragic aura, but it's certainly ironic that it was never intended to be a cemetery at all.

On February 23, 1945, one of the most famous photographs in American history was taken atop Mount Suribachi, as five American soldiers began to raise an American flag. The picture, which most Americans are instantly familiar with, has come to symbolize the strength and sacrifice of America's armed forces, and though many realize it was taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima, much of the actual battle and the context of the picture itself have been overshadowed.

After the last major pitched battle of the Overland Campaign was fought at Cold Harbor in early June, Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac had suffered more casualties during the campaign than Robert E. Lee had in his entire Army of Northern Virginia at the start of May. Understandably, the American public was shocked by the carnage, and to this day Grant has been accused of being a butcher, but attrition had become a vital war aim for the North, and Grant remained undeterred.

The Underground Railroad is one of the topics that young schoolchildren are most often taught. Every American is familiar with the idea of fugitive slaves escaping to Canada and the North with the help of determined abolitionists and even former escaped slaves like Harriet Tubman.

It had taken about 40 years for Chicago to grow from a small settlement of about 300 people into a thriving metropolis with a population of 300,000, but in just two days in 1871, much of that progress was burned to the ground. In arguably the most famous fire in American history, a blaze in the southwestern section of Chicago began to burn out of control on the night of October 8, 1871.

The Transcontinental Railroad, laid across the United States during the 1860s, remains the very epitome of contradiction. On the one hand, it was a triumph of engineering skills over thousands of miles of rough terrain, but on the other hand, it drained the natural resources in those places nearly dry.

As one of the seminal social revolutions in human history, the French Revolution holds a unique legacy, especially in the West. The early years of the Revolution were fueled by Enlightenment ideals, seeking the social overthrow of the caste system that gave the royalty and aristocracy decisive advantages over the lower classes.

Europe’s attempts to appease Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, most notably at Munich in 1938, failed, as Nazi Germany swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia by 1939. Italy was on the march as well, invading Albania in April of 1939.

Some historians have called the Seven Years’ War the first true world war, and they make a good point. Ultimately, this globally coordinated war involved five continents and at least 29 states and tribal confederacies, with a casualty toll in the millions and the maps forever altered. As part of the Seven Years’ War, the French and Indian War was the last in a long series of colonial conflicts between the French and British and also changed the map in America. At the end of the war, disputed borders were finally settled, and both empires were left reeling from the costs of war.

As 1975 dawned, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) prepared for a final series of campaigns to conquer the territory of South Vietnam, leading to a chain of events that culminated with the fall of Saigon and some of the most infamous footage in 20th century America’s history. The Fall of Saigon: The History of the Battle for South Vietnam’s Capital and the End of the Vietnam War examines how the war ended.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren't so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression.

In 1918, the world was still in the throes of the Great War, the deadliest conflict in human history at that point, but while World War I would be a catastrophic war surpassed only by World War II, an unprecedented influenza outbreak that same year inflicted casualties that would make both wars pale in comparison.