Army of Northern Virginia in the context of "Conclusion of the American Civil War"

During the American Civil War, Arkansas was a Confederate state, though it had initially voted to remain in the Union. Following the capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861, Abraham Lincoln called for troops from every Union state to put down the rebellion, and Arkansas along with several other southern states seceded. For the rest of the civil war, Arkansas played a major role in controlling the Mississippi River, a major waterway.

Arkansas raised 48 infantry regiments, 20 artillery batteries, and over 20 cavalry regiments for the Confederacy, mostly serving in the Western Theater, though the Third Arkansas served with distinction in the Army of Northern Virginia. Major-General Patrick Cleburne was the state's most notable military leader. The state also supplied four infantry regiments, four cavalry regiments and one artillery battery of white troops for the Union and six infantry regiments and one artillery battery of "U.S. Colored Troops."

George Gordon Meade (December 31, 1815 – November 6, 1872) was an American military officer who served in the United States Army and the Union army as a major general in command of the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War from 1863 to 1865. He fought in many of the key battles of the eastern theater and defeated the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia led by General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg.

He was born in Cádiz, Spain, to a wealthy Philadelphia merchant family and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1835. He fought in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican–American War. He served in the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers and directed construction of lighthouses in Florida and New Jersey from 1851 to 1856 and the United States Lake Survey from 1857 to 1861.

The Army of the Potomac was the primary field army of the Union army in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was created in July 1861 shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run and was disbanded in June 1865 following the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in April.

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States president Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland, he was a noted actor who was also a Confederate sympathizer; denouncing Lincoln, he lamented the then-recent abolition of slavery in the United States.

Originally, Booth and his small group of conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederate cause. They later decided to murder him, as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. Although the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, had surrendered to the Union Army four days earlier, Booth believed that the American Civil War remained unresolved because the Army of Tennessee of General Joseph E. Johnston continued fighting.

The Battle of Gettysburg (locally /ˈɡɛtɪsbɜːrɡ/ ) was a three-day battle in the American Civil War, which was fought between the Union and Confederate armies between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle, won by the Union, is widely considered the Civil War's turning point, leading to an ultimate victory of the Union and the preservation of the nation. The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of both the Civil War and of any battle in American military history, claiming over 50,000 combined casualties. Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the North and forcing his retreat.

After his success in the Battle of Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County, Virginia in May 1863, Lee led his Confederate forces through Shenandoah Valley to begin the Gettysburg campaign, his second attempt to invade the North. With Lee's army in high spirits, he intended to shift the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged Northern Virginia in the hopes of penetrating as far as Harrisburg or Philadelphia, which he hoped would convince northern politicians to end the war. President Abraham Lincoln initially prodded Major General Joseph Hooker into pursuing Lee, then relieved him of command just three days before the Battle of Gettysburg commenced, replacing him with Meade.

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general whose early actions in the American Civil War led to his appointment as the overall commander of the Confederate States Army near the end of the war. He led the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most powerful army, from 1862 until its surrender in 1865, earning a reputation as one of the war's most skilled tacticians.

A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. He served across the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican–American War, and was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He married Mary Anna Custis, great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife Martha. He supported the legality of slavery and held hundreds of slaves. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. During the first year of the Civil War, he served in minor combat operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

The eastern theater of the American Civil War consisted of the major military and naval operations in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the national capital in Washington, D.C., and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina. The interior of the Carolinas were considered part of the western theater, and other coastal areas along the Atlantic Ocean were part of the lower seaboard theater.

The eastern theater was the venue for several major campaigns launched by the Union Army of the Potomac to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia; many of these were frustrated by the Army of Northern Virginia, a division of the Confederate States Army, commanded by General Robert E. Lee. President Abraham Lincoln responded by seeking a general to match Lee's boldness, and successively appointed Major General Irvin McDowell, George B. McClellan, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker, and George G. Meade to command his principal eastern armies.

The 3rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment, commonly known as the "Third Arkansas", was a line infantry formation of the Confederate States Army in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War.

Mustered into Confederate service in 1861 under Colonel Albert Rust, and later falling under the command of Colonel Van. H. Manning, the Arkansas regiment was part of the Army of Northern Virginia, serving under General Robert E. Lee. The Third Arkansas served for the duration of the war, from the late months of 1861, through to its surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865.