When the Civil War began, the remote Pacific Northwest lacked Eastern telegraph and railroad connections, cutting it off from news. Newspapers took six weeks to arrive by ship. The news of South Carol ...

Does Donald Trump have the power to suspend a foundational legal right to challenge a person’s arrest and detention?

More than two decades have passed since historian Jay Winik wrote about the end of the Civil War with a book with “April ... at Fort Sumter. The political intrigue leading up to 1861 rivals ...

More than two decades have passed since historian Jay Winik wrote about the end of the Civil War with a book with “April 1865 ... In “1861: The Lost Peace,” Winik covers the lead-up to the first shots ...

In April 1861, cannons opened fire on Fort Sumter—and the American Civil War began. This is the tense standoff that turned into the first battle of a nation divided. News Analysis: A political ...

The Civil War began when the Confederates bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. The war ended in spring 1865; Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major ...

On this day in 1861, the first official shots of the American Civil War were fired. The short battle, which took place at Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, marked the beginning of ...

Today’s column picks up where last Monday’s ended as we look back at the week before the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter. We left off on April 6, 1861, when the first ...