Siege of Port Hudson Begins

Date: May 22, 1863 • Location: Zachary, United States

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1863.

American Civil War: Union forces begin the Siege of Port Hudson which lasts 48 days, the longest siege in U.S. military history.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by Southern states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with a Union victory, dissolution of the Confederacy and the national abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.