The unexperienced Union Army faces 30,000 Confederate troops in the first land battle of the Civil War. A Decisive Confederate victory signals that a long conflict lay ahead.

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In This Day in History video clip: The First Battle of Bull Run, was the first major land battle of the American Civil War, fought on July 21, 1861, near Manassas, Virginia. Three months after the Civil War erupted at Fort Sumter, Union military command still believed that the Confederacy could be crushed quickly and with little loss of life.

In the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, 3,000 Union soldiers prepare to face the onslaught of 60,000 advancing Confederate soldiers.

At Shiloh, Tennessee in April of 1862, a Confederate surprise attack backfires when the Union holds firm at the "Hornet's Nest."

General Robert E. Lee defies military convention to defeat the Union at Chancellorsville, but was the price of victory too high?

For three days in July 1863, Union and Confederate forces clash at Gettysburg in one of the most pivotal battles of the Civil War.

General Burnside takes Fredericksburg but experiences a disastrous defeat when attacking Confederate forces entrenched in the high ground above the town.