If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good animation is worth ten thousand. After reading book after book about the US Civil War and finding only complicated maps with dotted lines and dashed lines crisscrossing the pages, we decided to depict the key naval and land battles using animation technology.

From Todd Bryda, Proffesor of History at Northwestern Connecticut Community College “In the constant battle to keep students interested in the past, History Animated gives teachers a precious resource to fight for the attention of the video game generation.  The maps are visually appealing and represent solid scholarship.  What separates the operators of this site from others isn’t just that they provide a quality product, but they are also open to suggestions, i.e. a compact disk without text for classroom use.  Well done James!”

 Recent note from a high school history teacher: "I've been going through all of them and for an American History class and Civil War elective, they are PRICELESS!  It's exactly what I try to cover in PowerPoints, except you can actually see what happens!"

From a recent article in Armchair General Magazine: "You could read several books and never get the same comprehension of the overall battles as with these animations."

While the animation helps readers view a broader picture of the battles showing the inter-relationships of the opponents in time and space more clearly, it is limited in the detail that can be shown. While accuracy has been attempted, at times the picture of the battles must be simplified to make the battle as clear as possible. We expect to continue developing new animations every few weeks until all of the key battles of the Civil War have been animated.

We are not attempting to reinterpret history, but merely to depict it as the best military historians have written it.

Please make a donation...

Why Register?

1) You will be notified when new animations are created.

2) The Gettysburg animation can be downloaded from the registered user area.  You can get all the animations on CD with a $25 or greater donation to HistoryAnimated.

3) Your contact info will NEVER be used for anything else....other than to update you when new animations or major changes occur to the site