Civil War News May 2016

Civil War News $3.00

Vol. 42, No. 4

48 Pages, May 2016

Jamestown Settlement “Military Through The Ages” Event

By Nancy Jennis Olds

JAMESTOWN, Va.—They came with their armor, weapons, tents, and cooking pots. Armies, ranging chronologically from the Roman Legions to today’s Virginia Army National Guard, with several Civil War organizations participating.

Thirty-five groups came from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania setting up their camps at the Jamestown Settlement, renown as the site for the first permanent English colony in Virginia in 1607, for the 2016 “Military Through The Ages”. This popular event, which occurs just before the approach of spring, this year was on the weekend of March 19 through March 20, is a family-friendly event open to the public. Participating groups test their skills in accurately depicting military life according to their chosen time period, such as the War of the Roses, the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and more contemporary wars such as the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, the War in Vietnam to name a few. Moving from camp to camp is

as simple as stepping back and forward in time, leaping from one century to the next!

There was a strong showing of Civil War organizations, among them the Tidewater Maritime Living History-Associates, U.S.S. Aroostook, 1862, the 3rd U.S. Regular Infantry, 1861, and the Norfolk Light Artillery Blues, 1861-1865. Another group, the Jetersville Militia, 23rd Regiment of Infantry, Virginia-1859, represented an earlier militia around the time of the capture of abolitionist John Brown and his band after their raid on Harper’s Ferry.

Several qualified historians served as judges for this broad spectrum of military reenactors with judging based on three defining periods which used these types of transformative weaponry: cold steel period, black powder period and modern period. The Civil War impressions qualified for the black powder period. All participating reenactors are judged by their unit’s impression and demonstration. The 2016 Reenactor’s Choice Award and the 2016 Visitor’s Choice Award go

Pvt. Neil Burke, acting assistant quartermaster, Pvt. Tom Weiss and Pvt. David Welker all of the 3rd U.S. Regulars.

(Article photographs Nancy Jennis Olds)

Sgt. Clint Brunt, far left, to his right is Mark Pettijohn and on the far right is Pvt. Matthew Tobin that are part of the 1907-1909 (First) Zouaves, (Third) Battalion-Machine Gun Section. Note similar uniforms to Civil War Zouaves. The two Confederate artillerists, Pvt. John Stansell and Pvt. Robert Fly are from the Norfolk Light Artillery Blues, 1861-1865. to the most outstanding impression.

La Belle Compagnie, 1400, a medieval group, won both of those categories. The 3rd U.S. Regular Infantry, 1861, won third place in the Best Unit Impression-Black Powder Period. The Tidewater Maritime Living-History Associates, U.S.S. Aroostook, 1862 won second place with the Best Unit DemonstrationBlack Powder Period and the 3rd U.S. Regular Infantry, 1861 gained third place in the same category.

Visitors to the event were also welcomed to interact with these military units testing their skills at sword fighting, marching, or in the case of the 3rd U.S. Regular Infantry, 1861, thrusting a musket with a fixed bayonet into the “enemy”. Members of the Young Marines, a national youth organization headquartered in Quantico, Virginia, dressed in their military khakis, lined up to try their skill in dispatching the “enemy”.

The Tidewater Maritime Living History Associates, U.S.S. Aroostook, recreated its history. It was a Union Navy gunboat that patrolled the James River thwarting Confederate vessels from trading abroad.

Members had their own cannon, which they demonstrated. The Norfolk Light Artillery Blues, 18611865, brought their own cannon as well. This artillery unit is the Civil War equivalent of today’s Virginia National Guard, founded in 1828.

This medley of military prowess through the ages has continued since its inception in 1984. This year, three Civil War regiments and one pre-Civil War militia regiment contributed to this truly unique event encompassing centuries of military history at Jamestown Settlement.

3rd U.S. Regulars members Mary Quinn Eakins and 1st Lt. Paul Stier posing by a replica antique camera.

H Jamestown

. . . . . . . . . . . see page 4 Inside this issue: 32 – Ask The Appraiser 7 – Black Powder, White Smoke 20 – Book Reviews 29 – Critics Corner

36 – Events Section 12 – The Source 3 – Through The Lens 15 – The Watchdog

Civil War News

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Paging Through

– Letters To The Editor – Distortions Of History Or Erroneous Points?

By Jack Melton This month marks the third issue since we acquired the Civil War News this year. Time sure flies by quickly when you have a deadline every month. We are expecting a very busy summer with lots of travel to cover events such as the Mansfield Ohio Civil War Show the last weekend of April, the National Skirmish Shooter’s Association (N-SSA) in May and then Gettysburg in June. We are looking forward to bring you some great coverage and photographs of the events. We are getting very excited about the upcoming Gettysburg edition in July. Please contact us if you have stories or event announcements you would like to share.

On another note, we are often asked the question “How do I know when my subscription is expiring?”

There are two ways you can keep

track of your subscription. Your expiration date is printed on your paper each month on your mailing address label along with your subscriber account number. In addition to that, we send out reminder/renewal letters a month before your subscription is due to expire to give you plenty of time to act so you don’t miss a single issue.

Finally, if you are moving or have a temporary change of address, please let us know in advance so that we can make the change in our system to avoid any delays or interruptions in service.

The Gettysburg Section is coming soon. Contact us if you have an suggestions, articles, events, or advertising. That deadline is June 3 so please send your submissions in early.

Civil War News

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TO THE EDITOR: H.V. Traywick’s once again engages in distortions of history, this time in response to my critical letter of his neo-Confederate views in a prior issue. I would like to respond to some of the so-called “erroneous points” of mine that Traywick cites in his letter.

Sorry, Mr. Traywick, the South’s response to Lincoln’s legal election as president, after it dominated the federal government since its inception, was indeed armed insurrection.

The seceded states renounced their allegiance to the federal government, placed tens of thousands of men under arms, seized federal forts and arrested hundreds of U.S. army personnel, and fired on a U.S. vessel, all before Lincoln was sworn in as president.

Shortly after Lincoln was in office, the South opened fire on federal Fort Sumter, which was obliged to surrender If these acts do not constitute armed insurrection, what would? As for Traywick’s bizarre claim that the first “act of war” was Major Anderson’s burning of the gun carriages at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, apparently he forgets that these carriages were the property of the United States government, as were both Forts Moultrie and Sumter.

The South wanted those gun carriages to use in its rebellion against the United States! Traywick feels that Lincoln’s only recourse to these violent actions was to acquiesce in the South’s unconstitutional rejection of his election.

This is analogous to saying that FDR’s only valid response to the

attack on Pearl Harbor would have been to capitulate to Japan’s quest for hegemony in order to avoid a bloody war. Lincoln chose to preserve the nation rather than see it torn asunder, and the South bears responsibility for the carnage that followed.

As for Lincoln’s “war of invasion,” how can a country invade itself? Treason has its consequences, Mr. Traywick. The armed insurrection preceded the war.

And yes, Mr. Traywick, the seceded states did indeed intend to expand slavery. The Confederate Constitution required that all territories admitted to the CSA would have to be slave states. As various reputable historians have noted, the Confederacy planned to annex Cuba and parts of northern Mexico as well as to invade Haiti and enslave its free black population, whom the South had long regarded as a threat.

And Traywick’s assertion that by seceding the Confederacy “gave up any claims to the common U.S. territories” is patently absurd. The Confederates claimed, and invaded, the New Mexico Territory (the present day states of Arizona and New Mexico) and had designs on Colorado Territory as well. And, yes, the various Secession Ordinances did indeed make clear that slavery was by far the primary reason for the Cotton States illicit withdrawal from the Union, with their rants against “Black Republicanism,” “Abolitionism,” and “miscegenation.”

Finally, Traywick regurgitates the revisionist claim that Lincoln waged war solely for economic reasons under pressure from “the industrialists,

the financiers, the railroad magnates, and the crony capitalists who had gotten him elected” (I guess the millions of people that voted for him do not count), implying that Lincoln and the Northern people had no other considerations in making vast sacrifices in order to preserve the Union other than greed.

The fact is that if Lincoln had simply recognized the Confederacy, southern cotton would still have been sold to northern mills, the South still would have been a market for northern manufactured goods, and USA ships would still have had access to the mouth of the Mississippi, since blocking access would have been an act of war, which the South would certainly have wanted to avoid.

An independent South would have been no more free of Northern economic power than an independent Canada is free of United States economic might today. As for the loss of tariff income from the South, Traywick conveniently neglects to note that a disproportionate amount of the federal budget was devoted to the numerous forts and military installations defending the South’s enormously long coastline as well as the Mexican border with Texas, a state that also needed federal protection from hostile Native Americans.

Recognizing secession would have freed the federal government from all of these monetary obligations.

No, it was not greed that motivated the Union to suppress the rebellion, but higher principles than Mr. Traywick is willing to acknowledge.

I know, facts can be so very annoying at times.

Dennis Middlebrooks Brooklyn, N.Y.

Ordinance Of Secession Good Column To Expand Slavery Claims TO THE EDITOR: In the April issue, H.V. Traywick, Jr. writes that secession was not intended to expand slavery because the seceding states “gave up any claims to the common U.S. Territories and thereby willfully gave up any claims to their rights to carry slavery into them!” He fails to acknowledge that many Confederates desired to annex and bring slavery to Cuba and parts of Mexico, Central America and the American Southwest.

In fact, the Confederate Constitution reflects their expansionist desires. Article IV, Section 3(3) states: “The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without [emphasis added] the limits of the several States, and may permit them, at such times and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy.

In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the

Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”

Mr. Traywick also says that “any reading of these Ordinances of Secession will readily reveal” that preservation of slavery was only one, but not the only, reason for secession.

To the contrary, the reasons for secession set forth in those documents relate exclusively to preservation of slavery and white supremacy, the right to extend slavery into territories, and the right to secede if their pro-slavery and white supremacy arguments were not accepted. For details on the exclusive slavery/white supremacy basis for secession and the Confederacy, see my book on The Myth of the Lost Cause.

Edward H. Bonekemper, III Willow Street, Pa.

TO THE EDITOR: Great issue of Civil War News, the best ever!

I have always enjoyed Joe Bilby’s column and his great perspective. I wish we had a black powder/modern cannoneer historian to run a column like Bilby.

Rob Zaworski Atlanta, Ga.

Deadlines for Advertising or Editorial Submissions is April 25 for the June issue.

Please submit your information early!

May 2016

Civil War News

Through The Lens

By Stephanie Hagiwara

The Quaker Gun “[I]t was a favorite trick to run it out into the center of the road and go through the motions of loading a gun and pointing it at the enemy, who promptly stampeded, under the impression that we had a piece of artillery with us,” said PVT Edgar Warfield of the 17th Va., Munson’s Hill, Va. “Quaker Guns” – logs, usually painted black, have been used to deceive the enemy in North America

of the Potomac at the capital. Thaddeus Lowe would send up his observation balloons to check out the situation. Stuart was promoted to the rank of Brig. Gen. The Confederates kept busy firing at anyone approaching on the broad, flat plain called Bailey’s Crossings below and the observation balloons above.

As there weren’t any major battles being fought, the newspapers focused on the Confederates above

was declared a “humbug - worse that a Bull-run” in the song, “The Battle of the Stoves-Pipes”. However, as the war proceeded, the newspapers began to defend the generals by pointing out that without risking being fired upon, it is difficult to discern logs from actual cannons.

Quaker guns were used not only to hoodwinked the enemy on the strength of a position but were deployed by Confederate Gen. P. T. Beauregard to rescue his army from capture. During the April – May 1862, Siege of Corinth, Miss., Union Gen. Henry Halleck’s strategy was to keep his men in a mass, build entrenchments, have men move forward, dig more trenches at the new position and then repeat. As the federal troops crept towards him, Beauregard saw the writing in the mud.

To save his army, he needed to em-

Centreville, Virginia. Quaker gun, George N. Barnard, photographer, March 1862. since the American Revolution.

Adding wheels to the log made it virtually impossible to discern it was a fake from a distance. During the Civil War, both sides, including civilians would hoodwink their foe using logs, stove-pipes, kegs and more.

After the First Battle of Manassas, Va. on July 21, 1861, Col. J.E.B. Stuart’s troops ended up approximately six miles from Washington, D.C. at Munson’s Hill, Va. While Gen. Joseph Johnston reorganized the Confederate Army of the Potomac; Stuart dug earthworks that appeared to be up to 15’ high and erected signal stations. Lacking actual cannons, he placed Quaker Guns in the trenches.

As Gen. James Longstreet later recalled, “the authorities allowed me but one battery...we collected a number of old wagon-wheels and mounted on them stove-pipes of different calibre, till we had formidable-looking batteries, some large enough of calibre to threaten Alexandria, and even the National Capitol and Executive Mansion.”

For the next two months, Gen. George McClellan drilled the Army

Washington, who alarmed everyone living in the capital by flying “an immense Confederate flag—the red, white, and blue stripes in which are at least five feet wide each—is the most prominent object upon the top of the eminence.” According to the New York Times, it “was visible with a glass from the top of the shiphouse at the Navy-yard” in Washington, D.C. Longstreet recollected, “[W]e were provokingly near Washington, with orders not to attempt to advance even to Alexandria.” Johnson, on the other hand, considered the Munson’s Hill position as defensively unsound and logistically difficult to keep supplied. McClellan, by twice sending out heavily armed reconnaissance parties to probe the rebel lines, may have convinced Johnson that enough was enough. It was time for the troops to fall back.

On September 28, 1861, the Confederates abandoned Munson’s Hill, leaving behind their Quaker Guns. After having been terrified by logs, the North proceed to mock the army in the newspapers and by song.

McClellan was the target of “The Bold Engineer” and the situation

(Library of Congress)

3 ploy every trick that he could think of to fool Halleck.

Beauregard ordered empty trains to continually rumble through the area. The soldiers cheered the trains as if reinforcements were arriving.

Bands played festive music while fake deserters carried three days of rations as they slipped through Union lines. The buglers and drummers would convey “orders” from where each unit had camped. And dummies, with smiles on their faces, manned the Quaker guns that replaced the real cannons.

“The enemy is re-enforcing heavily, by trains, in my front and on my left,” Gen. John Pope at the Siege of Corinth, wrote. “The cars are running constantly, and the cheering is immense every time they unload in front of me. I have no doubt, from all appearances, that I shall be attacked in heavy force at daylight.”

Instead of attacking, by May 30, 1862, Beauregard’s army had disappeared. Halleck didn’t care. The capture of Corinth was a major victory.

And he had done it all, he told his wife, “with very little loss of life...I have won the victory without the battle!”

Not only armies used Quaker guns. The citizens of Frankfurt, Ky. deployed two to save their town from Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan. During the war, Kentucky tried to maintain her neutrality. Frankfort, the capital, had the support of Union sympathizers but her Governor was a Confederate. On October 4, 1862, the Confederates decided to inaugurate Richard Hawes as the Confederate Governor of Kentucky. Union Gen. Don Carlos Buell broke up that party.

Before the Oct. 8, 1862, Battle of Perryville, Ky., Union Gen. Joshua Sill had hauled in two monster cannon to the hills of South Frankfort.

When he left, he took his cannons with him. The citizens of Frankfort were understandably concerned.

Rumor had it that Morgan was coming to town to destroy the turnpike

bridge and more. Action had to be taken under the cover of night.

By morning, two empty beer kegs, covered with a tarpaulin stood in the spot that the cannons had so recently occupied. All the next day, Morgan’s cavalry scouted the kegs but were reluctant to face their firepower.

On Wednesday, the Confederates, “made a bold and daring charge on the ‘tarpaulin beer keg battery’, and captured it without the loss of a man.” Morgan’s cavalry took the town vacated by Sill. Their Captain acknowledged that he had been “sold by the Yanks.”

In turn, the town was immediately abandoned by the Confederates.

On Thursday, Oct. 9, 1862, Gen. Ebenezer Dumont’s forces, using actual guns, swept the Confederates out of Frankfort. Our citizens, “and the two empty beer kegs had kept the Rebels from burning all the bridges around Frankfort,” boasted the residents of Frankfort.

While these wooden “mock” guns had been named for the Quaker religious group, it is interesting to note that they too had deployed Quaker guns. During the War of 1812, the British would go to Reed’s Beach, N.J., to fill their water casks and replenish their stores. The Quaker’s belief in peace combined with the need to save their goods, resulted in a meeting to talk about their predicament. William Douglas, a ship’s carpenter, suggested the use of Quaker guns. “A day later the shoreline of Reed’s Beach was bristling with cannons peeping out from the underbrush.” The British, after considering the situation, decided it was time to move on.

Stephanie Hagiwara is the editor for Civil War in Color.com and Civil War in 3D.com. She also writes a weekly column for History in Full Color.com that covers stories of photographs of historical interest from the 1850’s to the present. Her articles can be found on Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.

Colorization © 2015 civilwarincolor.com, courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. Original black and white photograph is shown above.

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Civil War News

H Jamestown

May 2016

Shiloh 154th Anniversary

. . . . . . . . . . . from page 1

By Craig L. Barry

SHILOH, Tenn.—After a hiatus of five years, Shiloh National Military Park held Camp life, Cavalry, Artillery and Infantry historic weapons demos in honor of the 154th anniversary of the historic battle. For more than a few of us, the annual anniversary programs at Shiloh were the unofficial start to the living history calendar of events Then four years ago, about the time of the 150th anniversary, there were two competing Civil War reenactments both using Shiloh as their backdrop and scheduled on the same weekend.

The Shiloh National Military Park decided to take a break and not to put on any living history programs as a result.

The 154th anniversary programs were held on Saturday, April 2, at various locations throughout the park. At the Visitors Center was a

Union Camp, which provided insight into the life of a Civil War soldier as well as a Union Quartermaster demonstration.

There was also a wet plate photographer there making portraits as well. The main Cavalry, Infantry and Artillery programs were at Duncan Field, between tour stop 2 and tour stop 3. The Camp life demonstrations were unique because they featured a number of the massive bellshaped Sibley tents which were a feature of camps on both sides early in the U.S. Civil War. Artillery demonstrations started the event at 10 am, followed by Infantry at 11 am and Cavalry at Noon.

There was a period music demonstration at 1 pm, sailors from the U.S.S. Shiloh (currently forward deployed at Yokosuka, Japan) at 2 pm before concluding with a combined arms demonstration at 3 pm.

Lt. Kurt Eberly is the paymaster of the Tidewater Maritime Living History Associates unit. He is standing by the maps, official books and instruments needed for the voyage on the USS Aroostook, June 1862.

Right: 8th Tenn.

Cavalry at Shiloh National Military Park.

(Mike Warfield)

Michaeyla Nadeau and her father Mike Nadeau. Michaeyla’s maternal ancestor was Thomas Stone, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Left: Stones River Gun Crew at Shiloh. Standing in the front is Mike Warfield, center is Joe Webber, and to the right is author Craig L. Barry.

(Mike Warfield)

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Civil War News

5

Confederate Flag Supporters Gather At Peace Light

By Leon Reed

GETTYSBURG, PA.—Nearly 500 Confederate flag supporters gathered on Saturday March 5th at the Eternal Light Peace Memorial in Gettysburg to show their support for the Confederate flag.

The rally was part of a nationwide series of rallies sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. This event was organized with the help from the members of the J.W. Culp SCV Camp.

Sculptor Gary Casteel (who did the Longstreet statue in the park) organized the event on short notice, and the main speaker was Mike Landree, the executive director of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

A group of about 50 protesters, organized by a Gettysburg College professor, was confined behind a fence about 100 yards from the rally.

They made their presence known by shouting through a megaphone, frequently drowning out the speakers with occasionally obscene messages.

Many of the participants in the rally grumbled, but there were no confrontations during the rally. A small contingent of NPS rangers kept the groups separated and the Cumberland Township police remained in the background. There were a few individual confrontations as the flag rally was breaking up.

The organizers were pleased with the event. Casteel said “I think it went beautifully. We had no idea what to expect.” Landree agreed that “I can’t think of a better location than the Peace Memorial.”

James McKee from nearby Hanover was there to honor a great grandfather who fought in the war.

“I don’t think people should be persecuted for supporting the flag.

Especially if you had an ancestor, you should be able to honor your heritage.”

Stephen Davidson, who wore a Confederate uniform and is planning to join the 5th Texas, agreed that the rally was a positive event. “I think you need to support what you believe in no matter what people think.

It’s not about hate; it’s about history.

I think this is a great way to promote our heritage.”

Victoria Chadwick, who was also in period costume along with her mother, Deborah, and her daughters, Anastasia and Scarlett, also enjoyed the day. But she did not enjoy having the protesters yell that she was teaching her children to hate at a young age.

Casteel said it wasn’t certain whether this would become an annual event. “That’s up to the SCV board. But based on how well this one went, I sure hope so.”

Sculptor Gary Casteel, who organized the event, was interviewed by a Fox News reporter.

(Leon Reed)

The small organized group of protesters were led by Scott Hancock, a Gettysburg College professor who is standing in the center holding a sign comparing the Confederate flag to a Nazi swastika.

Confederate flags adorn the field in front of the Eternal Peace Monument on the Gettysburg National Military Park. Unlike the protesters, this heritage group maintained a friendly presence during the event.

Confederate flag supporters braved the dreary weather and inconsiderate protesters to listen to the speakers. They were there to honor Confederate history, their ancestors and, unlike what the misinformed protesters thought, were not there to honor slavery or endorse hate.

Speaker Mike Landree is executive director of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Civil War News

6

My Genealogical Journey

By Michael Kent

Being involved in the Civil War industry for the past 25 years, I am often asked if I have ever traced my Civil War roots. Before last year, my answer had always been no. At the beginning of 2015, I made my annual bucket list of things to accomplish in the coming year, and one of my goals was to research my family tree in hopes of finding a distant Confederate relative I could claim for membership in my local SCV camp. For many years, I wondered where my family had come from and what type of military heritage they had.

Aside from my father, W.L. Kent, who served in the U.S. Navy during WWII, my family history was sparse.

A story had been handed down from my grandfather about his great uncle who fought for the Confederacy and walked home to Georgia from Virginia at the end of the war where even his own family did not recognize him, but this was only a tale which had never been substantiated.

I made up my mind to trace my family tree to prove this story true or false once and for all.

As a complete novice to the field of genealogical research, all I had to start with was a group photograph of some family members dated 1905 with names handwritten on the back and a subscription to Ancestry.com. I was now all set to key in some basic information, get a “leaf” as shown on TV and begin to unlock the secrets of the Kent family! Imagine my surprise when I entered my name, my father’s name with birthday and place of birth and my grandfather’s birthday and place of birth and up popped several leaves! There on my computer screen were names I did not recognize but were obviously my great grandfathers and great grandmothers.

Clicking on each name brought up more information on the selected individual such as birth date and place, parents names, spouses names, siblings, date of death and place of burial. With each name, I was also shown a list of suggested records for further research. The suggestions included Federal Census Records, Marriage Certificates, property records, death notices and military service records.

Now I was really onto something!

I stayed up half the night furiously tapping my computer keys and waking my wife every 30 minutes or so to regale her with my latest finds.

As I suspected, most of my ancestors were poor, uneducated farmers with large families, primarily from

Georgia and Alabama. Some could not even read or write, and their net worth as recorded in the federal census was often less than $500.

No ancestor ever owned a slave as far as I could determine. Although Ancestry.com was a treasure trove of genealogical information about my great grandfather and great-great grandfather, it did not give me the military background and details I desperately sought. My great-great grandfather Isiah Kent did not serve during the Civil War, but had several younger brothers, Absalom and John Gilbert Harris. Could these relatives have joined for the cause? I quickly entered Absalom R. Kent into my family tree and clicked onto his information. There under additional suggested records to research was a source entitled Alabama Civil War Soldiers 1860-1865.

With trembling fingers I clicked on the source and up popped an entire page for my great-great uncle Absalom R. Kent. According to the Ancestry.com records, he enlisted in Chambers County, Alabama in January 1862 at age 17. He joined Company G of the 37th Alabama Infantry as a private and served until he was wounded at Missionary Ridge and never returned to service. This was the Holy Grail I had been searching for!

At long last, here was a lineal family ancestor who was documented as serving the Confederacy during the Civil War and was even wounded in battle! I was now officially hooked but wanted to know more about Absalom Kent from a military standpoint; where did he fight, how did he sustain a wound, what happened to him after the war? For this information, I would have to dig a little deeper and, fortunately, there was another website there to help me in the form of Fold3.com.

Fold3.com is a military based genealogical website documenting the service and other activities of US service men and women back to the Revolutionary War. While Ancestry.com merely states a few facts concerning an individual’s military career, Fold3.com compiles all available military records in chronological order and provides the ability to view the record on screen and download copies for your files. It is easy to research as you type in the period you are researching (Civil War, World War II, etc.), state your ancestor was from, unit if known and name.

Fold3 will indicate how many

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printed documents exist and lay them out in chronological order that you can scroll through, zooming in and out as needed and increasing or decreasing contrast for best viewing.

For purposes of Civil War research, common documents seen include muster rolls, pay slips, hospital admittances, wounded and capture reports, prisoner of war rolls, amnesty papers, letters and pension documents. While some individuals may only have a few documents listed, others may have 20-30 or more documents, depending on their rank, activities and time in service. I found it utterly fascinating to look at a copy of a document signed by my ancestor over 150 years ago and wonder what his life was like during this period in American history. Although I never found that relative that supposedly walked home from Virginia after the war, I did find many far more interesting stories associated with my relatives. After searching for that one Confederate soldier that would allow me entry into the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I came up with a total of 14 paternal and maternal relatives that fought for the South.

These valiant volunteers died at Vicksburg, were wounded at Chancellorsville and Chickamauga, captured at Gettysburg and Missionary Ridge, suffered at Point Lookout

May 2016 and came back home to families and loved ones a changed man forever.

Their stories were those of common men called to uncommon acts of valor with little reward other than the satisfaction of knowing they served a cause they believed in and were willing to die for. Even though I have visited many Civil War battlefields where my ancestors fought, I now long to revisit them with new insight and walk among the Confederate lines where they fought and died.

A final resource to utilize in tracing your family tree is www.Findagrave.com. This website is powered by volunteers who have photographed tombstones, cemetery plots, obituaries and other information on the deceased. It is only fitting after researching a person’s birth, life and death that the final chapter be closed with an appropriate marker or tombstone.

As a novice genealogist, I made many mistakes in my initial foray into the field and would like to share some of those missteps to save others considerable time and effort. First, don’t get overwhelmed and carried away by the first few relatives you run across. If you are searching for Civil War contacts, you will have to go back four generations to arrive at the proper time frame for individuals 15 to 60 years old during the period of 1861-1865. This would translate into a minimum of 16 family lines taking into account both paternal and maternal family trees. It is common to jump from family to family as you go back in time as some trees are simply easier to trace due to more thorough records. Resist this urge and follow one family name all the way back to the Civil War or until the

trail ends. This way you can ascertain all known facts about a particular family tree before moving on to another one.

Secondly, print off a copy of every document you run across. You may not think it is an important piece of information at the time, but sooner or later you will need it to fill in a gap or jog your memory as you cross family trees, and I can guarantee you will never be able to find it again after you pass on it!

Lastly, make a file folder with every family members name on it and save every document you come across. Some individuals may only have one or 2 documents while others may have dozens of pages. This will come in handy as you put together a complete family tree and makes it much easier should you ever decide to publish a family history.

In a nutshell, you have a beginner’s tutorial on how to get started researching your Civil War ancestors.

If you are a history buff interested in the Civil War (and I assume you are if you are reading Civil War News the best publication in the industry), finding and documenting your ancestor’s military service should be the next obvious step in your Civil War education. Happy Hunting!

Mike Kent is President of MK Shows, LLC, promoters of the Nashville, Richmond & Dalton Civil War shows as well as gun shows in North and South Carolina. He holds degrees from both Georgia Tech and Georgia State University. He can be contacted at Mike@MKShows.com

May 2016

Civil War News

Black Powder, White Smoke

By Joe Bilby

The “Stupids” A Postal Match And A Living History Range Instructing the “Stupids”

In the early months of the Civil War the basics of military life were often difficult to grasp for many volunteers, a situation that caused a Springfield, Massachusetts newspaper to complain that: “Some stupids down near Boston have been loading the United States rifle muskets with cartridges made of heavy paper, and finding that they do not work well, complain of the rifles as in fault.”

Apparently the “stupids” had been loading their rifle muskets in the same manner as they had loaded smoothbore muskets in the past, pouring powder down the muzzle and then ramming down the rest of the cartridge, including the paper casing, unaware that with the rifle musket, the cartridge paper was supposed to be disposed of before inserting the Minie ball in the gun’s muzzle.

The newspaper went on to further lecture the “stupids” that “no paper should be used in loading these arms.

First, the powder is poured in from the cartridge, and then the ball is dropped on top, and will go home of itself, but a gentle tap of the ramrod is useful to fill the cavity of the ball with powder, and leave no opportunity for the gas generated by the explosion to escape but behind the ball.” Apparently there were “stupids” on the other side as well, since a Richmond newspaper copied the article as an advisory to Virginians.

The 2015 Postal Match

In a previous column, I wrote about the international postal match conducted between members of the N-SSA’s 34th Virginia Battalion and a group of British black powder shooters in 2014. The many events at a N-South Skirmish Association National (N-SSA) skirmish, where the contest was held, made it difficult to incorporate the match in the schedule, as British ranges use 30-minute relays while N-SSA events use 10 and 20-minute relays, and the British fire from standing, sitting and prone positions. The leadership of the 34th decided that it would be easier to shoot succeeding postal match events on a regional or local basis.

The 2015 match used the tra-

ditional N-SSA clay pigeons on a cardboard backer event timed with a stopwatch, but with five-man teams rather than the usual eight. The Americans cleared the board in 277 seconds, beating the British effort of 417 seconds.

The N-SSA shooters wore full uniform and used period cartridge boxes. One fired period regulation US paper cartridges, the rest loaded with N-SSA style plastic or cardboard tubes that hold a charge plugged by a bullet removed with the teeth or fingers. They all fired American model arms, including three Richmond rifle-muskets, an 1861 Springfield rifle-musket and a Model 1855 Harpers Ferry rifle.

The British shooters did not wear historical clothing and equipment, and only one used a “cartridge” that contained both powder charge and the projectile. The other shooters used charges in holders or tubes, with separate projectiles. They fired various models/patterns of original or reproduction Enfields. Bill Adams of the 34th, who is looking forward to another match this year, noted that: “This is all still a work in progress and has been great fun.”

The British shooters have proposed a 200-yard offhand match using balloons as targets for the next postal event, tentatively scheduled for the coming summer, probably at a regional N-SSA shoot in Massachusetts. I will keep you posted.

Not Civil War, But…

Colonial Williamsburg, perhaps the most well-known historic venue in the United States, opened an “educational musket range” on March 19. The range offers guests an opportunity to learn about and operate the types of firearms that were used in the American Revolution – and for long afterward. In the opening days of the Civil War flintlocks were often issued to volunteers, and state armories were full of them. While conversion to percussion ignition was expedited wherever possible, some soldiers in the Confederate army carried flintlocks into the war’s early battles.

At the new Williamsburg range, costumed living history interpreters will inform guests about the history of flintlock guns, their mechanical operation and their use in hunting

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and war, as well as proper and safe handling.

Noting that the range provides a “new level” for engaging history, Peter Seibert, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of historic trades and skills, said. “For decades, our guests could learn about these pieces and watch them being operated. Now they can experience them – the weight, the smell, and the sound – not to mention how challenging their operation was for people whose lives often depended on it.”

Guests, under the direct supervision of staff, will able to prime and fire reproduction British short land pattern muskets and civilian fowling pieces. The range is accessible only by ticketed guests via a shuttle from the Williamsburg Lodge. Admission includes instruction, safety equipment firearms, ammunition,

7 and targets.

To participate, guests must reserve spaces in advance and present photo ID to purchase tickets on-site.

Tickets are $119 and are available to guests ages 14 and older. Children under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Additional information is available at Colonial Williamsburg ticketing locations and hospitality properties, online at www.colonialwilliamsburg.com or by calling 855-296-6627.

It will be interesting to see how the Williamsburg “educational musket range” progresses. Perhaps some Civil War venue will consider a similar program in the future.

Joseph G. Bilby received his BA and MA degrees in history from Seton Hall University and served as a lieutenant in the 1st Infantry

Division in Vietnam. He is assistant curator of the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey and author of more than 300 articles and 14 books including Small Arms at Gettysburg, Monmouth Court House: The Battle that Made the American Army and Freedom to All: New Jersey’s African-American Civil War Soldiers. He is at JGBilby44@aol. com; www.hiddenhistoryofnewjerse. com.

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Civil War News

8

May 2016

Rare Civil War U.S. Hospital Flag Donated To Atlanta History Center

By Gordon L. Jones

ATLANTA, Ga.–A rare Civil War U.S. Army field hospital flag has been donated to the Atlanta History Center and placed on exhibit. The flag – one of only about a dozen known to have survived the conflict – was the gift of John and Joyce Schmale of Mahomet, Illinois.

Both Union and Confederate armies used bright red or yellow flags to designate field hospitals, enabling stretcher-bearers and ambulance drivers to easily locate them behind the front lines.

In January 1864, the U.S. Army issued formal regulations for yellow hospital flags, specifying a contrasting green “H” for “Hospital.” Larger flags of the same design marked the location of 200 permanent hospitals in cities and towns.

During the war, U.S. Army

surgeons performed some 30,000 emergency amputations, some of which undoubtedly happened under this flag. What made the flag so personally meaningful for the Schmales is the fact they both have medical backgrounds and both have avid interest in Civil War history, especially the history of Civil War flags.

The hospital flag now joins a collection of some 11,000 Civil War artifacts at the Atlanta History Center, most of which were assembled by the Beverly DuBose family beginning in the 1950s. “The DuBoses collected for 35 years and never found a hospital flag,” noted Gordon Jones, the Center’s Senior Military Historian and Curator. ”I’ve never even seen one for sale, let alone one in such superb condition.”

Prior to being placed on exhibit, the 63-by-46-inch wool bunting flag was treated by textile conservator

Kate R. Daniels before being placed in a custom-made pressure-mount frame. The Plexiglas cover is shielded from ultraviolet light to protect the colors from fading.

The flag was made in Portland, Maine, by the banner and sign-painting business of Harrison Bird Brown.

Until the Schmales discovered this example, no one knew that Brown had made flags for the Union cause.

After the war, Brown went on to become one of the most prolific and famous landscape painters of the late 19th century.

Gordon L. Jones Ph.D., is the Senior Military Historian and Curator at the Atlanta History Center, where he has worked since 1991. He is the author of Confederate Odyssey: The George W. Wray Jr. Civil War Collection (University of Georgia Press, 2014).

This rare field hospital flag retains its original colors and still bears the maker’s mark stenciled on the hoist edge.

(Atlanta History Center)

“Called To Duty” Movie’s First Screening

By Joe Bordonaro

MANALAPAN TOWNSHIP, N.J.—When most people think of Monmouth Battlefield in New Jersey, they think of the Revolutionary War. The Battle of Monmouth, on June 28, 1778, was a signal victory for the young Continental Army. But the battlefield also was used during the Civil War as a training camp.

This little known history is the subject of a new documentary, “Called to Duty”, that received its first screening at the Visitor Center at Monmouth Battlefield on March 26.

Produced by Tom Burke and

directed by Rich Mendoza, the documentary tells the story of several New Jersey citizens who enlisted in the Union Army in the Summer of 1862.

Entirely a volunteer effort, the documentary enlisted the services of the Civil War reenacting community as well as descendants of the one of the soldiers portrayed, Ellison Jamison. A short version can be seen at the Visitor Center. The documentary has been entered in Gary Sinise’s GI Film Festival in Washington, DC.

Donated to the Atlanta History Center in 2015, the flag is now displayed in the signature exhibition, Turning Point: The American Civil War. (Atlanta History Center)

Civil War Trust News

By Gregory L. Wade

Called to Duty screening with Producer Tom Burke and Director Rich Mendoza.

(Joe Bordonaro)

FRANKLIN, Tenn.—James Lighthizer, President of the Civil War Trust, recently attended a dinner in Franklin, Tennessee celebrating the purchase of 1.6 acres considered the bloodiest ground from the November 30, 1864, Battle of Franklin. The Civil War Trust is known for its work nationally preserving and protecting battlefield properties.

The land, adjacent to the Carter House farm where the Confederates briefly broke the federal lines, was purchased from the Lovell family for $2.8 million. The Trust was involved in this purchase as well as Jim Lighthizer, left, Mary Pearce and Harris Pearce. Mary sits on several other parcels in the evolving the board of Franklin’s Charge, the preservation coalition leading Franklin Battlefield park. the effort in Franklin battle ground preservation. (Franklin’s Charge)

May 2016

Civil War News

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Civil War News

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May 2016

Electric Map Nears Completion In Hanover

By Leon Reed

HANOVER, Pa.—For more than 50 years, a visit to the Electric Map was one of the essential first stops before a tour of Gettysburg. Within a few months, the flashing lights may once again be delighting visitors, though now they will have to travel 12 miles to nearby Hanover to see it.

The first electric map was installed in the private Rosensteel Museum in the 1930s. A newer and larger map was installed in 1963. Both maps used a series of flashing lights to illustrate the battle of Gettysburg as a narrator read a script. The National Park Service took over the Rosensteel Museum in 1971 and used it as its Visitor Center until the new one opened in 2008.

Despite occupying a place of honor in the old Visitor Center, the map did not make the cut to move over to the new Visitor Center, which opened in 2008. "[GNMP director at the time] Latschar hated it," said former map operator Bernadette Loeffel-Atkins. "Latschar called it the ‘Electric Nap.'" The last Electric Map show was on April 13, 2008.

Scott Roland bought the 12-ton map for $14,000 at auction in 2012.

He hopes to open it as an attraction at a conference center in downtown Hanover.

"All I got was the map," said Roland. "The control panels were gone, the wiring was shot, and there wasn't even a script or a wiring diagram. We even had to figure out which segment represented which part of the battle to know how to reassemble the map."

Over the past three years, he and his team have removed asbestos and rewired and relit the entire map – a total of more than 800 bulbs and seven miles of wire. "The wiring was a nightmare," said Roland. "We replaced all the lighting with LED bulbs and it will be much more efficient to operate." The job is nearly done. In late February, 3 ½ of the four panels had been completely rewired and re-lit and they were beginning to work on connecting to the computer that will control the lights.

He hopes to open "before the end of the school year."

Roland emphasizes that many people have let him know how important it is to keep the "same look and feel" to the show. "I'm not going to spice up the show; it will be as close to the original as I can make it.

I also kept the original lenses. Everything below the lenses is new, but it will look the same."

Many people have expressed excitement upon hearing about the project. A sampling of quotes from a Facebook page.

Patricia Petry, now a History teacher in Virginia, said: "I loved the electric map on a school trip in elementary school!"

Sandy Dobson said "Our first stop in Gettysburg on our high school trip in 1979 was the map. I was mesmerized by it. That was the start of my Gettysburg fascination. Can't wait to see it again."

Mickey Martin from Easton, Penn., called it "a must see. Saw it when I was ten years old [and] at least 15 times when I brought people to visit Gettysburg. Some from Australia and Germany and many friends from my area. I'll be 67 in May and would love to see it again. Thanks for the restoration. I can't wait."

Jim Doncaster, who grew up in York, Penn., but lives in Knoxville said "It'll be great to have it up and running again. I was disappointed the NPS didn't see fit to incorporate it into the new Visitors Center.

I've seen it a few dozen times, many times on our frequent trips to the battlefield growing up and many times since when I'd bring others to Gettysburg. It was always the perfect way to orient people to the field before going out on it."

The map is located at 22 Carlisle St. in Hanover, Penn. Updates on the project are available on Facebook pages: Gettysburg Electric Map in Hanover, Penn.

Owner Scott Roland stands next to his electric map project.

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A few of the original lights from the electric map.

(Leon Reed)

(Leon Reed)

May 2016

Civil War News

11

Demolition Begins At Gettysburg Lee’s Headquarters Site

By Leon Reed

GETTYSBURG, Pa.—The Civil War Trust completed interior cleanup work and began exterior demolition of non-historic buildings on the “Lee Headquarters” site on Chambersburg Rd. in Gettysburg. The land sits on Seminary Ridge, just north of the Lutheran Seminary and was part of Lee’s command complex during the 2nd and 3rd days of the battle. It is immediately to the east of the first day’s battlefield and was occupied

by Stewart’s battery and the 143rd Pa. of Stone’s brigade during the last stand of the 1st Corps on Seminary Ridge, late on the afternoon of July 1st.

The 4-acre property was part of the growing tourist industry since the 1930s when tourist cabins were built on the property. Until the Trust’s

purchase, the property held a 1950s motel (most recently, a Quality Inn) and a restaurant building, most recently occupied by the Appalachian Brewing Co. brew pub.

The Civil War Trust purchased the property in 2013 and has spent the past 2+ years navigating federal and local historic preservation and other requirements. Land clearance started on March 21st with the demolition of the brew pub building, and the demolition of the motel itself was underway by March 30th. The Trust hopes that all clearance and redevelopment activities will be completed by late spring. The property will include a network of trails and signage to interpret both the Civil War and tourist era uses of the property.

While the project is popular among many Civil War buffs, it has aroused

concern within the Borough of Gettysburg. It is not universally popular even among some Gettysburg battlefield buffs, who lament the loss of a motel and restaurant and raise concern about access to the building after the renovation is complete. On a popular Gettysburg-related Facebook page called Gettysburg Past and Present, Chuck Teague, a former ranger, took issue with the sale. “The two businesses (motel and restaurant) operating there continued to be viable enterprises, which is why this was such a surprise to everyone in town. The motel had been renovated, and I heard only glowing reports from customers. It was the big bucks offered by the CWT that prompted the sale, not any distress in continuing those businesses.”

Bill Sack stated “When preservation involves taking away part of a town’s personality and can cause a negative economic impact and cost jobs that is where I draw the line. In this case, all three came into play. Nobody can say, that over the years, the Quality Inn and whichever restaurant happened to occupy that building at any one time, were not part of Gettysburg’s personality and not local landmarks. They were not eyesores in the least. No matter how many times the Civil War Trust thumps their chest and exclaims how they “saved” Lee’s Headquarters, the reality is, saved from what? The Mary Thompson house was never in any imminent danger of ever being torn down or lost to history….In my opinion, part of the face of Gettysburg is forever changed with this “preservation” and not for the better.

These photos sadly mark the end of an “era.”

Lori Cesare Francesconi stated “as far back as I can remember that is the only place we stayed. The rooms were inexpensive, spacious and clean. Breakfast was included and a tour of the museum. You also had a nice pool, charming gift shop, and a restaurant. It was quiet and looking out of your window on the battlefield was fantastic. There is a lot of history there and so what if it is old. Isn’t that the charm of Gettysburg. It’s not New York City, where bigger, brighter, fancier and modern is necessary.

It was also nice having a motel on

that side of town.”

She also questioned whether access to the museum will be lost.

“Now that the only thing left standing there will be Lee’s Headquarters, is it going to be a museum where people can go inside, or is it just go-

ing to sit there as an empty building?

I heard there is going to be a walking path there. Who is going to go on that side of town just to walk a path if you can’t go in the museum?”

(All photos Leon Reed)

Civil War News

12

The Source

May 2016

By Michael K. Shaffer

Atlas To The O.R.s Preparing to launch his 1862 Valley Campaign, Major General Thomas J. Jackson turned to his topographer, Jedediah Hotchkiss, and asked him to “…make me a map of the Valley.” Just as generals needed reliable maps (sometimes they held inaccurate maps, and probably would have maneuvered just as well with no maps at all), anyone wishing to conduct research on various Civil War battles needs access to maps.

Collecting many of the wartime maps, and redrawing most of them for clarity, resulted in the 1895 publication of The Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

Hotchkiss served as a consultant on the project, but far more Federal maps exist in the Atlas, as many Confederate charts became lost forever because of destruction.

Barnes & Noble provided a reprint of the Atlas in 1983, ISBN 0760750440, and copies remain readily available, often for less than $30.

A helpful index at the front of this volume will assist in finding specific place-names and battles. (In the original O.R., footnotes referencing the Atlas did not appear until volume 43.)

One note to researchers, the Atlas contains various large-scale maps (showing great detail of a small area), and small-scale maps (less detail of a broad region). Many of the scales referenced on the maps do not prove incredibly accurate, so if you wish to learn the true scale, an investigation of the originals in the National Archives might prove helpful.

About the National Archives, as with the O.R. aids discussed in the March 2016 edition of this article, users can view the Atlas collection online at https://www.loc.gov/ item/03003452/. In 1964, The Archives also published a guide entitled Civil War Maps in the National Archives; remember to use (WorldCat http://www.worldcat.org/) for help in finding a copy of this work - and other books referenced in this article - in your local library.

Various Civil War maps exist online, and one can view many of them from the main ‘Civil War Map’ page of the National Archives, https://www.loc.gov/collections/ civil-war-maps/. The Civil War Trust

provides a series of helpful maps at http://www.civilwar.org/; conduct your own Internet search to locate even more!

Four different sections comprise the Atlas. Maps detailing military operations opens the collection; topographic maps of the United States follow; next, maps showing the various military departments; and a section of miscellaneous material completes the work.

This final part includes sketches of uniforms, insignia, flags, and some photographs from the war. Lieutenant Daniel Cowles, working in the War Records Office, tried to arrange the maps in chronological order, but despite his best intents, finding specific maps can prove challenging.

To help researchers, a few guides to using the Atlas exist. The same tool referenced in an earlier article provides some tips to navigating through the Atlas: Alan, C., and Barbara A. Aimone. A User’s Guide to the Official Records of the American Civil War. Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Pub., 1993. In addition, although out of print, if you can find a copy of Noel S. O’Reilly, David C. Bosse, and Robert W. Karrow Jr., Civil War Maps: A Graphic Index to the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Chicago: Newberry Library, 1987), this work will prove valuable in your research.

In the introduction, the authors noted, “The entry for New Hope Church, Georgia, lists fifteen maps.

These represent five different localities of the same name, with no indication of the engagements fought at New Hope Church from May 25 to June 4, 1864.” This offers an excellent explanation for why their resultant work proves so useful!

Civil War Maps: A Graphic Index lists each state individually, and the various boxes and symbols on each map quickly direct researchers to the corresponding maps in the Atlas.

Staying with New Hope Church, page 20 of the Graphic Index lists the various large-scale maps found in the Atlas concerning Georgia.

Knowing (or discovering) New Hope Church rests in Paulding County will direct the user’s attention

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Cover of The Official Military Atlas Of The Civil Atlas

Cover of Civil War Maps: A Graphic Index.

Plate from The Official Military Atlas Of The Civil Atlas, with four maps.

to several maps, for example, 43:5, 48:3, etc. The first number points to the respective plate in the Atlas (earlier editions of the Atlas used Roman numerals), and the second number lists the exact map on the plate. Most plates (think of plates in the Atlas as page numbers) contain many maps, so time spent with the Graphic Index will strengthen your research efforts!

Many other books containing various maps - including battle specific treatments - exist, with more appearing almost weekly; following, a list of some of the more helpful of these newer, general editions.

Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Concise Historical Atlas of the U.S. Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Atlas for the American Civil War, ed. Thomas E. Griess, The West Point Military History Series (Garden City Park, NY: Square One Publishers, 2002).

Craig L. Symonds, A Battlefield Atlas of the Civil War, 3rd ed.

(Baltimore, MD: Nautical and Aviation Pub. Co. of America, 1983).

John Carl Nelson, Atlas of the American Civil War: National Overview (Alexandria, VA: World History Maps, 2010).

John Carl Nelson, Atlas of the American Civil War: Army Organization (Alexandria, VA: World History Maps, 2011).

Mark Swanson, Atlas of the Civil War, Month by Month: Major Battles and Troop Movements (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004).

Stephen G. Hyslop, ed., Atlas of the Civil War: A Comprehensive Guide to the Tactics and Terrain of Battle (Washington, D.C: National Geographic Society, 2009).

Steven Woodworth and Kenneth J. Winkle, Oxford Atlas of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Next month, we will continue

to explore other primary source materials, and please continue to send suggestions for future ‘The Source’ columns to the email address shown below. Good luck in your quest to learn more!

Michael K. Shaffer: a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, remains a member of

the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com, or request speaking engagements via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net.

Follow Michael on Facebook www. facebook.com/michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @michaelkshaffer.

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A small sampling of the successes for our consignors in our March 2016 sale

LeMat SN 8, General P.G.T. Beauregard’s Personal Revolver and Finest Known.

(Bryan Collection) (est: $200,000-$300,000)

“Sisterdale Texas” Dragoon Army Revolver (Only Example Known to Exist) (Bryan Collection) (est. $150,000-250,000)

Sold for $253,000

Rare And Historic Confederate Lt Colonel’s Coat of William Hulsey, Commander of 42nd Georgia and Later Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia (est. $40,000-$60,000)

Sold for $40,000

Sold for $224,250

Rare L.E. Tucker Lancaster Texas Confederate Navy Revolver (Bryan Coll.) (est. $150,000-250,000)

Rare Cofer Portsmouth, Va. Percussion Confederate Revolver (Bryan Coll.) (est. $100,000-150,000)

Sold for $172,500

Sold for $149,500

Collection of Fifteen Charleston, South Carolina, “Slave Hire” Tags 1803-1850 (est. $60,000-90,000)

Civil War Model 1861 Parrott Rifle Cannon Made For State of NY; Believed to Have Been Used By NY Light Artillery at Battle of Gettysburg In The Wheatfield (est. $40,000-65,000)

Sold for $86,250

Sold for $80,500

“Memphis Novelty Works” Confederate “Floating CS” Clip Point Bowie Knife ( John Ashworth Coll.) (est. $30,000-40,000)

Sold for $34,500

Very Rare Extraordinary and Historical Captured Civil War Battle Flag of The 45th Pennsylvania (est. $40,000-60,000)

Sold for $57,500

Fine And Rare “Novelty Works” Marked Thomas Leech, Memphis Confederate Side Knife (est. $8,000-$12,000)

Sold for $18,400

Fine & Rare Keen Walker Confederate Brass Frame Tilt Breech Carbine (est. $20,000-$30,000)

Sold for $34,500 13 Star Confederate 1st Nat. Battle Flag of Jeff Thompson’s MO Legion Captured at Island No. 10, Near New Madrid, Missouri April 1862 (est. $20,000-30,000)

Sold for $43,125

Seller’s Commission Rates on High Value Items as low as...

0

%

Colt Model 1883 U.S. Navy Gatling Gun (est. $150,000-250,000)

Sold $322,000

Contact: Francis Lombardi | Email: firearms@jamesdjulia.com | Tel: + 1 207 453-7125 Fax: (207) 453-2502 | www.jamesdjulia.com | Auctioneer: James D. Julia | Lic#: ME:AR83 | MA: AU1406 | NH 2511

Civil War News

14

– Briefs

of

Civil War News Interest –

Gettysburg NMP GETTYSBURG, Pa.—Gettysburg National Military Park honors Walter “Buzzy” Baker and Josh Francisco.

Gettysburg National Military Park recently recognized two employees with incentive awards. Walter “Buzzy” Baker and Joshua Francisco were recognized for outstanding

performance of their jobs supporting the maintenance of Gettysburg National Military Park and the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Ed Clark, Gettysburg National Military Park superintendent, presented the awards.

From left, Walter “Buzzy” Baker, award winner; Superintendent Ed Clark; Joshua Francisco, award winner; and incentive awards committee chair Greg Goodell.

New Bern Names Mikey Miller As Executor Director NEW BERN, N.C.—Mickey Miller Named Executive Director New Bern Historical Society. New Bern Historical Society President, Nelson McDaniel announced that after an extensive search, the Society has a New Executive Director in Mickey McAninch Miller. “I am pleased to announce the Board’s decision. Mickey brings a passion and an experience that will serve the mission of the Society and the community very well. She follows Executive Director Lynne Harakal,

who resigned the position to become the executive director at Swiss Bear.”

Mickey says she believes “in investing in the community through civic engagement.” She will continue to do so with the Historical Society whose mission is to celebrate and promote New Bern and its heritage through events and education.

For more information about the New Bern Historical Society, call 252-638-8558 or go to www.

NewBernHistorical.org.

Mickey Miller, new Executive Director at New Bern Historical Society at the historic Attmore Oliver House, home of the Society’s offices.

Civil War Catalog Featuring a large assortment of Civil War and Indian War autographs, accoutrements, memorabilia, medals, insignia, buttons, GAR, documents, photos, & books.

National Civil War Museum, Dauphin County Win Award

Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield Park Possible Acquisition

HARRISBURG, Pa.—The Dauphin County and the National Civil War Museum were honored by the Harrisburg Regional Visitors Bureau with an “Excellence in Programming Award” for their role in producing the Lost Story Lecture Series: African Americans in the Civil War. “Everyone involved in the project is very proud to have received this award,” Snyder said during his acceptance speech. “We thank Commissioner Haste and Dauphin County staff for their support and contributions that made this program possible. And we want to thank museum staff and the visiting public for their continued commitment to the museum and our historic programming.”

Snyder said the museum will continue to play a major role in regional tourism and diverse event programming.

Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste and the National Civil War Museum Board Chairman Burt Snyder received the award at the bureau’s recent 4th Annual Partner In Tourism Awards event. For information about the National Civil War Museum can be found at www.nationalcivilwarmuseum.org

MARIETTA, Ga.—The Wallis House near Kennesaw Mountain is nearer to its inclusion in the National Park system On February 24, the House of Representatives passed a resolution authorizing the Department of the Interior to accept an 8 acre property through donation or exchange.

The property, owned by Cobb County, includes the Wallis House, used as a hospital and headquarters.

The resolution is necessary because the property is not contiguous to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. During a tour with Ed Bearss, Park Superintendent Nancy Walther was optimistic that the property will be added to the park, though the house will require work that is not yet funded.

Bennett Place State Historic Site Events DURHAM, N.C.—On Tuesday May 10th Bennett Place State Historic Site will commemorate Confederate Memorial Day with living historians on site between 10 am to 4 pm. Learn how this traditional observance of sacrifice and honor began in 1866 by the ladies of Columbus, Georgia and how it evolved in to the national recognition of all American soldiers known as Memorial Day. Location: 4409 Bennett Memorial Rd. Durham, NC 27705.

Free to the public. For information please call 919-383-4345 or email us at bennett@ncdcr.gov.

On May 28th and 29th Bennett Place Historic Site will be hosting our 10th annual Memorial Day Military Timeline Event. Join military living historians representing the American soldier of all time periods throughout our nation’s history and learn about the uniforms and weapons and how they evolved over the years. There will be weapons demonstrations periodically each day and a military salute to all those who served will take place each afternoon at the Unity Monument. Free to the public. Hours for this event are Sat. 10-4 and Sun. 10-3. Location is: 4409 Bennett Memorial Road Durham, NC 27705 For more information 919-383-4345 or bennett@ncdcr.gov

Please visit our fully illustrated online catalog at

www.mikebrackin.com Free copy mail catalog

Mike Brackin

May 2016

PO Box 652, Winterville, NC 28590 • 252-565-8810

Find us on Facebook facebook.com/CivilWarNews

Confederate Collector Steve Mullinax Passing VILLA RICA, Ga.—Steve Eugene Mullinax, age 69, passed away March 16, 2016, at his residence.

Born February 15, 1947, in Villa Rica, he was the son of the late Eugene Mullinax and Ann Marchman Mullinax. He grew up in his families grocery store Mullinax Grocery in downtown Villa Rica. He graduated from Villa Rica High School in 1965 and worked for Ford Motor Company for 20 years.

Steve had a lifelong love for Civil War Memorabilia and Artifacts. He authored several books was well respected and admired for his wealth of knowledge. He was best known for the book, Confederate Buckles & Plates; that stands today as the reference work for Confederate belt buckles and other associated belt plates. He was often called upon to authenticate artifacts and was considered an expert in this field. Steve also loved horses and breed World Champion Morgan Horses. He was a Christian and a member of the Church of Christ.

Survivors include his loving wife of 38 years, Patricia Lamar Mullinax; step-son and daughter-in-law, Todd and Carol Parrish, brother-inlaw and sister-in-law, Ronnie and Nancy Lamar, niece and nephew, Jaime and Jason McLain, nephew, Josh Lamar, and great niece, Faith McLain.

Deadlines for submissions or advertising is April 25 for June issue.

Civil War Trust Awarded 4-Star Rating WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Civil War Trust, the nation’s largest non-profit organization, devoted to the preservation of America’s Battlegrounds, has earned a prestigious 4-star ranking for the seventh consecutive year from America’s leading evaluator of charity, the Charity Navigator. They were given an overall rating of 94.62 on a scale of 100.

The Civil War Trust continues to meet all of the 20 standards required to be accredited by the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance and last November; they were named a Top-Rated 2015 Nonprofit

by GreatNonprofits whose awards are based on testimonials from donors, volunteers and clients.

These awards are a testament that the Civil War Trust is making a real difference in the preservation of not only Civil War battlegrounds, but also those connected to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

For more information visit www. civilwar.org

Myth Of The Lost Cause The Smithsonian Institution videotaped our very own Civil War News Book Editor, Ed Bonekemper’s recent sold-out (265 people) presentation on “The Myth of the Lost Cause.” His talk was based on his recent book, The Myth Of The Lost Cause: Why The South Fought The Civil War And Why The North Won (Regnery History). The following link is to the video of that program: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/85049153 A C-Span 3 American History telecast is expected to follow. Ed has had the pleasure of discussing this topic with many of your CWRTs.

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May 2016

The Watchdog

By Craig L. Barry

Personalized Muskets During a recent visit to the Springfield Armory Museum there was a video program which included a re-enacted segment about 19th century British officers from the Royal Small Arms Manufactory inquiring about a gun stock being cut on a lathe. The British officer asks the American machinist, “So every stock will be exactly the same?” The American replied that was correct, “as long as the blades are kept sharp the stocks will be exactly the same.”

Those who have made a careful study of Civil War muskets can tell you that this was one of the biggest advantages of the U.S. model 1861 as compared to the English P53 Enfield, the interchangeable parts. We know soldiers became attached to their issued weapons and since they did, how did they tell their musket from another when they all looked pretty much the same?

Addressing this, the Springfield Armory museum states, “Civil War infantrymen, just as soldiers of all wars, ignored regulations and decorated or modified their equipment to reflect their tastes and inclinations.

Flags and drums were emblazoned

with the names of battles and campaigns. Most common, however, was the individualization of the basic infantryman’s weapon, the musket or rifle.

While the quality of ornamentation varies, each is unique and interesting as a reflection of the life of the soldier.” If this is indeed the case, what are the implications for the living history community? How common was the practice? Should those concerned with “getting it right” also personalize their musket?

Well, not so fast…to start with there were (and still are) government regulations prohibiting personalization of issued equipment. To the Army, the soldier is the mechanism necessary to fire the musket. If injured or killed, the musket will be reissued to another soldier. Technically speaking, no ordnance is the property of the soldier – it is entrusted to his care but remains the property of the government or at least the company commander who receipted for it. If Civil War soldiers did carve their name in the stock of their musket, they could expect to be fined for the offense. So why would they do so?

One of the things which is fascinating about the Civil War-era

Civil War News is not just how familiar the actions of soldiers seem compared to people today, but the odd differences in everyday attitudes. Treatment of government property might just be one more area of subtle indifference.

Individual soldiers may not have cared or even been aware of what regulations or Ordnance Department instructions called for in the care of issued weapons. Illiteracy was not a thing unknown.

There is an amusing anecdote told

by John Holland, Chairman of the N-SSA Small Arms Committee, “I know firsthand of a family heirloom musket, complete with belt, buckle, cap box, sling, bayonet and scabbard which includes the papers showing purchase at time of discharge.

The musket’s stock is beautifully chip carved with his name and regiment. Every paper the family has which was signed by their German soldier relative is signed with “his mark,” usually an X, sometimes a cross, and witnessed by someone else. The family was baffled as to how he was able to carve his name when he was illiterate. Well very simply, he got someone else to do it for him!”

Sometimes the barrel finish was removed to personalize the weapon. A famous example is “Florence Fleming” which was the name of the rifle belonging to Sam Watkins messmate W. A. Hughes in his famous memoirs Company Aytch. Watkins notes that it was “the brightest gun in the whole army.”

After Hughes was mortally injured in July 1864, he asked that Watkins

15

A customized and personalized U.S. 1835/40 musket.

(Collectors Firearms, Houston, TX) receive some personal effects along with the rifle “Florence Fleming,” which Sam Watkins carried until the surrender at Bentonville, N.C. in 1865. Watkins writes the rifle had the name on the stock in silver letters.

It may have been in tacks. However, not much else is said about it after that. Watkins makes so many mentions of using his P53 Enfield that many readers just assumed “Florence Fleming” was an English Enfield long rifle that had been polished or “struck bright.” That may or may not have been the case.

In the Ordnance Returns for the 1st Tenn. (Watkins was in Company H of the 1st Tenn.), the records actually show a mixture of U.S. models and P53 Enfields in the ranks.

According to information from their service records, 1st and 2nd quarter of 1864 Col. Feild’s Ordnance repot shows the 1st, & 27th. Tenn. armed with 74 Enfields, and 174 .58 Cal. Rifled Muskets.

This return is dated June 30th, 1864 from Marietta, Ga. In a report of ordnance issued to Col. Feild’s Regt. at Dalton, Ga., April 20th, 1864 by Alex Allison acting Ordnance Officer Maney’s Brigade lists 20 Springfield Rifles Cal. .58 issued to the 1st. & 27th. Tenn. So whether it was a U.S., C.S. or imported model and whatever the markings on “Florence Fleming” may have been, there was certainly no attempt by Sam Watkins or the previous owner to concern himself with following the Army regulations to the letter on the matter of personalization.

So what happened with these personalized weapons after the war ended? Did soldiers keep them or turn them in? Under the provisions of General Order 101, May 30, 1865, discharged Federal soldiers were permitted to purchase their arms and take them home with them. Muskets of all types, with or without accoutrements, cost $6.

Spencer carbines, with or without accoutrements cost $10, while all other carbines and revolvers cost $8. Under G.O. 101, Union soldiers purchased 116,677 “muskets”; including 96,238 U.S. models, 19,882 Enfields, and 557 “others.”

(U.S. Congressional Serial 1497, pp. 167-72; G.O. 101) Obviously, paroled Confederate soldiers at the end of the war were not allowed to purchase their rifles or muskets and take them home.

A final point as to commonality of the practice, while there are certainly a number of notable personalized weapons, in terms of total surviving artifacts the numbers of unmarked muskets far exceeds the personalized examples. And what also remains unknown is during what time period the personalization took place.

After examining surviving originals, it can be hard to know if an individual soldier carved his name, company, or other artwork on his gun stock in 1862 or 1892. While we do see markings on gun stocks from the Civil War, there are some pretty good reasons why we don’t see more, despite soldiers’ latent desire to personalize their equipment.

So back to the original topic...

“Should I or should I not personalize my musket by carving (inlaying or whatever) the gun stock?” While ultimately a personal decision, we can answer the question of whether doing so improves or lowers the historical feature accuracy of the reproduction weapon. It probably has no effect.

The point being, soldiers varied on the practice and there are a variety of other ways to make your weapon individually distinctive enough to spot at a glance without chopping it up.

For example, a different lock plate date than the musket came with out of the box, or better yet...fit it with an original lock plate. It will stand out in the stack of muskets at a glance.

Civil War News

16

May 2016

Full-Throated Defender Of Hood

By Stephen Davis

Upon learning that John B. Hood had been placed in command of the Army of Tennessee in mid-July 1864, Confederate Maj. Gen. William H. T. Walker, division commander in the army, wrote his wife Mary, “Hood has ‘gone up like a rocket.’ It is to be hoped…that ‘he will not come down like the stick.’”

Well, we know that six months later, Hood had come down like the stick—or worse. After losing Atlanta to Sherman in September, two months later he led his army, more than 30,000 strong, on a quixotic campaign into Tennessee. He ordered a frontal assault at Franklin on November 30 that cost 6,250 casualties. Then, even more quixotically, he marched north toward Nashville and dug in, awaiting attack by George H. Thomas’ army. When Thomas did so with overwhelming numbers, Hood’s line collapsed in utter rout—the only one in the war for a Confederate army. By the time it hobbled back to Tupelo, Mississippi in January 1865, the Army of Tennessee had essentially ceased to exist as an organized fighting force.

Hood may have sensed that he was about to be relieved of command—

he was—but he beat the government by offering his resignation in mid-January. It was accepted in two days.

You’d think that an army commander’s colossal collapse, such as Hood suffered, would have led his officers after the war to remember him bitterly and condemningly.

This was not the case universally.

Just look at Lt. Col. Bushrod Washington Frobel of Virginia (18251888).

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Frobel acquired engineering skills at Annapolis. He offered his services to Governor Letcher after the state seceded, and was quickly commissioned lieutenant in the Virginia state navy. In early October Frobel transferred to the army artillery, in which service he was promoted to captain. Frobel commanded a battery on the lower Potomac in the autumn of 1861. Gen. Chase Whiting, in charge of the area, took a shine to Frobel, and appointed him to his staff. In the Seven Days’ Battles Frobel distinguished himself, such that he became Chief of Artillery for John B. Hood’s infantry division and promoted to major in July ’62. His battalion comprised three batteries

from the Carolinas. He directed their action in Lee’s next battles, Second Manassas and Sharpsburg. On the morning of September 17, against Hooker’s I Corps attack on the Confederate left, Frobel’s gunners fired until they ran out of ammunition.

Two months later, on November 8, Frobel was ordered to a new front, Wilmington, North Carolina. He would report to his former commander, Major General Whiting, who had taken charge of the Military District of Cape Fear. Frobel assumed the position of Whiting’s artillery chief, directing the guns which were being placed to protect the important port city. He also supervised the building of fortifications. Despite the work, life at the beach was pleasant. “We live very nicely, have everything we want,” he wrote his sister Elizabeth in the spring of 1863. Frobel was promoted lieutenant colonel in midJune1863.

Frobel had won promotion from lieutenant to lieutenant colonel largely as an artillery officer, but it was his talent as engineer which brought him his next major assignment. On August 4, 1864 Frobel was ordered by the War Department to report to Gen. John B. Hood, commanding

After arriving in Atlanta as Assistant Chief Engineer for Hood’s army, Lieutenant Colonel Frobel spent the rest of August supervising workers strengthening the city’s fortifications. His diary reads: “August 31st. Large details, together with six hundred and fifty negroes, have been set to work on the inner line, completing the redoubts and strengthening the position by connecting them with a heavy stockade of green timber.”

(Library of Congress)

May 2016 the Confederate army defending Atlanta. The month before, Richmond had already transferred one of Lee’s leading engineers, Maj. Gen. Martin L. Smith, to become chief engineer of Hood’s army. It is not known whether Hood, given Frobel’s service under him in Virginia in 1862, had asked the War Department to send him to Atlanta. But it was logical for the administration to send another good engineer to help Hood with his fortifications protecting the vital city.

After a circuitous train trip, Frobel arrived in Atlanta, and sought out Hood’s headquarters, which were at John S. Thrasher’s house on Whitehall Street. “I met my old commanding officer, General Hood, who received me cordially,” Frobel later wrote. Frobel pitched his tent in Thrasher’s backyard, and assumed his role as Assistant Engineer-in-Chief for the Army of Tennessee, reporting to Major General Smith.

There was much work for Frobel.

Sherman’s three armies were investing Atlanta in a semi-siege; their lines stretched from east of Atlanta, around its north to west and southwest of it. Sherman’s goal was to cut the last railroad feeding Hood’s army from Macon to the south. As the campaign settled into a kind of sitzkrieg, Yankee artillerymen cannonaded the Confederates in their entrenchments daily, as well as lobbing shells into the city against the remaining populace. Hood kept his engineers and soldiers constantly strengthening their works; Frobel sited new artillery forts, occasionally in company of Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith, commander of the Georgia Militia in the city.

Sherman broke the deadlock in the last days of August by swinging six infantry corps in a wide march southwest of Atlanta. In mid-afternoon of the 31st, Federals descended upon the Macon & Western Railroad eight miles north of Jonesboro. Word quickly got back to General Hood, who was compelled to order an evacuation of the city.

Sherman allowed Hood to withdraw his army southwest of Atlanta.

At Palmetto, September 25-27, Jefferson Davis met Hood, reviewed the troops, and talked strategy. With the president’s approval, Hood led his army on September 29 northward into Sherman’s rear, where he planned to tear up the single-track railway supplying the enemy forces in Atlanta, and from there head into north Alabama.

Hood’s new campaign, of course, laid open to Yankee raiders the important manufacturing cities of Macon and Augusta. Hood dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Frobel to Macon to become engineer-in-charge of fortifying that city. Two months later, Frobel was in Savannah, helping efforts to strengthen its defenses.

When Sherman approached the city in December, Frobel oversaw the laying of the pontoon bridges across the Savannah River which allowed General Hardee’s troops to escape.

In spring 1865 he was in Macon, where he presumably surrendered himself to Federal forces.

After the war Frobel did not return to Virginia, but took residence

Civil War News in Georgia. In December 1865 the state legislature created the position of Superintendent of Public Works.

Frobel got the job and spent the next few years in Milledgeville, then the state capital, rebuilding the governor’s mansion, statehouse and other buildings.

It is not known whether Frobel wrote for publication before the war, but afterward he proved himself a talented writer. After Rev. William J. Scott launched Scott’s Monthly Magazine in Atlanta in December 1865, Frobel contributed two series of articles about the war and his Confederate service. A thirty-chapter series entitled “Field and Camp; or. The Recorded Facts of an Eye-witness to Numerous Important Events and Occurrences Both in Field and Camp, During the Late Four Years’ War” appeared in fourteen installments running in Scott’s from September 1866 to December 1867. Curiously, Frobel never identified himself by name—he signed himself merely “An Officer”—but his narrative is clearly autobiographical. His first article begins, “on the 20th of April, 1861, I took the cars at Alexandria, Virginia, and started for Richmond by way of Gordonsville.”

“Field and Camp” ends with General Whiting calling Frobel to Wilmington in the fall of 1862.

While much of his attention is on “the General”—Whiting—Frobel offers occasional glimpses of John B. Hood. They are uniformly flattering. “It was an easy matter to find Hood” on the battlefield, he writes of the engagement at Eltham’s Landing on the Peninsula in May 1862. “As the fire from his brigade was almost continuous, I had only to go to where the fight was the hottest, and there he was sure to be.”

Frobel seems not to have written about his year-and-a-half at Wilmington. When he continued his war-narrative, it was in a series for Reverend Scott entitled, “The Georgia Campaign; or, a South-side View of Sherman’s March to the Sea.” Here again, Frobel did not sign his name to his writing, only referring to himself as “the author of ‘Field and Camp.’”

Eleven chapters of “The Georgia Campaign” were published in Scott’s during February 1868-March 1869.

As with his earlier series, this one is also strongly autobiographical.

With his subtitle “South-side View,” Frobel clearly signals to readers his pro-Confederate perspective on the war. Indeed, he does not confine himself to the Georgia Campaign, but surveys events in the western theater, such as Shiloh and Bragg’s raid into Kentucky in 1862.

Early on, Frobel establishes himself as a strong admirer of General Hood. In his second installment he recalls Hood’s battles in Virginia, 1862-63, referring to “Hood, the idol of his division, and the pride of Lee’s army.” “It is true Gettysburg claimed an arm, and Chickamauga a leg,” he concedes, “but it was still Hood—unconquered and undaunted as ever.”

In his description of the Atlanta Campaign, with its disagreements between Joe Johnston and Hood, Frobel obviously sides with the latter. President Davis was right in re-

lieving Johnston in mid-July 1864.

“He had abandoned the mountains because he did not believe he could longer hold them,” he explains, “and had been forced back, step by step, to the flat lands of Georgia to a point where no strong natural barrier presented itself between the invading army and the sea. Georgia was thoroughly alarmed.”

Then, when Hood took command of the Army of Tennessee, Frobel defends every decision he made trying to save Atlanta from Sherman’s capture. At Peachtree Creek, July 20, Hood had “met the enemy in open fight, had foiled his movement and had for the time saved Atlanta.”

On July 22, his flank attack on Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson’s army had failed to roll it up (like Stonewall Jackson’s had at Chancellorsville the year before). Yet “the partial success is but stronger evidence of the victory that would have resulted to our arms had Hood’s order been fully executed”—Frobel sided with Hood, too, in his criticism of Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee’s handling of the assault. Even the battle of Ezra Church, July 28, which resulted in a costly Confederate repulse, was seen positively. Because of it, the last railroad supplying the city, which Sherman hoped to break, “remained in our possession.” As a result of these three battles, the Southern people “began once more to take heart” and “confidently expected that Sherman would not only be met, but hurled back in one grand and overwhelming victory.”

In late July Sherman sent mounted columns raiding south of Atlanta; all Southerners rejoiced in their rout

by Joe Wheeler’s cavalry. Hood then dispatched Wheeler on a raid of his own to tear up Sherman’s railroad supply line. This Wheeler failed to do, but Frobel absolves Hood of blame for the decision: “The raid, though a failure so far as its main object was concerned , had the effect of causing Sherman considerable uneasiness—compelling him to send large bodies of troops to the rear for the protection of his communications.”

In late August Sherman, stymied

by Hood’s defense of the railroad to Macon, broke the deadlock by leading most of his army in a march toward Jonesboro. When Federals cut the Macon & Western, Hood was finally forced to evacuate Atlanta.

But even here Frobel finds no fault with the Confederate commander.

“From the beginning Gen. Hood had been satisfied that the move was designed to cut his communications,” Frobel writes, so he sent two corps to Jonesboro to prevent it. “This, it was hoped, would draw the attention of Sherman in that direction, and that he would abandon his works on the left, giving Hood a favorable opportunity of attacking him in flank.”

What?! I’ve read a lot about Hood’s decisions during August 2531, the decisive days of the Atlanta Campaign, but I’ve never read anything like this. In the literature Hood is usually criticized for a tardy, ineffective response to Sherman’s grand sweep to the right. Here, Bushrod Frobel lauds his sending of Hardee’s and Stephen D. Lee’s corps to Jonesboro, as it would divert Sherman and

17 give Hood “a favorable opportunity of attacking him in flank.”

After this exoneration, Frobel’s conclusion is predictable: “The defense of Atlanta, under the innumerable disadvantages with which it was conducted, reflected highest credit upon both the army and the General.”

Lieutenant Colonel Frobel’s defense of John B. Hood in the Atlanta Campaign is remarkable for three reasons: first, for its steadfastness, but also for its timing. The war had not even been over three years when Frobel began his “Georgia Campaign” series. Ex-Confederates were still publicly lamenting their defeat and searching themselves for the causes of their failure. Instead, Frobel was leading discussion on how, for one, John B. Hood had done his best to help the South win its War

Bushrod Washington Frobel (1825-1888) is buried in Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery. He spent his last years in nearby Marietta, earning his living as an engineer.

(Daniel T. Davis)

for Independence.

Finally, Bushrod Frobel’s articles are remarkable because they are so little known today.

Sources: Bushrod Washington Frobel Compiled Military Service Record, copy courtesy of W. Gaines Burnette of Tucker, Georgia (a greatgrand nephew); Ray M. Atchison, “Scott’s Monthly Magazine,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, Sept. 1965, 294-305.

Stephen Davis is a longtime Civil Warrior and avid book collector. His two paperbacks on the Atlanta Campaign, A Long and Bloody Task and All the Fighting They Want, will be published this summer as part of Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series.

Descendants of Lt. Col. Bushrod Frobel possess no photograph of him, but have this image of Frobel’s brother David.

Photograph courtesy of W. Gaines Burnette of Chamblee Ga., David Frobel’s great grandson.

Civil War News

18

May 2016

Civil War Steamer R.E. Lee Camp Hall Revels Discovered Off N.C. Its “Mercy Street” Connection

By Joan Wenner

WILMINGTON, N.C. – The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Office of Archaeology-Underwater announced a 225foot Civil War-era iron-hulled blockade runner has been found about 27 miles downstream from Wilmington near Fort Caswell at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, and the first such find in decades.

Due to its size, researchers believe that it is the wreck of the Scottish-built Agnes E. Fry, one of three sidewheel steamers lost. Part of the Union’s tightening grip along the North Carolina coast to impede navigation and particularly to block the flow of Confederate supplies at the major port of Wilmington on the banks of the Cape Fear River. Originally settled in the 1700s and where columns of Cox’s conquering Federals strutted up Market Street, today the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society in the restored Latimer House keeps guard downtown.

A routine sonar sweep in late February revealed the remarkably preserved state of the vessel with diving for examining as weather permits.

The operations are part of a project funded by the National Park Service through the American Battlefield Protection Program. Researchers aboard the Research Vessel Atlantic Surveyor initially recorded the sunken steamer and students from the East Carolina University Maritime Studies Program (who several years ago conserved shells from the CSS Neuse) will assist in gathering data.

Changing conditions in the area in recent years have revealed large portions of wrecks to be revealed 18 to 20 feet below the surface, rising 6-8 feet from the sand and protruding that much below, said

By Nancy Jennis Olds

Billy Ray Morris, state Director of the Underwater Archaeology Branch and Deputy State ArchaeologistUnderwater, told media sources when discovered. As identification proceeds to confirm the vessel as the Agnes E. Fry, it could also possibly shed light on her advanced British engine technology of the day; he said, The Official Records of the Union Navy note Federal officials writing these blockade runners were far faster than Union cruisers could catch.

Identification could also confirm, said Morris, that the Fry’s crew ran her aground rather than let the ship fall into enemy hands. The same was done with the famous blockade running “ghost ship” Georgianna when Confederate field artillery batteries destroyed her rather than let her be boarded when Union landing parties tried fetching her cargo of military stores when her captain ran her aground off the South Carolina coast.

Some of the blockade running steamers were able to carry 1,440-bales payloads of cotton on runs to Cuba and Bermuda and Nassau with total cargoes valued up to $400,000. The iron-hulled Britannia, for example, had early on (before captured as a prize) made several successful runs with munitions, war supplies, and other commerce through the blockade at Wilmington at the Cape Fear Inlet.

Other vessels of this type built in Britain for the Confederacy were to be sent as blockade runners and fitted out as warships upon their arrival, thus serving two purposes. Some, however, were completed too late in the war to be of any real use to the Confederacy.

Side-scan sonar photo of the Civil War wreck. (North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Raleigh)

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The City of Alexandria, established in 1749, has within its streets, monuments buildings and cemeteries compelling stories, which vastly enriches the historical reputation of this port city on the Potomac River in Virginia.

Very early on during the American Civil War, Alexandria became a vital region for the Union while maintaining its Southern roots. Visit many of the well-preserved historical buildings in “Old Town” and you will likely encounter numerous stories about the people who endured the ravages of wartime beyond the fields of battle.

A distinctive Greek Revival brick home with Italianate touches, the house on 806 Prince Street is just blocks away from Christ Church where the first president of the United States, George Washington, and his family shared a pew during another time and place in American history.

Robert E. Lee and his family were respected members of Christ Church before the Civil War changed everything. At the intersection of Prince Street and South Washington Street is a bronze monument of a standing soldier holding his wide-brimmed hat, his arms crossed with his head bowed and faced due south. The stoic soldier wears a haversack and canteen over his shoulder, but his weapons are missing. The house on 806 Prince Street and the Appomattox monument showing a sorrowful but unbroken soldier have more stories in common to share about Civil War Alexandria.

On this particular Sunday in January, the members of the Mary Custis Lee-17th Virginia Regiment Chapter 7 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy held an open house for their members and guests in the early afternoon. Engaged in conversation in the R.E. Lee Camp Hall Museum was Al Stone of Lee’s Lieutenants, a Civil War living history organization. Stone, who bears a striking resemblance to Lee, was attired in the general’s uniform. Although he appeared in formal military dress, this was not the General Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia, but Robert E. Lee, president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, visiting Alexandria before returning home to face his relentless mission of restoring this financially and academically devastated institution at the end of the war.

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Guests and members, including several representatives from Lee’s Lieutenants and the 17th Virginia Infantry Company D, Fairfax Rifles, were attired in period civilian clothing. Light refreshments were served as sleet and snow fell outside.

I enjoyed meeting with some of the UDC members and their affiliates while taking photos of President R.E. Lee in their presence. Caroline “Caro” Eaton served as a docent for all the visitors who wished to join her tour of the house.

R.E. Lee Camp Hall Museum.

Caroline “Caro” Eaton served as a docent for the Mary Custis Lee17th Virginia Regiment Chapter 7, UDC. Al Stone portrays President Robert E. Lee of Washington College in Lexington, Va.

(Nancy Jennis Olds) This immaculately preserved house and museum are symbolic of the Confederate influences during the war, but the building contains traces of what happened to the City of Alexandria after Virginia seceded from the Union on May 23, 1861.

Martial law was enforced when Federal troops occupied Alexandria. The previously prominent port city was transformed into a federal supply depot, military posts and hospitals, many hospitals. A good number of residents fled the city and their homes were seized. Those who remained

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faced uncertainty if they did not take the oath of allegiance. The new PBS series, “Mercy Street”, concentrates mainly on the activities that occurred at one hospital, the Mansion House General Hospital, formerly the Mansion House, a luxury hotel owned by the wealthy Green family. However, the Johnston House at 806 Prince Street, built in 1852, and owned by Reverend James T. Johnston, and the house directly across the street from the Johnston House, the Fowle House, were well known as the Prince Street General Hospital during the war. These two buildings became a branch of the Mansion House General Hospital from March 1862 to September 1862. Afterward, the buildings became part of the 2nd Division General Hospitals.

Reverend James T. Johnston and his wife vacated their home and lived in Richmond after their house was seized.

These hospitals received patients transported from the field hospitals on the battlefields. The sick and the wounded were transported by train to Alexandria to provide long-term care and convalescence for these patients.

Dr. Alfred Summers was the medical director of the 2nd Division and Dr. St. John was the surgeon in charge of the Prince Street General Hospital.

Confederate wounded were said to be sheltered in the Johnston House basement.

The president of the Mary Lee Custis-17th Virginia Regiment Chapter 7 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Debby Mullins, was able to provide me with more insight into the medical aspects of the Johnston House (Prince Street Hospital). According to President Mullins, the two parlors on the first floor (where the meeting rooms are for the UDC members) would have had room for fourteen patients and two attendants. The entire house would have provided enough capacity for ninety-five people.

Mullins recollected a story that she read in a book edited by Michael Stevens called As If It Were Glory: Robert Beecham’s Civil War from the Iron Brigade to the Black Regiments. Robert K. Beecham, who had initially enlisted in the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, was a patient at the Prince Street General Hospital in April 1862. He was able to provide vivid accounts of the hospital as well as a telling account of the food served to the patients who were deemed “convalescent”, or almost ready to return to their regiments.

Beecham described the hospital as “neat, clean and orderly”. However, the menu, “a la Prince Street Hospital”, prepared for the “convalescent” patients, was sparse, highly salted, with the bread nearly the only item of any redeeming quality. Moreover, the patients had “neither a chair, bench nor stool”, so they were forced to eat “sat upon our feet”. On occasion, Beechman wrote, they received some vegetable soup, sometimes boiled potatoes and a tiny portion of meat, without the vegetable soup.

May 2016 Perhaps, as Mullins suggested, this method was conceived to convince the patients to leave the comforts of the hospital with more urgency! Unfortunately for Private Beechman, he became infirmed again after joining his regiment and repeated the whole ordeal as a patient at Mansion House General Hospital with the same semi-humorous and bleak assortment of culinary delights! However, Beechman decided to persevere, finding a kind chaplain who offered to “consolidate forces with mine and together we captured the fort”.

Some of the UDC members have experienced the smell boiled potatoes in rooms where they have encountered spirits or the paranormal. Yes, the Johnston House seems to be haunted. About eight years ago, according to Mullins, a group specializing in the paranormal was invited to conduct their investigations. They indicated that the basement possessed a greater degree of supernatural activity.

Coincidentally or not, Confederate prisoners were kept in a cell in the basement. The partition to the holding cell was constructed with wooden slats. A restorer confirmed that the hinges supporting the lockup were 1860s vintage. As President Mullins was walking by the cell one day while describing the history of the basement to two members, she felt a chilling blast of air down her back. One of the participants tried to take a photo of the supporting brick post. The resulting image was of

Civil War News “an amorphous mass”, according to Mullins.

Homes, churches, hotels and other buildings, which were converted into hospitals, were places where surgeons, stewards and nurses worked tediously around the clock to care for patients who suffered agonizing pain, and who were traumatized and maimed both physically and mentally. There is no doubt that the City of

19

Alexandria had more than its share of misery during the Civil War. It would be highly unlikely that their spirits would leave such hallowed places. For more information: R.E. Lee Camp Hall Museum 806 Prince Street Alexandria, Virginia 22314 Phone: (703) 519-2123 Email: relcamphall@hotmail.com

Al Stone and Debby Mullins, president of the Mary Custis Lee-17th Virginia Regiment Chapter 7, UDC pose for photographs during the event. (Nancy Jennis Olds)

Gathered by General Lee’s portrait: Front: Al Stone. Rear, L-R: Debbie Page-Maples, a member of the 17th Virginia Infantry, Co D, Fairfax Rifles. Tom Maples (son), a member of the 17th Virginia Infantry, Co D, Fairfax Rifles. Mark Whitenton, a member of the 17th Virginia Infantry, Co D, Fairfax Rifles, a member of Lee’s Lieutenants portraying General Joseph E. Johnson and vice president of the BRCWRT (Bull Run Civil War Round Table). Drew Pallo, a member of Lee’s Lieutenants who usually portrays General Samuel Cooper.

20

– Reviews

Civil War News

of

Pricey, Graphic Books About Plantation Violence, Slavery Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South. By Jeff Forret. Notes, charts, bibliography, index, 530 pp., 2015, LSU Press, www.lsu.edu, $65.

You have to really be interested in slavery to appreciate this book. Besides having that appreciation, you had better be prepared to pay $65 to show that appreciation.

Be prepared for some pretty graphic depictions of violence. Be aware that author Jeff Forret will also question if slaves committing violence against each other has anything to do with black-on-black crime today.

And finally, readers will have to be prepared to suffer some eye strain to read the text.

I don’t think most people will enjoy this book. If they do, they must have sadistic tendencies because the writer cites hundreds of incidents in minute detail of slaves hitting, stabbing, maiming and often killing other slaves.

He also details some particularly gruesome treatments of slaves by their owners. In one case an owner branded a slave who was loosely

bound to a tree in order to punish him for the crime of visiting his slave “wife” on another plantation without the owner’s permission. The slave scraped himself bloody against the tree trying to evade the owner’s hot branding iron.

I admire the writer’s diligence in tracking down and publishing these slave stories, mostly found in court records, but the book quickly gets repetitive. One only needs to read about a few murders before getting the picture.

There are some interesting tidbits Forret turns up, such as white-onwhite crime occurring much more often in the Old South than blackon-black crime. And (spoiler alert!) many of the crimes slaves committed against each other happened when they had been drinking and gambling. They were kind of like white folks in that respect.

From a practical reading standpoint, the heavy serifs of the typeface seem small and hard to read.

Forret also does not like paragraphs much; two paragraphs often take up an entire page. The overall effect is that the pages seem to dazzle one’s eyes.

A larger typeface and more paragraphs creating some white space might have lessened that effect.

But the book is already 395 densely packed pages of copy, and the publisher may have chosen to pack in as many words in as few pages as possible to keep the price down. I consider the $65 price tag for such a specialty market book to be too high.

If the details of slavery interest you, you may buy the book. If you are looking for a Civil War book, you won’t.

Reviewer Clint Johnson has written 12 Civil War and American Revolution history and historical travel books.

May 2016

Civil War Books –

Douglass’s Visit To Ireland Affected Abolitionist Views Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Odyssey and the Making of an American Visionary.

By Tom Chaffin. Illustrated, photos, map, 328 pp., 2014, Virginia, www. upress.virginia.edu, $29.95.

This is a hyper-focused biography of Frederick Douglass. Specifically, it chronicles Douglass’s 1845-47 lecture tour of England, Ireland and Scotland.

Even though the vast majority of the book investigates his European tour, the last two sections explain how the tour impacted Douglass, his politics in America and the world at large.

SHARPSHOOTER

Maturity is one major theme that Tom Chaffin develops throughout all five sections. This maturity grows on two different levels: Douglass’s personal maturity and his development as a politician who cares about and advocates to rectify social and political inequality on a global scale.

Chaffin makes excellent use of primary sources, including Douglass’s personal correspondence. He skillfully weaves in quotations to prove his ideas and help familiarize readers with Douglass’s unique perspective and political voice.

The author includes a chronology to parallel the major events of Douglass’s life with the salient contemporary events and conditions in America and Europe.

The book’s copious citations are another great strength. Since he uses endnotes, his voluminous citations do not slow down the narrative. Instead, the endnotes serve as an excellent research tool to help readers find the necessary sources for deeper investigation.

The graphics are extremely helpful as they create a visual context to better understand Douglass and his time period. The many types of graphics include political cartoons, lithographs, photographs, illustrations and portraits.

One of the most haunting images shows poverty-stricken Irish peasants vying for admittance into a workhouse. As if the image isn’t striking enough, the caption explains the dismal conditions Irish endured

VOLUME 1

Fred L. Ray, Ed.

Reviewer Evan McLaughlin, a Muhlenberg College graduate, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a social studies teacher at Mountain View Middle School in Mendham, N.J.

witness of a sort “thatA historians rarely encounter.

The Selected Letters and Papers of Maj. Eugene Blackford, C.S.A.

while living in these British-operated facilities.

By connecting the plight of the Irish to that of African-American slaves, Chaffin provides a much more complete understanding of how Ireland and the struggle of its people impacted Douglass’s abolitionist politics.

These images connect seamlessly with Douglass’s letters describing the crushing poverty he witnessed in Ireland.

This book is enthusiastically recommended for readers who enjoy detailed biographies.

Although connections to the American Civil War are mostly made through social and political comparison and commentary regarding Douglass’s European tour, readers interested in how one of the most famous abolitionists developed and honed his views overseas will greatly appreciate Giant’s Causeway.

”

SHARPSHOOTER The Selected Letters and Papers of Maj. Eugene Blackford, C.S.A. Edited by Fred L. Ray

A Virginia officer in an Alabama regiment, commander the Army of Northern Virginia’s elite sharpshooters, Eugene Blackford’s correspondence spans nearly the entire war and allows a modern reader to see this turbulent era through the eyes of someone who lived it. His accounts of the sharpshooters; battles like Chancellorsville and Gettysburg; camp life; army leaders; and national and regimental politics are detailed and exceptional. Volume 1 of 3.

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Soldier Letters Small Part Henry Clay Was Greatest Statesman Of Book With Poor Essays So Much Blood: The Civil War Letters of CSA Private William Wallace Beard 1861-1865. Edited

by Virginia Cornue and William R. Trotter. Illustrated, photos, bibliography, 529 pp., 2015, Creative Books, www.somuchblood:civilwarletters. com, $23.95 softcover.

Born in Mecklenburg County, N.C., in 1836, William Beard moved to Mississippi. When war came he enlisted in Co. G of the 18th Mississippi Infantry Regiment.

Beard served with the regiment throughout the war, but he was often on the sick list. Captured in May 1863, he missed Gettysburg. In April 1865 the Yankees again took him prisoner during the retreat from Richmond. After his release the following June, he returned to Mississippi, where he lived until his death in July 1900.

The letters and other documents in this collection contain a fair amount of useful information on Beard’s army life, including his time as a

prisoner. Some of these documents were published in a local newspaper in the 1970s.

The 33 documents make up only about one-fourth of the book. The remainder consists of essays by Virginia Cornue and William Trotter on different topics, few of which relate to Beard and many of which are marred by glaring errors.

Jefferson Davis and Braxton Bragg were not West Point classmates; Stonewall Jackson’s first name was not “Joseph”; a clash of mounted units near the Pamunkey River on May 28, 1864, was not “what may well have been the largest cavalry-versus-cavalry battle ever fought in Virginia,” and so on.

A photograph of dead soldiers on “Spotsylvania Court House Battlefield” shows some of the dead at Gettysburg.

A simple check of a few sources would have shown that Gen. Robert Hoke’s division went to Wilmington, N.C., in December 1864. Instead, the editors confess their inability to determine if Beard’s Hoke Division reference was to North Carolina or Delaware. (A full Confederate division roaming around far behind Union lines in December 1864!)

The tiny maps are almost useless.

The editors’ writing is frequently ridiculous (to be kind about it): “Bobby Lee” defeated Joseph Hooker, who was “almost feverishly randy for the White House.” Gen. William J. Sherman “didn’t give a rat’s ass how many barns his troops burned.”

Read the book for Beard’s letters.

Reviewer Richard M. McMurry, an independent scholar in Dalton, Ga., is working on a study of Joseph E. Johnston’s role in the Confederate military history.

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Henry Clay: America’s Greatest Statesman. By Harlow Giles Unger.

Illustrations, appendices, notes, index, 318 pp., 2015, Da Capo Press, www.dacapopress.com, $25.99.

Many readers know of the American Presidents series (Henry Holt and Company), a string of concise volumes about the nation’s chief executives edited by the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Henry Clay, a five-time presidential aspirant, never gained the nation’s highest office.

Had Clay attained his lifelong goal, Harlow Giles Unger’s superlative biography of the Kentucky statesman would have made a perfect addition to the series since it offers what other biographers do not, an economically-sized volume of one of the nation’s central political actors.

Unger, a retired journalist and historian, knows the revolutionary, early national and antebellum periods well. He has written biographies of a number of the Founders as well as other giants who shared the American political stage with Clay, such as John Quincy Adams and John Marshall.

That Unger believes Clay to have been a figure of enormous importance is made obvious in the subtitle.

Indeed, in reading through the short introduction, I feared that Unger’s treatment of Clay’s life would succumb to hagiography, a fate common to many biographers.

Such worries were soon dispelled, as the author, making generous use of Lincoln’s eulogy of Clay, demonstrates time and again why Kentucky’s adopted son came to be known deservedly as the “Star of the West” or “Henry of the West.”

Other able biographers, most recently David and Jeanne Heidler, needed weighty volumes to chronicle Clay’s remarkable rise and career. Though their book and those of others offer much, many will welcome Unger’s compact study of the Kentuckian’s life from his birth in Hanover County, Virginia, to his death 75 years later in June 1852.

Fittingly, Clay’s end came in his suite in the National Hotel, just blocks from the White House and within sight of the Capitol, which housed a chamber that he changed and where his body would lay in state.

Like his nemesis Andrew Jackson,

to whom he was a full decade junior, Clay had indelible memories of the Revolutionary War that included British pillaging of the family’s flourishing farmstead and despoiling of his father’s grave.

In recounting his youth years later, Clay offered a pitiful tale of his abandonment by his stepfather and mother, although, in truth, he had been placed with a court in nearby Richmond under the tutelage of Judge George Wythe, one of the Declaration of Independence signers.

That relationship, more than any other, formed and guided the development of Clay’s social temperament, law career and political sensibilities.

Wythe had also mentored Thomas Jefferson. Clay often supported the president, such as when Jefferson convinced congress in 1807 to embargo trade in a bid to force the belligerent powers France and Great Britain to respect the neutrality of American shipping.

The measure shut the ports in seaport cities, thereby ruining eastern commerce and only served to delay, rather than prevent, America’s conflict with Great Britain.

Later, as Speaker of the House, the youngest ever to serve, Kentuckian Clay led the congressional “War Hawks.” This faction sought war with Britain and the seizure of Canada.

In words that Jefferson would soon echo, Clay told members of congress that the conquest of Canada would require a military force no larger than “the militia of Kentucky… [to place the British possession] at your feet.”

However ill-considered the embargo, Kentucky itself benefited economically, even as its militia suffered severe losses in the military struggle with Great Britain.

From the conflict Clay, who helped negotiate the end of the War of 1812, learned how well the fighting had exposed the limitations of the nation’s finances and infrastructure. The war transformed Clay and many others into nationalists.

“Harry of the West” would take on the second of his three identities and became known as “The Father of the American System.”

With ports more or less closed to British industrial goods from 1807 until 1815, Kentucky’s shop

ACE p yro

production grew. Throwing his support to a tariff after the war, Clay sought to protect his state’s nascent manufacturing enterprises.

Such duties, combined with rechartering the Bank of the United States and federally funding internal improvements, lay at the heart of Clay’s American System.

Though he realized parts of his legislative program, Clay’s bid for federal support for internal improvements, similar to his two-decade long quest for the presidency, was never realized in his lifetime. Federally funded infrastructure would not draw closer until after his death and the coming of the Civil War. Avoiding that fratricide for better than 30 years is what gave Clay his final soubriquet: “The Great Compromiser.” Of his three monikers, it is the nickname that continues to define his historical legacy.

Had his wunderkind achievements in congress even once failed to maintain the sectional peace throughout the Missouri Crisis (1819-1821), the Nullification Crisis (1832-33), and the Compromise of 1850, it is highly probable that the country would have descended earlier into what Clay feared the most: “[a] civil war [producing]….streams of American blood shed by American arms.”

Had the sectional clash come a decade sooner than it did, the results may have been quite different.

The book is almost devoid of error with the sole mistake being the date that Clay’s death was reported to the nation. The author intended to write June, not July, 29.

This review cannot begin to touch on all the rich facets of Clay’s extraordinary public life or the many sorrows that he suffered in his private one.

Readers seeking a complete, yet crisp, account of one of the nation’s most important leaders will be rewarded by reading this fine book.

Highly recommended.

Reviewer Thomas M. Grace is an adjunct professor of history at Erie Community College whose work has appeared in Blue and Gray and America’s Civil War. His article, “The 1862 Invasion of Kentucky: A Movement Too Far?” will appear this year in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

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May 2016

Book Tells How Dead Georgia Banned Slavery For 17 Years Of Battle Dealt With The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead. By Meg Groeling. Illustrated, photos, 189 pp., 2015, Savas Beatie, www. savasbeatie.com, $14.95 softcover.

Many of our readers may be familiar with Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series, which lets readers gain a basic level of knowledge about specific topics or battles without reading a detailed and expensive analysis of the subject.

An objective of the series is to whet readers’ appetites to visit a site or consult additional references for more in-depth study.

Meg Groeling does a good job meeting this series objective. Her book contains multiple chapters related to major Civil War battles and how the dead from those battlefields were handled. Each chapter ends with a list of things to see at the specific battlefield.

Common threads of all chapters are the hardships families faced when their loved ones died far from home, the growth of embalming as a new industry, and the logistical issues in transporting deceased remains over long distances. Numerous appendices provide background information on well-known soldier monuments and memorials.

The credibility of this work is degraded by the lack of a bibliography and specific detailed

information about the research processes involved.

Although the book advises readers that footnotes are available at a specific website, those notes are inadequately connected to the text material or do not adequately support the specific referenced text.

For example, there is no support for the statements that City of Memphis was the only certified hospital boat or that “Taps” was first played for the whole nation at John F. Kennedy’s funeral.

The conventional methods of footnoting appear not to have been followed. There are no footnote number references, and readers have to switch from the footnotes back to the pages in the book to understand the citations.

Since no bibliography is provided with the books in this series, readers must rely on the footnotes to determine the sources used. In addition to the problems noted above, a quick review of these notes also reveals that a significant number are from secondary sources.

This means the reader not only faces confusing information from vague source citations but must also wonder if this is new material or a rehash of already published information with little or no new analysis.

If readers can get past these issues, this work has a nice collection of illustrations and accompanying descriptions. It is obvious Groeling conducted a lot of research. She also organized and presented her topics in a manner that was fun to read and easy to understand.

This is a relatively inexpensive book and contains many facts. However, this work is not as comprehensive as other works on this topic that are available.

Reviewer Richard J. Blumberg has a master’s degree with honors in Civil War studies. He is past president of the Houston Civil War Round Table and is a speaker for that group and the Society of Women in the Civil War. He also reviews books for the Blue and Gray Education Society.

Civil War Antique Shop

The Short Life of Free Georgia: Class and Slavery in the Colonial South. By Noeleen McIlvenna.

Notes, bibliography, index, 143 pp., North Carolina, www.uncpress.unc. edu, 2015, $24.94 softcover.

From 1733 to 1750 the colony of Georgia prohibited slavery. Founded as an experiment to which free white laborers immigrated from Europe, the colony was to be the moral reformer of the idle and landless class.

Workers were to be freed from the British social system of deference to the upper classes. They were to be paid a fair wage for their labor and be driven by their best impulses and hard work to succeed and join in the colony’s governance and thriving

economy.

But when the trustees in London and their appointed agents in Georgia demanded strict obedience to their rules, installed their wealthy friends on the best lands, and failed to pay a high wage, workers revolted.

When the voices of religious leaders like George Whitefield were added to the workers’ demands, the planter gentlemen realized that their status and wealth were threatened.

The road to riches, they calculated, lay in a working class that was forced to obey and need not be paid any wages.

Therefore, as the 1740s became the 1750s, Georgia transformed itself from a trust colony where opportunities were provided for poor workers to a royal colony favoring the select few wealthy landowners and new elite that mirrored the detested old British class system.

Land’s availability and nobility’s absence that had induced early settlers were no more.

The malcontents, the planter class that worshiped status and slavery, slowly undermined the notion of a free Georgia as unworkable and in 1750 convinced London authorities to remove the ban on slavery.

Noeleen McIlvenna argues that, contrary to propaganda that drove London to approve slavery, Georgia was succeeding as a free-labor colony.

It was the campaign of misinformation by the landed gentry of Georgia and South Carolina that convinced London that the workers’

demands for higher wages and better lands were causing rebellion.

They argued that only a system of forced labor would provide the high profits necessary to sustain the new elite. The trustees thus abandoned their utopian experiment and chose the road of slavery rather than freedom.

Almost immediately expansionist South Carolina planters poured into Georgia with their black slaves in tow, added cotton production to the rice and silk crops, and made Georgia a sister slave state. The Georgia experiment had failed.

This book explores the first two decades of Georgia’s existence as a free colony, a subject neglected by many historians. It simultaneously debunks the myth that free labor could not sustain itself and yield huge profits.

The author’s research is meticulous, historically sound, and presented in a readable and engaging manner.

For those wishing to explore the political, social and economic foundations of colonial slavery, this book provides a wonderful place to begin.

Reviewer Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War including The Last Confederate Scout and Two Years Before the Paddlewheel. He is past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable.

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Civil War News

Novel’s Character Takes Role Back In 1858 Events Memoirs of a Dead White Chick. By Lennox Randon. Novel.

310 pp., 2015, CreateSpace, www. createspace.com, $13.99 softcover.

Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is about the experiences of a 19th-century American who is knocked on the head and awakens to find himself back in 6th-century England. Going back in time is also the theme of this book, but it creates a variety of difficult situations facing this woman of 1999.

The chick is Eleanor Louise Ross, a former policewoman turned elementary school teacher, who dies in an accident. She awakens not in 1999 but in 1858 and not in Houston but in Philadelphia.

As she opens her eyes, she sees three black adults and a small black girl looking at her with fear in their eyes. Her eyes crossed slightly and she saw her nose.

“It was brown. Not a golden-brown, suntanned kind of brown but an African-American Negro kind of brown. Right about then, I blacked out.”

When she comes to, the man in the hovel asks, “Is he dead again?”

“Not yet,” she says. “Was I dead before and why are you calling me boy?”

The middle-aged woman spoke next: “Honey, you was as dead as anybody I ever seen, but the good Lord musta decided it wasn’t your time. And your Daddy has always called you boy, baby. We know you pretty much an adult now, but your always gonna be our boy.”

The little girl calls her Matthew, and she slowly realizes that she is now in the body of a 16-year-old black who died. His mother, father, grandmother and sister are happy Matthew is alive, but frightened that some evil spirit brought him back to life because he doesn’t know who

he is or who they are. Furthermore, he/she speaks like a well-educated white man.

At first, Eleanor/Matthew hopes that she/he is suffering a long, realistic nightmare. But as time passes she/he decides she must make the best of this new life and does so.

(Reviewer’s note: To avoid further confusion, from this point on I will use masculine terms to describe the protagonist.)

Matthew has to help support this impoverished family of free Negroes by going to work. He has no aptitude or interest in being a stevedore, loading and unloading boats, as does his father.

He tells his hard-to-believe story to the white owner of the stevedore company who tests his memory with a newspaper story about the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The employer accepts his story but refuses to believe that Abraham Lincoln could be elected president.

He then introduces Matthew to a Negro in a similar business, and the teenaged mid-19th century black male with the mind of a white woman from the late 20th century is off to a series of adventures.

He becomes a follower of former slave and abolitionist lecturer Harriet Tubman and accompanies her on what we in the 21st century call a “freedom walk” through the neighboring slave state of Delaware. They are both captured. He saves her from hanging and is sold to the owner of a Maryland tobacco plantation.

Matthew escapes but soon finds himself surrounded by a group of heavily armed men led by John Brown, who insists he join them.

Civil War News readers can predict what comes next: Matthew is forced to take part in Brown’s raid on the Federal Armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. Brown futilely hopes the raid will start a slave uprising. During the fighting Matthew uses first-responder medical knowledge he learned while a Houston police officer to save one of Brown’s wounded men.

He slips away during the night and makes his way “home” to his family in Philadelphia, then makes another trip south and successfully rescues slaves he has become close to in Maryland.

This easily read book is entertaining. But because both Eleanor and Matthew think about sex from time to time, it is not recommended for anyone below high-school age.

Reviewer EMMY award-winning journalist Lee Bailey is trying his hand at fiction himself, working on a novel about Gen. John Hunt Morgan, C.S.A.

23

Future President Garfield’s War Role For Ohio And The Union James Garfield & the Civil War: For Ohio and the Union. By Daniel J. Vermilya. Illustrated, photos, appendices, notes, index, 208 pp., 2015, History Press, www.historypress.net, $21.99 softcover.

James Garfield’s reputation as a Union general during the Civil War was largely responsible for his election to the U.S. presidency in 1880.

Yet, as this book illustrates, Garfield’s experience as a commander of troops in combat was limited to a handful of minor smallunit engagements.

So how did he acquire a military record impressive enough to qualify him for the presidency? The answer lies partly in his positive conduct during the 1863 Battle of Chickamauga when he served as chief of staff for the Army of the Cumberland under William Rosecrans.

Perhaps even more important were Garfield’s actions throughout the war as an eloquent and persistent propagandist for the proposition that only an aggressive and relentless strategy would enable the North to win victory.

Garfield, a volunteer, detested what he called the “West Point” clique of generals who thought that the South should be pampered and allowed to keep its slaves.

Garfield urged ruthless offensive operations against the Confederacy together with widespread confiscation of Rebel property and wholesale destruction of the slave system. He sometimes criticized Lincoln for being too soft.

One could argue that Garfield’s aggressive attitude was an outgrowth

of his religious fervor. Born poor in northeast Ohio, Garfield, while still a teenager, joined the Disciples of Christ sect and became a passionate evangelist and preacher. He became convinced that slavery was immoral and had to be eliminated.

As the Civil War approached, Garfield expanded his passions to include politics and served in the Ohio Senate. In 1861 the governor appointed Garfield a lieutenant colonel in command of the 42nd Ohio Volunteer infantry. He saw action in several small battles in eastern Kentucky.

In 1862, he was promoted to full colonel and given command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio.

Garfield and his brigade narrowly missed the Battle of Shiloh, arriving there one hour after the battle concluded While home on extended sick leave in late 1862, Garfield won election to the House of Representatives from Ohio’s 19th congressional district.

Garfield remained in the Army until he was scheduled to take office.

He was assigned to the Army of the Cumberland under Rosecrans. Garfield was originally intended to be given a divisional command. However, they hit it off so well — they both shared the same religious fervor — that Rosecrans appointed Garfield his chief of staff.

When Rosecrans advanced on Chattanooga on June 24, 1863, the Confederates retreated without a fight. Thinking that he might be able to cut off the Rebel retreat, Rosecrans pushed his men forward.

All he succeeding in doing, however, was to expose his army to

a counter-attack, which came at Chickamauga Creek, south of Chattanooga. After the Army of Tennessee drove in the Union’s right flank and center, Rosecrans believed that the battle was lost and pulled back.

Garfield, on the other hand, had heard firing coming from George Thomas’s corps on the Union left flank and believed that Thomas was still holding out. Garfield rode to Thomas and gave him information about the status of the remainder of the army and urged him to maintain his position, which Thomas did.

The battle ended as a Northern defeat, but Thomas’s heroic defense boosted his reputation as well as that of Garfield.

Not surprisingly, when Garfield took his seat in the House of Representatives in late 1863, he became an important and influential member of the Radical Republicans.

He went on to serve many years in the House before being nominated as president in 1880. He was in office for four months before being wounded in an assassination attempt.

He died two-and-a-half months later.

Although Garfield had limited combat experience, his advocacy of an aggressive strategy gave him the military credentials necessary to win election as president in 1880. This well-researched book fills a void in existing literature concerning Garfield’s Civil War career.

Reviewer Walt Albro is a magazine editor and writer based in Rockville, Md. His history articles have appeared in such publications as MHQ (Military History Quarterly), Military History and The Civil War Times.

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24

May 2016

Confederate Version Of Gettysburg Battle In Soldiers’ Words ‘Night Before Christmas’ Confederate Night Before Christmas. By Mark Vogl. Illustrated by Stephanie Ford. Juvenile poem. Glossary, 32 pp., 2015, Pelican, www.pelican.com, $16.99.

Christmas during the Civil War was unlike the celebrations of today.

There were no department store sales and advertising blitzes.

If celebrated at all, Christmas was a day of reflection and prayer and not visions of Santa Claus coming down chimneys and beacon-nosed reindeer.

Mark Vogl provides a unique twist to the old classic. He presents the story as one of concern for humanity and suffering in a wartorn land.

The author substitutes the fields and camps of battle for the comforts of hearth and home. The theme here is what the true spirit of the season should be.

The illustrations are majestically presented and enhance the text perfectly. The large-scale format makes it easy for young readers to grasp.

Although it is a rather short story, it is right on point. It is meant to encourage our youth to be less concerned with themselves and share with those less fortunate. It tugged at the wings of my better angels.

This is a tale that stresses the need for compassion, and that is something we can never get enough of.

This is a wonderful book to start our young “buffs” with, but you better hurry before the minions of “political correctness” petition to have it removed from bookshelves.

Reviewer Joseph A. Truglio is president and business agent for a motion picture film technicians local union and a lifelong student of the Civil War. His memberships include the Lincoln Group of New York and New Jersey Civil War Heritage Assn. He is president of the Phil Kearny Civil War Round Table in Wayne, N.J.

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Gettysburg 1863 — Seething Hell: The Epic Battle of the Civil War in the Soldiers’ Own Words.

By Thomas R. Pero. Illustrated, photos, maps, bibliography, index, 426 pp., 2016, Wild River Press, www. wildriverpress.com, $75.

Thomas Pero is a Seattle-based travel journalist who for 16 years was the editor of Trout magazine. He has produced a 6-pound, 9-inch-by12-inch, 406-page, heavily illustrated book on the battle of Gettysburg.

Pero’s publishing firm, Wild River Press, usually specializes in posters, greeting cards and photograph-books of trout, grouse, tarpon and salmon.

So it is something of a surprise to find among Wild River’s offerings Gettysburg 1863 — Seething Hell, which Pero has not been shy about touting as a “lavish production,” offering “a stunning new perspective on the most famous battle of the American Civil War.” Maybe. The question that led Pero to Gettysburg was one many Gettysburg enthusiasts have tinkered with: “What would it have been like?”

By his own reckoning, Pero has “spent every day for the last three years asking this question,” and his answer has taken the form of an anthology of excerpts from the diaries and letters of the soldiers who actually marched and fought at Gettysburg.

This is not the first time such a collection has been offered. Richard Wheeler’s Witness to Gettysburg (1994), Richard Rollins’s Pickett’s Charge: Eyewitness Accounts (1994), and Jim Slade and John Alexander’s Firestorm at Gettysburg (1998) all pulled-together personal accounts of the battle to create a youare-there impression.

But Pero implies that Seething Hell will be different – not only a far larger selection, with maps and photographs in a large format, but unpublished materials like the letters provided him by a granddaughter of George Buswell of the 33rd Virginia, or the “letters, diaries, notes written by dying soldiers, battle reports” from “large archival boxes” at Gettysburg National Military Park.

There are, however, two problems with this. One is the difficulty every battle historian encounters: battlefield myopia. A soldier in combat is necessarily in the middle of the most terrifying experience anyone ever encounters and in that environment the reality a soldier can afford to notice shrinks to a perimeter of about 36 inches in radius.

The British war journalist Richard Holmes recalled (in Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle) that even decorated soldiers were frequently

unable to see their behavior as heroic because, at the time, they scarcely knew what they were doing anyway.

In the Civil War, the use of black-powder muzzle-loaders ensured that battlefields would become so densely smothered in powder smoke that few men on the line had any idea of what was going on elsewhere.

Journalists may believe that direct reporting can write the first draft of history, but no one who has spent time with soldier letters and diaries of the Civil War will leap automatically to that conclusion.

A worse problem, though, comes in the form of Pero’s suggestion that he is employing “thousands of pages of original letters, journals and diaries...from dozens of historic collections.” In some ways, he is, but what he offers is neither “new” nor “stunning.”

If we take the first hundred pages of Seething Hell as a guide, we discover extracts from the letters or journals of 30 individuals, of whom five are civilians, 15 are Confederates, and 10 Union. Eighteen of these have long been published in various “hard” formats, while four others are available in accessible digital format or as digital images.

Pero does sometimes post images of the original letters he is excerpting, as he does, for instance, with Tally Simpson’s letters. But the actual texts are, for the most part, very familiar ones.

Nor do Pero’s excerpts follow his initial promise to tell his story without “bias...staying true to the experience of those who did the fighting.”

In this sample, Confederate sources easily over-balance Union ones.

Thomas Lewis Ware (whose five-volume diary was used for its Gettysburg portions by Mark Nesbitt in Five Days to Gettysburg: The Campaign Diaries of Two American Enemies) earns 13 entries in the first quarter of Seething Hell. He is followed by Nimrod Newton Nash (13th Mississippi) at six and Tally Simpson at five.

The most any Union soldier gets is five extracts by Manley Stacey of the 111th New York (whose letters can be read at the website of Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest in Illinois).

What Pero’s documents lack in novelty is made up for by the 600 photographs splashed across Seething Hell’s pages. Curiously, Pero chose to include almost nothing from the body of contemporaneous

battlefield photographs made famous

by William Frassanito.

Pero instead equipped a team of professional photographers to accompany reenactors to the Gettysburg battle sesquicentennial in 2013 and, in numerous instances, stage lurid recreations of blistered feet, bloody heads, blood-spattered stunt falls, exploding skulls and flying bodies propelled by shell-bursts.

These images make Seething Hell seem more like a heaving mess and give the book an eerie sense of looking like war pornography – of people playing at being grotesquely butchered, and with no other discernible purpose than provoking a titillated “Oh, yuck!”

These images are then mixed with more conventional shots of reenactors on the march, wading streams, firing by volley – and all, strangely, in black-and-white, which I can only suppose is intended to confer on the photographs a verisimilitude of 19th-century photography.

Perhaps there are readers who find “realistic” recreations of mutilation entertaining. I do not, and I have never known any reenactors who do. If anything, such images mock the horrors of war – not to mention the maiming and death of Civil War battlefields – and turn them, in the name of “reality,” into a theater of perversion.

What is worse, we know perfectly well that Civil War munitions did not merely dirty and bloody their victims. They dismembered them, tossed body parts into the air, mashed them with solid shot and occasionally blew them into obliteration. If “realism” is the excuse, I dare the entertainers to recreate and photograph that.

Ironically, the book’s title – Seething Hell – is drawn from Walt Whitman, who never actually witnessed a battle at any time during the Civil War, although his brother, George Washington Whitman, certainly did.

Stuffed-chair poetry of that sort comes easily to those who have never actually been shot at, but I question how reliable an answer it provides to the question, “What would it have been like?” I have the same skepticism about Seething Hell.

Reviewer Allen C. Guelzo is the Luce Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College and the author of the New York Times best-seller Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.

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May 2016

Civil War News

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Informative Essays About Good History Of First Georgia Cavalry Texans During Civil War Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance. By Jesus F. De La Teja. Illustrated, photos, map, notes, bibliography, index, 296 pp., 2016, Oklahoma, www.oupress.com, $19.95 softcover, $29.95 hardcover.

This intriguing book describes Texas’s civil war within the American Civil War. Several essays describe fairly widespread opposition to secession, the Confederacy and the draft — as well as the resulting turbulence and violence.

One essay describes the dissatisfaction of slaves with their bondage and their attempts to flee the state, especially into Mexico and the Indian Territory.

Although the failure of Union forces to establish a significant presence in the state prevented the mass slave defections that occurred elsewhere, Texas whites became increasingly aware of their slaves’ disaffection.

Another essay portrays the slave owners who fled into Texas from other states with their slaves as Union armies advanced into the Deep South. Although some slaves fled during the interstate movements, others went willingly to keep their families intact.

After the war, many ex-slaves left Texas to return to their “home” states in search of family members from whom they had been separated.

Other essays describe the anti-secession and anti-Confederate activities of North Texans, East Texans (often German-Americans), Tejanos (Texans of Mexican origin), and Rebel deserters.

These individuals faced violent opposition and death because of their views and activities. Individual and group lynchings were all too widespread for their comfort.

Tejanos found themselves in a series of awkward positions. They often were labeled Mexicans and thus denied the right to vote and other benefits of citizenship. However, when Texas had problems meeting its draft quotas, they suddenly found themselves conscripted as Confederate citizens.

This book is recommended for those interested in Civil War Texas or the role of Unionists, minorities and other dissenters in the Civil War South.

Reviewer Edward Bonekemper is Civil War News Book Review Editor and author of six Civil War books, including The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won.

The First Georgia Cavalry in the Civil War: A History and Roster. By Michael Bowers Cavender.

Photos, roster, notes, bibliography, index, 268 pp., 2015, McFarland, www.mcfarlandpub.com, $39.95 softcover.

Although this book is nominally a history of the First Georgia Cavalry Regiment, it also evolves into a narrative about Lt. Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry corps — particularly during the later stages of the Civil War. It focuses on Wheeler’s triumphs and travails in contending against Union forces.

Michael Cavender’s motivation to spend several years researching and writing this regimental history was the “need to understand the extent of their devotion to the states rights of Georgia and the Confederacy.”

He is a descendant of William Washington Cavender, whom he describes as “the famous secret service man and scout” in Wheeler’s cavalry.

Included are accounts of operations in the Department of East Tennessee under Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith beginning in mid-1862.

The action shifts from Murfreesboro into Kentucky and back to Tennessee

before moving south into Georgia — culminating in the Battle of Atlanta in July 1864.

From that point on, the First Georgia regiment as a part of Wheeler’s cavalry fought tirelessly in a futile effort to interdict Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea and eventual push through the Carolinas.

The author depicts Wheeler’s cavalry in general and the First Georgia in particular as frequently contending successfully against much stronger Union forces. He describes instances when the Rebels outwitted and whipped the enemy practically at will despite overwhelming strength in numbers.

However, these accounts are based primarily on Confederate reports published in the Official Records, where objectivity is typically not a standard practice.

One such account involved an event during August/September 1862 in Kentucky. Col. Joseph R. Scott, commander of a cavalry brigade that included the First Georgia, reported the capture of nearly 4,000 Union prisoners, 375 wagons, 1,500 mules and a large number of horses.

Scott’s total force at the time numbered less than 900.

The First Georgia had competent leadership throughout the war, beginning with its organizer Col. James Jefferson Morrison in April 1862.

Speaking of Morrison’s confidence and capability, the author comments “[he] knew his regiment could whip any two Yankee regiments.”

The regiment was constantly in the saddle on reconnaissance missions or in combat against the enemy. When Morrison received a temporary promotion to brigade commander following the September 1863 Battle of Chickamauga, Lt. Col. Samuel W. Davitte took the First Georgia reins.

In combat at Philadelphia, Tenn., the brigade reported capturing 500 to 700 of the enemy, and killing and

wounding a much larger number than Morrison’s loss of 14 killed and 82 wounded.

Combat wounds caused Morrison’s resignation in April 1864, and Davitte received promotion to colonel of the First Georgia. The regiment took an active part in the grueling Atlanta campaign. Wheeler’s cavalry strove to harass and delay Sherman’s armies that pressed southward through the mountains.

Sherman’s maneuvering forced Confederate commander Gen. Joseph E. Johnston to withdraw so often that President Jefferson Davis replaced him with Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood. Despite, or due to, Hood’s aggressiveness, Atlanta fell into Sherman’s hands on Sept. 2, 1864.

Wheeler’s cavalry reported continued success against Union cavalry accompanying Sherman under Brig.

Gen. Hugh Judson Kilpatrick’s command. Wheeler’s hit-and-run tactics kept Sherman’s forces on alert throughout their marches through Georgia and the Carolinas. The First Georgia Cavalry played an integral part in these operations.

This regimental history includes a roster with annotations about the men who fought under its banner.

There are no maps, however, in a book that is replete with the names of places throughout several states where this unit was engaged.

Descendants of the participants and those interested in fighting units from Georgia will find this work required reading. Anyone with a particular interest in Civil War cavalry actions will also find it rewarding.

Reviewer Thomas J. Ryan is the author of Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign: How the Critical Role of Intelligence Impacted the Outcome of Lee’s Invasion of the North, June-July 1863. His website is www.tomryan-civilwar.com.

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Civil War News

26

Book Features 16 Children Of

The Civil War Beyond Their Years: Stories of Sixteen Civil War Children. By Scotti Cohn. Photos, bibliography, index, 170 pp., 2016, Globe Pequot, www.rowman.com, $16.95 softcover.

Perhaps the fastest-growing genre in Civil War literature is biography.

This small volume contains a series of biographies, and its unique voice is that of children who witnessed and participated in the war.

The tales of 16 young people and their experiences during the war are included. Their backgrounds vary, but their wartime experiences are similar.

Some are familiar, like Jesse Root Grant, the general’s son; Ed Fitzgerald, known popularly as Eddie Foy; and Rose Greenhow, the spy’s daughter. Other children are not so famous but are equally important and interesting. Each story is succinct, well written, informative and thought-provoking.

For example, we see how Jesse Grant rode with Tad Lincoln, Ella Shepard survived slave rebellions, 13-year-old drummer boy Ransom Powell survived Confederate prison camps, and Eddie Fitzgerald grew up to be a famous vaudeville performer.

A short bibliography provides sources for further study of each included child.

This type of book is a favorite of mine. The biographies are a great source of information and a wonderful means to get youths involved in our history. Scotti Cohn is on the mark.

I highly recommend that you get a copy for a young adult in your life and get him or her started on the historic journey. In fact, get a copy for yourself. You will be entertained and informed.

Reviewer Joseph A. Truglio is president and business agent for a motion picture film technicians local union and a lifelong student of the Civil War. His memberships include the Lincoln Group of New York and New Jersey Civil War Heritage Assn. He is president of the Phil Kearny Civil War Round Table in Wayne, N.J.

May 2016

Confederate Dead At Enjoyable Novel About Gettysburg Is Updated ’63 Confederate Raider In North Atlantic Gettysburg’s Confederate Dead: An Honor Roll from America’s Greatest Battle. By Robert K. Krick and Chris L. Ferguson. Roster, photos, 180 pp., 2016, Angle Valley Press, www.anglevalleypress.com, $22.95 softcover.

As Robert K. Krick makes plain in his preface, Confederate recordkeeping was a rather haphazard affair.

Even the Compiled Service Records, which offer the most complete surviving contemporary records, are deficient.

The company clerks who labored over musters, explains Krick, “produced them expressly to balance pay ledgers, not as documents of lasting historical importance.”

A soldier killed at Gettysburg, for example, “fell into the same status as one merely captured, for payroll purposes, leaving no imperative to clean up the record subsequently.”

Thankfully, the incomplete nature of surviving records has not stopped Krick and co-author Chris Ferguson from dedicating untold hours scanning a wide variety of documents and collating all they found to produce the most thorough and up-to-date roster of Gettysburg’s Confederate dead.

Their combined four decades of labor have produced this updated edition (their first, The Gettysburg Death Roster, appeared in 2004) and identified 5,001 specific men. Most

are from Virginia outfits, which, Krick explains, is largely the result of the writers who produced the regimental histories in H.E. Howard’s Virginia Regimental History Series.

According to Ferguson’s introduction, every man who appears here was “killed in action or mortally wounded in the fighting of July 1-4 and [died] prior to Jan. 1, 1864, from wounds received during this four day period.”

The limitation makes sense because one has to cut off the date of death related to wounds at some reasonable point. Also, those unwounded who were captured but died in captivity are thus excluded.

The alphabetical roster could have been produced in a wide variety of ways, but the large book format and across-the-page listing makes it easy to read.

Each entry in the death roster contains six columns: name, regiment (often including rank and company), birth, death, comment and burial. The comment section is always brief and includes such notations as “killed in action,” “died of wounds received on July 2,” or the name of the cemetery in which the soldier is buried.

It seems as if the deluge of Gettysburg titles continues unabated. Many are unnecessary and add nothing to the literature, but Gettysburg’s Confederate Dead: An Honor Roll from America’s Greatest Battle stands apart in this regard.

Krick and Ferguson’s accounting reflects deep and relentless research that will prove invaluable to historians, genealogists, specialist collectors and researchers.

Reviewer Theodore P. Savas is the owner and managing director of Savas Beatie Publishing, an independent military and general history press. A former litigator, he taught college classes in business, law, and history for two decades, and is the author or editor of more than a dozen books in eight languages. He lives in El Dorado Hills, Calif. He can be reached at teds@savasbeatie.com.

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August 1864: A Civil War Naval Adventure. By H.V. Rhodes. Historical fiction. 2015, Write Thought, www.thewritethought.com, $15.95 softcover.

On Aug. 6, 1864, the CSS Tallahassee, a two-screw steam sloop, slipped out of Wilmington, N.C., and began a raid up the North Atlantic coast that would net 33 Northern vessels. Her commander was John Taylor Wood, a grandson of Zachary Taylor and a nephew of Jefferson Davis.

In this novel H.V. Rhodes only touches briefly on Wood. Instead he draws sympathetic portraits of fictional officers on the Southern ship and on a pursuing Northern frigate, the fictional USS Chowan.

Lt. Matthew Deaton has given up a promising career and a possibly advantageous marriage to join the

Confederate navy. He deplores the cruelty of war that requires the destruction of Northern family-owned fishing boats and Union armies’ widespread destruction throughout the South.

Quartermaster Nathaniel Brooks, a highly skilled navigator on the Chowan, lives in a world of bigotry and humiliation because of his African-American race.

Readers will be thrilled by this account of the Tallahassee’s cruise and its daredevil escape back into Wilmington. They also will learn about day-to-day operations on a naval ship and the skills required to prepare a detailed navigational route.

In truth, the Tallahassee was not a good candidate for raiding. Its steam plant and need for coal severely limited its range, and the vessel shortly resumed its career as a speedy blockade runner.

Although it caused temporary consternation in the North, the raid’s chief result may well have been the redoubled Union effort to capture Fort Fisher and close the port of Wilmington.

Readers will find this novel enjoyable and educational.

Reviewer Patrick E. Purcell, a graduate of Northeastern University, is a retired railroad manager. He is a former president of the Old Baldy Civil War Round Table in Philadelphia and was on the Board of Governors of the Civil War Library and Museum in Philadelphia

May 2016

Civil War News

27

Detailed Account Of Shepherdstown (W.Va.) In The War Mosby’s First Year Private John S. Mosby, First Virginia Cavalry: Picketing Fairfax County before Becoming the Confederacy’s “Gray Ghost”.

By Gregory P. Wilson. Illustrated, photos, maps, notes, appendix, bibliography, index, 188 pp., 2015, Gregory P. Wilson, www.civilwarquakerscout.com, $25 softcover.

Perhaps no Civil War figure captures the imagination more than Col. John Singleton Mosby. The so-called “Gray Ghost” has been the subject of many studies over the decades, from Virgil Carrington Jones’s classic Ranger Mosby (1944) to more recent studies by such notable historians as Jeffry Wert and William Connery.

While every book about Mosby chronicles what Jones referred to as the “thrilling incidents in the career of Mosby,” no study just describes Mosby’s experience during the war’s first year. That year proved critical in molding one of the conflict’s more intriguing personalities.

Gregory P. Wilson has filled that void with this study. He has produced a fast-paced chronicle based largely on published sources and a smattering of unpublished manuscripts.

After a brief first chapter outlining Mosby’s prewar life, Wilson presents a crisp narrative detailing Mosby’s every move as a private in the Washington Mounted Rifles (later Co. L, 1st Virginia Cavalry). He meticulously describes Mosby’s scouting in such places as the Shenandoah Valley and Fairfax County.

Wilson does a fine job analyzing Mosby’s thoughts on the First Battle of Manassas — an engagement in which he did not participate — and capturing the excitement Mosby felt after killing his first Union soldier in autumn 1861.

Mosby callously wrote about the killing to his wife with a gold pen taken from the dead soldier.

Although some might view Wilson’s in-depth treatment of months of picket duty and scouting as somewhat pedantic, he makes a compelling argument that the time Mosby spent scouting, particularly in Fairfax County, played a significant role in educating him about “the land” where he earned his reputation as the Gray Ghost.

Throughout this engagingly written book, Wilson traces Mosby’s movements and fixes them on today’s landscape with modern-road names and GPS coordinates. This allows readers who trek to Fairfax to follow in Mosby’s steps.

This book also offers some insight into Mosby’s complex attitudes on slavery. He was no apologist for slavery’s existence in the antebellum South and believed that slavery was the source of secession and the war.

A brief biographical sketch of Mosby’s slave Aaron Burton, who accompanied Mosby to the field, affords an opportunity to understand the complexities of the master-slave relationship in wartime.

The inclusion of a chronology of Fairfax County events during the conflict’s first 11 months enhances this profusely illustrated volume.

Although not a complete biography of Mosby, Wilson’s volume fills an important void in Mosby literature and serves as a nice complement to existing treatments of Mosby and his wartime exploits.

Reviewer Jonathan A. Noyalas is assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Civil War History at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Va., and is the author or editor of 11 books on Civil War history, including the recently released Civil War Legacy in the Shenandoah: Remembrance, Reunion, and Reconciliation.

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Shepherdstown in the Civil War: One Vast Confederate Hospital. By Kevin R. Pawlak. Illustrated, photos, map, notes, bibliography, index, 172 pp., 2015, History Press, www. historypress.net, $21.99 softcover.

Sept. 17, 1862, America’s bloodiest day, produced an overwhelming number of casualties. Add the battles of South Mountain, Crampton’s Gap and Harpers Ferry to the casualty list and you had a monumental disaster in western Maryland.

Just about every church, farmhouse, public building and private home became a makeshift hospital.

The community that was hit the hardest was Sharpsburg, Md., which adjoined the Antietam battlefield.

But other nearby communities also bore their share of the carnage.

Shepherdstown in Virginia (now West Virginia), was one of those nearby communities. With a population of less than a thousand, it had to cope with more than 6,000 sick and wounded. Even with the help of the locals, there were not enough doctors, nurses and medical supplies to keep up with the demand.

The Army of Northern Virginia was said to have entered Maryland with over 2,500 wagons, but they

l

were insufficient to meet the need for ambulances. Therefore, countless unattended wounded suffered and died on the battlefield.

The overwhelmed caregivers, with very little sleep, fought heroically, but the odds were against them.

To make matters worse, disease ran rampant in the crowded, unsterile conditions they had to work in. Incoming Union artillery shells raining down on the streets and buildings made the situation hellish.

As bad as it was when casualties flowed in from the battles of the gaps and Harpers Ferry, the maelstrom of Sept. 17 drove Shepherdstown to the breaking point. Both sides were illprepared to deal with never-imagined causalities of that great magnitude.

The problem had existed since the war’s start. The Union army had a medical department with only 23 surgeons. The Confederacy had 11 with a budget of $350,000.

Jefferson Davis appointed Dr. Samuel Preston Moore Surgeon General of the Confederacy by. He and his family had extensive medical backgrounds. The doctor began work immediately to prepare his department for what he believed would be a long war.

During the Seven Days’ Campaign, Gen. Robert E. Lee appointed Dr. Lafayette Guild of Alabama as medical director for the Army of Northern Virginia. He was also well qualified for the job.

Without much direction, it was onthe-job training for doctors Moore and Guild and their staffs. They both soon realized that the key to saving lives was to recover the wounded and transport them to safe medical help as quickly as possible.

Shepherdstown in the Civil War will be especially welcome to students of the Maryland Campaign, the Confederate Medical Department, the plight of the wounded and the communities involved during and after a major battle.

Author Kevin Pawlak is an Antietam licensed battlefield guide and has served as an intern at other Civil War battlefields. His extensive study of the subject is evident in his concise and well-written text.

He also gives a broad overview of the Maryland Campaign and the battles and skirmishes at Crampton’s Gap, South Mountain, Harpers Ferry and Boonsboro. As to the battle of Antietam, Pawlak covers in great detail the fighting at Miller’s Cornfield, Hagerstown Pike, the West Woods and the Sunken Road.

The maps are well done. The many images are nicely reproduced, and the bibliography and endnotes are extensive.

On your visit to Antietam, drive a few miles to Shepherdstown and be sure you have a copy of this book.

Reviewer Michael A. Cavanaugh is the former editor and publisher of the Civil War Book Exchange, now Civil War News. He has authored and co-authored five books on the war.

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Civil War News

28

May 2016

1864 Battle History Mississippi Artillery Sergeant’s Diaries Of Trevilian Station Trevilian Station, June 11-12, 1864: Wade Hampton, Philip Sheridan and the Largest All-Cavalry Battle of the Civil War. By Joseph W. McKinney. Illustrated, maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index, 360 pp., 2016, McFarland, www.mcfarlandpub.com, $39.95.

While Brandy Station is considered the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War, Trevilian Station was the war’s largest all-cavalry battle.

That’s because at Brandy Station two Union infantry brigades played small parts while at the time of Trevilian Station, west of Richmond, all Union and Confederate infantry brigades were east of Richmond taking part in the Overland Campaign’s closing days.

Joseph W. McKinney sets the scene for the clash, taking us through the evolution of both armies’ cavalries, past and current leadership, arms, accoutrements and horses. The battle took place almost a month after Jeb Stuart’s mortal wounding at Yellow Tavern, and Robert E. Lee had not appointed his successor.

Union Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s orders were to break up the

Virginia Central Railroad northwest of Richmond and proceed west to the Shenandoah Valley destroying bridges and facilities along the way.

Confederate Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton was senior to Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee and coordinated the efforts of their two divisions as they thwarted Sheridan.

The South was beaten on the first day but fought the Union to a draw on the second day. This result caused the isolated Sheridan to retreat and shoot many broken-down horses on the way.

The book covers the pursuit and retreat to Union lines, the Battle of Samaria Church, a Confederate victory that, according to a trooper in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, was “the most disorderly retreat I have seen.”

A plaque placed on the Trevilian Station battle site by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1926 states that it was the “Greatest All-Cavalry Battle of the War” and a “Signal Confederate Victory.”

McKinney ends the volume by stating: “It is likely that all Confederate participants, and many Union participants as well, would agree with both assertions.”

The author brings a vast amount of scholarship to bear on this battle — along with his knowledge of military leadership, strategy and tactics and of horses and horsemanship.

This is an interesting, wellwritten book. It will appeal to Civil War buffs interested in the Eastern campaigns, the mounted branches of both armies, or the Civil War generally. It is highly recommended.

Reviewer Joseph A. Derie is a VMI graduate and a longtime Civil War buff and military book reviewer.

A retired Coast Guard officer and Merchant Marine licensed officer, he is a Certified Marine Investigator and marine surveyor.

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To Succeed or Perish: The Diaries of Sergeant Edmund Trent Eggleston, 1st Mississippi Light Artillery regiment, CSA. Edited

by Lawrence Lee Hewitt, Thomas E. Schott and Marc Kunis. Illustrated, photos, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 248 pp., 2015, Tennessee, www.utpress.org, $49.95.

This book is a welcome addition to Confederate historiography in the Western Theater. Too few published primary sources are available – especially about the 1st Mississippi Light Artillery.

There are the usual disappointments in Edmund Eggleston’s diary because it, like most, is incomplete.

Especially regrettable is the lack of entries during most of the inland Vicksburg campaign.

Though three editors are listed, this volume was primarily edited

by Lawrence Lee Hewitt. He does

an admirable job mending the continuity of Eggleston’s account.

Eggleston, born in 1833 in Wilkinson County, Miss., divided his diary into two volumes. The first, surviving only in typescript, covers 1862 to May 9, 1863. The second includes one entry in late 1863 and, in the most informative part, covers much action in Georgia in 1864.

Hewitt fills gaps with narratives about where Eggleston’s Co. G was serving.

Several appendices list the company’s bookkeeping accounts. Another contains rather mundane entries about documents omitted in the second diary. Although the entries describe only the letters’ dates and recipients, genealogists will welcome them.

There is also an appendix of “Other Documents,” which are official in nature but relate only to Eggleston.

One is a letter to Jefferson Davis regarding an assignment request.

Davis passed the letter along to a member of his cabinet, and it made a long trip through the bureaucracy.

It did not, however, result in an assignment to commissary duty that both Eggleston and his mother had requested.

The last appendix is a roster of Co. G. It includes more information of genealogical value.

Included are maps of battles at Resaca, Cassville, Kennesaw Mountain and Allatoona and of Civil War Atlanta. The maps are disappointing because small print makes them difficult to read. They need to be larger and more informative.

They are not marked with the locations of Eggleston’s battery during all the fighting. Fortunately,

the Battle of Franklin map is better, and the map of the Nashville fight clearly depicts where Eggleston and his comrades had to abandon their guns.

Eggleston served the remainder of the war (1865) in the unsuccessful Confederate defense of Mobile.

There are no diary entries for that period. He lived his postwar years in Vicksburg, where he died at 62 in 1896.

Historians will find entries of value throughout Eggleston’s diary – especially descriptions of the Atlanta Campaign. He provides details of the fighting around Atlanta, including the number of rounds Co. G fired: May 21, 86; May 22, 103; May 23, 53; May 24, 206. These entries place readers in the battle lines and provide an understanding of artillerists’ lives in battle.

Eggleston’s diary has many such nuggets. So instead of lamenting the gaps, historians can be thankful for the pages that survived. Hewitt does a fine job bringing the project together and providing thorough documentation.

This not inexpensive book is well worth the price for those interested in Civil War artillery, the life of the common artillerist and the social interaction among the battery members.

The book is one in the University of Tennessee Press’s “Voices of the Civil War” series, and it is delightful to hear Edmund Eggleston’s voice among those previously published.

Reviewer Michael B. Ballard is Professor Emeritus of Libraries, Mississippi State University, and author and editor of 14 books.

Little New In Book About Impact Of Disease In American Military History Bacteria and Bayonets: The Impact of Disease in American Military History. By David R. Petriello.

Illustrated, photos, notes, bibliography, index, 264 pp., 2016, Casemate, www.casematepublishing.com, $32.95.

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Civil War chapter. David Petriello describes the impact of disease in American military history from Columbus’s explorations through the recent terrorist activities.

Each chapter has a catchy name to capture readers’ attention. Malaria, dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid and influenza are among the many maladies addressed. The author does a good job telling the story of how battlefield medicine has evolved to keep up with changing tactics and different types of enemies.

While this work outlines several medical advances made during America’s wars, it provides very little new analysis and relies heavily on published secondary sources.

It is disappointing that bayonets are essentially not covered. This weapon/tool was used not only for hand-to-hand combat, but for cooking and a variety of other functions.

Although it was not a major battlefield weapon, the bayonet would have been an interesting topic – particularly an examination of how its uses might have impacted the spread of various bacteria.

The main focus of my analysis

was chapter nine, “Johnny Dysentery and Billy Typhus.” It contains several factual errors. Union Gen. George McClellan did not face Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in western Virginia. Gen. John Pemberton’s surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was not unconditional.

There is much debate about where Lee was camped near Gettysburg in July 1863. The Thompson House served as his headquarters, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he remained encamped there.

Readers wanting gimmicks and catchy titles will find this work very appealing. Scholarly readers will find this book a bit pricey for a work that relies almost totally on already published materials.

Reviewer Richard J. Blumberg has a master’s degree with honors in Civil War studies. He is past president of the Houston Civil War Round Table and is a speaker for that group and the Society of Women in the Civil War. He also reviews books for the Blue and Gray Education Society.

May 2016

Civil War News

29

S teve D avis ’ s C ritic ’ s C orner

By Stephen Davis

Editor’s note: Do you have a favorite “battle book”? CWN contributor Steve Davis invites your opinions and comments by writing to his email steveatl1861@yahoo.com.

What makes a good battle book?

Readers of military history will have a variety of criteria, but it is easy to agree upon a few standards.

And because it eminently meets all of those I consider, I value John J. Hennessy’s Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas (1993, Simon & Schuster) as one of my very favorite Civil War battle books.

Let’s see…where to begin?

First of all, the subject has to be important, and the battle fought on Aug. 29-30, 1862 certainly was. For Gen. Robert E. Lee, Second Manassas was, in Hennessy’s fine words, “the happiest marriage of strategy and tactics he would ever attain.”

Longstreet’s attack on the second day, with 25,000 troops, was the biggest assault Lee launched in the entire war. And when it succeeded, “Lee came as close as he ever would to destroying a Union army.” I remember reading this sentence two decades ago, and it has stuck with me ever since.

The author’s narrative must be comprehensive. This doesn’t mean that the book has to be long--although, at just over 600 pages, this one is.

Hennessy sets the battle in just the right perspective. After McClellan’s failure in the Seven Days, hardliners in the Lincoln administration wanted to shift away from McClellan’s gentlemanly style of leading an army to a harder war, one which would punish Southern civilians for their treason.

Maj. Gen. John Pope, brought

from out west, was thought just the man to do this. So Lincoln and Stanton created a new army of some 50,000 men and sent Pope forth with it into central Virginia to wreck farms while subsisting on the countryside.

General Lee, rightly offended by “the miscreant Pope,” determined to “suppress” him before he could be reinforced by McClellan’s troops.

Second Manassas, Hennessy writes, “would be his first full campaign as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.”

A good battle history has to capture the drama. Hennessy’s certainly does. Lee’s plan, sending Stonewall Jackson with half the army around Pope’s flank and into his rear, was audacious and brilliantly executed.

Hennessy describes Jackson’s march—54 miles in 36 hours, Aug. 25-26—breathlessly, but the real fun begins when Jackson’s tired veterans captured Pope’s big supply base at Manassas Junction.

“From boxcar to boxcar and warehouse to warehouse the men dashed,” he writes, “uncovering ever more desirable delicacies”: cakes, candy, oranges, canned oysters—you name it. For John Worsham of the 21st Virginia, it was French mustard.

“To see a starving man eating lobster salad and drinking Rhine wine, barefoot and in tatters, was curious,” Worsham reflected. I’ll say. Aug. 27, 1862 ranks as one of the most “curious” days of the war.

The traits and performance of the key leaders must be thoughtfully depicted. Jackson is the hero here.

“History must judge him,” the author contends, “as the man who by boldness and incredible speed made Lee’s greatest triumph possible.”

In contrast is poor John Pope. He was laughably pompous (“I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies”).

He was pitifully opaque, unable to perceive the danger crashing his way, as when he ordered his army to chase after Jackson and “bag the whole crowd.” On the morning of the 30th, Pope “was practically paralyzed with uncertainty.” When Longstreet began massing for his afternoon attack, Pope continued to disregard the warnings streaming into his headquarters.

The best battle books describe the fighting with enough detail to be definitive without sinking to excessive militrivia. This Hennessy does admirably. He has the added advantage of knowing the terrain— he was NPS historian at Manassas

National Battlefield.

I remember decades ago, in Dr. Bell Wiley’s Civil War course at Emory, hearing him voice suspicion that Bruce Catton never visited Gettysburg, based on his description of the battlefield terrain. (Ouch!)

Military history demands a writing style that is spare and pithy, but the best books are written gracefully as well. A confident author is also unafraid to use colorful language. Here, in Hennessy’s words, a Union battery galloping hard for the rear ran through a Federal infantry line and “completely discombobulated” it.

Full annotation and explanatory endnotes are the clearest measures of the author’s scholarship. Hennessy once told me that when researching this book he was reading so much microfilm that he bought a microfilm reader for home use. That’s research.

An outstanding battle book does not have to be flawless. In Hennessy’s, my eyes strain to see a statement of Confederate casualties from the battle. A footnote refers us to the Official Records (1,090 K, 6,154 W).

We insist, of course, on good maps. There have to be enough of them to complement and clarify the text (fifteen here, the work of Richard Darling). To my eye, they should not be too detailed; brigade-level will do unless the book portrays itself as a “microhistory” (think George R. Stewart’s Pickett’s Charge [1959]).

I also believe a good military history will offer stories that stick with you. I remember reading Hennessy’s

history and coming upon the story of Captain David Gibson, Co. H, 3rd West Virginia. Before a Federal assault Gibson walked up to another officer and said, “Major, I shall be killed in this charge.”

Maj. Theodore Lang tried to brush off Gibson’s dark premonition. “I tell you, I am going to be killed in this charge,” Gibson repeated. “I knew it last night; I have known it all morning.”

Sure enough, the Federals charged; Captain Gibson was shot in the head and killed.

I remember telling this story to my wife-of-the-time. Her practical response: “If he knew he was going to be killed, why did he charge?”

I have told this story countless times, illustrating how this one vignette from Hennessy’s history illustrates what I call the difference between the practical and the sublime.

Everyone gets it.

So how many criteria are we articulating? By all of mine, I wish to thank John Hennessy for a fine battle book on Second Manassas.

Wait—one more. One can see quality in a good book’s final sentences. Hennessy tells how a humiliated Pope, removed from command and sidelined to fight the Sioux in Minnesota, en route stopped over in Chicago. A crowd formed and called for remarks.

“My friends, I am glad to see you to-night,” he began. “I am glad to be back to breathe again the pure air of the State of Illinois. It has been for

many years my home, and I am glad to return to it. God almighty only knows how sorry I am I ever left it.”

Stephen Davis is a longtime Civil Warrior and avid book collector.

His two paperbacks on the Atlanta Campaign, A Long and Bloody Task and All the Fighting They Want, will be published this summer as part of Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series.

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30

May 2016

Intriguing Telling Of Streight’s Essays About War In Indian Territory Foiled ’63 Raid On Railroad Streight’s Foiled Raid on the Western & Atlantic Railroad: Emma Sansom’s Courage and Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Pursuit.

By Brandon H. Beck. Illustrated, photos, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, 112 pp., 2016, History Press, www.historypress.net, $21.99 softcover.

This small, highly illustrated volume tells the story of Col. Abel D. Streight’s mule-mounted infantry raid against the Western & Atlantic Railroad.

This railroad ran from Atlanta, Ga., to Chattanooga, Tenn., with many connections. It was one of the Confederacy’s main transportation links and highly important to the Rebel war effort.

Streight’s Foiled Raid begins with the story of the railroad and the first Union attempt against it, the “Great Locomotive Chase” in April 1862.

After a good description of James J. Andrews and the “Chase,” the book gives brief biographies of the main characters involved in Streight’s Raid. It then describes the April and May 1863 raid.

This account would not be complete without a description of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s dogged pursuit of the raiders.

Forrest’s chase is the subject of many tales that have become legends.

Streight led his mounted infantry

from Murfreesboro, Tenn., through portions of Mississippi and Alabama in an effort to get to Rome, Ga., where a branch line (the Rome Railroad) connected to the Western & Atlantic (W&A). From there, it was a short distance to the W&A, where they could begin their destructive work.

Unfortunately for them, Forrest had different ideas. Although outnumbered, he pushed the Yankees ruthlessly, giving them no relief. In the end, Streight abandoned the attempt to hit the W&A and tried to escape.

One of the legendary but true narratives is that of Emma Sansom.

Streight’s men destroyed a bridge over Black Creek, which Streight thought would finally give him the respite he needed.

Forrest asked at a local house if there was any other way to cross the creek. A 15-year-old girl, Emma Sansom, said there was a nearby low-water ford where Forrest’s troopers could probably cross safely.

Forrest took her up behind him on his horse and she showed him the way to the ford. The author, Brandon Beck, provides us with Emma’s own story of how she helped Forrest.

The ford that Sansom showed Forrest allowed him to finally catch up with Streight’s main body. The story of how Forrest convinced him to surrender is another that has become almost mythological — among the many yarns that are spun around Forrest, the “Wizard of the Saddle.”

In case the story of Streight’s Raid is new to some readers, I will not divulge this tale.

This book has some great illustrations and maps. I highly recommend this modest volume to anyone interested in the war in the Western Theater, Nathan Bedford Forrest or a good story well told.

The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory.

Edited by Bradley R. Clampitt.

Map, notes, index, 200 pp., 2015, Nebraska, www.nebraskapress.unl. edu, $25 softcover.

This volume consists of an introduction and eight scholarly essays spanning the gamut of the Civil War in the Indian Territory.

“Bitter Legacy: The Battle Front” covers the war in the Indian Territory and parts of Missouri and Arkansas.

“Hardship at Home: The Civilian Experience” covers the war the civilians endured. The suffering of both Union and Confederate sympathizers was as bad as or worse than that of civilians in any other part of the country.

“Our Doom is Sealed: The Five Nations in the Civil War” discusses the choices the major tribes in the Indian Territory (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek/Muscogee and Seminole) had at the beginning of the war.

As Bradley Clampitt points out, the eventual choices were made “not necessarily out of affection for the Union or Confederacy.” “‘The Most Destitute’ People in Indian Territory: The Wichita Agency Tribes and the Civil War” tells the little-known story of the Wichita Tribe and its agency, which was located in the westernmost portion of the Indian Territory. This area was far from the major battlefields of the Indian Territory but close to the Comanche and other hostile tribes.

Two essays cover Reconstruction.

“Who Defines a Nation?: Reconstruction in the Indian Territory” discusses the Federal government’s move to end the sovereignty of the Five Tribes after the Civil War.

In “‘We Had a Lot of Trouble Getting Things Settled after the War’: The Freedpeople’s Civil War” the author points out that “the freedpeople found themselves caught in a second civil war for their rights as members in the Five Nations.”

Two memory essays complete the volume. “Hearth and Home: Cherokee and Creek Women’s Memories of the Civil War in Indian Territory” contains interviews conducted during the 1930s Writers Project.

“To Reach a Wider Audience: Public Commemoration of the Civil War in Indian Territory” is about “bringing historical research to the public consciousness through historical reenactments and ‘living history.’”

This is a serious, scholarly book with some excellent essays. It is highly recommended for Civil War buffs interested in the Indian Territory and the Trans-Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Reviewer Joseph A. Derie is a VMI graduate and a longtime Civil War buff and military book reviewer.

A retired Coast Guard officer and Merchant Marine licensed officer, he is a Certified Marine Investigator and marine surveyor.

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Civil War News

Historical Fiction Work Portrays Waste Of War The Waste of War: The Story of a Civil War Union Surgeon and His Nurse. By Carole Emma Matthewson. Historical fiction.

336 pp., 2014, Mogollon Press, cmatthewson@npgcable.com, $19.99 softcover.

Lt. Col. Harley P. Matthewson, a doctor, and his wife and nurse Mary Sanborn Matthewson were ancestors of the author. Beginning with an ancestry research endeavor, Carol Matthewson has crafted a story of love, devotion and service to the Union.

Following the Matthewsons from their initial surge of patriotism after Fort Sumter, the author travels with them through the Civil War. She highlights their service from Yorktown and Williamsburg to Fair Oaks, the Seven Days, 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, Vicksburg, Fredericksburg and the Red River campaign.

Conversations involving the war’s luminaries, such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, George McClellan, Joseph Hooker and Walt Whitman, are contrived, but generally seem historically accurate. They simultaneously convey the author’s major theme that war is terrible and the human cost of failing to compromise political disputes.

Harley and Mary Matthewson seem to always be where battlefield action occurs. Amputating shattered limbs, battling scarlet fever outbreaks and writing to dead men’s families show both their medical skills and their humanity. They never waver in their support of the Union and opposition to slavery.

Nonetheless, they assess individual generals’ abilities and, using comments by ordinary soldiers, lament how inexperienced leaders cause tremendous human suffering.

They admire both Gen. George McClellan for his concern for his troops and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant for his desire to end the war quickly.

They are equally vociferous in their criticism of generals Ambrose Burnside and Joseph Hooker for needlessly wasting lives in frontal assaults.

Finally, they constantly praise President Abraham Lincoln as a kind, fair and gentle leader whose love of country motivates his actions.

Throughout the novel, military actions play a secondary role to the author’s four main points: (1) Mary

Matthewson’s courage in shredding feminine myths and braving the horrors of war, (2) Dr. Harley Matthewson’s adherence to modern visions of cleanliness and compassion as the medical profession’s dual responsibilities, (3) the worth of human life and how political decisions cost families their loved ones’ health and happiness, and (4) how politicians should strive to become instruments of peace instead of catalysts for human carnage.

Despite a few historical errors, the novel reflects both historical fact and myth. The conversations allow the author to emphasize her themes using both historical figures and literary license. My only criticism of the style is that the conversations appear

too scripted, formal and stiff to reflect 19th-century discussions.

This historical fiction work is recommended for those opposed to war; those tasked with dealing with the medical, emotional and social aftermath of war; and politicians who contemplate sending young men into harm’s way.

Reviewer Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War including The Last Confederate Scout and Two Years Before the Paddlewheel. He is past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable.

31

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May 2016

Ask The Civil War Appraiser

By John Sexton We are starting a new feature in Civil War News, which will be a regular column written by Civil War Appraiser John Sexton. John is a long-time Civil War aficionado who co-authored my book Confederate Bowie Knives. He will answer questions concerning authenticity and evaluation of Civil War items of any genre about which you might have a question. Please send your questions to mail@CivilWarNews.com.

Ask The Appraiser: I have a minor query which I hope someone can answer.

My LeMat (number 1473, Paris address, London proof marks) has an additional mark engraved on the receiver: “P&Co / Sample”. Do you know who P&Co might be?

As my father acquired the pistol about 1935, we have owned it more than half its life.

Simon Stannard-Powell Dear Mr. Powell: This gun is fascinating indeed. I have studied Confederate revolvers and LeMats for many years and noted numerous variations in the standard production models. This gun is a typical second model with Paris address and reciprocating pin mechanism seen prior to the ratchet system later used on London-produced guns. This gun does exhibit full octagonal barrel which is typical in this serial range. The last few hundred guns in the Paris production starting about Serial Number 2200 are London proof like your gun Serial Number 1473. The proofs are found on the barrel and each chamber of the cylinder. To my knowledge, this is the only reciprocating pin London proof standard production LeMat. The frame marking which reads “P & Co / Sample” is intriguing. I have little doubt that P & Co was an agent attempting to sell these guns. Based on research, this gun was most likely made early 1863. We know that most of the first Confederate revolvers were purchased under Confederate government contract for both the Navy and Army. Various private entities advertised the availability of these guns in 1862 based on ads in Charleston by C.T. Mitchell & Co. and Kent, Paine & Co., Richmond, VA. Payne, Huntington & Co., New Orleans, guaranteed a $400,000 payment for Confederate imports from France. It is interesting to note that Col. LeMat was paid $2,500 August

10, 1862, by Gautherin & Co., New Orleans who was the New Orleans company that was the actual agent making the Confederate purchases in New Orleans.

“P & Co.” could have been either an American or an English agent, as this gun was proofed in England.

Perhaps one of our readers will have a long, lost document showing a potential match to solve our mystery as to who was attempting to sell LeMats?

This gun appears to be very fine. It saw limited use still exhibiting most of its original finish. If this gun were sold in a well-advertised international auction, it would probably have a presale estimate of $20,000-30,000, and I would not be surprised to see it bring more as not only does it appear in very high condition, but the intriguing marking adds value, in my opinion. Of note, the two finest first model LeMat revolvers, in my opinion, just sold at James D. Julia Auctions March 15, 2016. Serial Number 8, which at one time belonged to Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, sold for $224,250. Serial Number 88, which belonged to Gen. John Lawson Lewis, the commanding general of the Louisiana State Militia, sold for $86,250. A Francotte LeMat, Serial Number 16, in exceptional condition, sold for $46,000. There is an extraordinary collection of LeMats from the Clifford Young estate to be sold April 26, 2016, at Cowan’s Auction in Cincinnati, and the remainder of his over 30 LeMats to be sold at a later sale. In his collection is found the lowest serial number first model LeMat, Serial Number 4, and a Francotte LeMat with an inscription as a Christmas present to a Maine Civil War soldier in 1863. There are many other rarities also to be offered.

For those interested in the intriguing story of LeMat revolvers, the following references are recommended: Doug Adams, The Confederate LeMat Revolver, 2005.

Fuller & Stewart, Firearms of the Confederacy, 1944.

William Albaugh, Confederate Arms, 1957.

Anthony & Hill Confederate Longarms and Pistols, 1978.

Forgett, Serpette, LeMat, The Man, The Gun, 1996.

Madaus & Murphy, Confederate Carbines & Musketoons, 2002.

Wiley Sword, Firepower from Abroad, 1986.

Crisp serial number and LM & star trademark which ironically does stand for “Lemat” but for the barrel maker “Lejay & Massiaux” only seen on Paris Lemats.

Right view of Lemat grapeshot revolver.

Left side view of Lemat showing unique loading assembly and lots of original bright blue factory finish.

John is an certified appraiser with International Society of Appraisers specializing in Civil War memorabilia. He authenticates and evaluates other rare and valuable historic items also.

Typical 2nd model address, “Bte” is abbreviation for Brevette or patent, “s. g. d. g.” is abbreviation for “sans guarantie du gouvernment” meaning the French Government does not guaranty the pistol.

Engraved in English Style unique agent marking: P & Co. / SAMPLE on left side plate.

May 2016

Civil War News

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Still Standing: Confederate Courthouse Monuments in Georgia

By Gould B. Hagler Jr. and Stephen Davis Relics and reminders of the Confederacy’s war for independence are under threat by well-publicized campaigns to relocate them, dismantle them and hide their pieces away - and even to destroy them. In New Orleans, the city council has declared that statues of Robert E. Lee, Pierre G. T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis are “public nuisances.” The councilmen voted to have the statues disassembled and taken to a warehouse.

In Baltimore came a recommendation that a dual statue of Lee and Stonewall Jackson be removed from a city park.

In Georgetown, Texas, a local church has petitioned the county to take its Confederate monument from the courthouse to a cemetery or a museum.

A century ago, Georgians were busily erecting monuments to

Confederate soldiers on courthouse squares and other locations in communities throughout the state. Huge throngs witnessed the dedication ceremonies, listened to inspiring oratory and paid their abiding respects to the aged veterans still in their midst. In comparison to other places, Georgia has seen relatively little agitation to remove memorials to the Southern Confederacy. However, there is some chatter on the subject, including talk of destroying the carving on Stone Mountain. Destruction of this unique work of art is unlikely, to say the least. But as Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Like Yogi, we do not know what the future holds, but for now, Georgia’s courthouse squares contain a rich architectural heritage in the 200plus sculpted memorials to Southern

Stewart County, Lumpkin.

Our soldier on the courthouse grounds in Lumpkin takes a break from his duties to tamp some more tobacco in his pipe. Confederate soldiers lacked necessities of all kinds, but they did have their tobacco.

IN MEMORY OF THE BRAVE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS OF STEWART COUNTY, BOTH THOSE WHO FOUGHT AND FELL, AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT AND SURVIVED

soldiers raised over the decades in every corner of our state.

Beginning in the summer of 1865 Southern ladies formed memorial associations to tend to the many cemeteries in which Confederate soldiers had been buried. Confederate Memorial Day is said to have been first observed in rituals on April 26, 1866, in Columbus. Georgia’s first Confederate memorial was raised in June of that year in a rural cemetery in Richmond County, a modest column honoring the 23 men from the small Linwood Church who went to war and did not return. Atlanta was not far behind. In 1869, citizens organized to raise a monument to Confederate soldiers; the 65-foot obelisk was dedicated April 26, 1874, in Oakland Cemetery.

Indeed, most of the South’s first Confederate monuments were like these, erected in the many soldiers’ graveyards strewn across our region.

However, as time passed memorializers wanted more visible reminders of their Confederate heroes and began to set their statues in county courthouse squares and other prominent sites. In downtown Griffin, for instance, 1909 saw the dedication of a new soldier monument, while the angel erected in 1867 continued to watch over the graves of the fallen in nearby Stonewall Cemetery.

The waning years of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth were the heyday of Confederate monument building in Georgia and across the South. In Lumpkin, the seat of Stewart County, there was raised the tall stone pillar atop which stands a Confederate soldier’s sculpted likeness. He is not holding his musket in a bayonet charge, and not shouldering it on the march. This rather relaxed Johnny Reb, holding his rifle at parade rest, is casually tamping tobacco into his pipe.

The Stewart County monument introduces us to the rich variety of Confederate monumentation in our state. Join us on a drive around Georgia to visit these memorials and learn of the men they honor.

Stephen Davis is the author of What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Destruction of Atlanta (Mercer University Press, 2012) and Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001). Davis is also the author of two additional books on the Atlanta Campaign to be published this year as part of the Emerging Civil War Series by Savas Beatie.

Gould Hagler is the author is Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation (Mercer University Press, 2014). All the photos are taken from this book, available from Mercer University Press, retail outlets, online sellers, and directly from the author by email at gould.hagler@gmail.com.

Butts County, Jackson.

This youthful soldier greets visitors to the courthouse in Jackson. The monument was erected in 1911 by the Larkin D. Watkins Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The fabricator, the McNeel Marble Company of Marietta, built more Confederate memorials in Georgia than any other monument company.

Butts County lay on Sherman’s route to the sea, and suffered much destruction as the Union army moved through the area.

IN MEMORY OF THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS OF BUTTS COUNTY OUR HEROES

Wilkes County, Washington.

The Last Cabinet Chapter of the U.D.C unveiled the Wilkes County monument in 1908. Among the inscriptions is a hortatory message to posterity.

MEN OF WILKES! KNOW THROUGH ALL TIME THAT THEY FOUGHT TO MAINTAIN A JUST UNION; TO DEFEND CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT; TO PERPETUATE AMERICAN LIBERTIES, AND LEFT YOU THEIR PATRIOTIC SPIRIT.

Civil War News

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May 2016

Jasper County, Monticello.

Commissioned by the local chapter of the U.D.C., these twin marble statues – a cavalryman and an infantryman – have stood beside the granite obelisk in Monticello’s town square since 1910. The monument is visible in a scene in the 1992 movie “My Cousin Vinnie,” shot partly in the Jasper County Courthouse.

Among the inscriptions is a quote from a poem by Father Abram J. Ryan, the poet-priest of the South.

IN LEGEND AND LAY, OUR HEROES IN GRAY, SHALL FOREVER LIVE OVER AGAIN FOR US.

Effingham County, Springfield.

The fine courthouse is new, but this obelisk has stood on the same ground since 1923. Restored seven decades later, Effingham’s monument, like most in Georgia, is structurally-sound and ready to begin its second century.

ERECTED BY SALZBURGER CHAPTER UNITED DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY APRIL 26, 1923

Decatur County, Bainbridge.

Bainbridge’s Willis Park, formerly known as Monument Square, was the site of an older courthouse, replaced in 1902 by the Neoclassical Revival structure in the background. The monument was unveiled in 1906 by Linda Gordon, niece of Gen. John B. Gordon.

TO OUR CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS 1861-1865

Colquitt County, Moultrie.

Moultrie boasts one of Georgia’s fine McNeel monuments, built by the U.D.C. in 1909.

ON FAME’S ETERNAL CAMPING GROUND, THEIR SILENT TENTS ARE SPREAD, AND GLORY GUARDS WITH SOLEMN ROUND, THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.

May 2016

Civil War News

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Hancock County, Sparta.

This modest obelisk, erected by the Ladies Memorial Association, predates the Hancock County Courthouse by two years. The Second Empire structure, built in 1883, was destroyed by fire in 2014.

Reconstruction is underway.

GEORGIA’S WAS THE WORD, AND THEIRS THE WILL TO DIE.

Dodge County, Eastman.

Erected in 1910, this classic monument originally stood in a downtown street. Like many other memorials, this one was taken out of harm’s way as automobile traffic increased. The Confederate Everyman now stands at the Dodge County Courthouse.

NOR SHALL YOUR GLORY BE FORGOT, WHILE FAME HER RECORD KEEPS.

Loyal Legion of the Confederacy

CSA National Defense Medals & other banned internet items

Civil War Recreations

Elbert County, Elberton.

The odd-looking soldier who originally stood atop this monument was so unpopular that he was deposed by a group of unhappy citizens just two years after the 1898 dedication. A close examination of the more worthy replacement reveals that it is made of white bronze, not the more usual marble.

Liberty County, Hinesville.

This 1928 monument, recently restored, is one of the few Georgia monuments featuring a cavalryman.

LORD GOD OF HOSTS, DEFEND US YET LEST WE FORGET LEST WE FORGET

THIS MONUMENT PERPETUATES THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO, TRUE TO THE INSTINCT OF THEIR BIRTH, FAITHFUL TO THE TEACHINGS OF THEIR FATHERS, CONSTANT IN THEIR LOVE FOR THE SOUTH, DIED IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THEIR DUTY.

WWW.CWMEDALS.COM cwmedals@yahoo.com

1 Smithbridge Rd., Unit 61, Chester Heights, PA 19017

Kimberly Brigance ISA Accredited Appraiser Civil War Militaria & Memorabilia kbappraise@gmail.com | 770-715-2208 www.kbappraise.com

Civil War News

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May 2016

– Civil War Events Through July – Exhibits

To May 1, Pennsylvania. 1865

“1865: The End of the Civil War & Lincoln Assassination” exhibit at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia. Focus on notable 1865 participants at Laurel Hill.

Opening reception, walking tour, May 17, 1 p.m. with Andy Waskie & Russ Dodge. Free by registration, 215-228-8200, tours@thelaurelhillcemetery.org

May 6-Aug. 28, Virginia. Postwar Virginia

“Wounds Healed, Wounds Inflicted: Post-Civil War Virginia” exhibit guest curated by John Hennessy at Manassas Museum in Manassas. From postwar-1902. For information, 703-368-1873; www.manassasmuseum.org

To May 30, New York. Künstler Exhibit

“Mort Künstler: The Art of Adventure: exhibit at Long Island Museum, Stony Brook. Civil War, other works from artist’s 60-year career. Open ThursdaySaturday, 10-5, Sunday, 12-5 p.m. For information, 631-751-0066.

Through May, Pennsylvania. Robert Smalls

“The Life and Times of Congressman Robert Smalls” traveling exhibit with artifacts, images, documents about the former slave and Civil War ship pilot at National Civil War Museum, Harrisburg. Opening reception June 19, free showing June 20. For information, 717-260-1861; www. nationalcivilwarmusuem.org

To June 1, North Carolina. CSS Neuse

“Treasures from the Vault” at CSS Neuse Civil War Interpretive Center, Kinston. Items not previously shown and recent donations. For information, 252-526-9600, cssneuse@ncdcr.gov; www.nchistoricsites.org/neuse

June 3-Aug. 28, Virginia. John S. Mosby

“John Singleton Mosby: Lawyer, Soldier, Statesman,” guest curated by David Goetz at Manassas Museum in Manassas. Honoring 100th anniversary of Mosby’s death. May 22 panel discussion, 1:30 p.m. For information, 703368-1873; www.manassasmuseum.org

To October 2017, District of Columbia. Immigration

“American by Belief” special exhibit at President Lincoln’s Cottage on Lincoln’s little known immigration policies. Info: www.lincolncottage.org

To Nov. 1, Wisconsin. Iron Brigade.

“Faces of the Iron Brigade – A Social Network of Soldiers” exhibit at the Civil War Museum Kenosha. Words, images, equipment of the Iron Brigade.

For information, 262-653-4141; www.TheCivilWarMuseum.org

Through 2016, Pennsylvania. Vice & Virtue

“Tell Mother I’ve Been Good: Vice & Virtue in the Civil War” exhibit at National Civil War Museum, Harrisburg. Stories, images, artifacts about moral challenges faced by servicemen. Info: www.nationalcivilwarmuseum.org

Through 2016, Virginia. Union Aid Groups

“Union Aid Organizations during the Petersburg Campaign” at Grant’s Headquarters at City Point in Hopewell. Photos, original and reproduction artifacts, documents highlighting U.S. Sanitary Commission & Christian Commission, Northern state relief agents’ work during May 1864-spring 1865 Petersburg Campaign. For information, www.nps.gov/pete

Events

April 30-May 1, New York. Artillery School

28th Annual Artillery School at Old Fort Niagara, Youngstown. Open to all branches of service, Federal & Confederate, & civilians. $7. Sponsored

by National Civil War Artillery Association & Reynolds’ Battery L. For information, registration, John Beatty, 716-432-0456, jrbeatty21@aol.com; www.reynoldsbattery.org

April 30-May 1, Ohio. Civil War Show

39th Annual Ohio Civil War Show & 24th Annual Artillery Show at Richland County Fairgrounds, Mansfield, Saturday 9-5, Sunday 9-3. Seven buildings, living history, cannon firing, field hospital, music, demonstrations. $7 ages 12 up. For information, 419-884-2194; www.ohiocivilwarshow.com

May 1, Maryland. Junius Brutus Booth

Speaker Jim Garrett, a life-long Lincoln Assassination and Booth enthusiast will talk at 2 p.m. for about 45 minutes. Located at Tudor Hall, 17 Tudor Lane, Bel Air. $5 cash for ages 13 and older. For information, 443-619-0008, SpiritsOfTudorHall@gmail.com, http://spiritsoftudorhall.blogspot.com

May 1, Maryland. Guided Tour of Historic Tudor Hall

Tour the grounds and first floor of the home of Maryland’s famous family of Shakespearian actors including Edwin and John Wilkes Booth. 45 minute tour begins at 1 p.m. 17 Tudor Lane in Bel Air. $5 for age 13 and older. For information, 443-619-0007, SpiritsOfTudorHall@gmail.com, http://spiritsoftudorhall.blogspot.com

May 5-7, Georgia. Savannah Preservation Festival

Savannah, GA | Historic Savannah Foundation. This educational festival demonstrates what makes Savannah unique. Event programming will include the annual Preservation Awards ceremony; an opening lecture and reception; a house and wine tour; and will conclude with a neighborhood-wide “Block Party.” Contact Frances Colón at fcolon@myHSF.org or 912.233.7787.

Website http://www.myhsf.org

May 6-8, Virginia. Grant Association

Ulysses S. Grant Association Annual Meeting in Richmond. For information, www.usgrantlibrary.org

May 7, California.

Living History

Fort Ord Warhorse Days at Fort Ord in Marina. Civil War mounted artillery, Hussars, current mechanized artillery. For info: fortordhistory@gmail.com; www. fortordwarhorse.org/home.html

May 7, Illinois.

Grave Marker Dedication

The Philip H. Sheridan Camp of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in conjunction with the Oswego Township Cemetery will dedicate new headstones on graves of 22 Civil War veterans buried in Oswego Township Cemetery. Ceremony will be held Saturday at 1 pm at the cemetery. 503 South Main Street in the Village. Speakers will include representatives from Civil War heritage groups. Local reenactors will provide rifle and artillery salutes. For information, 630-3888675, robtrogers@aol.com

May 7, New Jersey.

Confederate Memorial Day

Honor Ceremony Finns Point National Cemetery, 454 Fort Mott Road, Pennsville. Adjacent to Fort Mott State Park. We will meet in the Fort Mott parking lot at 10 am. In conjunction with Private Meredith Pool Camp 1505, SCV, 12th Virginia Infantry, 7th New Jersey Infantry, Sons of Veterans Reserve, and the Col. Francine Camp 7, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. Contact David Hann at Dhann59@aol.com or Rich Silvani at RR1863@aol.com

May 7- 8, West Virginia.

155th Jackson’s Raid

Anniversary at Martinsburg Roundhouse Center, Martinsburg.

Battle, living history, dance.

Sponsored by Martinsburg-Berkeley County Convention & Visitors Bureau. Information & registration: 717-338-1776; ALHES.com

JACKSON’S RAID th 155 Anniversary

at the Martinsburg Roundhouse Center located at 100 E. Liberty Street

Period Dance • Civil War Camps Hourly Promgrams • Battle at 2 pm

May 7th & 8th 2016 MARTINSBURG, WV Reenactor Registration at ALHES.com or by calling 717.338.1776 Sponsored by Martinsburg - Berkeley County Convention & Visitors Bureau

May 2016

Civil War News

May 13, Virginia. Cemeteries Tour

Explore Your Park: Historic Cemeteries at Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park, Bristow, walking tour at 7 p.m. Free, donations encouraged.

For information, 703-366-3049.

May 14, Virginia. Lecture

“Ramming Speed: The Rise & Fall of the Ram as a Naval Weapon” by John V. Quarstein, Civil War Lecture Series at The Mariners’ Museum & Park, Newport News, 2:30. For information, 757-596-2222; MarinersMuseum.org

May 14-15, North Carolina. Reenactment

Battle of Warm Springs reenactment in Hot Springs area of 2nd N.C. Mounted Infantry activity and skirmishes. $5 registration by April 1, $10 later.

For information, www.2ncmi.org

May 15, Pennsylvania. GAR 150th

“Grand Army of the Republic Tour of Veterans of the Civil War” at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, 1 p.m. Featuring notable founders & leaders, led by Dr. Andy Waskie & Russ Dodge. Related 150th anniversary exhibit 12 p.m. $12 tour donation requested. For information, 215-228-8200.

May 18-22, Virginia. N-SSA Live Fire Matches

North-South Skirmish Association National Competition in Winchester.

Individual, team matches with Civil War firearms; cannons, mortars. For information, Melinda Shaw, Annieoak13@gmail.com; recruitment@n-ssa. net and the N-SSA web site at: www.n-ssa.org

May 19-22, Virginia. Seminar & Tour

“Stonewall Jackson in the Valley” Chambersburg Civil War Seminar & Tours based in Harrisonburg. Tours of Lexington, Jackson 1862 battle sites in Valley.

Speakers & guides include Ed Bearss, Dr. James Robertson, Keven Walker, Jeff Wert, Jerry Holdsworth. For information, www.CivilWarSeminars.org

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For information, Tim & Diana Bucknam, 585-507-6847, HTBuck@aol.com; http://fireonthegenesee.com

May 21, Maryland. A Civil War Dance

Saturday from 1:00-3:30 p.m., in the restored 19th century Enlisted Men’s Quarters of Fort Washington Park, 13551 Fort Washington Rd. The dance will be under the direction of Dance Mistress Amy Delery and the Arlington House Victorian Dance Society, of Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial. Civil War era clothing is welcome but not required for visitors.

The dance will be preceded by cannon firings at 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Free and open to the public.

May 21, Washington. Victorian Ball

Grand Victorian Ball for Peace at Lakewold Gardens, Lakewold. Sponsored

by Washington Civil War Assn. For information, Victoria Cady, 360-6492546, stickyvicki@msn.com

May 21-22, Virginia. 152nd Fort Pocahontas

152nd Anniversary of The Action at Wilson’s Wharf at Fort Pocahontas, Charles City, 10-4. Daily 1 p.m. battles, presentations, self-guided fort tours, Saturday dinner, dance, artillery fire, night tactical. For information, registration, 804-829-9722, www.fortpocahontas.org

May 22, Maryland.

Till the Curtain Falls: The Genius of Edwin Booth

Presented by Kate Ramirez. The 45-minute talk starts at 2 p.m. Located at 17 Tudor Lane, Bel Air. $5 cash for ages 13 and older. For info 443-619-0008, SpiritsOfTudorHall@gmail.com, http://spiritsoftudorhall.blogspot.com

May 22, Philadelphia.

Gravesite Placement Of Veterans’ Flags At Laurel Hill

Letterman Lecture on patient extraction from the battlefield at National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Frederick, 4 p.m. Speakers Dr. Gary Gilbert and Don Choate. For information,civilwarmed.org

Gatehouse of Laurel Hill Cemetery, 3822 Ridge Avenue, in Philadelphia at 10 am. The group will place U.S. flags on the graves of veterans’ of all wars. Cemeteries to be covered: Laurel Hill, Mount Peace & Saint James the Less. Refreshments and lunch provided. Open to the public. 3822 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia. Free parking. For information, 215- 228-8200, www. thelaurelhillcemetery.org

May 20-22, Georgia. 152nd Resaca

May 27, 28, Virginia. Symposium

May 20-22, New York. Reenactment

May 27-29, Michigan. Living History

May 20, Maryland. Lecture

152nd Anniversary “Battle of Resaca” reenactment on over 650 acres of original battlefield in Resaca. Battles both days, period dance, medical demonstrations, cavalry competition, ladies’ tea, civilian refugee camp, memorial service at Confederate cemetery. Registration $10 by May 1.

Sponsored by Georgia Division Reenactors Assn. www.georgiadivision.org 17th “Fire on the Genesee” reenactment, Letchworth State Park, Mt. Morris.

Friday education day. Battles both days, Saturday dance, Sunday morning church service. Bounty for artillery on field. $5 by May 7, $8 at registration table. Proceeds to maintain park’s Civil War Parade Ground & Museum. Hosted by 5th Virginia Cavalry, 28th New York & Fire on the Genesee Committee.

16th Biennial Stonewall Jackson Symposium at Virginia Military Institute, Lexington. Speakers include Keith Bohannon, Robert E.L. Krick, Robert K. Krick, John W. Mountcastle, Elizabeth Parnicza, Frank A. O’Reilly, Jeff Shaara. Sponsored by VMI & Stonewall Jackson House. Registration deadline May 18. For information, registration, www.stonewalljackson.org Branch County Civil War Days at Heritage Park, Coldwater. Friday evening train ride (fee) at the Little River Railroad. Free weekend living history, demonstrations, drills, battle, Saturday ball, Sunday church service. www. cwcwmi.com

May 27-30, New York.

150th Commemoration

Commemoration in Waterloo. Friday evening ceremony at American Civil War Memorial. Weekend living history, demonstrations, historical figures, Saturday parade. Monday decoration ceremonies at cemeteries, 150th parade, ceremony. All units & branches welcome. Sponsored

by Waterloo 150th Celebrate/ Commemorate, VFW & American Legion. Caren Cleaveland, 585-7036489, ccleave1@yahoo.com; www. waterloony.com

May 28-30, Maryland.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day Weekend at Monocacy National Battlefield, Frederick, with 2,200 flag memorial display honoring those who fell during the battle, programs throughout weekend. For information, 301-6623515; www.nps.gov/mono

May 28-30, Virginia.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day Weekend at Pamplin Historical Park, Petersburg. Walk of Honor Breakthrough tour, living history programs, ceremony with artillery, color guard, Taps. For information, 804-861-2408; www. pamplinpark.org/events

May 28-30, Washington.

Reenactment

Battle of Deep Creek reenactment at Medical Lake near Spokane.

Sponsored by Washington Civil War Assn. For information, Bob Davisson, 509-995-8619 (evening), bob@14virginiacavalry.org

May 29, Pennsylvania.

Memorial Day

Recreation of Meade Post 1’s original 1868 GAR Decoration Day Service at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, 12 p.m. Dedication of

Hosting Civil War tours sinCe 1989.

April 7-10 Ed BEArss symposium Based in Chambersburg, Pa.

Tours of Gettysburg and Brandywine Battlefield with Ed Bearss, Tom Clemens, Dana Shoaf, Steve Bockmiller, and others. Covering Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, WWII.

mAy 19-22 stonEwAll JAckson in thE VAllEy Based in New Market, Va.

Tours of Lexington, Va., Jackson Battle sites of 1862 in the Valley.

Speakers include Ed Bearss, Jeff Wert, Keven Walker, Jerry Holsworth, others.

July 27-31 GEttysBurG dAy thrEE & BEyond Based in Chambersburg, Pa.

Tours of Gettysburg off the beaten path, East Cavalry Field, the Retreat, and more. Speakers include Ed Bearss, Jeff Wert, Carol Reardon, Eric Wittenberg, Wayne Motts, Steve French, & others.

FAll 2016 lincoln At GEttysBurG Based in Chambersburg, Pa.

Featuring Joe Mieczkowski, John Schildt, David T. Dixon, Ed Steers, and others. Includes bus tour following Lincoln’s path to giving the Gettysburg Address, sessions, and tour of sites in Harrisburg.

“ExcEllEnt as always. I always lEarn so much that I can latEr dElvE Into.”

- donna m., 2015 attEndEE

CONTACT US!

717-264-7101

/CivilWarSeminars

Special thanks to our Sponsor:

Essays on How We Remember the Battle and Understand Its Consequences, edited by Gerald Christianson, Barbara Franco & Leonard Hummel

Foreword by Edward Linenthal. Contibutors: Maria Erling, Pamela Cooper-White, Rick Beard, Gerald Christianson, Bradley Hoch, Mark Oldenburg, Nelson Strobert, Barbara Franco, Susan Colestock Hill, Leonard Hummel, Gregory Hoskins Available in the Seminary Ridge Museum Shop for $18.95 + tax directly, or for $28.00 with shipping and handling in the U.S. Call: (717) 339-1353.

Seminary Ridge Press, 61 Seminary Ridge, Gettysburg, PA 17325 WWW.LTSG.EDU

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Civil War News

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May 2016

veterans’ markers, ceremonies followed by traditional service honoring all veterans at Gen. George G. Meade’s grave. Wreaths, military contingents, color guards, music, period civilians invited. Co-sponsored by General Meade Society of Philadelphia; Friends of Laurel Hill; American Legion Post 405; MOLLUS, Union League; Sons of Union Veterans. For information, 215228-8200.

June 4-5, New Jersey. School of Soldier

June 1-5, Pennsylvania. High Tide at Gettysburg

Old North State Antique Gun & Military Collectors Show, North Carolina State Fairgrounds, Raleigh. Saturday 9-5, Sunday 10-4:30. $8 adults, $1 ages 7-12. For information, Carolina Trader Promotions, 704-282-1339, TheCarolinaTrader.com

Sponsored by the Civil War Trust. Exhibit Hall at the Wyndham Gettysburg located at 95 presidential Circle, Gettysburg. Open to the public Wednesday through Sunday. Will include tours and guest speakers. For information, 800298-7878, ext. 7229, www.civilwar.org/annualconference

June 2-5, West Virginia. 155th Philippi

28th Annual Blue & Gray Reunion commemorating war’s first land battle on June 1, 1861, in Philippi. Commemorative battle, skirmishes, living history, tea, ball. For information, Ed Larry, 304-457-3773, frank.larry45@gmail.com

June 4, California. Conference

7th Annual School of the Soldier Encampment at Allaire State Park, Farmingdale. Skirmishes, tactical, lantern tour & night firing. Registration opens in February. Info at Facebook: Allaire “School of the Soldier” Civil War Encampment.

June 4-5, North Carolina. Show

June 10-12, Pennsylvania. Women’s Weekend

Women’s Contributions & Challenges of the Civil War: Mentoring Weekend at Daniel Lady Farm, Gettysburg. Camping available, meals, learning about reenacting. $10 registration by May 31. Hosted by Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Assn. For information, organizer Melynda Wrightstone, melwinna1@yahoo.com and Facebook; www.gbpa.org

American Civil War Conference – 1861: Marching to War at Temecula Conference Center, Temecula, 8:30-5 with lunch. Seven historians commemorate first year of the war. Registration required. For information, registration, www.gazette665.com/cw-conference-2016

June 11, Maryland. Living History

June 4-5, Alaska. Living History

June 11, Virginia. Lecture

Civil War Living History Weekend at Chena Lakes Recreation Area, Fairbanks.

Living history, drill demonstrations, presentations. For information, Lt. Ed Forquer, hq4thus@yahoo.com

“Living With War - Soldier and Civilian Life on the Battlefield” at Monocacy National Battlefield, Frederick. Military & civilian living historians, weapons demonstrations. For information, 301-662-3515; www.nps.gov/mono “Where are we in the conservation of the Turret?” by Will Hoffman, Civil War Lecture Series at The Mariners’ Museum & Park, Newport News, 2:30.

For info: 757-596-2222; MarinersMuseum.org

Battle of Resaca

152ND ANNIVERSARY REENACTMENT May 20-22, 2016 in Resaca, Georgia Sponsored by the Georgia Division Reenactors Association For more details visit our website

www.georgiadivision.org

June 11, Wisconsin.

Living History

“A Salute to Freedom” at the Civil War Museum, Kenosha, 10-4.

Reenactor demonstrations, displays, booths, presentations, music. Free.

For information, 262-653-4141, www.TheCivilWarMuseum.org

June 11-12, New York.

Reenactment

24th Annual Peterboro Reenactment in Peterboro. Skirmish both days at 2 p.m. No registration fee before June 1, $5 after & walk-ons. Hosted by 12th U.S., Co. A. For information, Carol Mayers, 315-633-8844, caroljmayers@yahoo.com; www. the12thus.com

June 17-19, Pennsylvania. Tour

Shenandoah Civil War Associates’ “J.E.B. Stuart at Gettysburg” tour of sites including Maryland & Virginia associated with Stuart’s ride & Battle of Gettysburg with Jeff Wert. Friday speakers Ted Alexander & Eric Wittenberg. Saturday dinner cruise on Susquehanna. For information, shencivilwar@gmail.com. Register, Bonnie Powell, Conference Services, James Madison University, 540-5688043.

June 18, Virginia.

Battlefields Tour

Forgotten Battles of Northern Virginia from Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park, Bristow, hours 8-5. Local historians explore smaller, hidden battles in the region from 1861 to 1865. Reservations required, $80 includes lunch. For information, 703-366-3049.

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May 2016

Civil War News

June 18-19, Maryland. Monocacy Open House

Open house at the Best Farm, Monocacy National Battlefield, Frederick, 11-4. Historic buildings, main house, site of slave village spanning three centuries. House tours, living historians. For information, 301-662-3515; www.nps.gov/mono

39

Battlefield Preservation Assn. For information, Bill or Brendon Synnamon, 717-339-0009; bill@unioncigarclub.com

June 26, Maryland. Guided Tour of Historic Tudor Hall

June 18-19, Washington. Reenactment

“Battle of Chehalis River,� Chehalis. Sponsored by Washington Civil War Assn. For information, Kevin Saville, 360-292-0966, Kevin@saville.net

Tour the grounds and first floor of the home of Maryland’s famous family of Shakespearian actors including Edwin and John Wilkes Booth. 45-minute tours begin at 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. 17 Tudor Lane, Bel Air. $5 for ages 13 and older. For information, 443-619-0007, SpiritsOfTudorHall@gmail.com, http://spiritsoftudorhall.blogspot.com

June 24-26, Kansas. Reenactment

July 1-3, Pennsylvania. Reenactment

June 24-26, Ohio. Living History

“The Road to Manassas� at Historic Lyme Village, Bellevue. Stone soup Saturday dinner, $5 poll tax. Artillery bounties. For information, www. lymevillage.com or Facebook.

June 24-26, Vermont. “Vermont at Cedar Creek� Weekend

Series of events offered by the park beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Saturday begins with The 10th Vermont at Cedar Creek Ranger program at 9 a.m. and continues with dedications, living history and various other activities through 6 p.m. The activities continue on Sunday from 10-2:30. For information, 540869-3051, www.nps.gov.cebe

June 25-26, Alaska. Living History

Civil War Living History at Pioneer Park, Fairbanks. Demonstrations, presentations. For information, Lt. Ed Forquer, hq4thus@yahoo.com

June 25-26, Maryland. Living History

Corbit’s Charge Living History Encampment at Emerald Hill Park, Westminster, 9-4. Highlighting Carroll County & Battle of Westminster.

Saturday parade, wreath-laying ceremony, battle tours, evening event.

Sunday church service. Participants, especially mounted cavalry, wanted.

Registration $5. Hosted by The Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table of Carroll County. For information, registration, Steven Carney, swcarney13@aol.com

June 25-26, Pennsylvania. Collectors’ Civil War Show

43rd Annual Civil War Collectors’ Show, Al1Star Expo Hall at Eisenhower Inn. Gettysburg. Saturday 10-5, Sunday 9-2. Sponsored by Gettysburg

Camp Nelson, Ky Civil War Days September 10 & 11, 2016 Experience military & civilian life during the Civil War and a skirmish reenactment on one of the best-preserved Union Army Supply Depot and recruitment sites in the nation. Living historians tell the stirring story of Camp Nelson and its impact on not only the Civil War but on African-American History. (859) 881-5716. www.campnelson.org

Civil Weekend â&#x20AC;˘ May 21 and 22 @M@C 08IWar 0<<B<E; a &8P 8E;

1 th Annual 19 TH ANNUAL Reenactment

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153rd Anniversary Battle of Gettysburg Reenactment at â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gettysburgâ&#x20AC;? movie site on Pumping Station Road, Gettysburg. Daily battles with pyrotechnics, living history village, activities tents, Saturday dance. Horse & cannon bounties. Registration fee. Reenactors may stay till July 4. For information, registration, gac42comcast.net; www.gettysburgreenactment.com

July 1-3, Pennsylvania. Anniversary Activities

Annual Gettysburg Battle anniversary activities at Seminary Ridge Museum, Gettysburg. For information, 717-339-1300; seminaryridgemuseum.org

770-630-7296

Reenactment of the Battle of Malvern Hill in Moline. Seeking Union & Confederate artillery & infantry. For information, R. Durbin, 785-453-2185.

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Prince William County Historic Bus Tours Forgotten Battles of Northern Virginia

Saturday, June 18, 2016 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. $80 per person, includes lunch. Reservations required.

Join local historians as we explore many of the smaller, hidden battles that took place in our region from 1861-1865. Tour stops will include: -Middleburg

-Unison

-Aldie

-Ox Hill

-And many more!

For more information or to make your reservation, please call: Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park; 703-366-3049

â&#x20AC;&#x153;In Much Need of Serviceâ&#x20AC;?: Civil War Hospitals of First Manassas

Saturday, July 23, 2016 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. $80 per person, includes lunch. Reservations required.

After the Battle of First Manassas, the horrors of battle continued in the numerous hospitals throughout the area. Commemorating the 155th Anniversary of the battle, join us as we visit the hospitals of Manassas and learn about Civil War medicine, the soldiers who were treated, the families whose homes were commandeered.

For more information or to make your reservation, please call: Ben Lomond Historic Site; 703-367-7872

The Bristoe Station Campaign

Saturday, October 8, 2016 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. $80 per person, includes lunch. Reservations required.

Enjoy a full day, in-depth tour of the sites and battlefields that made up the Bristoe Campaign.

Historians will explain how this important campaign impacted soldiers, civilians, and its overall impact on the outcome of the Civil War. Participants will have the chance to see little known or visited sites.

For more information or to make your reservation, please call:

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Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park; 703-366-3049

Prince William County Department of Public Works Historic Preservation Division Web: www.pwcgov.org/history Email: historicpreservation@pwcgov.org Facebook: www.facebook.com/pwhistoric Twitter: @PWHPF

40

July 2-4, Virginia.

Living History

Independence Day Weekend Celebration at Pamplin Historical Park, Petersburg. Living history programs & demonstrations of soldier, plantation life. July 4 artillery & bugling demonstrations, color guard. For information, 804861-2408, www.pamplinpark.org

Civil War News

July 2016

Civil War News Gettysburg Edition

May 2016

GETTYSBURG

FREE

Civil War News � www.civilwarnews.com � National Park Service Events � Annual Gettysburg Reenactment � November Remembrance Calendar � June 26-July 5 Calendar � Programs, Talks, Tours, Living History � News Stories & Historical Articles

July 4, Arkansas. Artillery

Artillery demonstrations at Fort Curtis, Helena, 9-12. Crews interpret Battle of Helena while demonstrating cannon operation during battle. For information, Ronald@arkansasheritage.org; www.deltaculturalcenter.com

July 9, Virginia. Lecture

“Why Composite Artifacts are Tricky to Conserve” by Kate Sullivan, Civil War Lecture Series at The Mariners’ Museum & Park, Newport News, 2:30. For information, 757-5962222; MarinersMuseum.org

July 9-10, Illinois.

Civil War Days

25th Annual Civil War Days at Lakewood Forest Preserve, Wauconda. Battles both days, living history, contests, drills, medical demonstrations, music, exhibits, historical persons, civilian programs, Saturday meal & ball. Registration

We are now accepting advertising insertion orders for the July Civil War News Gettysburg Edition. Fullcolor newspaper with a devoted section on Gettysburg that reaches 10,000+ people and is published in June.

You will want to advertise in this issue whether you own a restaurant, store, hotel, bed and breakfast, or you deal in relics or antique firearms, sell books or real estate. If you are holding an event such as a reenactment/living history program, auction, seminar, tour, trade show, fund raiser or anything related to tourism, then this is the issue that you don’t want to miss.

Call 800-777-1862 or email us at ads@civilwarnews.com to inquire about advertising rates & available space. The ad deadline is June 1.

Photographs by ©Helen S. Schwartz, Artistry In Photography www.artistryinphotography.com Top: Brown’s Battery B, 1st Rhode Island monument and Basil Biggs barn.

Middle: from left, monuments to 78 and 102 New York Infantry, Alabama State, 7th Indiana Infantry.

Bottom: Parrott rifle near North Carolina State monument, at right, and 29th Pennsylvania monument.

Civil War News FREE Gettysburg section � www.civilwarnews.com

May 2016

Civil War News

41

free by June 1. Limited bounties for artillery & cavalry. For information, Lake County Discovery Museum, 847-968-3400. Registration forms, www. lcfpd.org/civilwar

Saturday speakers & lunch, Sunday Second Fredericksburg Battlefield tour & raffle ticket. For information, http://emergingcivilwar.com/2016-symposium/

July 9-10, Kentucky. Reenactment

“Echoes of Blue and Gray” at Evergreen Cemetery, Everett. Battle event followed by memorial service. Sponsored by Washington Civil War Assn.

For information, Bruce Smith, 425-483-0351, babrsmith@peoplec.com

Reenactment of Morgan’s 1863 Raid at Brandenburg Riverfront. Battles both days, raid on downtown, dance, ladies’ tea, Saturday meal & music. Bounties for artillery, cavalry & infantry. Registration $5. For information, www. brandenburgreenactment.com

July 9-10, Maryland. 152nd Monocacy

152nd anniversary of Battle of Monocacy & 25th anniversary of Monocacy National Battlefield park. Civilian & military encampments, hands-on activities for kid, battle related programming, infantry & artillery firing. For information, 301-662-3515; www.nps.gov/mono

July 9-10, Ohio. Civil War Weekend

Annual Civil War Weekend at Heritage Village Museum, Sharonville. Focus on 1861 with early war scenarios, daily battles influenced by battle of Ball’s Bluff. Civilian & military activity in 19th century village, speakers, hands-on activities, building tours, Saturday dance. For information, 513-563-9484; www.heritagevillagecincinnati.org

July 15-16, Georgia. Gun & Military Show

Atlanta Antique Gun & International Military Show., IAMAW Local 709 Union Hall, Marietta, Saturday 9-5, Sunday 10-4. $7 adults, $1 ages 7-12, 2 day pass $10. For information, Carolina Trader Promotions, (704) 282-1339, TheCarolinaTrader.com

July 16-17, California. Reenactment

Civil War Days at Duncans Mills coastal encampment. Sponsored by California Historical Artillery Assn. For information, www.civilwardays.net

July 16-17, Maryland. Living History

Civil War Encampment & Living History at Union Mills Homestead, Union Mills, along Meade’s Pipe Creek Line & skirmish sites. Living history, infantry & artillery drills, skirmishes. For information, 410-848-2288, info@ unionmills.org

July 16-17, Maryland. Monocacy Open House

Aug. 6, Washington. Skirmish/Memorial Service

Aug. 6-7, New Jersey. Living History

Annual Parker Press Civil War Living History Weekend in Woodbridge, 10-4. Period impressions, displays, skirmishes, Saturday candlelight visits.

Sutlers by invitation. Free parking & admission. Sponsored by Robert E. Lee Civil War Round Table of Central New Jersey. For information, Mira Form, 717-420-5564, mkform48@gmail.com

Aug. 6-7, New York. Civil War Weekend

Civil War Weekend at Hallockville Museum Farm, Riverhead. Battles, demonstrations, living history. All proceeds to North Shore Horse Rescue & Hallockville Farm. Hosted by 14th Brooklyn Co. E & 57th Virginia, Co. B. For information, Col. Frank Ruiz Sr., Union Vols., skibbo14@aol.com

Aug. 13, Virginia. Lecture Series

Civil War Lecture Series: “Conservation of the USS Monitor” with Elsa, Conservator, USS Monitor Project at The Mariners’ Museum & Park, Newport News, 2:30. For information, 757-596-2222; MarinersMuseum.org

Aug. 13-14. Georgia. Civil War Show

38th Annual Southeastern Civil War and Antique Firearms Show and Sell.

Cobb Civic Center, 528 S Marietta Pkwy SE, Marietta. Sponsored by North Georgia Relic Hunters Assn. For more information http://www.ngrha.com

Aug. 13-14, Washington. Reenactment

“Battle of Snoqualmie” at Snoqualmie. Sponsored by Washington Civil War Assn. For info: Paul Timmerman, 425-894-5010, pault0721@gmail.com

Aug. 20, Virginia. Living History

Jacob’s Birthday: Celebrating 226th birthday of Jacob Bushong who, with family, endured the Battle of New Market on their farm, at New Market Battlefield. For information, www.vmi.edu

Open house at Worthington Farm, Monocacy National Battlefield, Frederick, 11-4. Farm was staging area for the Confederate Army’s attack. House tours, living history life in the 19th century. For information, 301-662-3515; www. nps.gov/mono

Aug. 20-21, Alaska. Living History

July 22-24, Virginia. 155th Bull Run

Aug. 20-21, New York. Reenactment

155th Anniversary of 1st Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) Reenactment on Cedar Creek Battlefield, Middletown. Hosted by Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation. For information, 540-869-2064, info@ccbf.us; www.ccbf.us

July 23, Virginia. Evening Tours

You Are There: Witness the Chaos of Pringle House Hospital at Ben Lomond Historic Site, Manassas, 7-9 p.m. House and grounds guided tours every half hour telling story of First Manassas field hospital. Reservations suggested. $10, blood donors $5. For information, 703-367-7872

July 23-24, Virginia. Living History

Pringle House Hospital Weekend and Red Cross Blood Drive at Ben Lomond Historic Site, Manassas, 11-4. Site of First Manassas Confederate field hospital. Portrayals of period medicine and hospitals. $5 per person, free for blood donors. For information, 703-367-7872

July 25-29, Virginia. Leadership Camp

Leadership Camp at Virginia Military Institute, Lexington. For young men 13-17 to learn & live life as a VMI Cadet in the 19th century. For information, www.vmi.edu

July 27-31, Pennsylvania. Seminar & Tour

“Gettysburg Day Three & Beyond” Chambersburg Civil War Seminars & Tours, based in Chambersburg. Speakers include Ed Bearss, Jeff Wert, Carol Reardon, Eric Wittenberg, Wayne Motts, Steve French. Tours of Gettysburg off the beaten path, East Cavalry Field, the Retreat. For information, www.

CivilWarSeminars.org

July 30, Pennsylvania. Civil War Day

Civil War Day at the Reamstown Memorial Park, Reamstown, 9-4. Battles, living history. Reenactor meal. Registration deadline April 15. Sponsored by Reamstown Historical Society & Museum. For information, Rick Jacobs, 717-413-4179, lakeside_drive@yahoo.com; Martha Sweigart-Brunner, 717364-0865, Masb51@gmail.com

Veterans Appreciation Weekend in Fairbanks. Civil War living history, drill demonstrations, historical presentations. For information, Lt. Ed Forquer, hq4thus@yahoo.com Civil War Encampment & Reenactment at Hamlin Beach State Park, Hamlin.

Battles both days, living history, talks, music, period dance followed by night fire, church service. Bounty for artillery that takes field. Reenactors $8 by Aug. 8, $10 walk-on. Hosted by 5th Virginia Cavalry & 28th New York, Co. E. For information, Timothy Bucknam, 585-493-3611, HTBuck@aol.com

Aug. 25, Georgia. Founder’s Day

Fort Pulaski National Monument will celebrate the 100th birthday of the National Park Service with a special day of events from 9-7. Special programs, artillery firings, and music, highlighted by an evening performance by the Third Infantry Division Band. https://www.nps.gov/fopu/learn/news/ nhpa50.htm

Aug. 26, Virginia. 154th Battle Tour

Jackson at Bristoe Station Anniversary in-time walking tour at Bristoe Station

1st Tennessee Light Artillery Presents The American Artillery Associations Sanctioned Shoot

“The Ponderosa Challenge”

June 4-5 Rain or Shine

Competition of Civil War Artillery

Aug. 5-7, Virginia. Symposium

Third Annual Emerging Civil War Symposium, “Great Attacks of the Civil War”, at Stevenson Ridge on Spotsylvania Court House Battlefield. Topics include the Fall of New Orleans, the Wolverines in East Cavalry Field, Breakthrough at Petersburg. Keynote speaker Jim Ogden on Longstreet’s attack at Chickamauga. $95 includes Friday roundtable & hors d’oeuvres,

100/500/800 Yards

• $20 entry fee per cannon/mortar • AAA Insured • Free camping, water, campfire & awards • Family friendly For info contact Ray at 518-380-1128 after 5pm or email 70sixpak@gmail.com

Event location: 699 Co. Hwy. 39, Worcester, NY

Battlefield Heritage Park, Bristow, 7 a.m.-4 p.m. 154th anniversary of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s capture of Bristoe Station, precursor to the Battle of Second Manassas & Jackson’s capture of Bristoe. Free, $5 suggested donation. For information, 703-366-3049

Aug. 26-28, Pennsylvania.

Reenactment

26th annual Lebanon County Civil War Weekend at Union Canal Tunnel Park, Lebanon. Battles both days, Saturday morning tactical. Artillery bounty. No mounted cavalry or horses. $10. Sutlers $25 by Aug. 10.

Hosted by 93rd Pennsylvania Vol. Inf., 13th Mississippi & Lebanon County Historical Society. For information, Dennis R. Shirk, 717933-4294, drshirk93@comcast.net

Aug. 26-28, Virginia.

Living History

Civil War Weekend in two locations in Manassas. The burning of reproduction railcar, extensive Civil War mourning exhibit, keynote speaker John Hennessy. For information, 703-368-1873; www. manassasmseum.org

Aug. 27 Maryland.

Campaign Commemoration

“Mystery & Myths of Lee’s Lost Orders” at Monocacy National Battlefield, Frederick. Rangers & living historians commemorate 1862 Maryland Campaign & Confederate encampment that led to the loss of Special Orders 191 found by 27th Indiana soldiers. Portrayals of regiment, infantry demonstrations throughout the day. For information, 301-662-3515; www.nps.gov/mono

Aug. 27, Maryland.

Living History

Annual Potomac River Crossing at Historic White’s Ford from Dickerson Conservation Park, Dickerson, 9 a.m. Cross at ANV’s location. Speaker on ford’s history.

Hosted by Col. William Norris Camp, SCV. For information, Frank Brown, fbrwnmcbrwn@aol.com

Aug. 27, Virginia.

154th Anniversary Tours

Battle of Kettle Run Anniversary Tours at Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park, Bristow, 1-4 p.m.

154th anniversary of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Aug. 27, 1862, capture of Bristoe Station & Battle of Kettle Run, opening round of Second Manassas. Free, $5 suggested donation. For information, 703-366-3049

Aug. 27-28, Kentucky.

Reenactment

Battle of Richmond in Richmond.

All branches needed. Sponsored by the Battle of Richmond Association.

For information, 859-248-1974; battleofrichmond.org

Digital Issues of CWN are available by subscription alone or with print plus archives at www.CivilWarNews.com

Civil War News

42

May 2016

Baltimore Show News Baltimore Antique Arms Show

TIMONIUM, Md. — The 62nd annual “Original Baltimore Antique Arms Show” presented by Maryland Arms Collectors Association, Inc. was held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds on March 19-20. The show was quite successful with approximately 4,000 attending. The show is the largest all antique weapons show in the country. No modern pistols manufactured after 1898 are allowed, except at exhibits. Visitors to the show enjoyed seeing antique weapons from the French & Indian War, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II. We like to call it the “Crown Jewel of Collectors Shows.” We have over 700 exhibitors from 44 of the 50 states and foreign countries including Canada, The United Kingdom, Denmark, Israel, Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and France. If a visitor spent one minute at each table, it would take approximately 15 hours to see the entire show.

The award recipients for this year were: Best Single Weapon – Dennis Pizzini with Tredegar Iron Works Richmond, Va. Cannon Model 1861; First Place Educational – Elliott Brodsky with Colonel Edward Anderson: Chaplain & Executioner; Second Place Educational – Samuel Higginbotham with Cut These Off; Third Place Educational – Jeffrey Sipling with Remington Model 26 BB Gun. Judges Choice Awards went to Paul Johnson, Mark Tyler, Robert Eckert, Roger Bethke, Robert Burnes and Craig Bell.

Display Appreciation Awards went to Mel Hankla, Harold Hopp, Elsie Kemp, Thomas Singelyn, Chris Foard and James Schoenung.

The first Maryland Arms Collectors Association Show was in 1955 at the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland with approximately 50 exhibitors. Over the years, as the show has grown, it has moved to larger venues with this year being its 25th year at the Maryland State Fairgrounds.

Show dates for next year: March 18 & 19, 2017.

Dennis Pizzini won the Best Single Weapon Award with his rare 12-pounder cast iron Tredegar Iron Works Field Howitzer.

Mark Tyler’s display won him a Judges Choice Award. Included in his display were two firearms made by Gunsmith Andrew Kopp.

Paul Johnson’s display, “Identifying U.S. Bayonets by Method of Attachment”, won a Judges Choice Award.

James Schoenung’s display on “Rapid Fire Weapons” won him a Display Appreciation Award. Part of his display was a Gatling gun, shown here, with its barrels that rotated when fired.

Military Images magazine Since 1979, MI has been America’s only publication dedicated to historic photographs of soldiers and sailors.

Harold Hopp’s display, “A Soldier’s Basic Equipment Civil War to WWII”, won him a Judges Choice Award.

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Asheville Gun & Knife Show WNC Ag Center 1301 Fanning Bridge Road Fletcher, NC

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Charleston Gun & Knife Show Exchange Park Fairgrounds 9850 Highway 78 Ladson, SC 29456

June 4 & 5, 2016

Columbia Gun & Knife Show

South Carolina State Fairgrounds 1200 Rosewood Drive Columbia, SC 29202

June 11 & 12, 2016

Capital of the Confederacy Civil War Show

Richmond International Raceway 600 East Laburnum Avenue Richmond, VA 23222

November 12 & 13, 2016

Middle TN (Franklin) Civil War Show

Williamson County Ag Expo Park 4215 Long Lane Franklin, TN 37064

December 3 & 4, 2016

Mike Kent & Associates, LLC • PO Box 685 • Monroe, GA 30655 770-630-7296 • Mike@MKShows.com • www.MKShows.com

Civil War News

44

May 2016

Regimentals & State Interest LINCOLN

LOUISIANA

NEW YORK

PENNSYLVANIA

VIRGINIA

THE LINCOLN Group of New York. Three dinner meetings each year with nationally acclaimed guest speakers. Come enjoy camaraderie and provocative discussions on Abraham Lincoln. For information, visit www.lincolngroupny.org. 6.15.16

POLIGNAC 2ND Texas Brigade in Red River Campaign: anything related to Crescent Rgt. 18 & 28 Louisiana Infantry, 15th Texas Infantry and 17th, 22nd, 31st & 34th Texas Dism. Cav. Regts and Gen. Polignac. Details about these units and the Veterans’ meetings after the war. Daniel J. Frankignoul, 64 Clos des Peupliers, 1200 Brussels, Belguim or email me at dan.franki@hotmail.fr. 11.15.16

2ND NEW YORK Mounted Rifles - Recruited largely in Erie and Niagara Counties. All information including letters, stories, diaries, photos, burial sites. Bill Crowlev, 9 Jasmine Lane, Kings Park, NY 11754 or wjcrowley@gmail.com.

12.15.16

WANTED: PENNSYLVANIA CDV’S, letters, images, artifacts, diaries, swords. Especially 61st, 62nd, 63rd, 77th, 78th, 101st, 155th, cavalry, artillery and Bucktails. Contact KC Turner, PO Box 911, Ellwood City, PA 16117.

CivilWar@zoominternet.net.

6.15.16

1ST COMPANY Richmond Howit­ zers. Seeking information, letters, journals, accounts for history. Wayne Rowe, 45 Starboard Dr #370, Tivertown, RI. Email newave99@yahoo.com. 4.15.16

DAKOTA TERRITORY SEEKING INFORMATION: Pvt. John McClellan, First Dakota Cavalry 1862 1865. Sgt. James McClellan, 3rd Cavalry 1872-1877, Sioux Indian Wars. Contact Greg Olsen. cwshiloh@sio.midco.net.

5.15.16

GEORGIA WANTED: LETTERS, documents related to Simeon B. David, 14th Ga., Hora1io J. David, l6th Ga., M. P. Alexander, 43rd Ga., Contact Ted Pulliam: 703-836-1094, pu1liams3@comcast.net. 5.15.16 42ND GEORGIA - Writing definitive regimental history. In search of letters, diaries, photos, etc. related to the 42nd Georgia. Contact Cliff Roberts at 770-656-5585 or cliff874@gmail.com 7.15.16

ILLINOIS LOOKING FOR letters, notes etc. of/on 39th Indiana Infantry, 39th Indiana Mounted Infantry, 8th Indiana Cavalry for regimental history. Mike Baker, psufan79@yahoo. com 6.15.16

INDIANA INTERESTED IN Civil War info, letters etc. of soldiers from Elkhart County, Ind. Contact Tom at tomandlouise@comcast.net.

8.15.16

IOWA IOWA TERRITORY & Midwestern collector buying Iowa and Indian Territory, Midwes1ern and Wes1ern Army post documents, general orders, photos, relics, 1830-1880s. Mike Brackin, PO Box 652, Winterville, NC 28590.

252-565-8810. tf

Find us on Facebook facebook.com/CivilWarNews

MASSACHUSETTS 25TH MASSACHUSETTS Volunteer infantry. Want to buy letters, documents, artifacts, images, diaries, and any relics associated.

Especially items identified to 1st Lieutenant Charles Francis Tew, Co. K and D, 1861-1864 and anything G.A.R. Post #10, Worcester, Mass., and Hancock’s Veterans Volunteers Co. G 1865-1866. Contact John Tew, 3 Yale Place, Merrick, N.Y., 11566. Home: 516-3782831. Cell: 516-376-7129 jtyankees@aol.com. 5.15.17 INTERESTED IN anything relating to Civil War Signal Corps, CDVs, letters, documents. Also the 40th Massachusetts Infantry.

Contact Wayne Augustine, 3701 W. 70th Place, Chicago, IL 60629, 773-581-6492 or email wayneaugie@comcast.net.

10.15.16 WANTED: IDENTIFIED items, photos, letters from the 15th, 25th, 21st. 36th, 51st or 57th Massachusetts regiments. Also anything from Worcester, Mass. Contact Mark Savolis, PO Box 3A, 1 College St., Worcester, MA 01610 or email msavolis@holycross.edu.

5.15.16

NEW HAMPSHIRE WANTED: 12TH New Hampshire Volunteers Brig. General Joseph H. Poller and 9th New Hampshire Volunteers Private Phendeus Potter photos and papers. Contact Jim Grismer, 5 Grove Park Way, Savannah, GA 31419; 912-308-8925 jimmygriz@aol.com. 6.15.16

NEW MEXICO NEW MEXICO wanted. Civil War and Indian Wars documents, photos and relics. Will Itoh, 5005 San Adan Ave. NW, Albuquerque, NM 87120-1835. 6.15.16

154TH NEW YORK: Seeking anything having to do with the “Hardtack Regiment” Letters, diaries, relics, photographs, veterans’ memorabilia. Visit our website www.hardtackregiment.com 6.15.16 REQUESTING ORIGINAL or copies of photos, letters, journals of these regiments: 116th NY Infantry, 10th NY Cavalry, 64th NY Infantry. Collecting data: Brant NY CW veterans. Contact Patti Friend at historian@brantny.com. 5.16.16

NORTH CAROLINA SALISBURY CONFEDERATE Prison Association seeking information on prison personnel, guards and prisoners of Salisbury Confederate Prison, December 1861 – February 1865. Contact Ed and Sue Curtis, PO Box 393, Salisbury, NC 28145-0393; 704-637-6411; southpaws@fibrant.com. 6.15.16

OHIO WANTED: 25TH Ohio Light Artillery Battery images, diaries and letters. Also 2nd Regiment Ohio Cavalry images, etc. Contact James at dwestcw@aol.com or 903-4525526. 5.15.16 COPIES OF letters or diaries from the 9th Ohio Infantry wanted for possible translation and publication. I am a published author. Contact: J. Reinhart, jrein8@yahoo.com 7.15.16

PENNSYLVANIA 54TH PENNSYLVANIA Infantry Regimental Band. Looking for photos, letters, documents, etc.

Also 176th Pennsylvania Drafted Militia, Company A. Macungie Historical Cociety, PO Box 355, Macungie, PA 18062. 610965-0372. MHS@macungie.org.

6.15.16 “MAJOR GENERAL James Scott Negley and Mutiny Camp Negley.” Scapegoat of Chickamauga.

Not a novel. $12.95 postage paid.

Steward Cruickshank, 95 Lutie St., Nashville, TN 37210. 6.15.16

US NAVY INFORMATION NEEDED: Trying to verify a 16 star U.S. flag flew on the USS Monitor, possibly as a boat flag or ensign’s flag, according to a note attached when donated to a local historical society by family of a sailor. Any information appreciated. Contact JonHeitland@gmail.com. 4.15.16

AFFORDABLE CLASSIFIED ADS. ONLY $30 FOR THREE ISSUES. $90 FOR A FULL YEAR. (11 ISSUES)

SEEKING PHOTOCOPY of letter from Edwin G. Lee to his wife Susan Pendleton, dated 15 July 1861 from “Headquarters Camp near Winchester’’. Purchased from the collection of Tony Marion in Tennessee, but current whereabouts unknown. Gary Gimbel, 401 W. Race St., Martinsburg, WV 25401.

304-263-7242. Email ggimbel@citlink.net. 5.15.16

WEST VIRGINIA WANTED WEST Virginia Civil War images, letters and documents. Richard A. Wolfe, 38 Gregory Lane, Bridgeport, WV 26330.

Call 304-592-5851 or email ra_wolfe@msn.com. 8.15.16

Civil War Books MAIL ORDER

MIXED

1ST EDITION Civil War Books.

Many 100 years old. Collections purchased. C. Clayton Thompson, Bookseller, 584 Briarwood Lane, Boone, NC 28607. 828-265-4970. greatbooks@aol.com. www.civilwarmall.com. tf

“Can You Find It?”

ATTENTION ALL bookworms: Forage Blue Acorn Press’ on-line catalog of Civil War and WWI titles. Heavy emphasis on Western Theatre subject matter. Original works and reprints. www.blueacornpress.com. 8.15.16

CIVIL WAR books: scarce, out-of­-print. Specializing in regimental histories. Free catalog. Buy, sell, trade. Richard A. LaPosta, 317 Turnpike Rd., Somers, CT 06071.

860-763-0481, email: ralapost@aol.com. tf

Hidden locations on the Gettysburg battlefield.

Iron Posts on Little Round Top. Nine Confederate Burials in the Gettysburg National Cemetery, Dinosaur Footprints, The Boy Colonel, Mount Rushmore, Witness Tree Tags, JFK, Actor Jimmy Stewart, Notre Dame, The God Tree, Christmas in July, Alexander Gardner’s “All Over Now” photograph plus 100 more locations.

Take the challenge.

How many can you find?

Softcover, 8-1/2" X 11", 104 pages, 165 color photographs. $21.95 to Dan G. Siderio, PO Box 3074, Gettysburg, PA 17325. 11.15.16

May 2016

Civil War News

Civil War Books

Relics & Artifacts

MIXED

NOVELS

ARTILLERY

“MARYLAND LINE Confederate Soldiers’ Home and Veterans’ Organizations in Maryland” $20; “Union Civil War Veterans’ Organizations in Maryland” $10; both titles by Dan Toomey. All prices include taxes and shipping. Visa, Mastercard or check to Toomey Press, PO Box 122, Linthicum, MD 21090 or toomeypress@aol. com. 6.15.16

A CIVIL WAR Naval Adventure...”August 1864”. The Confederates attempt a daring raid that may change history. Can the U.S. Navy stop them in time? www.

TheWriteThought.com or Amazon or B&N. Henry Rhodes, PO Box 320938, Cocoa Beach, FL 32932.

321-799-1219. 8.15.16

12-PDR Mountain Howitzer, “new” Prairie carriage, 3.5-inch bore. $5,000. Contact Jimmy White at 205-594-0136 alabamabattery@yahoo.com. Last one. Retiring from cannon making.

5.15.16

NEW CIVIL War biography by Gregory Wilson. “Jonathan Roberts: The Civil War’s Quaker Scout & Sheriff” details his life in northern Virginia. Available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble. www. civilwarquakerscout.com. 9.15.16 “CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of James W. King, 11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry,” from KSU Press in 2015 is now in print. Available from your local bookseller or on-line. 6.15.16 LEECHDOM BY Lee Tyler Williams of the 2014 Robert Penn Warren award for fiction. A horrific tale of life in a leprosy colony on the Mississippi during the Civil War. Order at www.newplainspress.com or check or money order written to Summerfield Publishing for $20 to PO Box 1946, Auburn, AL 36831. AL residents add 9% sales tax. 6.15.16 “DIVIDED WE FALL: The Confederacy’s Collapse from Within, A State-by-State Account”

by Calvin Goddard Zon. Available from Amazon in paperback and e­ book. Highly recommended by Civil War News reviewer. 6.15.16

INTERESTED IN the role of religion in the Civil War? Get the widely acclaimed “Both Prayed To The Same God” by Robert J. Miller. Go to Amazon.com or civilwarreligion.com. 12.15.16

“REMINISCENCES OF the Women of Missouri During the Sixties.”

Personal stories compiled by UDC. Hard reprint of the 1913 edition.

Hard Cover. Limited Quantity.

Contact Burnt District Press at ordernoll@aol.com 816-668-5862.

6.15.16

PUBLISHER CAMP POPE Publishing. Complete publishing services, editing, proof reading, typesetting, design, layout, printing and binding. Paperback or hardcover. Specializing in books on the Civil War. View our portfolio and get a free quote at www.camp­pope.com. 12.15.16

REFERENCE BARGAIN SALE - Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion.

Complete set of 30 vols. Published 1894-1921. Includes 1 or 2 later volumes. $499 price includes costly shipping. 717-464-4936. tf

“FOLLOWING IN Lincoln’s Footsteps” and “The Presidents Were Here” identify and illuminate thousands of places in the lives of the presidents. Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. 4.15.16

NEW BOOK on Civil War Kansas forts on Amazon.com. Search on Amazon for “William Pollard Forts and Posts in Kansas.” $12.20 plus tax. Shipping varies by region.

4.15.16

REMEMBERING MICHIGAN’S Civil War Soldiers. New book by authors David Finney and Judith McIntosh. Over 200 images, most have never been published. Send check for $26.99 to Michigan Civil War Book, PO Box 2063, Howell, MI 48844. 7.15.16

REGIMENTALS LOOKING FOR book related to 6th Georgia Cavalry or 49th Indiana Infantry. Are there any out there? Contact John Seibert, 800 Leeman Drive, New Franklin, OH 44319-4734 5.15.16

LEAVING HOBBY. Reproduction Model 1841 6-pdr bronze, limber, all implements and enclosed trailer. Will deliver. Call 843-7059049. 4.15.16

AUTOGRAPHS FOR SALE: Civil War autographs, letters, diaries, stamps, currency.

Price list upon request. Top prices paid for quality material. Brian & Maria Green, PO Box 1816 N. Kernersville, NC 27285-1816.

336-993-5100. Website: shop.bmgcivilwar.net or BMGcivilwar@traid.rr.com tf

GAR, UCV G.A.R. MUSEUM and Library, 4278 Griscom St., Philadelphia, PA 19124. Open first Sundays or by appointment. G.A.R. records, CW artifacts, extensive library. Admission free. Inquiries welcome.

Memberships $20 yearly. 215-2896484. tf

GENERAL INTEREST WWW.HORSESOLDIER.COM. Visit the Horse Soldier’s expansive on-line catalog of Civil War military antiques & collectibles.

Thousands of photographed items featured with new items added daily. Shop at 219 Steinwehr Avenue, Gettysburg, PA. 717-334-0347 info@horsesoldier.com tf

MAIL ORDER REB ACRES: Specializing in Civil War Memorabilia bought and sold. Priced right for the beginning collector. Something for everyone. Send 3 first-class stamps for complimentary 32-page catalog. S. Coleman & Co., PO Box 215, Raphine, VA 24472. 540-377-2057. www.rebacres.com. tf

MEDICAL MEDICAL instruments from the Civil War and before. Loose instruments as well as sets. Collum Antiques, 580A Indian Rocks Rd., Belleair Bluffs, FL 33770. 727581-6585. Email collumantiques@verizon.net See our display ad. tf

45

General & Information

FIREARMS

ART

MORT KUNSTLER LTD. ED. PRINTS - Private collection of un-

framed Mort Kunstler Civil War prints - Rare - LTD. Editions. Contact Paul P. 631-756-0693. pposil756@ aol.com (For titles/prices).

9.15.16

“LEE AT Fredericksburg, Princess Anne Street, 9:40 a.m., November 20th, 1862,” by Mort Kunstler, signed and numbered 446/2000 with COA. Triple matted, museum framed under UV glass w/metal nameplate. $600. Call Jim at 716345-1897. 6.15.16 DON TROIANI: “High Water Mark,” $500. “Burnside Bridge,” “Concord Bridge,” “For God Sake Forward,” “Jackson Is With You,” “The Black Hats,” $200 each or reasonable offer. Call Rick Baker at 617-304-9497. 5.15.16

BED & BREAKFAST LA CLE D’OR GUESTHOUSE, 226 North Union Ave., Havre De Grace, MD 21078-2907. Phone: 410-939-6562 or 410-458-2646. www.lacledorguesthouse.com.

Historic Johns Hopkins family home, 1868. Provides ambiance of quaint European hotel with exquisite suites. Full breakfast, private baths, a/c, wifi, Civil War and Railroad collections, antiques. 4.15.16

DANCE WE CALL dances as the Shenandoah Valley Civil War Era Dancers are all-volunteer & non-profit, raising money for battlefield preservation. Visit our website for schedules and photos. https://sites.google.com/site/ svcwed. Like us at www.facebook. com/SVCWED. 9.15.16

MAIL ORDER PARKER-HALE reproduction rifles wanted. British/English made 1853 Enfield Rifle musket or 1858 Enfield Rifle or 1861 Enfield Musketoon .577 caliber. New in box, unfired with paperwork. No Italian reproductions. The above made are Parker-Hale English made reproductions. Also, looking for new in box Colt 2nd generation percussion revolvers. Contact Blair Clifford 219-680-0490. 5.15.16 WANTED: REAR sight (folding leaf) for 1863 Frank Wesson .44 rimfire rifle issued by B. Kitteredge & Co. Send photo and price to dbespalec@hotmail.com. 5.15.16

FUND RAISING SUPPORT MARIETTA Confederate Cemetery. 2nd Largest Confederate cemetery. Email: jkwrightesa@yahoo.com. 6.15.16

HERITAGE GROUPS CIVIL WAR descendants are invited to join Lincoln Cushing Camp No. 2 SUVCW. Our camp serves the Washington DC Metro area. www.lincolncushing.org. 6.15.16

HISTORIC SITES FORT DELAWARE Society: non­ profit, chartered 1950, dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Historic Fort Delaware. www.fortdelaware.org. 5.15.16

INFORMATION WANTED G.R. WILSON inscription on scabbard for Ames Model 1850 Field and Staff Officer’s sword. Guard has been altered to CS. What is the story? Robert Bailey tombeetle@hotmail.com. 12.15.16 INFORMATION WANTED on 54th Indiana & 41st Alabama. Contact David Boswell 419-308-1447, deboswell@wcnet.org or write to 806 Brittney Ave., Bowling Green, OH 43402. 11.15.16

EVENTS

INTERNET

JUNE 2-5, 2016 in Philippi, WV, 28th Blue & Gray Reunion commemorating first land battle of the Civil War. North and South camp sites, reenactments, ladies’ tea, Civil War ball. Contact Ed Larry at 304-457-3773 or frank.larry45@gmail.com. 6.15.16

CIVIL WAR reproduction muskets, uniforms, equipment, accoutrements, shooting supplies, leather goods, original musket parts and a host more. Visit www.regtqm.com for latest listing. The Regimental Quartermaster, Inc., 49 Steinwehr Ave., Gettysburg, PA 17325. 717338-1850. tf

Civil War News

46

INTERNET

CONFEDERATEPLANET.COM. News, articles, Civil War show calendar, blog. All collectors information on-line. 5.15.16

MEMBERS/ RECRUITING ATTENTION TO arms. The 4th New Jersey Co. A based at the Jersey Shore is actively recruiting.

Military and civilian impressions wanted. Family oriented unit participating in battles, living histories and parades. Capt. Anthony Chadwick 773-920-3039. 4.15.16 BATTERY A, 5th US Artillery “Portsmouth Light-Huger’s” is recruiting in Virginia, North Carolina and pretty much anywhere for cannoneers. Please contact Captain G at drrickgist@hotmail.com or 225-326-8942. 12.15.16 93RD PA Vol. Infantry Senior member 1st Regt. FVB. Over 30 years in reenacting. Spend a weekend with us and then decide. Family-oriented. Located in South Eastern Pa. Contact Capt. D.R. Shirk: 717-933-4294. Dshirk93@comcast.net. 6.15.16 COME IN out of the draft. The 150th NY Volunteer Infantry, Dutchess County Regiment is recruiting. Eastern and Western impressions. Contact Pete Bedrossian ltpete@verizon.net or Rich Schisler rschisler@juno.com 12.15.16 ENJOY THE fun, thrill, and excitement of Civil War Reenacting.

Join the 104th Pa. Volunteer Infantry, Co. C. pa104@hotmail.com or call 215-672-7791 for more information. 5.15.16 F CO. 21ST Virginia Infantry.

Experienced, motivated, high standard company recruiting throughout Mid-Atlantic. Battle reenactments, living history, anniversary & educational programs.

Training with experienced officers and NCOs. Become part of the best in the field. Contact Capt. Tony Turley, 804-347-0822; www.21vafco.org.

11.15.16 JOIN THE 8th Ohio. Reenacting for over 30 years. Authentic unit and founding member of the National Regiment. Be part of one of the oldest and best units still active in the hobby. Location not an issue, we have members from Michigan to North Carolina, centered in Northern Ohio. 8thovi@att.net. 5.15.16 REYNOLDS’ BATTERY L, 1st NY Light Artillery, the largest reenactment batter in NYS is seeking members from upstate NY, Northern PA and Northeastern Ohio to help service its complement of three 3-in. Ordnance Rifles and traveling Battery Forge. Calendar includes full schedule of school days, living histories, local, regional and national reenactments. Family friendly and all impressions related to the life of a Civil War cannoneer including civilian welcome. w w w. R e y n l o l d s B a t t e r y. o r g 12.15.16

MEMBERS/ RECRUITING 10TH VIRGINIA Co. B is recruiting members. For information, please visit www.b10va.com. 12.15.16 ACTIVELY RECRUITING for the 13th Massachusetts in the New England area. You can follow us and join our Facebook page. 6.15.16 WRITER SEEKING stories from people who are unexplainably “drawn” to Gettysburg. Free copy of book for published cases. Anonymity assured. Email me at epalexander63@yahoo.com 7.15.16

MUSEUM MUSEUM & CIVIL WAR TAVERN.

Open April 1 thru Oct. 15.

Wade Hampton had his headquarters here during Battle of Trevilian Station. Most unusual place to see. You won’t be disappointed. Come visit us at 440 Oakland Rd., Louisa, VA 23093. 8.15.16 GRANT COTTAGE: Exit 16 off the Adirondack Northway to Mt. McGregor in New York. Open Memorial Day weekend through Columbus Day. Check hours at www.grantcottage.org or call 518584-4353. 5.15.16

PHOTOGRAPHY IMAGES FOR Sale: Stereoviews, Trans-Miss Generals & other CDV’s, Iowa GAR large format photos. Located in KC area if you want to view in person. I will travel 30 miles. Morebel50@yahoo.com or call 816-591-4457. 7.15.16 CIVIL WAR sesquicentennial photographic project. All proceeds donated to the preservation of Civil War battlefield sites. www.civilwar150photos.org. tf

POSTAL SESQUICENTENNIAL FIRST day postal covers. #6 envelopes $4-$5. Art-craft design. #10 silkscreened envelopes $8-$10. Contact Matt Farina at mafarina@aol. com for details and availability. All proceeds go to battlefield preservation.

RESEARCH SERVICES “RECORDS OF History”: Pension and military records from the National Archives, American Revolution to Spanish-American War. Great for collectors or family history. Reasonable fees, no charge until found. John Emond Phone: 301-384-2809.

Historyrecords@aol.com 01.15.17

May 2016

ROUND TABLES

ROUND TABLES

TOURS

ALABAMA CIVIL War Round Table in Birmingham, Alabama meets at 6 p.m. the second Thursday of each month except Dec., June, July and Aug. at the Vestavia Hills library on Highway 31. For more information, see our website at www. civilwaralabama.org. 8.15.16

KNOXVILLE CIVIL War Round Table meets 7 pm 2nd Tuesday each month at the Beardon Banquet Hall, 5048 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN For info visit www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/-tnkewr/KCWET/Welcome.html. 5.15.16

DC MILITARY Tours. Booth escape tour, Manassas staff rides and defenses of Washington tour guided by a trained military historian.

Get inside access to Capitol Region Civil War sites. www.dcmilitarytour.com; info@dcmilitarytour.com. 7.15.16

AUSTIN, TX CWRT meets 3rd Thursday, September to June for dinner followed by a guest speaker, frequently a nationally known author and/or historian. Visit www.austincivilwar.org.

Questions, contact electronic mailbox: 512-916-3412. 11.15.16 THE CIVIL War Round Table of Greater Boston meets on the 4th Friday of each month from September to May (except November and December) at 7 p.m. at The Community Room, downstairs, of The Arthur Clark Government Center Building on 119 School St. Waltham. Contact: Dave Smith at 781-647-3332, www.cwrtgb.com cwrtmass@comcast.net. tf BRUNSWICK CIVIL War Round Table, Southport, NC, meets on the first Tuesday of the month. Contact Wally Rueckel, president, at 910253-7382. wrueckel@questor.com brunswickcivilwarroundtable.com.

CINCINNATI CWRT meets at Drake Center, third Thursday each month, September through May. Reservations for dinner are required. Details can be found at www.cincinnaticwrt.org. Like us on Facebook. 12.15.16 FRANKLIN CWRT meets second Sunday every month in the “Community Room” at the Franklin Police Complex. Speakers and authors on various Civil War related topics. Primarily Middle Tennessee focused. Free and open to the public. Contact Greg Wade at Greglwade@yahoo.com.

CWRT OF FREDERICKSBURG. Founded in 1957, ours is one of the oldest round tables in the nation. Four major battles of 1he Civil War were fought within 20 miles of here. We meet monthly for a catered dinner followed by a presentation by a guest speaker, frequently a nationally known author. Reservations are required, so please call 540-361-2105 for info on the next meeting. www.civilwarroundtablefredericksburg.com.

Email: FredCWRT@yahoo.com. tf HOUSTON CIVIL War Round Table meets monthly on the Third Thursday, September through May at the HESS Club, 5430 Westheimer. Visitors are welcome.

Visit www.houstoncivilwar.com for additional information. tf

MICHIGAN REGIMENTAL CWRT meets 6:30 pm 1st Monday of month except for May (preceding Monday) and December (no meeting). Farmington Public Library, 23500 Liberty St., Farmington, MI 48335. www.farmlib.org/mrrt. 6.15.16 NEW YORK City’s original Round table. Founded 1951, September-June meetings, location mid-Manhattan, dinner speakers, battlefield tour, prestigious Fletcher Pratt and Barondess/Lincoln awards. Guests and new members always welcome. Contact cwrtnyc1@gmail.com 718-3419811; www.cwrtnyc.org. 5.15.16 ROCKLAND CIVIL WAR Round Table meets monthly at 7:30 pm at Pearl River High School Pirate Cove room. Guest and new members welcome. Meetings on 2nd Wednesday each month. For information call Paul Martin 914-9805267. http://www.paulmartinart. com/rcwrt.html 11.15.16 THE ROCKY Mountain Civil War Round Table meets the second Thursday every month at the Columbine United Church, 6375 South Platte Canyon Road, Littleton, Colorado, at 7 pm. Website: www.rockymtncivilwarrt.com.

6.15.16 TENNESSEE VALLEY Civil War Round Table, Huntsville, Alabama.

Meets the second Thursday every month (except December) at 6:30 pm. Visit www.tvcwrt.org or call 256-278-5533. Come share our passion! 11.15.16 WESTERN RESERVE CWRT - our 50th year. Cleveland area.

Meets at Baldwin-Wallace University student union, Berea, Ohio at 6:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday. Contact George 440570-0009, grolleston@aol.com.

11.15.16 YORK CWRT meets the 3rd Wednesday of each month except December, 7 p.m., York County Heritage Trust, 250 E. Market St., York, PA. Please contact: Lila Fourhman-Shaull at 717-8481585. Ext. #223. 5.15.16

SOUVENIRS WANTED: 150th Civil War Anniversary “diamond shaped” lapel pins. Need Kennesaw Mountain, Shiloh, Corinth, President Street Station pins. Were a common design issued for many NPS battlefields and forts. Contact Walt, wha2kasper@yahoo.com. 4.15.16

UNIFORMS MISS SUSAN’S Socks. Period correct, 100% wool, hand-knit, warm, comfortable. $25. Orderline 315-276-1878. Available at East Coast events from Tophat’s Sutlery. www.tophatssutlery.com 5.15.16

USED GEAR BERDAN SHARPSHOOTER frock coat, dark green, lined, $100.

U.S. light blue great coat, size 48/50, from Jarnagin, $100. Civil War “A” tent, approximately 7’x7’, no poles, $100.

Call 703-906-5621. 6.15.16 CONFEDERATE PANTS, size 40, length 30 inches, jean wool, slightly used. $40 plus shipping.

Email pasnyder@yahoo.com.

6.15.16 WANTED: CASH paid for your used muskets, pistols, tents, camp gear, uniforms, brogans, and anything the reenactor could use.

Email: marylandsutler@pa.net. tf

VIDEO AWARD WINNING DVDs “Spotsylvania”, “Perryville!” “Franklin: Five Hours in the Valley of Death!”

(Emmy Winner) Order via paypal at robertleehodge.com. Historians agree that these films are the best films made on these battles.

4.15.16

Last Raid at Cabin Creek – Ride along with

Stand Watie on one of the most daring raids of the war – the Confederacy’s greatest victory in the Indian Nations.

Award winning 90-minute documentary available as a download rental, download purchase or as a DVD at Amazon.com. 4.15.16

WAGONS FOR SALE: Civil War style covered wagon. Used at reenactments.

Located in upstate NY. $500. For pictures email: mmarchand@americoninc.com.

5.15.16

WOOD HAYCOCK WOOD Company: Civil War reproductions. Lanterns, tables, stools, toys and more. Norman and Arlene Scott, 1200 Mountain View Dr., Quakertown, PA. 18951. 11.15.16

May 2016

Civil War News

Advertisers In This Issue:

47

The Regimental Quartermaster..................15 Richard A. LaPosta......................................24 Sharpshooter Book CFS Press.........................................20 Ace Pyro........................................................21 Suppliers to the Confederacy...........................................23 American Digger Magazine....................... 17 Trail Head Graphics............................................................4 Antietam Battlefield Guides.......................24 Antique Ordnance Publishers....................31 Events: Artilleryman Magazine.........................18, 38 Bear River Powder..........................................9 Battle of Bethesda Church................................................39 Beaufort Naval Armorers............................12 Battle of Franklin.................................................................7 Brian & Maria Green.....................................6 Battle of Resaca..................................................................38 C. Clayton Thompson.................................21 Battle of Sacramento.........................................................38 Canister Publishing.....................................27 Camp Nelson Civil War Days..........................................39 Centurion Auctions.....................................16 Civil War Tours..............................................................9, 37 Civil War Acquisitions................................12 Fort Pocahontas Civil War Weekend..............................39 Civil War Antique Shop..............................22 N-SSA..................................................................................29 Civil War Recreations..................................35 Gettysburg Civil War Battle Reenactment.....................38 Civil War Trust.............................................31 Image of War Seminar...................................................... 36 Dell’s Leather Works....................................42 MKShows, Mike Kent.................................................27, 43 Dixie Gun Works Inc..................................30 Paths of Destruction.........................................................24 Fair Oaks Sutler............................................30 Ponderosa Challenge.........................................................41 Franklin Relics................................................9 Prince William County Bus Tours..................................39 Fugawee.com................................................29 Sidney, Ohio Living History Weekend...........................22 Gettysburg: The Quest For Meaning.........37 Union Bound Movie.....................................................9, 40 Gunsight Antiques...................................... 20 Harpers Ferry Civil War Guns...................27 Heavenly Harvest Inc.................................. 29 Deadline for submissions Henry Deeks...................................................4 and advertising is The Horse Soldier.........................................25 April 25 for the June issue.

James Country Mercantile..........................26 James D. Julia Inc.........................................13 John Sexton Appraiser.................................48 Kimberly Brigance Appraiser.....................35 Civil War News Legendary Arms Inc....................................10 6175 Hickory Flat Hwy. Suite 110-355 Le Juneau Gallery.........................................19 Canton, Georgia 30115 Lincoln’s Pocket Knife...................................6 Order Online at The Maine Powder House.......................... 28 www.CivilWarNews.com The Maryland Sutler....................................26 Mercury Supply Company Sutler...............23 800-777-1862 • mail@civilwarnews.com Mike Brackin................................................14 Military Images Magazine..........................42 All payments are processed under the name Panther Lodges.............................................14 Historical Publications LLC. Quartermaster Shop.....................................25

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