Civil War News
16
August 2019
The Soldiers’ Journal Shifting her focus from the hospitals, where she worked as a nurse tending to wounded and ill Federal soldiers, Amy Morris Bradley began publishing The Soldiers’ Journal on February 17, 1864, in Alexandria, Va. Bradley, a Maine native and prewar teacher, printed an eight-page edition each week, from inception until June 1865. Eventually surpassing 20,000 subscribers in the North, each issue contained reports from the battlefront, soldier letters, information on hospitals and relief
agencies, and many more topics. Researchers can access the surviving copies of the Journal for free, thanks to the Library of Congress and the ‘Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers’ website, at https:// chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ lccn/sn89038091/. Other online repositories also offer the Journal, including the Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com, and a subscription site, http://www.newspapers.com. Regardless of the access method,
August 17, 1864 cover of The Soldiers’ Journal.
On August 5, “Seventeen of the enemy’s vessels, (fourteen ships and three iron-clads) passed Fort Morgan this morning.”
Amy Morris Bradley. (Duke University Library, Amy Morris Bradley Papers.)
each website provides the ability to conduct keyword searches, save and print results, and the opportunity to view the actual digitized pages. Except for a few missing editions, most weekly issues remain from 1864; six exist from 1865. Given the August date of this column, let us turn to a critical event, that took place during the month in 1864 – the Battle of Mobile Bay. On August 5, Admiral David Farragut ran his 18 ships past Forts Morgan and Gaines, entered Mobile Bay, rendered the CSS Tennessee dead in the water, and sank the CSS Gaines. A search of ‘Mobile Bay’ at the Library of Congress site yielded the account shown in the clipping. Go online, check out the other issues available, conduct your own searches, and next month, we will explore another primary source. Until then, good luck in researching the Civil War!
Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, instructor, and a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, the Georgia Association of Historians, and the Georgia Writers Association. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@ gmail.com, or to 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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