#civilwar — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #civilwar, aggregated by home.social.
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https://www.europesays.com/videos/90726/ ‘New escalation in Yemen deeply concerning everyone in the region’ • FRANCE 24 English #CivilWar #FRANCE24 #FRANCE24English #FRANCE24Guest #FRANCE24 #FRANCE24English #Iran #RedSea #SaudiArabia #Yemen
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#CivilWar #History news #OTD - Confederate pirates (or privateers, depending on your point of view) active in the Atlantic, but none encountered by this patrol.
https://www.reporting-history.com/2026/09/08/no-sign-of-rebel-pirates/
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Real Housewives of London star says cast row exploded 'like a nuclear bomb'
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The pro-slavery city of Atlanta was evacuated OTD in 1864 on orders of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/usa/washington-lee-mansion/?s=mb #CivilWar #history
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Reporter’s Notebook: Bosnian Serbs reflect on life of Ratko Mladic https://www.byteseu.com/2345042/ #BALKANS #Bosnia #BosniaAndHerzegovina #BosniaHerzegovina #CivilWar #Europe #Herzegovina #Serbia #Yugoslavia
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Pro-slavery Confederate forces evacuated Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina OTD in 1863 https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/usa/washington-lee-mansion/?s=mb #CivilWar #history #BlackLivesMatter
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Pro-slavery Confederate forces evacuated Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina OTD in 1863 https://toilet-guru.com/blog/57.html?s=mb #CivilWar #history #BlackLivesMatter
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Pro-slavery Confederate forces evacuated Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina OTD in 1863 https://toilet-guru.com/blog/57.html?s=mb #CivilWar #history #BlackLivesMatter
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Pro-slavery Confederate forces evacuated Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina OTD in 1863 https://toilet-guru.com/blog/57.html?s=mb #CivilWar #history #BlackLivesMatter
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Pro-slavery Confederate forces evacuated Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina OTD in 1863 https://toilet-guru.com/blog/57.html?s=mb #CivilWar #history #BlackLivesMatter
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Pro-slavery Confederate forces evacuated Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina OTD in 1863 https://toilet-guru.com/blog/57.html?s=mb #CivilWar #history #BlackLivesMatter
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The Confederate Question Never Closed
An old professor's epigram, tested against the monuments, the forts, the flag, a Supreme Court ruling from this spring, and the counterfeit history of emancipation now spreading online. An old history professor of mine once offered a sentence that has outlasted most of what I learned in his classroom. The South lost the battle, he said, and won the war. He meant that the Confederacy was more alive in the present than it had been on the April morning when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. The claim sounded like provocation at the time. It reads now like a weather report. Army forts carry the names of men who took up arms against the United States. The Supreme Court has just rewritten the rules that protected Black voters in the states most determined to suppress them. A battle flag the rebel armies never managed to carry into Washington was paraded through the Capitol in 2021. My professor's epigram deserves a hearing, and it deserves a harder examination than its admirers usually give it, because one half of it is true in a way that should alarm anyone who wants a working democracy, and the other half is false in a way that can disarm the people who would defend one. […]https://bolesblogs.com/2026/07/02/the-confederate-question-never-closed/
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Jubilee "Chronicles the triumph of a free spirit over many kinds of bondage" Sale: $19.99 to $1.99 by Margaret Walker Rating: 4.7/5 (1,494 Reviews) #jubilee #blackhistory #historicalfiction #womensfiction #kindlebooks #books #booksky #civilwar #reconstruction #literature #africanamerican
Jubilee -
General Meade, Debbie, and the Observation Tower. Gettysburg, 1977. #gettysburg #gettysburgpa #gettysburgpennsylvania #pennsylvania #vacation #holiday #daytrip #daytrips #cartrip #attraction #attractions #civilwar #civilrights #observationtower #eyesore #disagreement #statue #statues #warstatues #warstatue #1970s #1970sfashion #sunnyday #weather #goodweather
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The Civil War Era Girls' Seminary in Academia, Pennsylvania, circa 1976. It no longer exists. #history #civilwar #1800s #seminary #academia #school #boardingschool #boardingschools #education #educationhistory #girlsschool #girlsschools #academy #boarders #warbetweenthestates
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This is actually what #CivilWar looks like. #Trump is pitting #USsoldiers against #US soldiers on #domestic soil.
#Pentagon readies 1,500 #soldiers to possibly deploy to #Minnesota
Troops with the #Army’s #11thAirborne Division in Alaska are preparing after Trump’s #InsurrectionAct threat, according to defense officials.#NationalSecurity #law #PosseComitatusAct #MilitaryState #MartialLaw #Constitution #CivilRights #RightToProtest #UseOfForce #AbuseOfPower #autocracy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/18/trump-minnesota-insurrection-act/ -
The future of the young boy is clear in his head: become a priest, live a life of studying hard and loving his fellow humans as much as loving God, and the path to sainthood is paved. Little did he know that the world had other plans, lurking just below the horizon.
#CriticalThinking #Atheism #Science #LossOfFaith #CivilWar #LebaneseCivilWar
https://thesimplependulum.blog/2025/11/15/in-his-image-and-likeness/
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The US is on the verge of a civil war, a drugged-up billionaire misanthrope is trying to taunt the UK into the same thing, and Russia is invading Poland and Romania's airspace.
But there will always be Paris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUEstWJUkAis
#TakeaBreak and #Relax in #Paris #Queen #BohemianRhapsody #FlashMob #Music #War #Pestilence #Plague and #Destruction #Russia #USA #UK #TommyRobinson #Nazis #ElonMusk #CivilWar
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Letters from an American – August 5, 2025 – Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American, August 5, 2025 (Tuesday)
By Heather Cox Richardson, Aug 05, 2025
Sixty years ago tomorrow, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The need for the law was explained in its full title: “An Act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, and for other purposes.”
In the wake of the Civil War, Americans tried to create a new nation in which the law treated Black men and white men as equals. In 1865 they ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing enslavement except as punishment for crimes. In 1868 they adjusted the Constitution again, guaranteeing that anyone born or naturalized in the United States—except certain Indigenous Americans—was a citizen, opening up suffrage to Black men. In 1870, after Georgia legislators expelled their newly seated Black colleagues, Americans defended the right of Black men to vote by adding that right to the Constitution.
All three of those amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth—gave Congress the power to enforce them. In 1870, Congress established the Department of Justice to do just that. Reactionary white southerners had been using state laws, and the unwillingness of state judges and juries to protect Black Americans from white gangs and cheating employers, to keep Black people subservient. White men organized as the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Black men and to keep them and their white allies from voting to change that system. In 1870 the federal government stepped in to protect Black rights and prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan.
With federal power now behind the Constitutional protection of equality, threatening jail for those who violated the law, white opponents of Black voting changed their argument against it.
In 1871 they began to say that they had no problem with Black men voting on racial grounds; their objection to Black voting was that Black men, just out of enslavement, were poor and uneducated. They were voting for lawmakers who promised them public services like roads and schools, and which could only be paid for with tax levies.
The idea that Black voters were socialists—they actually used that term in 1871—meant that white northerners who had fought to replace the hierarchical society of the Old South with a society based on equality began to change their tune. They looked the other way as white men kept Black men from voting, first with terrorism and then with grandfather clauses that cut out Black men without mentioning race by permitting a man to vote if his grandfather had, literacy tests in which white registrars got to decide who passed, poll taxes, and so on. States also cut up districts unevenly to favor the Democrats, who ran an all-white, segregationist party. By 1880 the South was solidly Democratic, and it would remain so until 1964.
Southern states always held elections: it was just foreordained that Democrats would win them.
Black Americans never accepted this state of affairs, but their opposition did not gain powerful national traction until after World War II.
During that war, Americans from all walks of life had turned out to defeat fascism, a government system based on the idea that some people are better than others. Americans defended democracy and, for all that Black Americans fought in segregated units, and that race riots broke out in cities across the country during the war years, and that the government interned Japanese Americans, lawmakers began to recognize that the nation could not effectively define itself as a democracy if Black and Brown people lived in substandard housing, received substandard educations, could not advance from menial jobs, and could not vote to change any of those circumstances.
Meanwhile, Black Americans and people of color who had fought for the nation overseas brought home their determination to be treated equally, especially as the financial collapse of European nations loosened their grip on their former African and Asian colonies and launched new nations.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-5-2025-tuesday
August 5, 2025 (Tuesday) by Heather Cox Richardson
#2025 #America #CivilWar #DonaldTrump #Education #HeatherCoxRichardson #History #LettersFromAnAmerican #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #LyndonBJohnson #Politics #PresidentJohnson #Resistance #Science #Substack #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #VotingRightsAct
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So a lesbian doesn't like you.. she's a "threat to humanity"? Do you remember when you were a kid and you assumed grown-ups were running things.. and everything was fine?
"What kind of #Murrican are you?"
#CivilWar #UnitedMyAss #FuckTrump #FuckedCountry -
The fat fascist fucking QUNT will call #MartialLaw in #California any day now...
Somebody will get killed (hopefully a #CosPlay masked pussy) and then all hell will break out.
"What kind of #Murrican are you?"
#CivilWar #UnitedMyAss #FuckTrump #FuckedCountryhttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-10/federal-immigration-sweep-ventura-county-farms
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Multiple outlets are now confirming that Trump will be leaving the G7 summit early as odds of U.S. involvement in Iran grows. Good job #maga
"War, war, war; this war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides... there isn't going to be any war."
#war #warwarwar #fiddledeedee #iran #g7 #trump #israel #usinvolvement #tehran #scarlettohara #vivianleigh #tarletontwins #gonewiththewind #movieclip #filmclip #classicmovie #civilwar
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Multiple outlets are now confirming that Trump will be leaving the G7 summit early as odds of U.S. involvement in Iran grows. Good job #maga
"War, war, war; this war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides... there isn't going to be any war."
#war #warwarwar #fiddledeedee #iran #g7 #trump #israel #usinvolvement #tehran #scarlettohara #vivianleigh #tarletontwins #gonewiththewind #movieclip #filmclip #classicmovie #civilwar
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Truth is whatever Donald John Trump says it is.
The "only following orders" Nazional Guard and Marinezis are in Los Angeles. Politicians dither. The constitution is dead. The federal government is already engaging in civil war.
They've already violated their oaths.
Newsome needs to line up military assistance. Like from Canada and France. That NATO thing the Nazi shit all hate. Now. Not next week. Now.
#USpolitics #NazionalGuard #NationalGuard #Marinezis #Marines #LosAngeles #Constitution #CivilWar #Nazis #Trump #Newsome #military
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Stay away from the #Mariners #Angels game today.
The #BigHands nazi and gestapo #civilwar will be roaming around unpredictability.
Don't let them take you to the El Salvador concentration camps.
Watch it on tv.
Also, #generalstrike. Start it now.
You're #antifa or you're irrelevant.
#cdnpoli #canada #mexico #fascism #antifa #elbowsup #bcpoli #vancouver #burnaby #canlab
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Tens of thousands of soldiers died of malaria during the Civil War, but the numbers would have been far higher if quinine hadn't been discovered. Because I live near Philadelphia, here's a lithograph of Rosengarten & Sons' factory complex where it was purified from the bark of cinchona, a relative of coffee (Rubiaceae). #MemorialDay #CivilWar #history #quinine #cinchona #philadelphia #mosquitoes #gallinippers #malaria #swamps
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Marvel United: Civil War - Kolekcja Bohaterów
Rozszerzenie wprowadza nowych Bohaterów, których możesz wykorzystać do odtworzenia epickiej Wojny Bohaterów lub połączyć z postaciami, Łotrami, Lokacjami i Wyzwaniami z innych części Marvel United, tworząc niepowtarzalne scenariusze.#MarvelUnited #CivilWar #GryPlanszowe #BoardGames #Superbohaterowie #Kompatybilność #MarvelGames #GraKooperacyjna #Rozszerzenie #MarvelUniverse
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“Labor Is Life” (U.S. Postal Service’s Labor Day Stamp, 1956, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).
Bakers, blacksmiths, boatmen, butchers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, cigarmakers, coal miners, factory workers, farmers, gardeners, gold miners, iron workers, masons, quarry workers, teamsters, tombstone carvers. These were just a few of the diverse job titles held by the laborers who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.
Many returned to their same occupations after the war ended while others found new pathways for their life journeys. Far too many were never able to return to the arms of their loved ones and still rest in marked or unmarked graves far from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
In honor of Labor Day, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is proud to present this abridged list of blue-collar men and boys who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry between August 1861 and January 1866, as well as the names of two of the women associated with the regiment who made their own unforgettable marks on the world.
* Auchmuty, Samuel S. (First Lieutenant, Company D): A native of Duncannon, Perry County and veteran of the Mexican-American War who was employed as a carpenter during the early 1860s, Samuel Auchmuty responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War by enrolling as a first lieutenant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on August 20, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed his work as a house carpenter and launched a successful contracting business that was responsible for building new business structures, churches, single-family homes, and schools, as well as renovating existing structures; he died in 1891, following a brief illness;
First Sergeant Christian S. Beard, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Beard, Christian Seiler (First Lieutenant, Company C): A twenty-seven-year-old, married carpenter residing in Williamsport, Lycoming County when President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1865, Chistian S. Beard promptly enrolled for Civil War military service before that month was out as a private with Company D of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; after rising up through the ranks to become a first lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on Christmas Day, 1865, and returned home to his wife in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, where he continued to work as a carpenter; after having several children with his wife, he was widowed by her; remarried in 1884, he relocated with his wife and children to Pittsburgh, where he continued to work as a carpenter; ailing with heart and kidney disease, he died there on November 16, 1911 and was interred at that city’s Highwood Cemetery;
* Burke, Thomas (Sergeant, Company I): A first-generation American, Thomas Burke was a twenty-year-old cabinetmaker residing in Allentown at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on the day that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded (August 5, 1861), he was officially mustered in as a private; from that point on, he continued to work his way up the ranks, receiving a promotion to corporal on September 19, 1864 and then to sergeant on July 11, 1865; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865, he returned home to Lehigh County, where he married and began a family; sometime in early to mid-1871, he and his family migrated west to Iowa, settling in Anamosa, Jones County, where he was employed as a carpenter and contractor; he died at his home there on October 22, 1910 and was buried at that town’s Riverside Cemetery;
* Colvin, John Dorrance (Second Lieutenant, Company C): A native of Abington Township, Lackawanna County who was a farmer when he enlisted for Civil War military service on September 12, 1861, John D. Colvin transferred to the U.S. Army Signal Corps on October 13, 1863, and continued to serve with the Signal Corps for the duration of the war; employed as an engineer, post-war, he helped the Pacific Railroad to extend its service from Atchison, Kansas to Fort Kearney in Nebraska before returning home to Pennsylvania, where he married, began a family and resided with them in Olyphant and Carbondale before relocating with them to Parsons in Luzerne County, where he became a prominent civic leader and member of the school board; initially employed as a machinist, he went on to become superintendent of the Delaware & Hudson Coal company before taking a similar job with the Lehigh Valley Coal Company; the U.S. Postal Service’s postmaster of Parsons during the early 1890s, he died there on March 15, 1901 and was buried at the Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre;
* Crownover, James (Sergeant, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old teamster residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Crownover rose up through the ranks of the 47th Pennsylvania from private to reach the rank of sergeant; wounded in the right shoulder and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; during captivity, he was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant; given medical treatment before he was returned to active duty, he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he found work at a tannery near Blain, married, began a family and then relocated with them to East Huntingdon Township, Westmoreland County, where he worked as a teamster; relocating with them to Braddock in Allegheny County after the turn of the century, he worked at a local mill there; he died in Allegheny County on July 18, 1903 and was buried at the Monongahela Cemetery in Braddock Hills;
Jacob Daub, circa 1862-1865 (carte de visite, Cooley & Beckett Photographers, Savannah, Georgia and Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina, public domain).
* Daub, Jacob and William J. (Drummer Boy, Company A): A German immigrant as a child, Jacob Daub emigrated with his parents and younger brother, William, circa 1852; after settling in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where his father found work as a stone mason, Jacob grew up to become a cigarmaker, and also became the first of the two brothers to enlist in the American Civil War; after enrolling at the age of sixteen, he was classified as a field musician and assigned to Company A as its drummer boy; his nineteen-year-old brother, William, a carpenter by 1865, followed him into the war when he enlisted as a private with the same company in February of that year; after the war ended, both returned home to Northampton County, where they married, had children and went on to live long, full lives; William eventually died at the age of eighty in 1928, followed by Jacob, who passed away in 1936, roughly two months before his ninety-first birthday;
* Detweiler, Charles C. (Private, Company A): Berks County native Charles Detweiler enrolled for Civil War military service on September 16, 1862; a carpenter who later became a farmer, he served with Company A until he was severely injured in the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, October 19, 1864, when he sustained a musket ball wound to the middle of his thigh; treated at a Union Army hospital in Virginia before being transported to the Union’s Mower General Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he learned that the musket ball had damaged his femur and femoral arteries; following his wound-related death at Mower on March 12, 1865, he was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in Kutztown, Berks County;
* Diaz, John (Private, Company I): An immigrant from Spain’s Canary Islands, John Diaz emigrated sometime between 1862 and 1865 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a cigarmaker; on January 25, 1865, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted with the Union Army at a recruiting depot in Norristown, Montgomery County and served as a private with Company I of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he resumed work as a cigarmaker in Philadelphia, eventually launching his own cigarmaking firm, which became a family business as his sons became old enough to work for him; sometime between 1906 and 1910, he relocated with his wife and several of his children to Camden County, New Jersey, where he died on September 5, 1915;
James Downs (circa 1880s, public domain).
* Downs, James (Corporal, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old tanner residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Downs was captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River; held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864, he received medical treatment and was subsequently returned to active duty; following his honorable discharge with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 25, 1865, he returned home, married, began a family and relocated with his family to Phillipsburg, New Jersey; suffering from heart and kidney disease, and possibly also from post-traumatic stress disorder, rather than “insane” as physicians at the Pennsylvania Memorial Home in Brookville, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania had diagnosed him, he fell from a window at that home and died at there on September 16, 1921; he was subsequently interred in the Veterans’ Circle of the Brookville Cemetery;
* Eagle, Augustus (Second Lieutenant, Company F): A German immigrant as a teenager, Augustus Eagle arrived in America on June 23, 1855, two years after his brother, Frederick Eagle, had emigrated and made a life for himself in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania; both men married and began families there, with Fred employed as a laborer and Gus employed by the Crane Iron Works; when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, both men enrolled for military service on August 21, 1861 as privates with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; in 1862, Fred fell ill and was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, but Gus continued to serve, rising up through the regiment’s enlisted and officers’ ranks; commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on September 11, 1864, upon completion of his three-year term of service; post-war, Fred became a successful baker with real estate and personal property valued at $4,200 (roughly $155,750 in 2023 dollars) and died in Catasauqua in 1885, while Gus owned a successful restaurant in Whitehall Township before operating the Fairview Hotel, which became a popular spot for political gatherings; after suffering a series of strokes in 1902, Gus died at his home on August 17 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;
* Eisenbraun, Alfred (Drummer Boy, Company B): A tobacco stripper and first-generation American from Allentown, Lehigh County, fifteen-year-old Alfred Eisenbraun became the second “man” from the 47th Pennsylvania to die when he succumbed to complications from typhoid fever at the Kalorama Eruptive Fever Hospital in Georgetown, District of Columbia on October 26, 1861; he still rests at the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home Cemetery in Washington, D.C.;
* Fink, Aaron (Corporal, Company B): A shoemaker and native of Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Aaron Fink, grew up, began a family and established a successful small shoemaking business, first in Allentown and then in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) in Carbon County; on August 20, 1861, he chose to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to help bring the American Civil War to a quick end when he enrolled for military service; shot in the right leg during the fighting at the Frampton Plantation during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, but died there from wound-related complications on November 5, 1862; initially buried near that hospital, his remains were later exhumed by Allentown undertaker Paul Balliet and returned to Pennsylvania for reinterment at that city’s Union-West End Cemetery;
* Fornwald, Reily M. (Corporal, Company G): Born in Heidelberg Township, Berks County, Reily Fornwald was raised there on his family’s farm near Stouchsberg; educated in his community’s common schools and then at Millersville State Normal School, he became a railroad worker before returning to farm life shortly before the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service at the age of twenty on September 11, 1862, he was wounded in the head and groin by an exploding artillery shell during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; stabilized on the battlefield before being transported to a field hospital for more advanced medical care, he spent four weeks recuperating before returning to active duty with his regiment; promoted to the rank of corporal on January 19, 1863, he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably discharged at Berryville, Virginia on September 18, 1864, upon expiration of his term of enlistment; after returning home, he spent four years operating a blast furnace for White & Ferguson in Robesonia, Berks County; he also married and began a family; sometime around 1870, he left that job to become an engine operator for Wright, Cook & Co. in Sheridan and then moved to a job as an engine operator for William M. Kauffman—a position he held for roughly a decade before securing employment as a shifting engineer with the Reading Railway Company at its yards in Reading; following his retirement in 1905, he and his wife settled in Robesonia, where he became involved in buying and selling real estate; following a severe fall in May 1925, during which he fractured a thigh bone, he died at the Homeopathic Hospital in Reading on June 1 and was buried at Robesonia’s Heidelberg Cemetery;
Captain Reuben Shatto Gardner, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Gardner, Reuben Shatto, John A. and Jacob S. R.: Natives of Perry County, Reuben Shatto Gardner and his brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner, began their work lives as laborers; among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861, Reuben was a twenty-five-year-old miller who resided in Newport, Perry County; after enlisting as a private with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20, he was honorably mustered out after completing his term of service; he then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a first sergeant with Company H of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; also enrolling with him that same day were his twenty-three-year-old and twenty-one-year-old brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner; John officially mustered in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on September 18 (the day before Reuben arrived), while Jacob officially mustered in on September 19; both joined their brother’s company, entering at their respective ranks of corporal and private, but Jacob’s tenure was a short one; sickened by typhoid fever in late December 1861, he died at the 47th Pennsylvania’s regimental hospital at Camp Griffin, near Langley, Virginia on January 8, 1862; his remains were later returned to Perry County for burial at the Old Newport Cemetery; soldiering on, Reuben and John were transported with their regiment by ship to Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida and subsequently sent to South Carolina with their regiment and other Union troops; shot in the head and thigh during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, Reuben was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina for an extended period of time, and then returned to active duty with his regiment; meanwhile, John was assigned with H Company and the men from Companies D, F and K to garrison Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas; both brothers then continued to work their way up the regiment’s ranks, with John promoted to corporal on September 18, 1864 and Reuben ultimately commissioned as a captain and given command of Company H on February 16, 1865; both then returned home after honorably mustering out with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865; sometime around 1866 or 1867, Reuben and his wife migrated west, first to Elk River Station in Sherburne County, Minnesota and then to Stillwater, Washington County, before settling in the city of Minneapolis; through it all, he worked as a miller; Reuben and his family then relocated farther west, arriving in King County, Washington after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889; initially employed in the restaurant industry, Reuben later found work as a railroad conductor before prospecting for gold with son Edward in the western United States and British Columbia, Canada during the 1890s Gold Rush; employed as a U.S. Post Office clerk in charge of the money order and registry departments in Seattle from 1898 to 1902, Reuben died in Seattle at the age of sixty-eight on September 25, 1903 and was interred at that city’s Lakeview Cemetery; meanwhile, his brother John, who had resumed work as a fireman with the Pennsylvania Railroad after returning from the war, was widowed by his wife in 1872; after remarrying and welcoming the births of more children, he was severely injured on October 9, 1873 while working as a fireman on the Pacific Express for the Pennsylvania Railroad; unable to continue working as a fireman due to his amputated hand, he worked briefly as a railroad call messenger before launching his own transfer business in Harrisburg; after he was widowed by his ailing second wife, John was severely injured in a second accident in 1894 while loading his delivery wagon; still operating his business after the turn of the century, he remarried on January 3, 1900, but was widowed by his third wife when she died during a surgical procedure in 1911; he subsequently closed his business and relocated to the home of his daughter in the city of Reading, Berks County; four years later, he fell on an icy sidewalk and became bedfast; aged eighty and ailing from arteriosclerosis and lung congestion, he died at her home on February 20, 1918 and was buried at Reading’s Charles Evans Cemetery;
* Gethers, Bristor (Under-Cook, Company F): Born into slavery in South Carolina circa 1829, Bristor Gethers was married “by slave custom at Georgetown, S.C.” on the Pringle plantation in Georgetown sometime around 1847 to “Rachael Richardson” (alternate spelling “Rachel”); a field hand at the dawn of the Civil War, he was freed from chattel enslavement in 1862 by Union Army troops; he then enlisted as an “Under-Cook” with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Beaufort, South Carolina on October 5, 1862, and traveled with the regiment until October 4, 1865, when he was honorably discharged in Charleston, South Carolina upon completion of his three-year term of enlistment; at that point, he returned to Beaufort and resumed life with his wife and their son, Peter; a farmer, Bristor was ultimately disabled by ailments that were directly attributable to his Union Army tenure; awarded a U.S. Civil War Soldiers’ Pension, he lived out his days with his wife on Horse Island, South Carolina, and died on Horse Island, South Carolina on June 24 or 25, 1894; he was then laid to rest at a graveyard on Parris Island on June 26 of that same year;
* Gilbert, Edwin (Captain, Company F): A native of Northampton County and a carpenter residing in Catasauqua, Lehigh County at the dawn of the American Civil War, Edwin Gilbert enrolled as a corporal on August 21, 1861; after rising up through his regiment’s officer ranks, he was ultimately commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on New Year’s Day, 1865, and then mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina of Christmas of that same year; resuming his life with his wife and children in Lehigh County after the war, he continued to work as a carpenter; after suffering a stroke in late December 1893, he died on January 2, 1894 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;
Mrs. Caroline Bost and Martin L. Guth celebrated the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday with fellow Grand Army of the Republic and ladies auxiliary members in February 1933 (public domain).
* Guth, Martin Luther (Corporal, Company K): A native of Lehigh County and son of a farmer, Martin L. Guth was a seventeen-year-old laborer and resident of Guthsville in Whitehall Township at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on September 26, 1862, he was officially mustered in as a corporal; he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably mustered out on October 1, 1865, upon expiration of his term of service; at some point during that service, he broke his leg—an injury that did not heal properly and plagued him for the remainer of his life; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he found work again as a laborer; married in 1883, he became the father of four children, one of whom was born in New Mexico and another who was born in California; he had moved his family west in search of work in the mining industry; documented as a “prospector” or “miner” records created in Nevada during that period, he was also documented on voter registration rolls of Butte City in Glenn County, California in August 1892; by 1900, he was living separately from his wife, who was residing in Bandon, Coos County, Oregon with their two children while he was residing at the Veterans’ Home of California in Yount Township, Napa County, California; subsequently admitted to the Mountain Branch of the network of U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Johnson City, Tennessee on February 11, 1912, his disabilities included an old compound fracture of his right leg with chronic ulceration, defective vision (right eye), chronic bronchitis, and arteriosclerosis; discharged on December 12, 1920, he was admitted to the U.S. National Soldiers’ Home in Leavenworth, Kansas on July 30, 1912, but discharged on September 29, 1913; by 1920, he was living alone on Fruitvale Avenue in the city of Oakland, California, but was remaining active with his local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic as he rose through the leadership ranks of chapter, state and national G.A.R. organizations; after a long, adventure-filled life, he died on October 11, 1935, at the age of ninety-one, at the veterans’ home in San Francisco and was interred at the San Francisco National Cemetery (also known as the Presidio Cemetery);
Lieutenant Charles A. Hackman, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).
* Hackman, Charles Abraham and Martin Henry (First Lieutenant and Sergeant, Company G): Natives of Rittersville, Lehigh County, Charles and Martin Hackman began their work lives as apprentices, with Charles employed by a carpenter and Martin employed by master coachmaker Jacob Graffin; members of the local militia unit known as the Allen Rifles, they were among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; both enlisted as privates with Company I of the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20 and were honorably mustered out in July after completing their service; Charles then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a sergeant with Company G of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; he then spent most of his early service in Virginia; meanwhile, his younger brother, Martin H. Hackman, who was employed as a coach trimmer in Lehigh County, re-enlisted for his own second tour of duty, as a private with Charles’ company, on January 8, 1862; working their way up the ranks, Charles was commissioned as a first lieutenant on June 18, 1863, while Martin was promoted to sergeant on April 26, 1864; Charles was then breveted as a captain on November 30, 1864 after having mustered out on November 5; Martin was then honorably discharged on January 8, 1865; initially employed, post-war, with the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad’s train car facility in Reading, Berks County, Charles was promoted to car inspector at the company’s Philadelphia facility in December 1866; he subsequently married, but had no children and was widowed in 1904; remarried, he remained in Philadelphia until the early 1900s, when he relocated to Allentown; Martin, who worked as a bricklayer in Allentown, did have children after marrying, but he, too, was widowed; also remarried, he became a manager at a rolling mill; ailing with pneumonia in early 1917, Charles was eighty-six years old when he died in Allentown on January 17; he was buried at Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery, while his brother Martin was buried at the Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, following his death in Bethlehem from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 14, 1921;
* Junker, George (Captain, Company K): A German immigrant as a young adult, George Junker emigrated sometime around the early 1850s and settled in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found employment as a marble worker and tombstone carver, and where he also joined the Allen Infantry, one of his adopted hometown’s three militia units; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, George enlisted with his fellow Allen Infantrymen, honorably completed his Three Months’ Service, and promptly began his own recruitment of men for an “all-German company” for the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; commissioned as a captain with the 47th Pennsylvania, he was placed in charge of his men who became known as Company K; mortally wounded by a Confederate rifle shot during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he died from his wounds the next day at the Union Army’s division hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina; his remains were returned to his family in Hazleton, Luzerne County for reburial at the Vine Street Cemetery;
* Kern, Samuel (Private, Company D): A native of Perry County who was employed as a farmer in Bloomfield, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, Samuel Kern was wounded and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died from harsh treatment on June 12, 1864; buried somewhere on the grounds of that prison camp, his grave remains unidentified;
* Kosier, George (Captain, Company D): A native of Perry County and twenty-four-year-old carpenter residing in that county’s community of New Bloomfield at the dawn of the American Civil War, George Kosier became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for military service on April 20 as a corporal with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; joining him were his younger brothers, Jesse and William S. Kosier, aged nineteen and twenty-three, who were enrolled as privates with the same company; all three subsequently re-enlisted with their company at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida in 1863; sadly, Jesse fell ill with pleurisy and died at the Union Army’s Field Hospital in Sandy Hook, Maryland on August 1864; initially buried at a cemetery in Weverton, Maryland, his remains were later exhumed and reinterred at the Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Maryland; both George and William continued to serve with the regiment, with George continuing his rise up the ranks; commissioned as a captain, he was given command of Company D in early June 1865; both brothers were then honorably discharged with their regiment on Christmas Day, 1865; post-war, both men married and began families; William died in Pennsylvania sometime around 1879, but George went on to live a long full life; after settling in Ogle County, Illinois, where he was employed as a carpenter, he relocated with his family to Wright County, Iowa, where he built bridges; he died in Chicago on December 3, 1920 and was buried at that city’s Rosehill Cemetery;
Anna (Weiser) Leisenring (1851-1942) , circa 1914 (public domain).
* Leisenring, Annie (Weiser): The wife of Thomas B. Leisenring (Captain, Company G), Annie Leisenring was employed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a factory inspector after the American Civil War; she became well known through newspaper accounts of her inspection visits and also became widely respected for her efforts to improve child labor laws statewide;
* Lowrey, Thomas (Corporal, Company E): An Irish immigrant as a young adult, Thomas Lowrey emigrated sometime around the late 1840s or early 1850s and settled in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a miner, married and began a family; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, Thomas enlisted with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania on September 16, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a coal miner near Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, and where he resided with his wife and children; after witnessing the dawn of a new century, he died in Shenandoah on January 11, 1906;
This image of Julia (Kuenher) Minnich, circa 1860s, is being presented here through the generosity of Chris Sapp and his family, and is being used with Mr. Sapp’s permission. This image may not be reproduced, repurposed, or shared with other websites without the permission of Chris Sapp.
* Magill, Julia Ann (Kuehner Minnich): Widowed and the mother of a young son at the time that her husband, B Company’s Captain Edwin G. Minnich, was killed in battle during the American Civil War, Julia Ann (Kuehner) Minnich became a Union Army nurse at Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. during the war in order to keep a roof over her son’s head; she then spent the remainder of her life battling the U.S. Pension Bureau to receive and keep both the U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension and U.S. Civil War Nurse’s Pension that she was entitled to under federal law; forced to go on working into her later years by poverty, she finally found work as a cook at a hotel in South Bethlehem; she died sometime after 1906;
* Menner, Edward W. (Second Lieutenant, Company E): A first-generation American who was a native of Easton, Northampton County, Edward Menner was a sixteen-year-old carpenter when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 25, 1861; working his way up from private to second lieutenant before he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he was wounded in the left shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he secured employment as a hooker with the Bethlehem Iron Company (later known as Bethlehem Steel) on March 15, 1866; he married, begam a family and continued to work in the iron industry for much of his life; he died in Bethlehem on April 25, 1913 and was buried at that city’s Nisky Hill Cemetery;
* Miller, John Garber (Sergeant, Company D): A native of Ironville, Blair County, John G. Miller was a twenty-one-year-old laborer living in Duncannon, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861; captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; returned to active duty with his regiment after receiving medical treatment, he continued to serve until he was honorably discharged with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he married, began a family and relocated with his family to Philipsburg, Centre County, Pennsylvania, where he was employed as a teamster; returning to Blair County with his family, he resided with them in Logan Township before relocating with them again to Coalport, Clearfield County; suffering from heart disease, he died in Coalport on February 16, 1921 and was interred at the Coalport Cemetery;
Captain Theodore Mink, Company I, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (circa 1870s-1880s, courtesy of Julian Burley; used with permission).
* Mink, Theodore (Captain, Company I): A native of Allentown, Lehigh County who was apprenticed as a coachmaker and then tried his hand as a whaler and blacksmith prior to the American Civil War, Thedore Mink became one of the “First Defenders” who responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital after the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; after honorably completing his Three Months’ Service in July, he re-enlisted on August 5 as a sergeant with Company I of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; after steadily working his way up through the ranks, he was commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on May 22, 1865; he continued to serve with his regiment until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he was hired as a laborer with a circus troupe operated by Mike Lipman before finding longtime employment in advertising and then as head of the circus wardrobe for the Forepaugh Circus before he was promoted to management with the circus; felled by pneumonia during late 1889, he died in Philadelphia on January 7, 1890 and was interred in Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery;
* Newman, Edward (Private, Company H): A German immigrant who left his homeland sometime around 1920, Edward Newman chose to settle in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a baker; after enlisting for Civil War military service in August 1862, he mustered in as a private with Company I of the 127th Pennsylvania Volunteers and fought in the Battle of Fredericksburg from December 11-15 of that year; honorably mustered out with his regiment in May 1863, he re-enlisted on October 23, 1863 for a second tour of duty—but as a private with a different regiment—Company H of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with the 47th Pennsylvania until he was officially mustered out in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he returned to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where he worked briefly as a baker; suffering from rheumatism that developed while the 47th Pennsylvania was stationed near Cedar Creek, Virginia during the fall of 1864, he was admitted to the network of U.S. Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at the Central Branch in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio on July 17, 1877; still unmarried and still living there in 1880, his health continued to decline; diagnosed with acute enteritis, he died there on January 22, 1886 and was buried at the Dayton National Cemetery;
Captain Daniel Oyster, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).
* Oyster, Daniel (Captain, Company C): A native of Sunbury, Northumberland County who was employed as a machinist, Daniel Oyster became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for Civil War military service on April 23 as a corporal with Company F of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; his brother, John Oyster, subsequently followed him into the service, enrolling as a private with his company on November 20, 1863; after rising up through the ranks to become captain of his company, Daniel was shot in his left shoulder near Berryville, Virginia on September 5, 1864 and then shot in his right shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19; successfully treated by Union Army surgeons for both wounds, he was awarded a veteran’s furlough in order to continue his recuperation and returned home to Sunbury; he then returned to duty and was honorably discharged with his company on Christmas Day, 1865; post-discharge, he and his brother, John, returned home to Sunbury; Daniel continued to reside with their aging mother and was initially employed as a policeman, but was then forced by a war-related decline in his health to take less-taxing work as a railroad postal agent; his brother John, who was married, lived nearby and worked as a fireman, but died in Sunbury on April 20, 1899; employed as a bookkeeper after the turn of the century, Daniel never married and was ultimately admitted to the Southern Branch of the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Hampton, Virginia, where he died on August 5, 1922—exactly sixty-one years to the day after the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded; he was given a funeral with full military honors before being laid to rest in the officers’ section at the Arlington National Cemetery on August 11;
* Sauerwein, Thomas Franklin (First Sergeant, Company B): The son of a lock tender in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Thomas Sauerwein was employed as a carpenter at the dawn of the American Civil War; following his enrollment for military service in Allentown, Lehigh County on August 20, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company B of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; from that point on, he steadily worked his way up the ranks of the regiment, ultimately being promoted to first sergeant on New Year’s Day, 1865; following his honorable discharge with his company on Christmas Day of that same year, he returned home to the Lehigh Valley, where he found work as a carpenter, married and began a family; by 1880, he had moved his family west to Williamsport in Lycoming County, where he had found work as a machinist; employed as a leather roller with a tanning factory, he was promoted to a position as a leather finisher after the turn of the century, while his two sons worked as leather rollers in the same industry; he died in Williamsport on July 29, 1912 and was buried at the East Wildwood Cemetery in Loyalsock;
* Slayer, Joseph (Private, Company E; also known as “Dead Eye Dick” and “E. J. McMeeser”): A native of Philadelphia, Joseph Slayer was a nineteen-year-old miner residing in Willliams Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service in Easton, Northampton County on September 9, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with his company, re-enlisting as a private with Company E, under the name of Joseph Slayer, at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas on January 4, 1864; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he relocated to Zanesville, Ohio sometime after the war, where he joined the Grand Army of the Republic’s Hazlett Post No. 81; he may then have relocated briefly to St. Paul, Minnesota sometime around the 1870s or early 1880s, or may simply have had a child and grandchild living there, because newspaper reports of his death noted that he had been carrying a photograph of a toddler named Robert—a photo that had “To Grandpa” inscribed on it and indicated that the grandchild, Robert, was a resident of St. Paul in 1892; by the 1880s, Joseph had made it as far west as the Dakota Territory—but this was where his life’s journey took a strange twist; discarding the name he had used in the army (“Joseph Slayer”), he changed his name several times over the next several years, as if he were trying to shed his prior life and all of its associations; acquaintances he met in the southern part of the Dakota Territory during the early to mid-1880s knew him as “Dead Eye Dick” while others who met him after he had resettled in Bismarck, in the northern part of the Dakota Territory, knew him as “Eugene McMeeser” or “E. J. McMeeser” (alternate spelling: “McNeeser”); by the time that the federal government conducted its special census of Civil War veterans in June 1890, Joseph was so comfortable fusing parts of his old and new lives together that he was convincingly documented by an enumerator as “Eugene McMeeser,” a veteran who had served as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry from September 9, 1861 until January 11, 1866; in 1890, Joseph became a married man; documented as having rheumatism so severe that he was “at times confined at home,” he filed for a U.S. Civil War Pension from North Dakota on March 28, 1891—but he did so as “Joseph Slayer”—the name under which he had first enrolled for military service in Pennsylvania in 1861; ultimately awarded a pension—which would not have happened if federal officials had not been able to verify his identity and match it to his existing military service records, he was diagnosed with angina pectoris in 1904, but still managed to secure a U.S. patent for one of his inventions—a napkin holder; he died in Bismarck less than a month later, on January 12 or 13, 1905; found on the floor of his rented room, his death sparked a coroner’s inquest which revealed that he had been living under an assumed name; he was buried at Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Bismarck; the name “Joseph Slayer” was carved onto his military headstone;
* Snyder, Timothy (Corporal, Company C): A carpenter who was born in Rebuck, Northumberland County, Tim Snyder was employed as a carpenter and residing in the city of Sunbury in that county by the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service as a private in August 1861, he was wounded twice in combat, once during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (1862) and a second time, in the knee, during the Battle of Opequan, Virginia (1864), shortly after he had been promoted to the rank of corporal; he survived and returned to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a carpenter; after relocating to Schuylkill County, he settled in the community of Ashland; in 1870, he married Catharine Boyer and started a family with her; he continued to work as a carpenter in Schuylkill County until his untimely death in May 1889 and was laid to rest with military honors at the Brock Cemetery in Ashland; John Hartranft Snyder, his first son to survive infancy, grew up to become a co-founder of the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, while his second son to survive infancy, Timothy Grant Snyder, became a corporal in the United States Marine Corps during the Spanish-American War; stationed on the USS Buffalo as it visited Port Said, Egypt, he also served aboard Admiral George Dewey’s flagship, the USS Olympia, in 1899;
Drummer Boy William Williamson, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company A, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Williamson, William (Drummer, Company A): A farmer from Stockertown, Northampton County, William Williamson was documented by a mid-nineteenth-century federal census enumerator as an unmarried laborer who lived at the Easton home of Northampton County physician John Sandt, M.D.—an indication that William’s parents may have either died or were struggling so much financially during the 1850s and early 1860s that they had encouraged him to “leave the nest” and begin supporting himself, or had hired him out as an apprentice or indentured servant; like so many other young men from Northampton County, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for help to protect the nation’s capital from a likely invasion by Confederate States Army troops, he stepped forward, raised his hand, and stated the following:
I, William Williamson appointed a private in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.
Later in life, William Williamson became a champion for an older woman who had been struggling to convince officials of the federal government that she was worthy enough to be awarded a U.S. Civil War Mother’s Pension, after her son had died in service to the nation as a Union Army soldier.
Post-war, William Williamson found work at a slate quarry, married, began a family in Belfast, Northampton County, and lived to witness the dawn of a new century. Following his death at the age of sixty in Plainfield Township on June 17, 1901, he was laid to rest at the Belfast Union Cemetery.
Sources:
- “A Badge from Admiral Dewey and Schuylkill County” (announcements of Timothy Grant Snyder’s service on Admiral Dewey’s flagship). Reading, Pennsylvania: Reading Eagle: October 3, 1899 and November 21, 1899.
- Baptismal, census, marriage, military, death, and burial records of the Snyder family. Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio, etc.: Snyder Family Archives, 1650-present; and in Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records (baptismal, marriage, death and burial records of various churches across Pennsylvania). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1776-1918.
- Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
- James Crownover, James Downs and Samuel Kern, et. al., in Camp Ford Prison Records. Tyler, Texas: The Smith County Historical Society, 1864.
- Civil War Muster Rolls, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, U.S. Army; Admissions Ledgers, U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers; federal burial ledgers, and national cemetery interment control forms, 1861-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of the Adjutant General (Record Group 94), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
- U.S. Census Records, 1830-1930. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- U.S. Civil War Pension Records, 1862-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
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On Great Fields by Robert C White is one of the best biographies I have ever read. The book goes beyond the heroism at Gettysburg and digs deep into motivations, personal and family life, friendships, and his idealism to paint a very full and clear (as well as can be over hundred years later) picture of a legit American Hero. #civilwar #gettysburg #littleroundtop #bowdoincollege #brunswickmaine #maine
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More Neon Love As ‘Babes’ Blasts Off Stateside – Specialty Box Office
#News #Babes #CivilWar #EthanHawke #EvilDoesNotExist #ISawtheTVGlow #KidnappedTheAbductionofedgardomortara #Marcobellochio #Neon #SpecialtyBoxOffice #Wildcathttps://deadline.com/2024/05/indie-film-box-office-babes-neon-blasts-off-1235941513/
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Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder Reteam with A24 for Ben Mezrich’s Carlsen-Niemann Chess Scandal Story (Exclusive)
#MovieNews #Movies #CivilWar #EmmaStone #TheCurse -
Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, shown here circa 1863, went on to become lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania after the war (public domain).
One of the terms that crops up when researching the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers is “court martial”—a phrase that often conjures images of soldiers deserting their posts or behaving in some other dishonorable manner, and who then ended up facing charges of “conduct unbecoming.”
With respect to the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the phrase “court martial” appears, more often than not, in relation to the service by multiple officers of the regiment who were assigned to serve as judges or members of the jury during trials of civilians in territories where the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were assigned to provost (military police and civilian court) duties, or as judges or members of the jury during the court martials of other members of the Union Army during the American Civil War.
This article presents details about two of the multiple military courts martial in which members of the 47th Pennsylvania were involved.
1862
In mid to late December 1862, Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan directed the three most senior officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry—Colonel Tilghman H. Good, Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander and Major William H. Gausler—to serve on a judicial panel with other Union Army officers during the court martial trial of Colonel Richard White of the 55th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Brannan then also appointed Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin of the 47th Pennsylvania’s C Company as judge advocate for the proceedings.
Of the four, Gobin was, perhaps, the most experienced from a legal standpoint. Prior to the war, he was a practicing attorney in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Post-war, he went on to serve in the Pennsylvania State Senate and as lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
On December 18, 1862, The New York Herald provided the following report regarding Colonel White’s court martial:
A little feud [had] arisen in Beaufort between General [Rufus] Saxton and the forces of the Tenth Army corps. Last week, during the absence at Fernandina of General Brannan and Colonel Good, the latter of whom is in command of the forces on Port Royal Island, Colonel Richard White of the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania, was temporarily placed in authority. By his command a stable, used by some of General Saxton’s employes [sic, employees], was torn down. General Saxton remonstrated, and … hard words ensued … the General presumed upon his rank to place Colonel White in arrest, and to assume the control of the military forces. Upon General Brannan’s return, last Monday, General Saxton preferred against Colonel White several charges, among which are ‘conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline’ and ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’ General Brannan, while denying the right of General Saxton to exercise any authority over the troops, has, nevertheless, ordered a general court martial to be convened, and the following officers, comprising the detail of the court, are to-day [sic, today] trying the case:— Brigadier General Terry, United States Volunteers; Colonel T. H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania; Colonel H. R. Guss, Ninety-seventh Pennsylvania; Colonel J. D. Rust, Eighth Maine; Colonel J. R. Hawley, Seventh Connecticut; Colonel Edward Metcalf, Third Rhode Island artillery; Lieutenant Colonel G. W. Alexander, 47th Pennsylvania; Lieutenant Colonel J. F. Twitchell, Eighth Maine; Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Bedell, Third New Hampshire; Major Gausler, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania; Major John Freese, Third Rhode Island artillery; Captain J. P. S. Gobin, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania, Judge Advocate. Among the officers of the corps the act of General Saxton is generally deemed a usurpation on his part; and, inasmuch as this opinion is either to be sustained or outweighed by the Court, a good deal of interest is manifested in the trial.
White, whose regiment had just recently fought side-by-side with the 47th Pennsylvania and other Brannan regiments in the Battle of Pocotaligo, was ultimately acquitted, according to subsequent reports by the United States War Department.
1863
Major William H. Gausler, third-in-command of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, 1861-1864 (photo used with permission, courtesy of Julian Burley).
Three months after the aforementioned court martial proceedings, Major William Gausler was called upon again to oversee legal proceedings against his fellow Union Army soldiers—this time serving as president of the courts martial of two members of the 90th New York Volunteer Infantry. Those trials and their resulting findings were subsequently reported by the Adjutant General’s Office of the U.S. War Department roughly a year later as follows:
General Orders, No. 118
War Department, Adjutant General’s Office
Washington, March 24, 1864I. Before a General Court Martial, which convened at Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida, March 23, 1863, pursuant to Special Orders, No. 130, dated Headquarters, Department of the South, Hilton Head, Port Royal, South Carolina, March 7, 1863, and of which Major W. H. Gausler, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, is President, were arraigned and tried—
1. Captain Edward D. Smythe, 90th New York State Volunteers.
CHARGE I.—“Violation of the 7th Article of War.”
Specification—“In this, that Captain Edward D. Smythe, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did join in a seditious combination of officers of the 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”
CHARGE II.—“Violation of the 8th Article of War.”
Specification 1st—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, being present at an unlawful and seditious assemblage of officers of the 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, held at the Light-house Barracks, Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”
Specification 2d—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, having knowledge of an intended unlawful and seditious assemblage of officers of the 90th New York State Volunteers being held at the Light-house Barracks, Key West, Florida, did not without delay give information of the same to his Commanding Officer. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”
CHARGE III.—“Rebellious conduct, tending to excite mutiny.”
Specification 1st —“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did, with, thirteen other officers of the 90th New York State Volunteers, tender his resignation, and insist upon its being forwarded, at a time when there were apprehensions of a general resistance to the execution of an order from the Headquarters of the Department of the South. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”
Specification 2d—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did, after so tendering his resignation, positively refuse to withdraw the same when requested to do so by his Commanding Officer, Colonel Joseph S. Morgan, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, then commanding the post, he having been notified by Commanding Officer that there were apprehensions of imminent danger at the post. All this at Key West, Florida, on our about the 20th day of February, 1863.”
To which charges and specifications the accused, Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th New York State Volunteers, pleaded “Not Guilty.”
FINDING.
The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th New York State Volunteers, as follows:
CHARGE I.
Of the Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”CHARGE II.
Of the 1st Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the 2d Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”CHARGE III.
Of the 1st Specification, “Guilty, except the words ‘insist upon its being forwarded at a time when there were apprehensions of a general resistance to the execution of an order from the Headquarters of the Department of the South.’”
Of the 2d Specification, “Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”And the Court, being of opinion there was no criminality, does therefore acquit him.
2. 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers.
CHARGE I.—“Neglect of duty.
Specification—“In this; that the said Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, Company ‘G,’ 90th New York Volunteers, did, on the night of the 10th of March, when he was the Officer of the Day, permit and encourage an enlisted man who was drunk to occupy and sleep in his, the said Lieutenant C. N. Smith’s quarters, and to create an uproar, to the disturbance and annoyance of the officers in the same building, and did not send him, the said enlisted man, although after ‘taps,’ to his proper quarters, or cause him to be quiet.”
CHARGE II.—“Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and prejudicial to good order and military discipline.”
Specification—“In this; that the said Lieutenant Charles N. Smith did allow and keep in his quarters all night a drunken enlisted man, and encourage him to speak disrespectfully and abusively of his superior officers; and upon the said enlisted man saying ‘that every officer who had sent in his resignation was a cock-sucking son-of-a-bitch,’ did reply ‘that’s so;’ and did further permit, encourage, and agree to many other things said of a like nature. All this at Key West, Florida, on or about March 10, 1863.”
To which charges and specifications the accused, 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers, pleaded “Not Guilty.”
FINDING.
The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers, as follows:
CHARGE I.
Of the Specification, “Guilty, excepting the words ‘encouraged’ or ‘cause him to be quiet.’”
Of the Charge, “Guilty.”CHARGE II.
Of the Specification, “Guilty of allowing and keeping in his quarters all night a drunken enlisted man.”
Of the Charge, “Guilty, except the words ‘unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’”SENTENCE.
And the Court does therefore sentence him, the said Charles N. Smith, 1st Lieutenant, 90th New York Volunteers, “To be reprimanded by his Commanding Officer.”
Trusted to honorably and faithfully fulfill their responsibilities by senior Union Army leaders, those and other officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry would be called upon repeatedly for the remainder of the war to serve in similar judicial roles throughout the remaining years of the war.
Sources:
- General Orders No., 118, Washington, March 24, 1864, in Index of General Orders Adjutant General’s Office, 1864. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865.
- “Our Hilton Head Correspondence.” New York New York: The New York Herald, December 16, 1862.
- “South Carolina.; Military Organization of the Department of South Carolina.” New York, New York: The New York Times, August 8, 1865.
#47thPennsylvaniaInfantry #47thPennsylvaniaVolunteers #America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #Army #CivilWar #CommonwealthOfPennsylvania #FloridaAndSouthCarolina #FortTaylor #HiltonHead #History #Infantry #JohnMiltonBrannan #KeyWest #PennsylvaniaHistory #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #SouthCarolina #TheUnionArmy #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy
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S2.3 now on YouTube!
The situation in Lebanon today is bleak. Carved out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire and subjected to years of colonialism-lite administration by France, its economy and infrastructure have been devastated by a long civil war, overlapping occupations by Syria and Israel, and corruption on a massive scale. Since 2019, Lebanon has been in the midst of a severe financial crisis, with widespread unemployment and hyperinflation. Now 80% of the population is poor and Lebanon is on the brink of becoming a failed state.
And yet, JD Harlock, Poetry Editor at Solarpunk Magazine, who lives in Beirut, believes in solarpunk. Join us for this episode to find out how that can be and what day to day life is like in Beirut right now.
#solarpunk #SolarpunkPresentsPodcast #Beirut #Lebanon #BeirutExplosion
#BeirutLebanon #hopepunk #hopeDespitePoliticalDisaster #podcast #interview #interviewPodcast #OttomanEmpire #economics #history #MiddleEasternHistory #colonialism #poetry SolarpunkMagazine #solarpunk poetry #poetryEditor #LebaneseCivilWar #civilWar #FrenchColonialism #infrastructure #financialCrisis #LebanonFinancialCrisis #LebaneseFinancialCrisis #Syria #Israel #unemployment #hyperinflation #hope -
Went to see Dune Part 2 last night. Visually stunning. I really like both movies. But what I really came here to say is: Did anyone else think the trailer for CIVIL WAR (a movie about a modern/current day US Civil War) is way too real and makes you want to stay faaarrr awaaay.
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Yes, #Republican #states are now starting to emulate the #CivilWar-era #south.
The #Texas #governor rejecting #federal #immigration #laws and #SupremeCourt #Rulings has echoes of the #Confederate #states
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/usa-texas-greg-abbott-civil-war-confederates-biden/
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General J. D. Fessenden’s headquarters, U.S. Army of the Shenandoah at Camp Russell near Stephens City (now Newtown) in Virginia (Lieutenant S. S. Davis, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, December 31, 1864, public domain; click to enlarge).
Erected in November 1864 on grounds that were adjacent to the Opequon Creek, just west of Stephens City (now Newtown) and south of Winchester, Virginia, by Union Army troops operating under the command of Major-General Philip H. Sheridan, Camp Russell was the site where the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was housed from November 1864 until December 20, 1864, while it was still attached to the United States Army of the Shenandoah.
Named after Brigadier-General David A. Russell, who had been killed in action on September 19, 1864 during the Battle of Opequan (also known as “Third Winchester”), which had unfolded just over two miles away during the earlier part of Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Camp Russell was built using the lumber and bricks from a neighboring African American Methodist chapel that had been dismantled by Sheridan’s troops, according to historians at the Newtown History Center.
It quickly became a two-mile-long complex that consisted of separate encampments for each of the Army of the Shenandoah’s individual regiments, as well as a hospital system, and was protected by a roughly four-mile-long system of earthworks and trenches that had been installed on both sides of the Valley Pike (south of what, today, is the intersection of Interstate 81 and Virginia Route 37).
These earthworks and trenches were subsequently connected to the Carysbrooke Redoubt on the pike’s eastern side, which ensured that the southern end of Camp Russell was also well fortified (a critical planning component since the Confederate States Army troops of Lieutenant-General Jubal Early were positioned to the south during this point in time). In addition, Camp Russell was also heavily guarded around the clock by Union Army soldiers who were assigned to scouting duties and picket details.
During this same time, C Company soldier Henry Wharton penned a new letter to the Sunbury American, his hometown newspaper:
NEAR NEWTOWN, VA.
November 14, 1864.DEAR WILVERT:
The day after election the entire army of the Shenandoah left their old camps at Cedar creek and fell back to this place. The reason of this was the scouts reported a force coming down the Luray Valley and the removal enabled General Sheridan to get a better position and establish lines unknown to the enemy. Intrenchments [sic] have been, and are now being constructed that will baffle the ingeniousness of the best rebel Generals, and such, that behind them our forces can repel double their numbers, and if they have the temerity to make an attack, with the number not slain or crippled by our arms, few could escape being capture. – Such is the position we now occupy.
For the last three days a considerable number of the enemy’s cavalry have been bothering our pickets, with the purpose, no doubt, of finding out our position. Our Brigade, (the 2d) was sent out to give the Johnnies a chance for a fight, but on their arrival, the cavalry of Jefferson D. fell back out of range of our rifles. Since then our cavalry went out in several directions for the purpose of giving them fight or gobble them up, the latter if possible. Brigadier General Powell took the road to Front Royal, met the graybacks, whipped them, captured one hundred and sixty prisoners, two pieces of artillery, (all they had) their caissons, ammunition, ambulances, wagon train, and drove the balance ten miles from where they first met. Of the other cavalry we have had no report as yet, but from the fact that they are led by a man who knows not defeat, the daring General Custer, we can expect news that will cheer the hearts of all who are in favor of putting down the rebellion by force of arms.
The election passed off quietly and without any military interference, not the influence of officers used in controlling any man’s vote. In the regiments from the old Keystone, the companies were formed by the first Sergeant, when he stated to the men the object for which they were called to ‘fail to,’ and then they proceeded to the election of officers to hold the election – the boys having the whole control, none of the officers interfering in the least.
Wharton went on to report the numbers of the election results by company as follows:
- Company A (ten votes for Abraham Lincoln, one vote for George McClellan);
- Company B (twenty-six votes for Abraham Lincoln, two votes for George McClellan);
- Company C (twenty-nine votes for Abraham Lincoln, fifteen votes for George McClellan);
- Company D (thirty-one votes for Abraham Lincoln, eleven votes for George McClellan);
- Company E (twenty-four votes for Abraham Lincoln, three votes for George McClellan);
- Company F (eighteen votes for Abraham Lincoln, sixteen votes for George McClellan);
- Company G (nine votes for Abraham Lincoln, thirteen votes for George McClellan);
- Company H (ten votes for Abraham Lincoln, twenty-four votes for George McClellan);
- Company I (nineteen votes for Abraham Lincoln, sixteen votes for George McClellan); and
- Company K (eighteen votes for Abraham Lincoln, twenty votes for George McClellan).
- Lincoln’s Majority: 73 votes.
According to Wharton, “The battle at Cedar Creek thinned our ranks by which we lost many votes—this number and those away in hospitals would have increased the Union majority to three hundred.”
* Note: To read more of Henry Wharton’s letters from 1864, click here.
A Time of Celebration and Sadness
As evidenced by several of the letters that were written by 47th Pennsylvanians during this phase of duty, life at Camp Russell was a time of both celebration and profound heartache. According to Professor Jonathan A. Noyalas, director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute:
In celebrating Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s triumph at the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864, newspapers across the North enthusiastically conjectured that this latest in a series of spectacular Union successes would finally end military operations in the Shenandoah Valley…. On October 23, a correspondent for Iowa’s Muscatine Evening Journal concluded the same, proclaiming, ‘Sheridan’s victory at Cedar Creek makes the third he has gained during the present campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. This last defeat will, it is more than probable, end the campaign on the part of the enemy in that region.’
…. Yet in Sheridan’s army itself, the soldiers’ mood generally remained much more restrained, reflective, and somber. Veterans especially found it difficult to reconcile the joy of victory with the grief they felt….
Beyond such melancholy reflections, the army’s veterans also confronted the stark reality that Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early likely wasn’t done yet….
In Cedar Creek’s immediate wake, continued harassment from Confederate partisans, irregulars, and bushwhackers only added to the uncertainty. Sheridan had been particularly annoyed by ‘guerrilla bands’ throughout the campaign [but] was confident these guerrillas could be curtailed by depriving them of potential manpower. On October 22, Sheridan ordered the arrest of every Confederate male civilian capable of bearing arms….
Significant Recognition for the 47th Pennsylvania’s Distinguished Service
Second State Colors, 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, showing the battles for which the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was honored for its distinguished service to the United States during the American Civil War (presented to the regiment 7 March 1865).
One of the more uplifting moments in the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry occurred in late November 1864 when this regiment’s members were honored by a senior Union Army officer, Brevet Major-General William H. Emory, for their valiant service during the Union’s spring 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana.
GENERAL ORDERS, HDQRS. NINETEENTH ARMY CORPS, No. 12.
Camp Russell, November 22, 1864.The following-named regiments are hereby authorized to inscribe upon their colors the names of the engagements set opposite their respective names in which they bore a distinguished part:
Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth Maine Volunteers-Sabine Cross-Roads, Pleasant Hill, Cane River Crossing, La.; One hundred and fourteenth, One hundred and sixteenth, One hundred and fifty-third, One hundred and sixteenth, One hundred and sixty-second, One hundred and sixty-fifth, and One hundred and seventy-third New York Volunteers-Sabine Cross-Roads, Pleasant Hill, Cane River Crossing, La; Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers-Sabine Cross-Roads, Pleasant Hill, Cane River Crossing, La.; Thirty-eight Massachusetts, Thirteenth Connecticut, and One hundred and twenty-eight New York Volunteers-Cane River Crossing, La.
By command of Brevet Major-General Emory:
PETER FRENCH, Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.”A War That Still Needed to Be Won
Charlestown West Virginia, circa 1863 (public domain).
Rested and somewhat healed, thanks to their stay at Camp Russell, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were informed less than a month after being honored by Brigadier-General Emory that their stay at their new winter quarters was destined to be shorter than they had hoped. They were being reassigned yet again—this time to help fulfill Major-General Sheridan’s directive that the Army of the Shenandoah eliminate the continuing threat posed by Confederate guerrillas and their sympathizers.
And so, after packing up and saying goodbye to the new friends they’d made at Camp Russell, they began a new, thirty-mile march, five days before Christmas. Trudging north during a driving snowstorm, they finally reached Charlestown, West Virginia, where they quickly established their latest “new home” at Camp Fairview, and continued to soldier on.
Sources:
- “Camp Russell.” The Historical Marker Database, retrieved online December 27, 2023.
- “Civil War, 1861-1865.” Stephens City, Virginia: Newtown History Center, retrieved online December 27, 2023.
- “General Orders, No. 12” (Issued by Brigadier-General William H. Emory, Camp Russell, Virginia, November 22, 1864), in The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Civil War: Chapter LV: “Operations in Northern Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania: Correspondence.” Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894.
- Noyalas, Jonathan . “The Fight at Cedar Creek Was Over. So Why Couldn’t Union Troops Let Their Guard Down?” Arlington, Virginia: HistoryNet, 27 February 2023.
#003366 #47thPennsylvaniaInfantry #47thPennsylvaniaVolunteers #America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #Army #CampFairview #CampRussell #CarysbrookeRedoubt #CedarCreek #CharlesTown #Charlestown #Christmas #CivilWar #History #Infantry #JubalEarly #Military #Newtown #Opequan #Opequon #Pennsylvania #PennsylvaniaHistory #PhilipSheridan #ShenandoahValley #StephensCity #Union #Virginia #WestVirginia #WilliamHEmory #Winchester
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Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous area in the Caucasus region between Europe and Asia. For more than 30 years, it's been locked in a conflict between Armenia...#armenia #azerbaijan #nagorno-karabakh #world #voxcom #vox #explain #explainer #turkey #russia #erdogan #putin #artaskh #armenians #azeris #war #conflict #poltiics #politics #geopolitics #international #civilwar #ussr #soviet #history #glasnost #drones #warfare #weapons #military
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict |AJ#shorts #aljazeeraenglish #armenia #azerbaijan #nagornokarabakh -
Bassett Island in Traverse City, Michigan
This tiny island bears the name of Civil War veteran, fisherman, and local celebrity Richard Bassett.#boats #government #surveyors #fishing #localhistory #resorts #islands #civilwar #history #section-Atlas
Bassett Island -
No a #Telegram-Channel liked to #Wagner has declared, that a #CivilWar has begun.
Source: https://twitter.com/lindseyhilsum/status/1672525083812810752
#WagnerCoup #Russia #UkraineWar #Prigozhin -
No a #Telegram-Channel liked to #Wagner has declared, that a #CivilWar has begun.
Source: https://twitter.com/lindseyhilsum/status/1672525083812810752
#WagnerCoup #Russia #UkraineWar #Prigozhin -
2/21 The 1860 #election of #AbrahamLincoln became the "last straw" for #Southerners.
Alabama #secession documents declared: "the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration...of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions" (which, as we've seen, was precisely slavery).
In other words, the #CivilWar was a rejection of — and retaliation to — *a presidential election with progressive results.*
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Today in #Connecticut History, December 31: Cutting-Edge Teamwork Turns A Starr Into A Star
Read the Story and Subscribe for Daily Updates
TODAYINCTHISTORY.comhttps://todayincthistory.com/2022/12/31/december-31-cutting-edge-teamwork-turns-a-starr-into-a-star/
#18thcentury #19thcentury #andrewjackson #britain #businessandindustry #civilwar #coginchaugriver #connecticuthistory #connecticutindustry #connecticutinnovation #december #firearms #france #isaachull #massmanufacturing #middletown
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Today in #Connecticut History, December 31: Cutting-Edge Teamwork Turns A Starr Into A Star
Read the Story and Subscribe for Daily Updates
TODAYINCTHISTORY.comhttps://todayincthistory.com/2022/12/31/december-31-cutting-edge-teamwork-turns-a-starr-into-a-star/
#18thcentury #19thcentury #andrewjackson #britain #businessandindustry #civilwar #coginchaugriver #connecticuthistory #connecticutindustry #connecticutinnovation #december #firearms #france #isaachull #massmanufacturing #middletown
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Today in #Connecticut History, December 31: Cutting-Edge Teamwork Turns A Starr Into A Star
Read the Story and Subscribe for Daily Updates
TODAYINCTHISTORY.comhttps://todayincthistory.com/2022/12/31/december-31-cutting-edge-teamwork-turns-a-starr-into-a-star/
#18thcentury #19thcentury #andrewjackson #britain #businessandindustry #civilwar #coginchaugriver #connecticuthistory #connecticutindustry #connecticutinnovation #december #firearms #france #isaachull #massmanufacturing #middletown
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Today in #Connecticut History, December 31: Cutting-Edge Teamwork Turns A Starr Into A Star
Read the Story and Subscribe for Daily Updates
TODAYINCTHISTORY.comhttps://todayincthistory.com/2022/12/31/december-31-cutting-edge-teamwork-turns-a-starr-into-a-star/
#18thcentury #19thcentury #andrewjackson #britain #businessandindustry #civilwar #coginchaugriver #connecticuthistory #connecticutindustry #connecticutinnovation #december #firearms #france #isaachull #massmanufacturing #middletown
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Today in #Connecticut History, December 31: Cutting-Edge Teamwork Turns A Starr Into A Star
Read the Story and Subscribe for Daily Updates
TODAYINCTHISTORY.comhttps://todayincthistory.com/2022/12/31/december-31-cutting-edge-teamwork-turns-a-starr-into-a-star/
#18thcentury #19thcentury #andrewjackson #britain #businessandindustry #civilwar #coginchaugriver #connecticuthistory #connecticutindustry #connecticutinnovation #december #firearms #france #isaachull #massmanufacturing #middletown