#civilwar — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #civilwar, aggregated by home.social.
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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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@flup The whole thing is a psyop for useful idiots to usher in the Technocratic #digitalID surveillance state in UK
British intelligence is already fully on board with creating #civilwar in #uk
Musk is there to create chaos and then sell the solution to the chaos to the UK government, the Technocracy
Create enough chaos and the British people will beg for authoritarian clamp downs against the useful idiots fighting civil war. And thus public consent is manufactured and the Technocracy is born
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@flup The whole thing is a psyop for useful idiots to usher in the Technocratic #digitalID surveillance state in UK
British intelligence is already fully on board with creating #civilwar in #uk
Musk is there to create chaos and then sell the solution to the chaos to the UK government, the Technocracy
Create enough chaos and the British people will beg for authoritarian clamp downs against the useful idiots fighting civil war. And thus public consent is manufactured and the Technocracy is born
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@flup The whole thing is a psyop for useful idiots to usher in the Technocratic #digitalID surveillance state in UK
British intelligence is already fully on board with creating #civilwar in #uk
Musk is there to create chaos and then sell the solution to the chaos to the UK government, the Technocracy
Create enough chaos and the British people will beg for authoritarian clamp downs against the useful idiots fighting civil war. And thus public consent is manufactured and the Technocracy is born
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@flup The whole thing is a psyop for useful idiots to usher in the Technocratic #digitalID surveillance state in UK
British intelligence is already fully on board with creating #civilwar in #uk
Musk is there to create chaos and then sell the solution to the chaos to the UK government, the Technocracy
Create enough chaos and the British people will beg for authoritarian clamp downs against the useful idiots fighting civil war. And thus public consent is manufactured and the Technocracy is born
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@flup The whole thing is a psyop for useful idiots to usher in the Technocratic #digitalID surveillance state in UK
British intelligence is already fully on board with creating #civilwar in #uk
Musk is there to create chaos and then sell the solution to the chaos to the UK government, the Technocracy
Create enough chaos and the British people will beg for authoritarian clamp downs against the useful idiots fighting civil war. And thus public consent is manufactured and the Technocracy is born
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No Victor, No Vanquished? Gowon’s Memoir Reopens Biafra’s Bloody Ledger by MARCEL MBAMALU
His new memoir, “My Life of Duty and Allegiance”, points a finger from the grave of history at Chukwuemeka Ojukwu — accusing the dead Biafran leader of lying about Aburi, arming the East for war, and dragging Nigeria into bloodshed. Ojukwu, buried since 2011, cannot answer. -
Albert Cashier
Cashier (1843 – 1915) was Irish-born Jennie Hodgers - an American soldier who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier was one of at least 250 women who enlisted as men to fight. However, Cashier had adopted the identity of a man before enlisting, + maintained it until death. He enlisted in 1862 for a 3 year term + was described as a 5'3" soldier, 29 years old with blue eyes + auburn hair, weighing 110 lbs. Cashier fought in over 40 battles until he was honorably discharged on 1865
After the war, continuing to live as a man, Cashier worked was a church janitor, cemetery worker, + street lamplighter. Living as a man allowed him to vote in elections + to claim a veteran's pension
In 1911, Cashier was hit by a car, resulting in a broken leg. A physician discovered his birth sex in the hospital, but did not disclose the information. No longer able to work, Cashier was moved to a Soldiers & Sailors home. He lived there until a deterioration of mind began to take place + he was moved to a Hospital for the Insane. Attendants at the hospital discovered his birth sex + forced him to wear women's clothes.
Albert Cashier died in 1915 + was buried in uniform with full military honors.
#albertcashier #civilwar #civilwarhistory #soldiers #history #americancivilwar
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Review of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, by Frederick Douglass
Wow! So this is why Frederick Douglass is so revered!
I first met Frederick Douglass years ago while covering a historical event as a local TV reporter. Okay, I met and interviewed a Douglass impersonator. I think they were rededicating a city park in his name, and this historical interpreter came and made a speech. I remember being absolutely taken by his charisma and command of the podium. It was like being in the presence of the great Frederick Douglass himself. Even though I knew this was an actor, this encounter really started my fascination with the stern and thoughtful-looking man whose 19th-century pictures survive and are well known today.
I started writing novels years later. I’m working on my seventh now. I’ve been reading slave narratives as research, all of which I’ve found well-written, fascinating, and heartbreaking. So far I’ve read Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup, and Henry Watson’s Narrative of a Fugitive Slave, and now The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas.
I was immediately taken by his writing. The descriptions and the emotional depth had me immediately captivated. I think he had this effect on people in general during his life. One of his contemporaries wrote a preface to this work in which he relates his first time experiencing Douglass speak at an abolitionist meeting. He describes how Douglass approached the podium as a humble, mild-mannered man only to be transformed into a passionate, fiery orator who held his audience absolutely spellbound with his harrowing eyewitness accounts and firsthand experiences of American slavery.
This book has the same effect.
Douglas recounts his childhood and the heartbreaking separation he had with his mother. He tells of his upbringing, his string of jobs and masters, and his first escape attempt, which had my stomach tied in knots and my heart pounding as I turned the pages frantically to learn the outcome.
This book is a very compelling read, albeit heartwrenching. However, Douglass’s undying hope, endurance, and sense of self-worth make him a hero you will cheer for. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his tale.
This is just the first of three autobiographies, by the way. He wrote The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass shortly after winning his freedom in 1845. Many in his time said it was so eloquently written that it could not have come from a black man. He wrote My Bondage, My Freedom ten years later, in which, I am told, he goes into much more detail about not only his time as a slave, but his years afterward as an activist during his freedom. He published his third and final autobiography in 1881 and revised it in 1882. In it, he gives the details about his slavery and escape, which he had to leave out of his previous books to protect those who helped him and to also not give away the secrets and routes still being used by runaways during the time he published his previous works.
However, this first book by Douglass is the one most people read in school. It’s a great introduction to this true American hero. It’s also a pretty entertaining thriller worth reading for anybody. I can tell you that my admiration for him has been confirmed by it, and I remain a fan.
Check it out here:
Get a FREE novela from me here:
Check out my latest novel here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DT45FFWH
#AmericanCivilWar #bookReview #CivilWar #history #writing -
@ablueview The #KuKluxKlan was started by one of the Confederate Army’s most feared leaders, General Nathan Bedford Forrest from #Tennessee. He recruited mostly battle-tested veterans of the #CivilWar. It became something else, but retained that #history.
#PatriotFront is masked #ChadsAndChuds in khakis and polos. #Incels don’t intimidate anybody - except their reflection in a mirror!
#Resist #WhiteSupremacists in #USpol and #American society.
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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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Donald Trump's wild 24 hours as he 'plots' using $1.7bn tax fund to pay January 6 rioters
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/trump-slush-fund-china-bbc-37162978
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On 26.04.1937, the town of Guernica in the Basque country became the target of one of the most shocking aerial attacks in modern history. During the Spanish Civil War, warplanes from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy bombed the town. #Guernica #CivilWar #NeverAgain
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Mit dem Beschuss von #FortSumter begann heute vor 165 Jahren der #Bürgerkrieg in den #USA. Wie dieser Vorstellungen von #Männlichkeit verändert hat, untersuchen:
▶ N. Finzsch/M. Hampf, Männlichkeit im Süden, Männlichkeit im Norden. Zur Genese moderner amerikanischer Männlichkeitskonzepte in der Epoche des Bürgerkriegs (1861–1865), #WerkstattGeschichte 29/2001, https://werkstattgeschichte.de/alle_ausgaben/maenner/
#histodons #USHistory #CivilWar #CivilWarEra #Masculinities #Männergeschichte
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The MAGA #CivilWar is escalating Trump’s use of government power appears to turn INWARD. The $FBI has reportedly launched an investigation into #JoeKent, while #TuckerCarlson claims the #CIA is preparing a criminal referral against HIM after both criticized Trump and his war youtu.be/sIXQlzBdF5g?...
Trump TURNS on His Own Officia... -
"Minnesota wäre heute besser dran, wenn wir zu Kanada gehörten", schimpfte der frühere Gouverneur von Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, im kanadischen Sender CBC.
👉 https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/amerika/kanada-minnesota-protest-ice-100.html
Solcher #Separatismus ist ein legitimes, aber sehr gefährliches Unterfangen, der schon mal in einem #Bürgerkrieg endete. Tipp: Felix Garland hat ein ähnliches Szenario in seinem Film Civil War (2024 ) hochaktuell und sehr anschaulich verarbeitet.
Für eine Welt kooperativer Regionen - ohne Staaten und ohne Herrschaft von Menschen über Menschen :anarchoheart3: !
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There Are Giant #Mammals Alive Today That Were Adults During the American #CivilWar
The #bowheadwhale, a giant, #Arctic-dwelling species bigger than a bus, evidence suggesting they live over 200yr. There are currently bowhead whales swimming around #Alaska that were alive when #MobyDick was written in 1851.
Other large #whales also enjoy relatively long lives; #bluewhales, can reach up to 90 years of age. Nevertheless, none can rival the extreme longevity of the #bowhead.
https://www.iflscience.com/the-longest-living-mammals-are-giants-that-live-up-to-200-years-in-the-icy-arctic-80853 -
In retrospect it was naive not to realize that the various "#counterinsurgency" tactics the US inflicted on other countries wouldn't come home to its citizens, too. Chickens coming home to roost.
Meanwhile, Dem leaders are *still* bringing rhetoric to a fucking #civilwar. #fascism
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#CharlieKirk and the "Righteous" Right
Well before a suspect was named and arrested, #rightwingers (including #PresidentTrump) were blaming #TheLeft and using the #CharlieKirksassassination to excuse a new #CivilWar against their #political opponents.
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#DougWilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a #Christian #Theocracy. In #Trump’s DC, the #NewRight Is Listening.
#DougWilson has built a #theocratic regime in Moscow, Idaho, where men rule and biblical teachings guide everything. Now he’s taking the model national, with a receptive crowd in the #GOP.
By Ian Ward, 05/23/2025Excerpt: "Wilson has spent much of his career outside the conservative mainstream, which has distanced itself from his frank defense of theocracy, his ultra-#patriarchal views on gender relations and his reactionary stances on race and 'the war between the states,' as he still calls the #CivilWar. (On the 'About' page of his blog, Wilson describes his politics as 'slightly to the right' of the #Confederate general Jeb Stuart.) Online, Wilson has cultivated a punk-rock aesthetic designed to foster his reputation as the 'based' intellectual bad boy of American #evangelicalism: In a promotional video posted at the height of the conservative backlash to '#woke' media companies in 2023, Wilson used a skull-and-crossbones-emblazoned flamethrower to torch oversized cardboard cutouts of various Disney princesses and social media companies, all while puffing on a fat cigar."
#ChristianNationalism #ChristoFascists #USPol #ChristoFascism #Fascism #Fascists #TradFuturism #TraditionalValues #Gilead #MegaChurches #Greed #Racism #UltraPatriarchy #TradWives #MakeAmericaHateAgain #MAGA #Theocracy #AmericanTaliban #Patriarchy #Xenophobia #Colonialism
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@dollemore.com talks about the #CivilWar brewing in conservative circles, as many are critical of #KristiNoem for #Cosplaying as a special operator, calling her #ICEBarbie and mocking her for turning the job of #SecretaryofHomelandSecurity into a weird costume party. youtu.be/TcRob3AB0hg?...
Republicans LOSE THEIR SH*T – ... -
@dollemore.com talks about the #CivilWar brewing in conservative circles, as many are critical of #KristiNoem for #Cosplaying as a special operator, calling her #ICEBarbie and mocking her for turning the job of #SecretaryofHomelandSecurity into a weird costume party. youtu.be/TcRob3AB0hg?...
Republicans LOSE THEIR SH*T – ... -
Poetry of the American Civil War: “An Evening in Camp” (December 28, 1861)
“Our Heaven Born Banner” (William Bauly, circa 1861, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).
It is evening on the camp ground, and the fading sunlight gleams,
Over hill tops, into valleys and adown the winding streams;Weary drill at last is ended, and the soldiers gather in
To the music of the fifers and the sweet-toned violin.Noble sons of patriot fathers, loving freedom most of all,
Dreading more the tyrant’s sceptre than the rifle’s deadly ball;Each within his homely quarters, on his hard unpillowed bed,
Takes the uninviting supper, by no loving mother spread.Not for them the winter fire where the family group is found,
Pleasant converse, peals of laughter, merry jestings circling round;Where the mother piles her knitting, and the sisters read or sew,
And the father paints in language, “miracles of long ago.”Not for them! yet through their changes, Memory keeps her taper bright,
Lighting up the streams of day-time, and the visions of the night;Hearts that know no selfish terror, through their tender pulses send,
Throbs of strong magnetic feeling, to the parent or the friend.One is writing to his mother, and his thoughtful eye grows dim,
With the memory of her kindness, and her loving care for him;Patient of his youthful follies, quick to lead and slow to blame,
Rising with his rising honor, sinking if he sink to shame.Well she knows her pillowed slumbers are not as they were of old;
Well he knows the grief and terror that her pen hath never told;And he sees the dark brown tresses, growing whiter day by day,
Since her country’s tocsin sounded, and she gave her all away.And another reads the message that a Father’s hand hath sent,
Strong in courage, wise in council, glowing with a high intent;“All his prayers go forth to bless him–he has been his pride and joy,
And the hopes of past and present crowd around his darling boy.”With a quivering lip he folds it, but his keen and steady eye,
Speaks the strong, unshaken courage, that shall conquer or shall die;Gentle words a wife has written, there the husband reads to-night,
And his manly tears are hidden in the fading winter light.Then he folds his daughter’s billet in a warm and close embrace,
Her’s, who holds the prisoned sunbeams of eight summers in her face;Ah! he cares not for the blunders, through each blurred and crooked line,
All the glances of her blue eyes and her bady graces shine.Needs must tremble they who called him from such pleasures to the strife,
He will keep his vow of vengeance at the peril of his life;Where the sunbeams linger longest, heeding not the frosty air,
With his pale young forehead shaded, sits another reading there.One who loved him like the poets, shared this in the days gone by,
And each line looks kindly at him through that sister’s speaking eye.“Sits she in the dear old Study, reading what I read to-night,
Tracing out the rhythmic numbers, in the flashing crimson light;Or, perchance, the lamps are lighted, and she pens the gentle line
That gives olden warmth and comfort to this stranger life of mine.”There a young man holds a locket, gazing on a face so dear,
That the past becomes the present, and the far away the near;Over streams, and hills and vallies, he is standing by her side,
And her dark brown eyes are liquid with the gush of love and pride.Sweeter than the sounds of summer is the language that she speaks;
Fairer than June’s fairest blossoms, are the roses on her cheeks,And he feels to-day more worthy plighted heart and hand,
Than when peace and smiling plenty blessed his sorrowing Fatherland.Breaking on the evening’s bustle calls the drum to muster roll,
And the soldier’s sterner duties shade the fancies of his soul.Turning to their straw and blankets, quiet slumbers close them round;
Nothing but the sentry’s pacing breaks the silence of the ground,And the stars look kindly on them from the blue etherial sea,
Leading on the Hosts of Freemen through the gates of victory.MELROSE
Source:
“Select Poetry [from the West Chester (Pa) Times].” Sunbury, Pennsylvania: The Sunbury American, 28 December 1861.
#America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #Army #Christmas #CivilWar #CivilWarArt #CivilWarPoetry #History #PennsylvaniaHistory #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #Poetry #Sunbury #TheUnionArmy #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #WestChester
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Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s. Vaccination campaigns ceased. So people under fifty are not immune to #mpox.
Rapid treatment reduces lethality from 10% to 1%.Mining for electricity transition is particularly conducive to the creation and export of new diseases. #Syndemics can be defined as optimal social and ecological environment for generating and propelling epidemics.
Dr Camille Besombes: ‘There is an epidemic of epidemics. We've entered a new era, with a proliferation of emerging infectious diseases. […] Ebola emerged in the same economic and social context as Kivu.
(in fr) https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/france-culture-va-plus-loin-l-invite-e-des-matins/crises-sanitaires-mpox-sortir-du-traitement-d-urgence-9146038 📻🎧#transition #extraction #civilWar #militias #sexualViolence #prostitution #famine #copper #lithium #mining #wood #epidemics #pandemic #healthCrisis #monkeyPox #Kivu #Congo #Africa #Nigeria #Ebola #HIV #AIDS #COVID19 #virus #diseases #health #ecology #medicine #vaccines #globalization #mobility #exports #freeTrade #bugs #mosquitoes
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Time for Culture Club, where our panel shares the movies, music, TV shows, books and more they’re loving this week.
Have you seen/heard/read any of the picks in the checklist?
#Hulu #TheGreatestHits #Film #Movies #CivilWar #ConanObrien #HotOnes #YouTube #TV #Music #NewMusic #VampireWeekend #HeartbreakHigh #Netflix #YA #StrangeWayofLife #LGBTQ #BrantHellville #HBO #Max #Franklin #AppleTV #Sugar #Dinosaur #DND #DungeonsAndDragons #RPG #DragRace #DragQueens #Dropout #Travel #GreatCities
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“The Commencement of the Battle near Pocotaligo River” (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 1862, public domain; click to enlarge).
And among them Strife and Tumult joined, and destructive Fate, grasping one man alive, fresh-wounded, another without a wound, and another she dragged dead through the melee by the feet; and the raiment she had about her shoulders was red with the blood of men. Just like living mortals joined they and fought; and they each were dragging away the bodies of the others’ slain.”
—Homer, The Iliad, Volume II, Book 18
October 22, 1862 was a deadly day for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and the succeeding days throughout that month and beyond proved to be deadlier still, as one member of the regiment after another succumbed to the wounds they had sustained in battle—or to complications that arose from the multiple surgeries that had been performed by Union Army surgeons in valiant, but vain attempts to save their lives.
Excerpt from “A Golden Thread” (John Melhuish Strudwick, circa 1885, public domain).
What will be striking to any student of history engaged in even just a cursory review of this regiment’s medical and death records during this period of American Civil War-era service, is the seeming fickleness of who lived or died—as if Lachesis and Atropos had debated and determined their fates while Clotho spun out the thread of each life, giving them no say in their individual destinies.
Or was it the decision-making mind and finger of God? “You, but not you.”
This randomness dawns with startling clarity when examining the vastly different outcomes of Sunbury, Pennsylvania brothers, Samuel and Peter Haupt, and of company commanding officers Charles Mickley, George Junker and William Wallace Geety.
Captain Charles Mickley of G Company was killed instantly, early on in the Battle of Pocotaligo on October 22, 1862—brought swiftly to the ground by a rifle shot to his head. He never knew what hit him—or what happened to the men of his company who were marching head on with him into an intense barrage of canister and grape shot, mingled with rifle fire and artillery shell shrapnel.
Captain George Junker of Company K was felled by a minié ball fired from a Confederate rifle during his company’s advance on the Frampton Plantation. Initially stabilized in the field before being transported back to Hilton Head, where he was hospitalized at the Union Army’s post hospital, he died there the next day. He, too, had been shot in the head.
But First Lieutenant William Wallace Geety miraculously survived the gunshot that he sustained to his head—despite having been initially described by The New York Times in its list of Pocotaligo casualties as “mortally wounded.” His survival subsequently became the subject of multiple newspaper reports and medical journal articles. According to the Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, he was wounded in action when “grape shot struck him between the eyes and passing to the left destroyed the eye, shattered the bones of the face, injuring the nerves and lodged near the carotid artery. While lying upon the field he was for a while given up for dead.”
The Union Army surgeons who treated him throughout his convalescence provided even more telling and precise accounts, documenting that William W. Geety had been struck between the eyes by a one-half-inch-diameter iron ball propelled by a cannon shrapnel shell which had exploded on impact in front of him while he was commanding his men on the field. As the shrapnel peppered the air around him, the ball traveled upward through his head before striking the back of his skull, where it then reversed course, traveled down toward his left jaw and neck, and lodged behind the carotid artery. In the process, his left eye was destroyed along with nerve sensation on his left neck and face, which was also disfigured. When battlefield surgeons realized that one of the major fragments was located perilously close to his carotid artery and could not be removed without killing their patient, they opted to leave that piece of shrapnel in place, stabilized Geety, and continued to care for him until he could safely be moved to one of the Union’s larger and better equipped hospitals for more advanced treatment.
Finally well enough to pen a letter home to his wife and children on November 19, 1864, Geety wrote:
I have lost my left eye, the base of the nose has been taken out. My jaw has been splintered besides some other bones about the brain being cracked. I am very thankful that I got through so safely, as my life was despared [sic] of at first.
In later accounts, he recalled that the grapeshot had struck him near the bottom of his nose, and “after knocking a piece out of my skull, turned and lodged in my throat against the carotid artery from whence I had it cut, at the same time part of the casing of the shell struck me in the face, making a longitudinal cut across my left eye, breaking the lower jaw, and staving in the upper jaw bone on the right side of the face. The socket for the lower jaw to work is broken off, so that every time I open my mouth the jaw flies out of joint.”
Astoundingly ambulatory just a month after the battle, he continued to receive medical care at the Union Officers’ Hospital in Beaufort, South Carolina, and was actually able to walk around the city under his own power.
* For more information about what happened to First Lieutenant William W. Geety after he was released from the Union Army’s hospital in South Carolina, read “First Lieutenant William W. Geety — Battling Back from a Nearly Fatal Head Wound.”
But a Foot Wound Was Fatal?
Atropos, one of the Three Fates in Greek mythology, cuts the thread of life (bas relief image, public domain).
Also wounded that same day, but seemingly less seriously than their commanding officers had been, were the Haupt brothers of the 47th Pennsylvania’s C Company (the color-bearer unit). Sergeant Samuel Haupt was struck in the chin—presumably by one of the countless artillery shell fragments flying through the air as the enemy unleashed a barrage of cannon fire on their company as it advanced toward its target—while his brother, Private Peter Haupt, was struck in the foot that had been fired by a musket or rifle ball.
Sam survived, but Peter did not.
A seemingly minor wound, ballistic injuries to a foot are often extremely painful and traumatic—even today. According to the editors of Ballistic Trauma: A Practical Guide, “There are three mechanisms whereby a projectile can cause tissue injury:
- In a low-energy transfer wound, the projectile crushes and lacerates tissue along the track of the projectile, causing a permanent cavity. In addition, bullet and bone fragments can act as secondary missiles, increasing the volume of tissue crushed.
- In a high-energy transfer wound, the projectile may impel the walls of the wound track [and] radially outwards, causing a temporary cavity lasting 5 to 10 milliseconds before its collapse in addition to the permanent mechanical disruption produced….
- In wounds where the firearm’s muzzle is in contact with the skin at the time of firing, tissues are forced aside by the gases expelled from the barrel of the fire, causing a localized blast injury.”
In Peter Haupt’s case, the high degree of damage to his foot was compounded by the fact that his wound was caused by a musket or minié ball that was made of lead—a substance known to cause blood poisoning and damage to human tissue and organs—and likely also by surgical procedures that were less than sterile, which resulted in a subsequent infection. His cause of death at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina on November 14, 1862—just over three weeks after the battle—was “traumatic tetanus,” according to the Union Army’s Registers of Deaths of Volunteer soldiers.
The Consequences of Human Conflict
Random, divergent and seemingly senseless fates.
Whether determined by the finger of God, the pre-battle machinations of the Moirai of Greek mythology, or the sheer dumb luck of being positioned at precisely the wrong spot in the regiment’s line of march that terrible day, the final outcomes of the 47th Pennsylvanians who did or did not make it home stand as a testament to the often inexplicable and heartbreaking nature of war.
Sources:
- “A Soldier’s Death” (obituary of Captain W. W. Geety). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Harrisburg Telegraph, 20 January 1887.
- Affidavit Regarding Peter Haupt’s Death (written by Second Lieutenant Daniel Oyster on August 14, 1863 and certified by Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin on August 20, 1863, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida). Washington, D.C.: Officer of the United States Commissioner of Pensions.
- Burial Ledgers, in Record Group 15, The National Cemetery Administration, and Record Group 92, United States Departments of Defense and Army (Quartermaster General). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: 1861-1865.
- Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, Containing Sketches of Representative Citizens, and Many of the Early Scotch-Irish and German Settlers. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: J. M. Runk & Company, 1896.
- “Extraordinary Case” (account of the injury and treatment of William Wallace Geety). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Patriot & Union, June 12, 1863.
- Haupt, Peter, in Registers of Deaths of Volunteer Soldiers, United States Army, 1862. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- Homer, The Iliad, II, Book 18 (A. T. Murray, translator). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1924.
- Junker, George, in Registers of Deaths of Volunteer Soldiers, United States Army, 1862. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- “Lead Toxicity: Biological Fate,” in “Environmental Health and Medicine.” Atlanta, Georgia: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, United States Centers for Disease Control, May 2023.
- Letter from Captain James Kacy from Beaufort, South Carolina, October 25, 1862, regarding H Company casualties sustained during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina, October 22, 1862. Bloomfield, Pennsylvania: The Perry County Democrat, November 6, 1862.
- “List of Casualties: Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers—Col. T. H. Good.” New York, New York: The New York Times, October 29, 1862.
- Mahoney, Peter F., James Ryan, et. al. Ballistic Trauma: A Practical Guide, Second Edition, pp. 31-66, 91-121, 168-179, 356-395, 445-464, 535-540, 596-605. London, England: Springer-Verlag London Limited, 2005.
- Reimer, Terry. “Wounds, Ammunition, and Amputation.” Frederick, Maryland: National Museum of Civil War Medicine, 2007.
- Reports of Col. Tilghman H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry and Report of Col. Tilghman H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry, commanding First Brigade, Tenth Army Corps, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Prepared Under the Direction of the Secretary of War, By Lieut. Col. Robert N. Scott, Third U.S. Artillery, and Published Pursuant to Act of Congress Approved June 16, 1880, Series I, Vol. XIV. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885.
- Schroeder-Lein, Glenna. “The Wounded,” in “Essential Civil War Curriculum.” Blacksburg, Virginia: Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, Virginia Tech University, retrieved online November 8, 2023.
- “The Killed and Wounded in the Battle” (casualty list from the Battle of Pocotaligo). New York, New York: The New York Herald, October 29, 1862.
- “Younker, George [sic],” in United States Records of Headstones of Deceased Union Veterans, 1879-1903.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- “Zurückgefehrt” (announcement of the return to Pennsylvania for reburial of the remains of Captain George Junker, Henry A. Blumer, Aaron Fink and Henry Zeppenfeld). Allentown, Pennsylvania: Der Lecha Caunty Patriot, December 3, 1862.
#003366 #47thPennsylvaniaInfantry #47thPennsylvaniaVolunteers #America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #Army #Art #Atropos #Casualities #CivilWar #Clotho #Death #Fate #History #Homer #Humanities #Infantry #Lachesis #Medicine #Military #Pennsylvania #PennsylvaniaHistory #Pocotaligo #SouthCarolina #Strudwick #TheIliad #ThreeFates #Union
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Been thinking it's time to update my pinned bio post, so here goes:
Hi, thanks for stopping by my profile! I teach history in Higher Education.
#USHistory, #CivilWar, #19thCentury, #Antebellum, and #Aviation and #NASA history.I also publish and create resources related to faculty development, online courses, and accessibility.
#EdTech, #InstructionalDesign, #Accessibility, #A11y, #LongCOVID, #InvisibleDisabilities, #OnlineLearning, #Gamification, #FacultyDevelopment, #CognitiveScience, #SoTL.I'm here to follow and engage with your posts on these topics too:
#PetBirds, #Birds, #Photography, #Hiking, #Kayaking, #Nature, #Programming, #CSS, #JavaScript, and #HTML. -
@SrRochardBunson #DecorationDay is associated with remembering ancestors who died during the #CivilWar , particularly while fighting - treasonously - for the #Confederacy. No bueno!
I agree with the general idea, and the #DayOfTheDead (or #AllSoulsDay ) has the same purpose, and would give #Halloween more purpose (actually, its original purpose).
