Published: 11/8/11A Regiment of InventorsBy: Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line “In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence,...
Published: 11/7/11Voices from the Past: “A Slow Affair”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line William Thompson Lusk (May 23, 1838 – June 12, 1897) was an American obstetrician, who left medical school to join the Union Army. Lusk participated in the Battle of Port...
Published: 11/7/11Voices from the Past: “The Glorious News from Port Royal”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line After the Union victory at Port Royal, Major General George Brinton McClellan wrote the following letter to his wife, Mary Ellen Marcy McClellan. “Nov. 1861. — You will have heard...
Published: 11/7/11The Confederate Perspective: “Port Royal…has been taken by the enemy’s fleet”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line “Port Royal, on the coast of South Carolina, has been taken by the enemy’s fleet. We had no casemated batteries. Here the Yankees will intrench themselves, and cannot be dislodged....
Published: 11/7/11Voices from the Past: “Sagacious Military Conjecture”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Wilder Dwight was a Lieutenant Colonel inthe 2nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Prior to dying September 19, 1862 from wounds at the Battle of Antietam, Dwight wrote some conjectures about...
Published: 11/7/11Voices from the Past: “The Gratifying Duty”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Port Royal—one of the earliest amphibious operations of the American Civil War. The United States Navy fleet and the United States...
Published: 11/4/11Image of the Day: The Dogs of WarBy: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line From Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, “An Incident of Battle — A Faithful Dog Watching the Dead Body of His Master”: Credit: Frank Leslie’s The Soldier in Our Civil War.
Published: 11/3/11Sarah Morgan’s Arrival in Yankee-Occupied New OrleansBy: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line In April 1863, 21-year-old Sarah Morgan, along with her mother and sisters, found herself on a ship headed for the city of her birth, New Orleans. The Morgan family had...
Published: 10/31/11Mrs. (“Beast”) Butler’s Scary DreamBy: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line Happy Halloween! To celebrate, we found a spooktacular letter from the archives… On April 4, 1862, Sarah Hildreth Butler, wife of Union general Benjamin F. (“Beast”) Butler, wrote a friend...
Published: 10/31/11“They See a Ghost or Something.”By: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line On May 25, 1863, Union soldier David L. Day, of the 25th Massachusetts Volunteers, recorded a strange incident that occurred while his regiment was on a recent nighttime march: Sometime...