Showing results for "Revolutionary War"
“But with blood” – John Brown, Violence, and Abolition in Kansas
On a cold December morning in 1859 in a jail cell in Charles Town, Virginia, John Brown reflected on his role in the desperate fight for abolition. Less than two months prior, he had led a small army of 21 men to raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry with the hope of inciting a […]
Read more...Book Review: Midnight Rising
…follow him they did, swearing allegiance to his revolutionary government and marching into Virginia to found a new order. Within two years, entire armies would cross the Potomac, and this obscured the magnitude of what happened in 1859. The street violence at Harpers Ferry came to seem almost quaint by comparison with the industrial-scale slaughter […]
Read more...Sink Before Surrender: The CSS Virginia Gets Underway
In the dawn of that fateful Saturday, March 8, 1862, the CSS Virginia lay alongside the Gosport Shipyard quay on the west bank of the Elizabeth River across from Norfolk, Virginia, and just upriver from Hampton Roads. The storm passed in the night leaving a cloudless morning, “calm and peaceful as a May day,” recalled […]
Read more...ECW Weekender: Rockfish Gap
Driving on Virginia’s Interstate 64? You’ll cross Rockfish Gap to leave or enter the Shenandoah Valley and drive right through a place of history. Situated about 16 miles east of Staunton and just above Waynesboro, the gap offers a crossing in the Blue Ridge Mountains and was a route for armies during the Civil War.
Read more...The First Contraband Combatants
“The scene on board the flag-ship was novel and thrilling. The thunder of the conflict drowned all other noises,” wrote historian John S. C. Abbott.[1] In one of the first Civil War histories, written while it happened, Abbott employed elegant Victorian prose to describe the Battle of Hatteras Inlet, August 28, 1861, including the distinguished […]
Read more...Mr. Lincoln: Though The Eyes of Gustav Koerner
Two hundred and ten years ago. Ten score and ten years ago. That’s when Abraham Lincoln was born in a tiny, chilly cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. February 12, 1809. At that time, none could have imagined what he would accomplish his fifty-six years of life or the enduring legacy and image of his life and leadership. […]
Read more...A Father’s Legacy: Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. and Jr.
On January 8, 1914, Simon Bolivar Buckner died. He was the last surviving Confederate lieutenant general, and was buried in Frankfort, Kentucky’s cemetery with considerable ceremony. Born in 1823, in Munfordville, Kentucky, he was named in honor of Simon Bolivar, the famous South American revolutionary.
Read more...Railroads – Her Journey: Ladies Traveling In Mid-19th Century America
The Civil War gave women reasons to travel like they had never had before. Some refugeed away from the armies. Others journeyed to be with loved ones in military camps or hospitals. Others packed their trunks, stretched society’s traditional feminine sphere, and embarked on journeys that would take them into hospital work, fundraising, or other […]
Read more...Around We Go: In the Monitor Turret
Lieutenant Samuel D. Greene, USN, had a problem. He was encased within a dim, claustrophobic, metal drum—20 feet in diameter—behind eight layers of bolted and riveted 1-inch-thick iron plates in charge of two immense 11-inch Dahlgren shell guns, each 13 feet long and weighing 9 tons. With him were sixteen brawny sailors packed in eight […]
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