Showing results for "Medal of Honor"
An Extraordinary Life: Mohammad Ali Nicholas Sa’id, Polyglot Genius of the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts
The ink was barely dry on Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in January, 1863 when Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew successfully petitioned the War Department to recruit a Black regiment for the Union Army. Andrew’s recruitment team, led by John Mercer Langston and George Stearns, fanned out across the North, while celebrated abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William […]
Read more...Civil War Medicine: Dr. Abner O. Shaw and the hard-on-surgeons 20th Maine
A replacement assistant surgeon for the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment, Dr. Abner Ormiel Shaw is best known for helping save the life of Joshua L. Chamberlain at Petersburg. There is much more to Shaw’s story, however, and had the 20th Maine kept wearing out its medical staff, Shaw might not have been at Petersburg at […]
Read more...Civil War Medicine: John Chase and the Lasting Legacies of Wartime Medicine
Civil War medicine did not exist in a vacuum only on battlefields and in hospitals. It began long before armies met in combat or men became ill; it began in classrooms, books, and lectures as surgeons and doctors learned and improved their skills and disseminated knowledge. Nor did it end on the battlefield, as surgeons […]
Read more...Hispanic Americans in the Civil War
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15), I’d like to provide our ECW readers with an overview of the contribution that Hispanic Americans made to the Civil War. Across the nation, Americans and immigrants that could claim some lineage to Spain, Portugal, Cuba, Mexico, or any other Central and South American […]
Read more...I Just Wanted a Little Background Info on Fort Monroe…
As historians, it can be so easy to get swept up in the larger trends of the profession that we forget to remember the basics. I ran into this very problem this week while doing some research on Fort Monroe. I was editing photo captions for a forthcoming Emerging Civil War Series book and needed […]
Read more...A Civil War Hero’s Tennessee Ties
ECW welcomes back guest author Gregory L. Wade The career of General Douglas McArthur is well known, especially for those of the World War II generation. But few know of the amazing Civil War connections this iconic family has with Tennessee towns like Franklin, Chattanooga, and Murfreesboro. In late November 1863, Douglas’s father, Lt. Arthur […]
Read more...Saving History Saturday: 28 Acres of New Market Heights Battlefield Donated to the Capital Region Land Conservancy
The owners of Four Mile Creek Farm, a core part of the New Market Heights Battlefield, donated 28 acres of the 73-acre farm to the Capital Region Land Conservancy, to be preserved forever. The remaining 45-acres will be conveyed to CRLC at a later date. On September 29, 1864, U.S. Colored Troops broke through Confederate […]
Read more...Shellbacks, Polliwogs, and Crossing the Equator Amid Civil War
Anyone watching a movie about sailing ships can quickly become confused with the overwhelming distinct terminology. There are much more than words that signify a sailor, however. Spending months at a time at sea, sailors have developed their own vocabulary, traditions, and culture to cope with life on the water. This includes distinct traditions and […]
Read more...