Showing results for "From the Tombstone"
Where Valor Proudly Sleeps (part one)
(part one of two) We’ve spent a lot of time and attention on Turning Points of the Civil War lately. Our first book in the Engaging the Civil War Series, published in cooperation with Southern Illinois University Press, tied into this year’s Symposium, so it’s been turning points, turning points, turning points. But there’s a […]
Read more...Remembering Sergeant Carney
One hundred and eighteen years ago today—May 23, 1900—William H. Carney received the Medal of Honor for actions in July 1863 during the Civil War. President William McKinley, who issued the Medal in the name of Congress (hence the oft-used misnomer “Congressional Medal of Honor”) was himself a Civil War veteran, having enlisted in the […]
Read more...The 114th PA at Chancellorsville, Overlooked in Plain Sight
The Chancellorsville monument to the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry is arguably the battlefield’s most visible monument—and, ironically, the least accessible. The granite tablet sits next to the eastbound lane of Route Three, facing the forest rather than the road, maintaining both a high profile and public anonymity. I’ve had to bushwhack here from the open ground […]
Read more...General Grant Loses a Resourceful Subordinate, Mentor, Role Model, and Friend
“During the war father was saddened often over the death of many who had been associates either at West Point or in the army,” Frederick Dent Grant wrote in 1899, “but I think his greatest grief, and perhaps his greatest disappoint [sic], were occasioned by the accidental death of General Smith.” On the night of […]
Read more...Battlefield Markers & Monuments: Johnson Island & McPherson’s Grave
Emerging Civil War welcomes back Frank Jastrzembski to share about a recent trip and his musings on historical graveyard markers. My wife reluctantly agreed to go on another of my weekend cemetery hunts. Only a few weeks before, we had taken another couple to visit Brevet Brigadier-General Orland Smith’s grave in Green Lawn Cemetery after […]
Read more...Stand in the Cemetery: George Washington Getty and the Battle of Cedar Creek
Following the engagement at Tom’s Brook on Oct. 9, 1864, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s Union Army of the Shenandoah continued north toward Winchester. Sheridan eventually put his men into camp along a stream known as Cedar Creek south of the village of Middletown. Jubal Early’s Army of the Valley followed and assumed a position on […]
Read more...John Adams Elder: Fredericksburg’s Civil War Artist
Emerging Civil War welcomes back Michael Aubrecht Standing amid the soldiers’ and civilians’ graves in the Confederate Cemetery on Washington Avenue is a simple, elegant marker with the name “Elder” etched across its face. To the casual observer, this tombstone would probably blend in with the rest of the surroundings, but the seasoned art enthusiast […]
Read more...The Final Resting Place of Lee’s “Old Warhorse”
Gainesville, Georgia, a town of 36,306 people at the last census, sits in North Georgia perched on the banks of Lake Lanier and straddling Interstate-985. Yet, in this Georgia town, lie the remains of James Longstreet, affectionately known during his life-time as “Pete” or during the American Civil War as Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s […]
Read more...