Showing results for "Revolutionary War"
What’s In a (Confederate) Name?
Visitors to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis are engulfed in history. The magnificent grounds on the Severn River (known officially as “the yard”) abound in monuments, plaques, halls, and displays memorializing the nation’s naval heritage. Names of heroes adorn stately buildings and major walkways. The Naval Academy’s mission statement reads: “To develop Midshipmen […]
Read more...‘Til Secession Do Us Part: A Citizen of Rome, Georgia Faced A Schism In Business, Life, and Marriage
ECW welcomes back guest author David T. Dixon The two-day pursuit ended in northwest Georgia’s Floyd County in early December 1864. Peter Sheibley lay writhing in pain, courtesy of a blow to the head from a Spencer rifle wielded by Josh Irons. Adnorium Lumpkin grabbed Sheibley’s hat and tossed him his own ragged chapeau, lambasting […]
Read more...The Hero & The Ghost: An Account of a Divided Family
ECW welcomes David T. Dixon When the Civil War splits a Georgia family, a returning veteran secures his legacy and helps to bury shameful secrets for future generations… Connor Wright remembered that he was eleven years old when he watched Yankee soldiers steal up through the backyard and surprise his father. Edwin Wright, home on […]
Read more...The Emergency Ironclads
In late summer 1861, the United States Navy initiated a crash program to build their first ironclad warships, leading directly to the titanic clash between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (ex USS Merrimack) in Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862. One might assume that the primary impetus behind this new naval strategy was […]
Read more...Saving History Saturday: Exciting News From Kentucky
House Bill 319. A new chapter for battlefield preservation may be on the horizon in Kentucky! State representative Daniel Elliott has sponsored this bill in the state legislature for the creation of Kentucky Battlefield Preservation Fund, which would help the state gain access to federal funding for Civil War battlefield preservation.
Read more...“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...