Freedmen Warriors, Civil Rights Fighters
By Charles Joyce On the morning of Aug. 9, 1864, a transport with grim cargo arrived at a military hospital in Alexandria, Va., bearing 350 soldiers wounded in the recent
Tag: civil war
Spiritualism Shot
Two portraits of John Huey Weeks suggest a storyline familiar to soldiers and loved ones separated during the Civil War. In the photo, left, Weeks feigns sleep as he
The Enduring Legacy of Gettysburg
The furious fighting in and about a bustling crossroads village in Pennsylvania for three days in July 1863 is Homeric in its scope. Every patch of hallowed ground on the
Gettysburg’s Honored Dead, Haunted Survivors
It was summer when they fell, dying in the searing heat and drenching humidity of an unforgiving early July—scattered amid fields of wheat, groves of peach trees, round-topped hills, and
Final Harvest: The Last Journey of a Confederate Lieutenant Wounded and Captured at Pickett’s Charge
By Charles T. Joyce Fields thick with golden wheat and oats blanketed the southeastern Pennsylvania countryside surrounding the hamlet of Fayetteville during the early summer of 1863. On June 28,
Return and Retreat at Gettysburg: A Seminarian Is Called to Arms to Defend His College Town
By Paul Russinoff Few soldiers had ever heard of Gettysburg before the blue and gray armies clashed there in July 1863. For one Pennsylvanian however, the crossroads town was more
Immortality on Little Round Top, Butchery in Saunders Field
By Kevin D. Canberg Nearly surrounded and shot to pieces, the Rochester Racehorses stumbled back amid a smoldering mass of oak and vine that opened into a Virginia cornfield, through
Conspicuous Cadet at New Market: The life and legacy of VMI’s Jonathan E. Woodbridge
By Katie O’Halloran Brown Late on the night of May 10, 1864, the cadets of Virginia Military Institute were called out of bed for orders that directed them to join
At Gettysburg, Life Imitates Art: A year before the “Children of the Battlefield” photo was taken from the body of Sgt. Amos Humiston, a similar drama unfolded in a poem
By Ronald S. Coddington One of the most poignant personal stories of the Battle of Gettysburg is the death of Union Sgt. Amos Humiston. Killed during the first day of
The Value of Photo Inscriptions as an Identification Tool
By Kurt Luther The majority of subjects in Civil War photos are anonymous, because, naturally, as most were known to contemporaries, there was little need to record their identities. As