Rachel Cormany recorded her experiences of the civil war in her diary of the time that the Gettysburg campaign was taking place. She lived in a place close by called Chambersburg. On June 15, 1863 she wrote how she saw all sorts of wagon trains make their way through the town. She experienced the panic that shot through the town due to the Rebels. There had been a cry that the Rebels were in Greencastle,...
Reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation, even among the common folk, was mixed and often violent. A letter to the Editor of the Harper's Weekly and published in the November 8, 1862 edition describes one reader's personal experience with such a reaction from a neighbor. Charity Grimes writes that her neighbor, Sarah Blue, and she do not always agree but on this one occasion Blue had come storming...
The stories about women and the unlikely role they played, in both the north and the south, during the Civil War are some of the most interesting stories of the Civil War. One such story, about Union spy Pauline Cushman appeared in the Valley Spirit on June 8, 1864. Ms. Cushman was arrested by the Confederates, freed by the Northern troops and rewarded with the honorary title of Major in the United...
The place of President James Buchanan in the history of this country has always been a topic of hot debate. The Franklin Repository of April 27, 1859 contains a summary of the April 13th anti-Buchanan speech made by the Honorable John Hickman at the Independent Democratic Convention at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Hickman was outraged at the conduct of President Buchanan which he believed had violated...
The most infamous of slave traders, Captain Nathaniel Gordon was finally brought to justice, and the significance of that event was reported and commented on at length in the March 8, 1862 edition of Harper's Weekly summarizing from accounts in the Times and Herald. This was an important event because the international slave trade had been considered piracy but had not been prosecuted due to the existence...
Born in Missouri and taken to Calhoun, Georgia with his brother, by his parents, Grigg and Diantha, Will Henry Thompson grew up in the foothills of the Cherokee Valley, living beside the "beautiful and scenic Coosawattee River." Both Will and his older brother Maurice learnt to hunt and fish, and eventually learned to use a longbow, thus leading to their toxophilitic nature (lovers of the bow and the...
The war in the West went on long after Lee surrendered, and not just because it took a little while for news to travel. The Confederates appeared utterly defeated, and yet some still were willing to fight. But the South was not the only problem for the North. Corruption was rampant in Forts Smith and Gibson (Indian Territory, now Oklahoma); safe havens for both southern and northern refugees, from...