Episodes Nearest to June 12, 1862 to June 15, 1862: 1 through 25 of 25

  1. J.E.B. Stuart Rides Around McClellan
    date June 12, 1862 to June 15, 1862map RICHMOND, Virginiatags Government, Migration/Transportation, War

    J.E.B. Stuart’s most celebrated act was his encirclement of the Union General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac in June of 1862. Newly appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart devised the plan to circle around McClellan and gather intelligence. The aggressive strategy stemmed from the knowledge that McClellan was hesitant to attack the Confederate...

  2. Operations on the James River near Chesterfield
    date June 21, 1862map CHESTERFIELD, Virginiatags Government, Law, Politics, War

    One Friday in a neighborhood along the James River called Drury?s Bluff two Federal gunboats came barreling up the river. As the gunboats got closer they began to shoot into the woods on the Chesterfield side of the river in hopes to kill Confederate forces. The boats were then opened upon by a battery from Stafford Virginia headed by Capt. French. The two boats turned around unable to face the...

  3. Jeremiah Cooper Recuperates from Disease
    date June 6, 1862map FRANKLIN, Pennsylvaniatags Health/Death, War

    Many soldiers in the Civil War had to worry about their own health and the health of everyone around them. The Civil War took place during what the Union Army Surgeon General called, "the end of the medical Middle Ages". At this time, there was not a lot known about diseases, how to stop them from spreading, or how to cure them. Regiments were typically reduced to half or less of their original...

  4. Union Lieutenant Wounded in Surprise Attack
    date June 2, 1862map EAST BATON ROUG, Louisianatags Health/Death, War

    Lieutenant DeKay was a reliable aid to Captain Thomas Williams of the Union army. Unfortunately on May 26 DeKay was severely, perhaps fatally wounded while traveling by boat down the Mississippi. While making their way down the river, gunshots were heard from the riverbank. The Union soldiers promptly went to go find the rebels. As the Union soldiers pursued their assailants white flags soon began...

  5. Hood and His Texans at the Battle Gainess Mills
    date June 27, 1862map HANOVER, Virginiatags War

    Courageously "march[ing] under a constantly increasing shower of shot and shell," General John Bell Hood and his fighting Texans battled their war towards a Union embankment and on to glory. The stage was the Battle of Gaines's Mills on June 27th, 1862, and it was up to Hood and his men to lead the charge to Confederate victory. This was the battle, as Hood describes it in his memoir, which...

  6. Virginia Upheaval
    date July 1, 1862map FAUQUIER, Virginiatags African-Americans, Race-Relations, Slavery, War

    A planter named Edward Turner who resided in Fauquier County wrote down notable events of 1862. He stated that, “Any lying negro who felt disposed to do so could involve in the most serious difficulties of the first men in the land;Excellent and worthy citizens were stripped of poverty and otherwise shamefully treated (by the Yankees) upon the testimony of some unprincipled slave,' (Hardwick/Hofstra,...

  7. Phillip Sheridan’s First Raid as Colonel
    date May 27, 1862 to May 29, 1862map TISHOMINGO, Mississippitags Civil War, Phillip Sheridan

     Phillip Sheridan had recently been appointed Colonel of the Second Regiment of Michigan Cavalry two days before a raid on Booneville, Mississippi. On the morning of May 27, 1862, Governor Austin Blair of Michigan formally gave Sheridan command of the regiment.  Sheridan explained that the regiment “was run down by losses from sickness, and considerably split into factions growing out of jealousies...

  8. War preparation
    date 1862map ORLEANS, Louisianatags War

    In the midst of the war, factories were steady at work manufacturing gun carriages and turning cotton wagons and drags into army wagons. All commercial businesses were suspended and the ships were cleared out due to the notice of the Union blockade in the spring of 1862. New Orleans would have seemed a deserted city if it were not for the bustling movements of the Third Regiment of Louisiana Volunteers...

  9. Soldier Conditions and Morale
    date 1862map HENRICO, Virginiatags Health/Death, War

    Soldier conditions throughout the Civil War, especially for the Confederacy were far from inspiring. All units from Virginia through Texas experienced poor camp conditions. Many soldiers wrote home complaining about the high occurrence of death and the inability of the sick to recover.

    J.B. Robertson was a colonel in the fifth Texas Infantry and often corresponded with Governor Lubbock....

  10. Pauline Cushman Gains Trust of the Rebels: An Episode from Her Life
    date 1862map JEFFERSON, Kentuckytags Crime/Violence, Race-Relations, War, Women

    Pauline Cushman was born Harriet Wood in the South, on June 10, 1833. Living the beginning of her life in New Orleans, she eventually moved with her family to northern Michigan where she first discovered her love of the theatre. By the age of eighteen she moved to New York to try her luck at being an actress and stage performer. In homage to Charlotte Cushman, her favorite performer, Harriet legally...

  11. Reverend McGill Offers His Religious Views on Slavery
    date 1862map PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvaniatags Church/Religious-Activity, Slavery, War

    Reverend Alexander T. McGill believed very strongly in the 1860s that slavery should be abolished because it "degrades and destroys the children of men."

    Slavery needed to be abolished immediately, but slaves needed to be educated first, because, "neither slavery perpetuated, for its own sake, nor slavery abolished before its subjects are educated for freedom will comport with the determination...

  12. The Battle of Shiloh: Through the Eyes of a Union Soldier
    date 1862map MARION, Tennesseetags Civil War, Battle

    The battle of Shiloh was fought in southwestern Tennessee in April of 1862. Confederates started the battle in an attempt to drive General Grant's army from the Tennessee River. Among the Union troops present, Samuel Bennett of the 26th Kentucky Volunteers kept a diary and wrote down his thoughts of the battle. For him the battle began when he left Savanna for Pittsburg Landing. It was at...

  13. Van Evrie offers evidence for the necessity of maintaining Slavery
    date 1862map NEW YORK, New Yorktags Slavery, Economy, trade relations

    Van Evrie's thirty page pamphlet, written in 1862 used the example of the West Indies, and with the help of statistics and examples, demonstrated how slavery in the West Indies benefited the United States of America. It also showed how eventual abolition in the United States would be a failure to both Southern States and Northern States.

    Throughout the nineteenth century, the islands...

  14. Women's Welfare Activist Records Inequalities Faced by Female Teachers
    date 1862map WASHINGTON, Vermonttags Public School, Teachers, Equal Rights, Women, Education, Powerful Women in History, Women's roles, women's rights

    During a visit to America, women's welfare activist, Emily Faithfull examined the vast inequality that existed between men and women teachers and concluded that the situation was unfortunately no better for English women. The "feminization of teaching" had just begun to evolve around the time of her visit (1862);the majority of teaching positions in America, from the colonial period to the middle...

  15. The Sioux and United States Indian Policy
    date 1862map DATOKA TERRITORY, Territorytags Sioux Wars, Sioux, Buffalo, Indians, Native Americans

    Amos H. Gottschall traveled across the North American continent four times from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which took him twelve years to do.  During his travels, Gottschall lived with the Indians he came across.  Gottschall wrote all his experiences down, especially with the Sioux from whom he later picked up the Sioux language.  Gottschall became very fascinated with the Indians and decided...

  16. Runaway Slaves Seek Refuge in Union Camp
    date May 21, 1862map JEFFERSON, Louisianatags African-Americans, Government, Migration/Transportation, Race-Relations, Slavery, War

    One morning in May two slaves, Sam and Mary, belonging to Mr. Mitthoff, left their home and went to Camp Parapet, a Union fort. They took with them an assortment of Mitthoff's property, including livestock, a cart, and clothing. Mitthoff's son went after the slaves and attempted to bring back the cart and other items.When leaving the camp he was asked to show his passports. He was then...

  17. Union Sentiment in Mississippi
    date May 21, 1862map YAZOO, Mississippitags Politics, War, Women

    Dedication to one's state and the Confederacy was of utmost importance to citizens of the South during the Civil War. Union sentiment or the suggestion of a peace negotiation with the Federal Government was considered an abomination among stanch Southern Confederates, including women. However, Unionists did exist on the southern home front, a struggle that pitted families and neighbors against...

  18. African American servicemen in the Civil War
    date May, 1862 to 1862map DUVAL, Floridatags Civil War, Wounded Soldiers, Emancipation

    “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny he has earned the right to citizenship.”

    --Frederick Douglass

     

    In books around the world, conventional history teaches that the American Civil War and black slavery are inextricably...

  19. A descriptive entry about a wife of a rice planter during the Civil War. She discusses the issues she and her family endured during the war.
    date May 12, 1862map COLLETON, South Carolinatags Diary, Civil War, Wife

    Margaret Ann Meta Morris, (1810-1881) was the wife of a rice planter. She resided in coastal South Carolina with her family. She kept a personal diary in which she focused on topics such as her family being ill, historical events, plantation life, her children’s involvement in the Civil War, and her teaching efforts. The entry on May 12, 1862, describes what she endured while she and her family...

  20. Southerners Interactions With Northern Soldiers
    date March 14, 1862 to July 7, 1862map SHENANDOAH, Virginiatags Crime/Violence, War, Women

    On March 14, 1862 in Shenandoah County, Virginia three Union soldiers marched to the door of Sigismunda S. Kimball, the wife of a southern planter, and demanded supplies. The soldiers threatened Mrs. Kimball saying they had plenty of ladies prisoners and continued to torment her. On July 6, 1862 two Yankee soldiers came up to the house and demanded for the key to the corn house, saying they had...

  21. Federal Government issues the Homestead Act
    date May 8, 1862map Washington City, District of Columbiatags 37th Congress

    Millions of unsettled acres remained in the west by the 1850s, and the Republicans viewed the land as an opportunity to offer it to settlers for next to nothing. Republicans drafted a homestead bill, but southern senators immediately rejected it. One southerner explained it "would prove a most efficient ally for Abolition by encouraging and stimulating the settlement of free farms with Yankees and...

  22. Confederate Refusal to Pledge Allegiance
    date July 24, 1862map WILLIAMSON, Tennesseetags War, Women

    For months Elizabeth McCavock Harding waited for her husband, William Giles Harding. Federal forces contained him in Fort Mackinaw, Michigan between April and September of 1862 as a prisoner of war. During that time Elizabeth wrote to him frequently describing the state of health of their family and the state of the town of Nashville, Tennessee. She very much wanted to visit him and worried about...

  23. Timothy Webster Becomes First Spy Executed in the Civil War
    date May 4, 1862map RICHMOND, Virginiatags Civil War, Timothy Webster, Espionage

    On the day of April 29, 1862, Timothy Webster became the first person executed during the Civil War for acts of espionage. Convicted four days prior to his execution, a court-martial in Richmond, Virginia ruled that Webster, an “alien enemy,” should “suffer death by hanging.” The New York Times republished an original article from the Richmond Dispatch relaying the information...

  24. Going To War
    date April 25, 1862 to May 1, 1862map ORLEANS, Louisianatags War

    Shouts and cheers filled the air as the words The Washington Artillery is going to war hummed through the streets. A telegram was sent by L. Pope Walker, the Secretary of War, to the battalion of artillery stationed in New Orleans, Louisiana. In preparation for the journey to Lynchburg, Virginia, contributions of money and clothing were raised by the women. Without any expense from the state or...

  25. Armed Slaves
    date June, 1862 to September, 1862map ORLEANS, Louisianatags African-Americans, Slavery, War

    Armed and prepared for confrontation, runaway slaves knew that their link to freedom was right before their eyes.It was the perfect opportunity to leave the plantation when the Union forces arrived in New Orleans. Many of their masters were away at war and the women were the only ones that stood in the way of freedom. In a period of three months in 1862, large groups of slaves armed with cane knives,...