In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
While many people know that the American Civil War revolutionized naval warfare with the introduction of the ironclad warship, few realize that another, equally important, seaborne weapon was introduced in that conflict: the submarine. The first sub was developed by the Confederacy in the later years of the War in an effort to counteract the Union blockade, with Charleston Harbor being used as the...
In the midst of the Civil War, one woman remained behind the scenes of the battlefield documenting the war and experiencing the fighting first hand. Belle Edmondson kept a diary from January to November of 1864 in which she detailed occurrences in West Tennessee such as the Union and Confederate battles, tragic accidents of friends, visitations by friends and family, travel to various southern...
An article in the Brownlow's Knoxville Whig stated that seventeen rebel assassins, led by Elbert Hurst, committed an act of cold-blooded murder. They approached a Mr. D.F. Huddleston, a good citizen, who was sitting close to a tan yard. The assassins demanded that he give up his arms, which he did, and then Hurst shot Huddleston in the head, forcing both eyes out. Huddleston had a wife and...
The 54th Massachusetts regiment of the Civil War was made up entirely of African Americans, except for its white officers. Because it was the first black regiment to be organized in the North, many were watching its progress. If the regiment’s performance turned out to be noteworthy, it would be the deciding factor if blacks would be used in battle.
The regiment was formed in...
On a cold day in February a Union expedition composed of gunboats Smith Briggs, Flora Temple, Gen. Jessup, and a transport Long Branch headed up the James River from Norfolk commanded by General Graham. The Long Branch had one hundred and fifty soldiers aboard on this particular expedition. Capt. Lee marched down the banks of the Nansemond River to meet up with the fleet of boats. The troops penetrated...
The Currency Act was first introduced as a bill to the “Currency Committee' of the House of Representatives in a secret session. The bill relied on taxation, not on funding, for the reduction of the heavily inflated currency in the Confederate States. It proposed that a tax of 4 percent be levied on the value of property. This bill became an Act of the Confederate Congress on February...
David Glasgow Farragut was captain of a Union ship in Mobile Bay. In his correspondence to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox, Farragut mentioned the increasing number of Confederate deserters he and his men picked up from gunboats. The Union used these men for intelligence, however inaccurate, and continued to take them on in hopes of gaining new information.
Union naval...
On January 12, 1864, A.K. Tribble offered a testimony in a New Kent County courthouse concerning the death of a slave, Ephraim. After Tribble's sworn statements, the County Clerk affirmed the verity of his account, but added that he could not set the official seal of his office because the Union Army had stolen it.
James B. Floyd of Newberry District, South Carolina owned Ephraim and,...
An article was printed in Brownlow's Knoxville Whig that discussed the enlistment of African-American soldiers into the Federal Army. The article claimed that a portion of the Federal Army was enlisting black soldiers because it would be a great insult and wrong to the South. However, this article also focuses on the issue of enlisting African-American soldiers into the Confederate Army, which...