Death by disease was a much more present fear then than now. Mrs. Mary B. Bondurant of Bedford County, Virginia, succumbed to consumption at the startlingly young age of thirty-four. She died on August 1st, 1864 in Lynchburg and was survived by her husband, John P. Bondurant. Three of her sisters had already suffered equal fates at the hands of the slow wasting disease.
Her obituary, which...
Marching upon the Catharpin Road after trudging up the Plank Road, where “nothing was seen of the enemy save a small mounted force,” the Third Indiana Cavalry under Union Colonel George H. Chapman “proceeded less than a mile when their advance was attacked by the enemy and driven rapidly back on the main body.” Experiencing an ambush such as this was common for soldiers of both Union and...
Confederate cavalrymen under the command of General John A. McCausland set the city of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania ablaze on the morning of July 30, 1864. According to a letter sent the following day by D. McConaughy to Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin and Major General Darius N. Couch, the commander of the Susquehanna Military District, the "lowest estimate of loss [from the fire] is 1,500,000."...
One of the opening battles of the Petersburg Campaign and one that foreshadowed some of the tactics used in the trench warfare of the First World War was the Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864. At this point in the war, the armies of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant had settled into trench warfare in the area just to the south of Richmond, with the U.S. Army attempting...
The Battle of the Crater in the early stages of the Petersburg campaign resulted in a massive amount of damage to the center of the C.S.A. breastwork. In the early stages of the Petersburg campaign, as the battle settled into trench warfare, a Union officer named Henry Pleasants hatched a plan to dig, plant explosives, and explode a mine in the middle of the Confederate breastwork. ...
When the Civil War broke out, Texan Charles William Trueheart was at the University of Virginia studying medicine. Despite initial reservations about secession, he joined the multitudes of southerners who rushed to enlist. At first an artilleryman, by 1864 Trueheart had finished studying medicine and was an assistant surgeon in the 8th Alabama Infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia....
On July 27, 1864, Private Richard Monnahan was discharged from G Company of the 16th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry, on the day the entire regiment was mustered out. According to his discharge form from the United States Pension Office, Monnahan was 22 years old, five feet five inches tall, of dark complexion with dark grey eyes.
The 16th regiment was formed in 1861...
Spotswood Rice was a black Missouri soldier in the Union army in 1864. During the time of Rice's military service, he had two daughters that were still slaves in Glasgow, Missouri. While spending time in Benton Barracks Hospital, which was in St. Louis, Missouri, Rice wrote letters to his daughters, as well as the master of the two girls. In the letter to his daughters, Rice assured them...
Twenty-four year old Thomas Nast made known his support for incumbent President Lincoln in a work in the September edition of Harper's Weekly. The cartoon entitled "Compromise With the South" was one of his most powerful and effective cartoons, and one of his personal favorites that he dedicated to the Democratic Chicago Convention in particular. Harper's Weekly, the first periodical to...
Writing based on a report from the Abingdon Virginian, the Charleston Daily Courier gives an account of the imprisonment of “about fifty soldiers, some of whom have been confined on charges mostly of a trifling nature, for at least three months, without being brought to trial or having their cases in any way investigated.' The article goes on to proclaim that this is not an isolated incident....