With the exception of two white women and two African Americans, the town of Darien, Georgia was deserted when the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, the first all black regiment of the Union army, and the Second South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of freed slaves, marched in on the afternoon of June 12, 1863. Neither the town nor its four inhabitants posed any threat to the Union forces....
This battle was the largest cavalry battle during the war, despite the terrain not being suited to cavalry battles, full of rolling hills with scattered clumps of trees, and it represented the height of the superiority of Confederate cavalry skill. Previously, the Confederate cavalry had consistently demonstrated its superior ability, but the prowess of the Union troops was on the rise, and subsequent...
The majority of the fighting during the Civil War occurred in the South, but on some occasions the war came to the northern border state of Pennsylvania. In mid-June 1863, several weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate raiders from a force of 8,000 soldiers and guerrillas poured into southern Pennsylvania intent upon destroying Union infrastructure and rustling horses. Within several...
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...
A very bloody battle, here African American soldiers fought alongside Caucasian soldiers for one of the first of many times during the war. Nearly fifteen hundred Union troops, mostly African-Americans, fought side by side against the two or three thousand Confederates stationed there. However, there still was not racially equal treatment of the soldiers, as the white soldiers rode forward on horseback,...
Harriet Tubman’s Raid
Between 1815 and 1822, Harriet Tubman was born to Ben Ross and Harriet Green in Dorchester County, Maryland. Many people know this courageous woman to have saved anywhere from 50-70 slaves in her time conducting the Underground Railroad. But what many people do not know about her, is she is responsible for rescuing an additional...
Matt Turner was an assistant surgeon caught in battle at Shelbyville with a little time to write his mother. The letter thought brief gave a great account to the attack that occurred in Tennessee from the 24th to the 28th of June in 1863. Turner gave the account of his army “falling back” and being “flanked” by the enemy, the hospital he feared would soon fall and...
Captain David Acheson, Company C of the 140th Pennsylvania Volunteers was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, about thirty miles south of Pittsburgh. Robert L. Stewart remarked that Acheson was "one of the most promising young men in the College Class" at the then Washington College (now known as Washington & Jefferson College). A very thoughtful and god fearing young man, Acheson enlisted during...
“It was a case of adherence to the letter and neglect of the spirit; but there was no alternative except good-naturedly to admit that my men had gotten the better of me that time”—so wrote General John B. Gordon about the regrettable conduct of his soldiers as they marched through Pennsylvania on their way to Gettysburg. Gordon, being a Southern Gentleman and a reputable man, sought to bring...
The first African American regiment, this group left Boston to head south to Port Royal, South Carolina, to fight for the Union army and demonstrate the capabilities of black soldiers. The enthusiasm of the troops was matched only by their numbers, a full regiment of fresh soldiers. In Boston, the regiment received a warm send-off, and the cheering crowds wishing them well were as vast as “have...