Tag Archives: Benjamin Butler

Bad intelligence leads to a nasty surprise near New Orleans

A Benjamin Butler-ordered raid cost the 12th Maine Infantry Regiment some 30 men in late summer 1862. On Saturday, September 13, “Acting General” (actually Army Major) George C. Strong (a native Vermonter) sallied forth with Union troops to attack Ponchatoula, a “village” located 48 miles from New Orleans. Strong planned to destroy a New Orleans, […]

Scarborough’s Hiram Berry fought in Louisiana and Virginia

There’s room in Maine Civil War lore for more than one Hiram Berry. The most famous, the general killed at Chancellorsville, has a quasi-monument at a Rockland cemetery. According to the soldiers’ files maintained by the Maine State Archives, three other Hiram Berrys served in the army during the Civil War. The Hiram Berry who […]

Emancipation: Free the blacks, if only to save the whites

Sworn into office as Maine’s governor in early January 1863, Abner Coburn of Skowhegan strongly supported raising black regiments — and not just for applying more pressure on the struggling Confederacy. Enlisting “the negroes for armed service in holding Southern ‘forts, positions and stations’ will be an immeasurable relief to the population of the North,” […]