Abner Coburn stepped into a political mess upon becoming Maine’s second war-time governor as the calendar transitioned to 1863. Born to farmers Eleazar and Polly Weston Coburn in Canaan in Somerset County in March 1803, Coburn studied at Bloomfield Academy in the town of Bloomfield, which lay across the Kennebec River from the upper section […]
He’d been shot and briefly captured at Gettysburg, had led his men into the maelstroms at First and Second Manassas, and had scurried as dawn approached on December 16, 1862 to find and save missing pickets at Fredericksburg. Now Elijah Walker was home, but bureaucracy followed him even there. With the Army of the Potomac […]
Previous: Maine Governor Abner Coburn runs afoul of the special interests Married to Augusta native Harriet Stanwood, transplanted Pennsylvanian James G. Blaine wielded great power within the Maine Republican Party by summer 1863. Buying into the Kennebec Journal in 1853, he moved to Augusta and won election to the Maine House in 1858. Repeatedly re-elected, […]
As Maine soldiers converged on Gettysburg, revengeful Republican politicians tossed aside the state’s sitting governor, Abner Coburn. A successful businessman from Skowhegan, he had beaten three opponents during the early June 1862 Republican state convention held in Portland. Winning the September election, he took office in January 1863 and soon collided with power-wielding politicians. Coburn […]
By late 1863, black Maine men were joining the fight against the Confederacy. War Department policy prohibited blacks from serving in white regiments, so except for a few situations, the black Mainers enlisted in black regiments being raised in other states. Some recruits went to the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery Regiment (Colored), forming […]
