David Glasgow Farragut would be jealous! If you’re a Civil War buff who’s also “into” cruising, American Cruise Lines has got the ultimate dream excursion for you! Based in Guilford, Connecticut, ACL announced on May 22 “a new cruise that visits nearly every major battlefield of the Civil War.” The 35-day Civil War Battlefields Cruise […]
Maine at War celebrates Women’s History Month with a four-part tale about nurse Abba Goddard and her adventures at Harpers Ferry during the Antietam Campaign. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. Cheers erupted (and probably echoed) across Harpers Ferry as civilians and paroled Union soldiers saw that “our […]
Maine at War celebrates Women’s History Month with a four-part tale about nurse Abba Goddard and her adventures at Harpers Ferry during the Antietam Campaign. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 4 here. Named matron of the Clayton General Hospital in Harpers Ferry in summer 1862, Maine nurse Abba Goddard […]
Maine sent approximately 73,000 men into the army to fight during the Civil War, but not all those recruits hailed only from the Pine Tree State. In fact, “over 2,400 New Brunswick-born men enlisted in the State of Maine,” says Canadian historian and Civil War re-enactor Larry Burden. He and his wife live in St. […]
Yelling at his men, Capt. O’Neil W. Robinson Jr. hurtled his 4th Maine Battery across country as they approached a Union firing line about 8 miles southwest of Culpeper, Va. on Saturday, Aug. 9, 1862. Riding on caissons and limbers or running alongside the horse-drawn artillery, the Maine men sweated profusely as they approached the […]
As did so many other Maine soldiers, a 19-year-old cavalryman from Levant who helped shove Confederate troops from their Petersburg defenses discovered that greater economic opportunity lay elsewhere than Maine after the Civil War. Born in Levant on December 6, 1845, Perley Lowe grew up in a decidedly rural Maine. Most men found employment […]
After Confederate troops captured William Frederick Irwin of the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment at Spotsylvania Courthouse in mid-May 1864, he was soon shipped to a prison camp at Salisbury, N.C. “This was a nasty place,” according to Maine historian Curt Mildner. The prisoners suffered from malnutrition, lack of clothing and shelter, disease, and sadistic guards […]
When the 5th Maine Infantry boys decided to party after the Civil War, they figured that Portland was the obvious place … … but to keep their poignant reunions private and give their weary comrades a quiet place to “get away from it all,” the 5th Maine’s surviving members chose peaceful Peaks Island as […]
Deserters were not the only man-made plague that drove Maine officers crazy during the Civil War; independent-minded Maine soldiers might mutiny, too, if they so decided. Patriotic fervor swept the Midcoast in mid-April 1861. A business partner with Hiram Berry, Elijah Walker sold coal and lumber in Rockland, recently split from Thomaston and designated the […]
As some 20,000 Union troops charged out of the fog and burst into the Mule Shoe salient at Spotsylvania Court House, Va. on May 12, 1864, Confederate resistance collapsed beneath the onslaught. Union soldiers swept up 3,000 prisoners, including the cane-wielding Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson and Brig. Gen. George Steuart, who led a mixed North […]
