Local women paid for two of the three veterans’ monuments in Newport, a town (3,133 residents in 2020) located at the modern crossroads of central Maine, the “Newport Triangle” where Interstate-95 meets routes 2, 7, 11, and 100. Those two monuments (and later the third) honor Newport’s Civil War veterans, in part or in whole. […]
Gathering at a local cemetery beneath a beautiful late summer sky, residents of Milo re-dedicated their town’s Civil War monument this August with capable assistance from Civil War descendants and re-enactors. Participating organizations included the Milo Historical Society; the Sarah Elizabeth Palmer Tent No. 23, Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War; the Col. […]
Much like patent-medicine hucksters peddling liquid healing, Army recruiters occupying just about every street corner in downtown Bangor in autumn 1861 promised potential recruits the sun, the moon, and the stars — and a $100 bounty to boot. Across Maine, recruiters scrambled that fall to raise men for an artillery battery, a cavalry regiment, and […]
Ellsworth rolled out the red carpet when the 6th Maine Infantry’s elderly survivors converged on the Hancock County shiretown 50 years after going forth to defend the Union. When the 2nd Maine Infantry Regiment left Bangor for Washington, D.C. by train on May 14, 1861, five unattached companies remained at Camp Washburn. These companies were […]
Among all the people affected by the Civil War’s blood and gore, to this day most Civil War historiography has touched little upon the wives who saw their men off to war, North and South. Onlookers paid little attention in print to particular central Maine wives biding their husbands “adieu” in spring 1861. Just 26 […]
Historical records tell us that when the 2nd Maine Infantry Regiment mustered out in May 1863, the three-year recruits transferred to the 20th Maine while the two-year men went home. Not every 2nd Maine lad went in one direction or the other. In fact, while sailing to Bangor in May 1863, the regiment strewed deserters […]
Facing the Army of the Potomac’s inevitable shrinkage, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker issued General Order No. 50 on May 12, 1863 expressing “his appreciation of their efforts and devotion” to the soldiers “leaving this army by reason of the expiration of their term of service.” Stating that “the records of their deeds … will live […]
For Civil War veteran Benjamin E. West, answering the “last call” had nothing to do with bellying up to the bar in a local tavern just before closing time. He literally “answered the last bugle call” on Tuesday, October 24, 1922 — and the obituary published before his body had barely cooled contained very fake […]
As the sun rose east of Richmond, Virginia on Friday, June 27, 1862, Charles W. Roberts knew that his 2nd Maine Infantry boys were “in” for it. The previous day, Colonel Roberts and the 2nd Maine had listened for hours as Confederate troops attacked Union soldiers entrenched along Beaver Dam Creek. A Pennsylvanian division […]
Looking from Maine in 2016 to Virginia in 1862, we cannot appreciate how, in the words of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, in speaking about Waterloo, the Battle of Gaines Mill was “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life, by God!” George Brinton McClellan had split his Army of the Potomac […]
