Tag Archives: 5th Maine Infantry Regiment

Gaines Mill: Part III — The 5th Maine marches into hell

  At 5:30 a.m. on Friday, June 27, 1862, Col. Nathaniel Jackson started the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment toward the fighting — at that moment only a large-scale shootout between opposing skirmishers — nears Gaines Mill east of Richmond. Jackson’s men marched with the 2nd Brigade led by Col. Joseph J. Bartlett. Fleshed out with […]

Gaines Mill: Part I — “The nearest run thing you ever saw”

  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 […]

Winter weather could be as wild in Virginia as in Maine

Accustomed to New England’s frigid winters, many Maine soldiers noticed how cold and wet that Virginia winters could be. John H. Stevens, a first lieutenant with Co. D, 5th Maine Infantry, hailed from Acton in York County. Nestled in the foothills of the White Mountains, Acton saw its share of bitter cold, but growing up […]

The Long March

“Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching” in late June 1863 as Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac chased the Pennsylvania-bound Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Somewhere on the wretched Piedmont roads tramped the men belonging to the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment, mustered into federal service at Portland two […]