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. […]
Civil War buffs living in Maine know that Gettysburg’s the nearest battlefield, with Antietam a close second distance-wise. Both are 10 to 13 hours away by road, depending on who’s driving and how traffic-plugged are I-495, the Mass Pike, and I-84 (in Connecticut and Pennsylvania). Are there bonafide Civil War-related sites we can visit in […]
When the War Department authorized Maine to raise several nine-month regiments in late summer 1862, the 26th Maine Infantry Regiment coalesced around 10 companies recruited in specific counties. Jasper N. Gray, a 27-year-old Ellsworth mechanic, recruited exclusively in Ellsworth in Hancock County, hence the nickname “Ellsworth company” given to what became Co. C, 26th Maine […]
What happens when warriors fresh off the battlefield spend two weeks traveling home? Hopefully they don’t stink, at least. Bloodied at Irish Bend in April 1863 and at Port Hudson that May and June, the 26th Maine Infantry boys probably lined the rails and cheered jubilantly as their steamboat chugged upriver, away from Port Hudson […]
Advancing north from the Piscataqua River, Phil Sheridan realized by the time he captured Maine “that this is the hardest campaign he ever had.” And that difficulty occurred even as Mainers welcomed him as a conquering hero. Viewed by many Northerners as a successful general in the anemically led Army of the Potomac, Sheridan toured […]
With recruiting seriously lagging in late summer 1862, the War Department authorized Maine and other loyal states to raise nine-month regiments. Rather than sign up three years or until the war’s end, as had the men recently enlisted in the 16th through 20th infantry regiments, men joining the nine-month regiments would serve only 270 […]
