Angered by resolutions passed during the Democratic State Convention held in Portland in early August 1863, “life long Democrat” Col. Elijah D. Johnson and his battle-hardened 21st Maine Infantry veterans organized an ad hoc meeting, discussed the situation, and “unanimously adopted” their own resolutions counterpointing the Democratic ones. The fact that the Maine lads held […]
A Benjamin Butler-ordered raid cost the 12th Maine Infantry Regiment some 30 men in late summer 1862. On Saturday, September 13, “Acting General” (actually Army Major) George C. Strong (a native Vermonter) sallied forth with Union troops to attack Ponchatoula, a “village” located 48 miles from New Orleans. Strong planned to destroy a New Orleans, […]
The most successful cavalry raid conducted by North or South until the war’s closing months, the May 1863 expedition known as Grierson’s Raid saw two Union cavalry regiments and an artillery battery cut some 500 miles through interior Confederate-held Mississippi. Commanded by Col. Benjamin H. Grierson, the raiders tore up vital infrastructure and ran Confederate […]
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 […]
A Confederate “pirate” — as the Northern press deemed him — so detested abolitionists that he really enjoyed burning a ship from a state he equated with the anti-slavery Republican Party. In spring 1861, Confederate Navy Commander Raphael Semmes received command of the CSS Sumter, a 473-ton, steam-powered merchant ship recently bought by the Confederate […]
By Nov. 7, 1862, Capt. John Franklin Godfrey could proudly tell his parents (John Edwards and Elizabeth Stackpole Godfrey of Bangor) that the Army had turned loose him and his Co. C, 1st Louisiana Cavalry Regiment (U.S.) to run amuck in Louisiana. “I like the cavalry service very much … and there are few […]
Upon arriving in New Orleans, John Franklin Godfrey of Bangor discovered he would rather ride like the wind than shoot like the devil. The 22-year-old son of Judge John Edwards Godfrey and Elizabeth Stackpole Godfrey of Bangor, Godfrey had joined the 1st Maine Cavalry as a private in autumn 1861. An ambitious young man, he […]
Sometimes we can almost reach across history and “touch” a Civil War veteran. At least with Andrew Derby Bean from Brooks, we can touch the trunk that he took to war in spring 1861, and if only that trunk could talk, If only the trunk owned by Andrew Derby Bean could talk, the war […]
Friendly (gun)fire was “heard” as far away as Washington, D.C. after Confederate troops advanced to attack the 14th Maine Infantry Regiment and other Union units at Baton Rouge, La. on Aug. 5, 1862. On July 7, Col. Frank S. Nickerson led the green 14th Maine ashore at Baton Rouge after an uneventful steamboat cruise […]
