As a Boston & Maine Railroad train carried the 21st Maine Infantry Regiment toward home on Friday, August 7, 1863, Col. Elijah D. Johnson and his surviving officers read the resolutions passed two days earlier during the Democratic State Convention held in Portland. History does not record who read the resolutions aloud on that rattling […]
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 […]
As Gardiner residents staged a proper “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” celebration for their city’s Port Hudson veterans, a local reporter nitpicked about a particular matter. He was fortunate that the weary soldiers did not hoist him on their bayonets. Mustered for nine-months service in mid-October 1862, the 24th Maine Infantry Regiment reached Augusta on […]
Veterans who had endured Port Hudson’s hell patiently listened as two politicians — one a minister just as long-winded as any elected Maine official — welcomed the weary warriors home. Then they finally got to eat. And a local newspaper reporter criticized their perceived (and collective) lack of appetite. Commanded by Col. George Marston Atwood, […]
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 […]
A 19-year-old Maine patriot, Charles Morgan Searles, unknowingly wrote the song that predicted how he would die. Nineteen when he enlisted in the 21st Maine Infantry Regiment, Searles was a farmer in Chelsea, now home to the Togus VA Hospital. The first among seven nine-month regiments raised in Maine in late summer/early autumn 1862, the […]
Playing “angel of mercy” briefly cost Charlie Blake his freedom at Port Hudson, La. in late spring 1863. Hailing from Portland, 21-year-old Charles H. Blake had enlisted in Co. B, 12th Maine Infantry Regiment as a corporal in November 1861. The regiment accompanied Ben Butler’s New Orleans expedition in early 1862. Within 12 months, Union […]
When he mounted his horse on Saturday, May 2, 1863, Capt. John Franklin Godfrey (“Frank” to his friends, relatives, and fellow officers) rode out to meet history — — and he became a historical footnote in doing so. Since raising Co. C of the 1st Louisiana Cavalry in New Orleans in late summer 1862, […]
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 […]
