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Category: Terrible War (1861-65) Page 1 of 2

1861 (Arguing for Justice) Kate Stone

Kate Stone (Louisiana State University)

Narrative
Kate Stone was twenty-years-old when Fort Sumter fell to Confederate forces. She was thrilled. Stone was an ardent southern nationalist from Louisiana who lived on a large plantation (Brokenburn) with many slaves and an extended family, including at least two brother who would die in the Confederate army. Within a month after Sumter, Stone began a diary the she kept for seven years. The material was full of biting insights and wise comments. Stone lived through Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign in 1863 and feared the arrival of black troops into the region. She and her family fled to Texas in 1863 and lived there until the end of the war. The young plantation mistress was suitably unimpressed by Texans and frontier life. “There must be something in the air of Texas fatal to beauty,” she wrote. Stone sardonic tone appeared frequently in her journal and sometimes appeared especially hardened. Following Lincoln’s assassination, she remarked on her satisfaction at his fate. Stone returned to Brokenburn –which had been devastated by the war—helped rebuild the place, married in 1869 and lived until 1907. When her diary was published in 1955, it was to wide acclaim, hailed by critics such as Edmund Wilson and by crowds –an estimated 10,000 folks in Louisiana including her 77-year-old daughter (who lived until 1972) and has since become regarded as a Civil War classic, though it is not as well known and familiar as Mary Chesnut’s diary.

Sources
John Q. Anderson edited Kate Stone’s diary and published it as Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868 in 1955. House Divided has several of Stone’s diary entries online, including July 4, 1861, June 30, 1862, March 22, 1863, September 5, 1864, and April 28, 1865.  In addition, Anderson discusses one of the soldiers who appeared in Stone’s diary in “Joseph Carson, Louisiana Confederate Soldier,” Louisiana History (1960). Other scholars have also examined Stone’s diary, including Drew Gilpin Faust’s “Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War,” Journal of American History (1990) and Clara Juncker’s “Confederate Languagescapes: Kate Stone’s Brokenburn,” Southern Quarterly (1996).  Other primary sources, such as photocopies of letters about Coleman Stone’s death and papers on the Carson family that appear in Stone’s diary, are in the John Q. Anderson Papers at Louisiana State University. The collection also has the  correspondence of Stone’s daughter. Amy discussed a number of different topics, such as Civil Rights issues, James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi, and President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  In addition, the collection has a map from March 1955 that indicates the location of Brokenburn Plantation. This finding aid has more information on this collection.

Places to Visit
No structures or sites related to Kate Stone exist. Stone was born in X, Mississippi, but she grew up on a plantation in Louisiana. While her family moved to Texas during the later half of the Civil War, they returned to Louisiana after Confederates surrendered in 1865.

Images
The John Q. Anderson Papers at Louisiana State University has images of the Stone family and the Carson family. (See this finding aid for more details). In addition, a photograph of a float in the Kate Stone Day Parade held on March 17, 1955 is online at the LSU Digital Collections.

1861 (Compromising for Union) Horatio Nelson Taft

Click on the Image to go to this collection.

Summary – “document daily life in Washington, D. C., through the eyes of Horatio Nelson Taft (1806-1888), an examiner for the U. S. Patent Office. Now located in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, the diary details events in Washington during the Civil War years including Taft’s connection with Abraham Lincoln and his family. Of special interest is Taft’s description of Lincoln’s assassination, based on the accounts of his friends and his son, who was one of the attending physicians at Ford’s Theatre the night Lincoln was shot, on April 14, 1865.” – Text from Library of Congress

See diary entries on June 29th 1863 and Oct 5th 1863 for comments related to the Battle of Gettysburg.

NOTE – This exhibit also has an essay that provides more background info on Taft and explains the significance of his diary.

Posted by Don Sailer
Credit – Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

1861 (Fighting for Liberty) Ivey W. Duggan

Duggan - (History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia)

Sources
A profile of Duggan is in Samuel Boykin’s History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia (2001). In addition, Dave Dameron discusses the unit that Duggan served with in  Benning’s Brigade: A History and Roster of the Fifteenth Georgia By (1997).

Artifacts
The Georgia Archives has the 15th Georgia Infantry Regiment flag.

Images
An image is in Samuel Boykin’s History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia (2001).

1861 (Fighting for Liberty) James Smith Colwell

James Colwell (Cumberland County Historical Society)

Narrative
James Smith Colwell, who worked as a lawyer in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was one of the men who answered President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Colwell joined the Carlisle Fencibles, a local volunteer company under the command of Robert Henderson, as a first lieutenant. Six weeks later the Fencibles left Carlisle for Camp Wayne in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where they received training and were designated Company A of the 7th Regiment, Pennsylvania Reserve Corps. His wife, Ann, had not been happy with that decision. “You left me without talking about it,” as Ann reminded him. While James admitted that “[he] err[ed] frequently,” he observed that “it [was] nearly always an error of the judgment & not of the heart.” Yet in this case he argued that it was impossible to get out of the army. “I do not see how I could get out of the service without bring[ing] disgrace and dishonour on myself & my little family,” as Colwell explained. Colwell had in mind his four children – two sons and two daughters. Colwell’s oldest daughter, Nannie, was about six years old in December 1861 when she announced in her “first letter” that she “[could] read” and “[sent him] a big kiss.” Colwell was able to return to Carlisle on furlough, but on September 17, 1862 he died during the Battle of Antietam. Local newspapers published obituaries, including the Carlisle (PA) American, which noted that “[Colwell’s] high moral character and exemplary life had made him a bright example in our midst.” When Civil War veterans in Carlisle established a local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic in February 1881, they decided to call it the Captain Colwell Post.

Sources
The best source on James Colwell is David G. Colwell’s The Bitter Fruits: The Civil War Comes to a Small Town in Pennsylvania (1998). In addition, the Cumberland County Historical Society in Carlisle, Pennsylvania has Colwell’s correspondence.

Places to Visit
The Colwell family’s house was located at 145 South Pitt Street in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. While today the house is a private residence, you can visit the Cumberland County Historical Society, which is located several blocks away at 21 North Pitt Street. You can also visit Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland.

Artifacts
The Cumberland County Historical Society has material related to Colwell and his regiment, the Carlisle Fencibles.

Images
The slideshow below includes images from David Colwell’s The Bitter Fruits: The Civil War Comes to a Small Town in Pennsylvania (1998).

1862 (Arguing for Justice) Cornelia Peake McDonald

Narrative
Winchester, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley was arguably the most contested town of the Civil War. Depending on how you count, the community changed hands over seventy times during four years. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson became a hero at Winchester at a major battle in 1862. The town was also part of the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863. And in the fall of 1864, Union General Philip Sheridan won a bloody but brutally effective victory there that contributed to Lincoln’s reelection effort. Winchester offers a dramatic window into the sacrifices of southern families during the war. Secretary of State William Seward visited in 1862 during a period of Union occupation and reportedly said: “”the men are all in the army, & the women are the devils.” Several women kept diaries, wrote remarkable letters or crafted post-war reminiscences. One of the best hybrid collections (part-diary/ part-recollection) comes from Cornelia Peake McDonald who wrote with great talent and behaved with outrageous defiance. In 1863, McDonald sent a sarcastic Valentine’s Day card to Union General Robert H. Milroy during the period when he was heading the occupation. He never discovered the culprit. She later fled Winchester following the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg and became widowed in 1864 when her husband (serving in the army) died from disease. She lived until 1909 but never remarried.

Life & Family
You can find information on McDonald’s family history on page 10 of of this PDF document. A list of McDonald’s children appears on page 10 and 11 of that PDF document. You can also find it in Gwin’s book (See the Appendix on page 273).

Sources
A key primary source is the diary edited by Minrose C. Gwin – A Woman’s Civil War: A Diary, with Reminiscences of the War, from March 1862 (2003). McDonald discussed the challenges of raising children during the war in a number of diary entries. After her son was arrested on the suspicion of throwing a snowball at a Union officer, McDonald noted in her diary on March 17, 1863 that “I have to be constantly on the watch for fear of my boys doing something to provoke the persecution of the Yankees.” Other selected entries in House Divided include September 26, 1862 ; October 13, 1862 ; December 26, 1862 ; January 20, 1863 ; May 15, 1863. Earlier versions of the diary are available. In 1875 McDonald put together an edition titled A Diary with Reminiscences of the War, From March 1862. In addition,  Cornelia’s son Hunter McDonald published an edition in 1935 –  A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life in the Shenandoah Valley, 1860- 1865. (You can find more information about the 1935 edition here).  McDonald’s also created a scrapbook, which included both text and artwork. “McDonald’s handwriting is flawless and always legible,” as Gwin describes. Gwin notes in footnote 2 on page 275 that the McDonald family of Nashville, Tennessee has the scrapbook in their private collection. In addition, the Jasper County Public Library in Rensselaer, Indiana has the original parody Valentine drawing that McDonald sent to Robert H. Milroy in February 1863.

Other secondary sources related to McDonald’s diary include Margaretta Barton Colt’s Defend the Valley: A Shenandoah Family in the Civil War (1994), Michael Mahon’s Winchester Divided: The Civil War Diaries of Julia Chase & Laura Lee (2002), Sheila R. Phipps’ Genteel Rebel: The Life of Mary Greenhow Lee (2004), Jonathan Noyalas’ My Will Is Absolute Law: A Biography of Union General Robert H. Milroy (2006), Richard R. Duncan’s Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861–1865 (2007). The online Encyclopedia Virginia also has an entry on “Winchester During the Civil War”.

Places to Visit
In Winchester, Virginia you can visit the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. McDonald is buried in Hollywood Cemetery, which is located in Richmond, Virginia.

Images
Minrose Gwin included three photographs in the 2003 edition of McDonald’s diary: Cornelia McDonald & her children in 1870, another family picture from in 1883, and McDonald’s house in 1914. McDonald’s profile on House Divided also has other images, such as McDonald’s home in Winchester circa 1900, William N. McDonald, and Angus W. McDonald.

1863 (Compromising for Union) Francis Lieber

Francis Lieber (House Divided)

Sources
You can find collections of Lieber’s papers at the Henry E. Huntington Library, Johns Hopkins University, the University of South Carolina, and at the Library of Congress. Other important primary sources include Lieber’s Miscellaneous Writings: Reminiscences, Addresses, and Essays (1881) and Like a Sponge Thrown into Water: Francis Lieber’s European Travel Journal of 1844-1845 (2002). Lieber also wrote several books and articles, such as A Popular Essay on Subjects of Penal Law (1838) and Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field (1863). Important secondary sources include Frank Freidel’s Francis Lieber, Nineteenth-Century Liberal (1948), Bernard Edward Brown’s American Conservatives: The Political thought of Francis Lieber and John W. Burgess (1951), Elihu Root’s, “Francis Lieber and General Orders no. 100,” American Journal of International Law 7 (1913): 453-469, Kent Blaser’s “Lieber’s Code and the Law of War,” Civil War History 30 (1984): 88-89, Michael O’Brien’s “‘A Sort of Cosmopolitan Dog’: Francis Lieber in the South,” Southern Review 25 (1989): 308-322, Burrus M. Carnahan’s, “Lincoln, Lieber and the Laws of War: The Origins and Limits of the Principle of Military Necessity,” American Journal of International Law 92 (1998): 213-231, and Hartmut Keil’s “Francis Lieber’s Attitudes on Race, Slavery, and Abolition,” Journal of American Ethnic History 28 (2008): 13-33.

Places to Visit
Lieber College is located on the University of South Carolina’s campus in Columbia. The building was constructed in 1837 and Lieber lived in the house until 1856. Today it houses the University’s Undergraduate Admissions Office.

Images
While an image of Lieber is available on his House Divided profile, the New York Public Library Digital Gallery also has several other photographs.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Amos Humiston

Amos Humiston


Narrative
Amos Humiston was a farmer and tanner from upstate New York who yearned to see the world and even served for a year on a whaling ship when he was a young man. He married Philinda Smith (1831-1913) and the couple raised three children –Franklin Humiston (1855-1912), Alice Humiston (1857-1933), and Frederick Humiston (1859-1918)—before Amos entered the Union army as a sergeant in the 154th New York infantry regiment. He was killed on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, found clutching an image of his young children, but with no other identification. Eventually, the Philadelphia Inquirer published the story in an article entitled, “Whose Father Was He?” which was reprinted across the North and which eventually led to the discovery of the Humiston family in the village of Portville. Soon after the war ended, Philinda and the children settled in an orphanage created for them and other families of Union veterans in Gettysburg. Their descendants are alive today.

Sources
Key secondary sources include Errol Morris’s five-part blog post at the New York Times and Mark H. Dunkelman’s Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death and Celebrity of Amos Humiston (1999). In addition, one of the best sources on the death during this period is Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008).

Excerpt from a letter from Humiston to his wife Philinda, dated May 9, 1863:

I got the likeness of the children and it pleased me more than anything you could have sent me. How I want to see them and their mother is more than I can tell. I hope that we may live to see each other again if this war does not last to[o] long.

Places to Visit
In 1993 a historical marker was installed near the location where a Gettysburg resident found Humiston’s body. While in Gettysburg you can also visit the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center and the David Wills House.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) First Arkansas Regiment


Black soldiers recruited in Arkansas in early 1863 (later 46th USCT) who found themselves surrounded by Confederate forces in June 1863 as part of a counter-offensive aimed at disrupting the Union occupation of eastern Louisiana (during Grant’s Vicksburg campaign). Seized as prisoners of war, more than two dozen still listed as POWs in 1865. There are powerful comments about this engagement from Grant, local diarist Kate Stone, and various officers. Lindley Miller, the first white colonel in charge of the regiment (and son of a US senator from NJ), also appears to have been the author of a well known marching song inspired by “John Brown’s Body,” sometimes attributed to Sojourner Truth, and recorded in the twentieth century by activists such as Pete Seeger. Includes fascinating lyrics such as:

“They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin,
They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin,
They will have to give us house-room, or the roof shall tumble in!
As we go marching on. “

Sources Summary
See David Walls’ “Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment: A Contested Attribution” (2007). Also available as a PDF. Also see John Q. Anderson, ed., Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868 (orig. 1955; new edition, 1995), , Gregory J. W. Urwin, ed., Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War (2005), 132-52, and the “First Regiment Arkansas Volunteers of African Descent” profile online at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

Artifacts Summary
Henry Ford Museum: muster roll (Apr. 30-June 30, 1865) for the 1st Arkansas REgiment (African Descent), which became Company E of the 46th Regiment, U.S. Colored Infantry. Commanding officer was Col. Julian E. Bryant (nephew of William Cullen Bryant). A number of the soldiers (26) are still noted as having been taken prisoner of war back in 1863, when they were guarding contraband at the Mounds or what is described here as “Mound Plantation” (near Goodrich’s Landing in East Carroll Parish in eastern Louisiana).
Historical Society of Pennsylvania: Song sheet from “Song of the First of Arkansas” in the collections of the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments. Important See David Walls article for complete details.
New York Public Library: Holds letters from Lindley Miller describing authorship of song lyrics. See Macculloch-Miller Family Papers.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Francis A. Donaldson

Francis A. Donaldson

Sources
The best source on Donaldson is J. Gregory Acken’s Inside the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Experience of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson (1998). For more information on the regiments that Donaldson served in, see History of the Corn Exchange Regiment: 118th Pennsylvania Volunteers (1888) and Antietam to Appomattox with 118th Penna. Vols (1892). In addition, you can learn more about other soldiers’ experiences in the Charles S. Swain collection at the University of Michigan, which has a scrapbook of material related to Swain’s service in the 118th Pennsylvania.

Places to Visit
The 118th Pennsylvania Infantry’s monument at Gettysburg National Military Park was built in 1889 and is located on Sickles Avenue. See this page to learn more about this monument. While in Gettysburg you can visit the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center.

Artifacts
The Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee has the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry’s Regimental Color, State Color, and National Color.

Images
See a list of illustrations in Acken’s Inside the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Experience of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson (1998).

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Frederick Stowe

Frederick Stowe (House Divided)

Sources
You can learn more about Stowe’s regiment in Alfred Seelye Rowe and Charles Nutt’s History of the First Regiment Heavy Artillery Massachusetts Volunteers (1917). Another important source is Edwin Bruce Kirkham’s “Andover, Gettysburg and Beyond: The Military Career Of Frederick William Stowe,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 109, no. 1 (1973): 87-93. In addition, Frederick’s mother, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and  A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853).

Places to Visit
You can visit the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Images
An image of Frederick Stowe is available on his House Divided profile.

The slideshow below includes images related to the Battle of Gettysburg.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman (House Divided)

Sources
Important sources include Sarah H. Bradford’s Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869) and Harriet, the Moses of Her People (1886). In addition, the National Archives has a 1898 affidavit related to her claim for a pension (Page 1 ; Page 2). One of the best studies on Tubman’s life is Kate Clifford Larson’s Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (2004). Check Larson’s website for excerpts, a timeline, and other resources. Other secondary sources include Dorothy Sterling’s Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman (1954), Catherine Clinton’s Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (2004), and Milton Sernett’s Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History (2007). Also see the “Harriet Tubman: Online Resources” from the Library of Congress.

Places to Visit
Historical markers related to Tubman are located in a number of places, including one in Bucktown, Maryland and another in Bristol, Pennsylvania. Bucktown is in Dorchester County, Maryland, the place where Tubman was born. You can also visit the Harriet Tubman Home Auburn, New York. Important museums include the Tubman Museum of African American History in Macon, Georgia and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition, this essay from the National Park Service provides an overview of places associated with Tubman.

Artifacts
The National Museum of African American History and Culture has the lace shawl (circa 1897) that Queen Victoria gave Harriet Tubman.

Images
The Harriet Tubman collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture has photographs of Tubman’s funeral in 1913.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Julius Leinbach

Julius Leinbach (A Johnny Reb Band from Salem)

Narrative
Julius Leinbach was part of a Moravian regimental band that traveled with the 26th North Carolina.  They actually played on the battlefield at Gettysburg, an event recorded by Leinbach in his diary.

Sources
Donald McCorkle edited Leinbach’s diary and published it in Regiment Band of the Twenty-sixth North Carolina (1958). Important secondary sources on the 26th North Carolina include Archie K. Davis’ Boy Colonel of the Confederacy: The Life and Times of Henry King Burgwyn, Jr. (1985), Rod Gragg’s Covered with Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at Gettysburg (2000), and Earl J. Hess’ Lee’s Tar Heels: The Pettigrew-Kirkland-MacRae Brigade (2002). Also see Steven Cornelius’ Music of the Civil War Era (2004).

Places to Visit
The 26th North Carolina has two monuments at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. One is located on Meredith Avenue and the other one is south of Gettysburg at the Angle on Hancock Avenue. While in Gettysburg you can also visit the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center and the David Wills House.

Artifacts
The Museum of the Confederacy has the 26th North Carolina battle flag in their collection  (see page 53 of this PDF file for details on the flag). The flag was captured by the 12th New Jersey Infantry during the Battle of Gettysburg and was recently on exhibit at the N.C. Museum of History.

Images
The image at the top of this post was originally published in Harry H. Hall’s A Johnny Reb Band from Salem: The Pride of Tarheelia (North Carolina Confederate Centennial Commission, 1963). Other images of the 26th North Carolina Regimental Band are also available in this book.

The slideshow below includes images related to the Battle of Gettysburg.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Marie Brose Tepe

Marie Brose Tepe (House Divided)

Sources
Important secondary sources include Linda Grant De Pauw’s Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present (2000), Larry G. Eggleston’s Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories of Soldiers, Spies, Nurses, Doctors, Crusaders, Others (2003), and Richard Hall’s Women on the Civil War Battlefront (2006). Tepe is also featured on the PA Civil War 150 website.

Places to Visit
See the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Images
Images are available on Tepe’s House Divided profile and on the PA Civil War 150 site.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) N. Claiborne Wilson

Click on the Image to go to this collection.

About N. Claiborne Wilson – “During the Civil War he served as a Major in the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment. He was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.”

About Collection – “Of the N.C. Wilson portion of the collection, the most significant item is a diary-account book fragment which includes entries (July 25th-July 3, the day of his death) from Pennsylvania and the battlefield at Gettysburg.”

Diary from June 25 – July 3, 1863 – see page images of Wilson’s diary and read the transcript.

Learn more about the other materials in this collection here, as VMI does own a few other letters from Wilson to his father. Note that the image of Wilson does not appear to be in VMI’s collection (apparently owned by Wilson family).

Posted by Don Sailer
Credit – Virginia Military Institute Archives

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Samuel Wilkeson

Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson leading Battery G, 4th U.S. Artillery at the Battle of Gettysburg

Narrative
Sam Wilkeson was a war correspondent for the New York Times who had sons in the Union army, including Lt. Bayard Wilkeson, an artillery officer who was mortally wounded on the first day at Gettysburg. The story of Bayard’s death became a northern sensation since he was one of the youngest artillery officers in the army, the son of a prominent journalist and also because he died in a particularly heroic fashion. The young lieutenant covered the retreating forces from the Union XI Corps on the battle’s first day and reportedly had to amputate his own shattered leg when doctors were forced to flee in the face of the oncoming Confederates. The elder Wilkeson, who was married to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s sister, recovered his mangled son’s body in Gettysburg’s aftermath and wrote an angry report in the Times which appeared on July 6. The article began: “Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest –the dead body of an oldest born son, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay.” Unionists later redistributed the moving piece as a pamphlet under the title: Samuel Wilkeson’s Thrilling Word Picture Of Gettysburgh. Artist Alfred Waud also drew a famous sketch of the young Wilkeson directing his battery on the battlefield. The story remains one of the most compelling of the battle. You can read more about it here at a special blog site built by Civil War enthusiast Randy Chadwick. Also, Louis M. Starr’s Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (1954) provides good context and more detail about Sam Wilkeson, one of the nation’s first embedded war correspondents. A more recent study by Michael A. Dreese, Torn Families: Death and Kinship at the Battle of Gettysburg (2007), provides several descriptive pages (available through Google Books) as part of a fascinating chapter on fathers and sons during the war.

Life & Family
Samuel Wilkeson was a reporter at the Battle of Gettysburg and his son, Bayard, was killed during the battle. Bayard’s brother Frank Wilkeson also served with the Union army during the war and died in 1913.

Sources
After the Battle of Gettysburg, Wilkeson’s report was published in the New York Times. You can read that report on House Divided (See page 1 ; page 2). Important secondary sources include  Richard M. Rollins’ Pickett’s Charge: Eyewitness Accounts at the Battle of Gettysburg (2005) and Michael A. Dreese’s Torn Families: Death and Kinship at the Battle of Gettysburg (2007). You can learn more about death during the Civil War in Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008).

Places to Visit
You can visit the monument for Battery G of the 4th U.S. Artillery on Howard Avenue in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. An identical monument is also at the National Cemetery. While in Gettysburg you can also visit the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center and the David Wills House.

Images
Alfred R. Waud drew this image of Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson leading Battery G during the battle.

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