Category: Fighting for Liberty Page 1 of 2

In Fighting for Liberty, Grave Crisis (1801-61)

Dangerfield Newby (House Divided)

Sources
Important primary sources on Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid include James Redpath’s The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (1860), Franklin B. Sanborn’s The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia (1885), and Richard J. Hinton’s John Brown and His Men; With Some Account of the Roads Traveled to Reach Harper’s Ferry (1894). Osborne Anderson, who participated in Brown’s raid but managed to escape, also published his account in 1861: A Voice from Harper’s Ferry: A Narrative of Events at Harper’s Ferry. Important secondary sources include Benjamin Quarles’ Allies for Freedom; Blacks and John Brown (1974), Paul Finkelman’s His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1995), David S. Reynolds’ John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005), and Jonathan Earle’s John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents (2008).

Places to Visit
You can visit Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia and see John Brown’s fort and the historic town. In addition, the Kennedy Farmhouse is only about 30 minutes from Harpers Ferry. The farmhouse, which became a National Historic Landmark in 1973, is the place where Brown’s raiders launched their attack on Harpers Ferry.

Artifacts
A number of institutions have one of Brown’s pikes in their collection, including the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Jefferson County Historical Society in West Virginia, and the National Museum of American History. In addition, the National Museum of American History has “John Brown’s Sharps Rifle” and another rifle seized during the attack on Harpers Ferry.

Images
The slideshow below includes images related to Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry in October 1859.

1859 (Fighting for Liberty) Osborne Perry Anderson

On December 6, 2010

In Fighting for Liberty, Grave Crisis (1801-61)

Osborne Anderson (House Divided)

Sources
Anderson published his account of Brown’s raid in 1861 as A Voice from Harper’s Ferry: A Narrative of Events at Harper’s Ferry. Other important primary sources include James Redpath’s The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (1860), Franklin B. Sanborn’s The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia (1885), and Richard J. Hinton’s John Brown and His Men; With Some Account of the Roads Traveled to Reach Harper’s Ferry (1894). Important secondary sources include Benjamin Quarles’ Allies for Freedom; Blacks and John Brown (1974), Paul Finkelman’s His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1995), David S. Reynolds’ John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005), and Jonathan Earle’s John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents (2008).

Images
The slideshow below includes images related to Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry in October 1859.

1861 (Fighting for Liberty) Ivey W. Duggan

On December 15, 2010

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).

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Amos Humiston

On January 7, 2011

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

On December 15, 2010

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

On January 11, 2011

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

On December 9, 2010

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

On December 15, 2010

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

On December 9, 2010

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

By donsailer

On February 8, 2010

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.

1863 (Fighting for Liberty) Susie King Taylor