This weekend, Northfield, Minnesota, has been host to the 2010 Vintage Band Festival. The four-day festival draws brass bands from as far away as Helsinki, Finland. One of the highlights of the weekend was a reenactment of a Civil War “battle of the bands,” with two bands in historical costume facing off across the Cannon […]
2
Aug
10
“The war was a good time for the study of the conflict between Athens and Sparta,” Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (1831-1924) wrote in 1897. “It was a great time for reading and re-reading classical literature in general, for the South was blockaded against new books as effectively, almost, as Megara was blockaded against garlic and salt… […]
24
Jul
10
The Courtship of James Garfield
Posted by hardyr Published in Antebellum (1840-1861), Letters & DiariesIn 1847, Zeb and Arabella Rudolph decided that their daughter Lucretia needed more of an academic challenge than the local Garrettsville, Ohio, schools could offer. The fifteen-year old was sent twenty miles away to board at the Geauga Seminary, where she would have the benefit of a classical curriculum. The Geauga Seminary was coeducational, and […]
20
Jul
10
The most popular American play of the antebellum period was the historical melodrama The Gladiator (1831), by the Philadelphia physician-turned-playwright Robert Montgomery Bird (1806-1854). Bird wrote the play, but actor Edwin Forrest owned it—literally. Bird sold Forrest (1806-1872) the rights to the play for $100, and Forrest performed the title role of Spartacus to sold-out […]
15
Jul
10
In 1873, a decade after his heroic defense of Little Round Top, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain faced another rebellion. Upon taking office as president of Bowdoin College in 1871, Chamberlain had instituted mandatory military drill for all Bowdoin students. Students complained about the military discipline and the expense of a military uniform (six dollars added to […]
14
Jul
10
When he was fifteen years old—before his right arm was shattered at Fair Oaks, before he saw action at Antietam and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and Chattanooga, before he marched to the sea with Sherman—General Oliver Otis Howard faced the the trial of his life: the entrance examination for Bowdoin College. “I have passed though many ordeals […]
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