Civil War (1861-1865) – Page 3 – The Civil War Era in Cumberland Valley, PA

Outbreak of War at Dickinson College

On June 22, 2010

The Dickinson College student body was evenly divided between Northern and Southern students who fought on both sides of the conflict. The split is well documented in Dickinson College class of 1861 student Francis Benjamin Sellers’ Autograph Album for the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity. Taken from the Phi Kappa Sigma News Letter, Fall, 1954:

“On April 21, 1861, Epsilon held its last meeting shortly past midnight. All of the members gathered in the room of John. E McCahan and Francis B. Sellers in West College and dispensed with the usual forms of business so that the brothers could say their last farewells before leaving for their respective armies.”

Dickinson College students expected to encounter one another on the battlefield, which is reflected in the comments left in the autograph album. Howard Kennedy Weber class of 1863 remarked: “If I wear the “Phi Kap” badge, don’t shoot me Frank.”

Other Dickinson College students featured in Sellers’ album that fought in the conflict include fellow classmates Elbridge Hoffman Gerry, James Glasgow Archer, William Miller Ogilby and Ernest Dudley Martin.

The John Taylor Cuddy Correspondence

By solnitr

On June 22, 2010

In Civil War (1861-1865)

Sixteen-year-old John Taylor Cuddy left his home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to enlist in Company A of the 36th Pennsylvania Infantry on June 5, 1861. Over the next two years, Cuddy wrote 77 letters home to his family describing his experiences as a soldier in the Union army. Cuddy’s correspondence is available online as part of Dickinson College’s “Their Own Words” digital archive. Over the course of his service in the army, Cuddy wrote his parents full of exuberance to go “lick the south” from his training camp at Fort Wayne, with a tempered tone of experience after fighting in the battle of Gaines’ Mill, and with a critical analysis of “old abe[‘s]” Emancipation Proclamation. At the Battle of the Wilderness, which lasted from May 5 to 7, 1864, Cuddy’s regiment was captured and sent to Andersonville, a Confederate prisoner of war camp in Georgia. With his capture, Cuddy’s letters stopped. Although John Taylor Cuddy never made it home to Pennsylvania (he died in a prison in Florence, South Carolina on September 29, 1864), his correspondence creates a living picture of the life of a teenage Pennsylvania soldier during the Civil War.