Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was born on this day in 1828. A professor at Bowdoin College when the war began, he led the 20th Maine at Gettysburg, his actions there earning him the Medal of Honor. He survived a severe wound at Petersburg in 1864 and ended the war a brevet major general.

Recently picked up this 1864 model Joslyn cavalry carbine. They didn’t make too many of these, only around 12,000, mine being around the 1500th. It was delivered to the US cavalry in July of 1864. Regiments from NY, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Tennessee were issued these guns. They fired the rimfire Spencer cartridge. They were heavily used in the Third Battle of Winchester, where they garnered mixed reviews from users. Overall a neat piece of civil war history that I’m glad I can share.

September 8, 1863. “The Confederacy’s Thermopylae.”

Lieutenant Richard W. Dowling’s 46 Confederates emerge victorious against 5,000 Federal infantry and 4 gunboats, thwarting the Union’s invasion of Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Sabine_Pass

https://thc.texas.gov/state-historic-sites/sabine-pass-battleground/sabine-pass-battleground-history

Well preserved fortification. The English docent was great.

Humiston was a member of Company C, 154th New York Infantry. During the fighting on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, he was killed and buried among the unidentified dead. There was little on his body that could establish who he was. The photograph he carried, however, offered a clue. It showed three young children, but no name was attached to it.

Dr. John Francis Bourns, a Philadelphia physician who had worked among the wounded at Gettysburg, became determined to identify the unknown soldier. Descriptions of the children's photograph were published in newspapers, and copies of the image were distributed in the hope that someone would recognize them.

The search eventually reached Portville, New York, where Philinda Humiston recognized the children as her own. They were Franklin, Alice, and Frederick Humiston. The unknown soldier was finally identified as her husband, Amos.

The photograph then took on a life of its own. Copies were sold to raise money for Humiston's widow and three children, and later became part of efforts to support children who had lost fathers during the war. The image became known as the “Children of the Battlefield.”

Mine is that charges treason against Jefferson davis was dropped because "secession was legal and therefore not treason".

None of the prosecutors doubted that Davis was guilty of "waging war" against the United States Richard Henry Dana, Jr had been the lead US attorney in the Prize Cases (1863) which established that the Rebellion was a war. However, Dana favored dropping the charge of treason because he feared a jury of 1 2 Virginians, many ex-Confederates, would vote not guilty.

Harper’s ferry was captured with much of its equipment being sent to Richmond. I know the confederates weren’t as hard up for guns as sometimes is said, but it seems like a pretty obvious thing to try and do. Start making 1841 pattern hall rifles and carbines instead of putting resources into making a copy of the sharps. Virginia militia had around 2,000 halls in service at the outbreak of the war, this was a tried and proven rifle. Why was there no attempt to make new ones?

Hey folks, I have full set OWR, Morningside Books. Had this fever dream about research 20 years ago that didn't come to fruition. Any suggestions on where to sell these? Cannot imagine a lot of intact full sets kicking around or?? I'm in Ohio. Thanks!

Here in California at the Reagan Library they are holding an exhibit for the America 250 thorough next weekend. They have artifacts going back to the Revolution through the Moon landing. The Civil War collection was quite amazing

The Confederacy and the Axis powers both fought for causes of racial hierarchy that inflicted atrocity at a scale rarely matched in history (chattel slavery, Holocaust, etc).

But postwar, they were treated very differently.
Germany went through formal reckonings (war crimes tribunals, denazification, education reforms); this shaped how military service from that era is remembered.

The U.S. never did anything like that with the Confederacy. No formal reckoning, just the Lost Cause myth within a few decades. Today you don't hear Germans say they're proud of SS heritage, but it's common to hear people say they're proud of Confederate heritage.

What accounts for that?

This was in our yard, and my mom thinks it's a cannon ball. It's small, isn't very heavy, and has a flattened side that looks like it could have hit something if it *is* a cannonball. No Civil War battles occured in my town to my knowledge.

If is a cannonball, can anyone tell me if it's explosive? It doesn't have a seamline or any visibile fuse mechanism/hole as far as I can tell.

I’m looking for books that describe this battle in full detail. Can anyone recommend the books?

Bryce

The poor biographer has to just wonder because Thomas’s neighbors and relatives refused to talk about him. And he burned all his papers. So the thing that we most want to know about, his reasons for his actions, are a closed and locked down book to us. His home was in the center of the Nat Turner rebellion.
He wasn’t an abolitionist: his family owned a lot of slaves and he personally owned a few. How that runs with his later activities is confusing. He was the most forward acting of all the generals.
He wasn’t petty that I can see. He had principles as is seen when Johnson had a dispute with Grant and offered him a higher command, and he refused. Grant should have given him the same courtesy.
One of the things that always surprises me, but shouldn’t, is how inbred the officer corps was. Thomas bunked with Sherman when they were in West Point.
Thomas married a New Yorker. He went with his wife, as did Pemberton.
This is an interesting book. It is well worth reading a second time

This is what I’ve heard about the Civil War from growing up in North Carolina:

- North Carolina gave the most men and supplies to the Confederacy than any other state.

- A quarter of all Confederate casualties at Gettysburg were North Carolinians.

- North Carolinians were the furthest at Pickett’s Charge.

Any truth in this?

If the pontoon boats had arrived and the bridges been build so the army could cross the Rappahannock river to beat Lee at Fredericksburg, would he have been able to eventually take Richmond?

Grant and Dent didn’t like each other. Grant first moved to Hardscrable and then Galena. What was the reason that Grant couldn’t stand any more of Dent? It must have been something awful because Grant’s life in Galena wasn’t a bed of roses either. He was living on sufferance as a helper for his younger brother.

I’m reading Battle Cry of Freedom and McPherson includes several quotes from Southerners who would lament the conditions of a factory worker in the North while extolling how much better it was to be a slave in the South.

This was obvious propaganda by plantation owners and the Southern elite but I am curious if slaves were compensated in any way for their labor?

Did they get “free” lodging and food? Or did they make a small wage and have to pay “rent” to the plantation owners and grow their own food?

This has always been a little baffling because I’ve read that Virginia fell into decline during the 1800s, and that the Confederate aristocracy was primarily centered in the Deep South. In other words, there was a power shift from the Upper South to the Deep South by the time of the Civil War. At the same time, so many Confederate military officers were Virginians (Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Johnston, Hill, Early, Pickett, etc.).

Do biased historians place too much attention on the Virginians? Or was there something about Virginia that provided strong military leaders for the Confederacy?