Civil War Times June 2019

Sept. 20-22 Antietam: McClellan’s Military Masterpiece $550 Join historians D. Scott Hartwig and Dennis Frye for this comprehensive tour of the 1862 Maryland Campaign. We’ll spend a day covering the events of the Battle of South Mountain and devote a morning to Jackson’s operation at Harper’s Ferry. Coverage will also include famous sites such as the Miller Cornfield, the West Woods, Bloody Lane along with the Burnside Bridge. In addition, this tour will include stops at sites outside of the park not usually visited even by veteran campaigners. Evening lecture by retired Antietam National Battlefield chief historian Ted Alexander. Sept. 27-29 Chancellorsville: Lee’s Greatest Victory $550 Follow historians Robert K. Krick and Erik Nelson as we cover the historic sites associated with R. E. Lee’s dramatic victory over “Fighting Joe” Hooker at Chancellorsville.…

I READ WITH GREAT INTEREST Professor Gallagher’s incisive argument in the April issue for separating the war to preserve the Union from the Indian Wars on the frontier. The Confederacy faced a similar situation. Texas was the only Southern state with an active Indian frontier. When the U.S. Army evacuated military posts in 1861, the defense of Texas’ Western frontier theoretically fell to the Confederacy, but it never supplied sufficient manpower to protect the scattered ranches and settlers pushing west. The men who replaced the Federal forces were known by various names, including Texas Rangers. They provided a screen from bands of roaming Indians, and tried to stabilize the constantly shifting settlement line. As the war progressed and the South’s manpower needs became desperate, many these men could have bolstered Confederate…

Visit historic Fort Morgan and travel back in time when the thundering booms of cannons protected the turquoise waterways. And imagine the shout of Admiral David Farragut, “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!” as he led his troops into battle across the sugar-white sand. The fort was built between 1819 and 1823 and is a site not to be missed. Another historical point of interest is the Mobile Bay Civil War Trail that highlights famous Civil War battles. Drive the impressive, historic trail that stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to north Mobile County. Tour the many unique, historical and sites throughout Alabama’s Gulf Coast including Native American museums and mounds, lighthouses, plantations and antebellum mansions, military history, maritime and railroad museums, agricultural and cultural museums, and much more. Visit GulfShores.com…

The 371-foot-long, 49-foot-high mural painted to commemorate General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Atlanta victory on July 22, 1864, is the centerpiece of a new permanent exhibit at the Atlanta History Center. The vast mural, created in 1886 by a team of some 200 German and Austrian artists led by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine in Milwaukee, Wis., went on display in Minneapolis and Indianapolis, but a few years later the company was bankrupt. An exhibition exploring the history of the mural and its several modifications opened on February 22, 2019, in a new building constructed to house the work, which has been restored to its original appearance. The resurrection of the cyclorama began in 2011 as the brainchild of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Including initial funding of $10 million to ensure maintenance for…

JUST 60 MILES from Washington, D.C., the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust is waging a battle to preserve some of the most pristine land remaining from the 1864 fighting near Spotsylvania Court House—73.3 acres on Myer’s Hill, where fierce battle raged on May 14, 1864. “The story of the second week of fighting at Spotsylvania Court House often gets overlooked in favor of the dramatic story at the Mule Shoe Salient, but there is a tremendous amount we can learn from that second week,” explains historian Chris Mackowski. The fighting pitted Union Brig. Gen. Emory Upton (P. 56) against Robert E. Lee’s “Bad Old Man”—Maj. Gen. Jubal Early—and troopers from the 9th Virginia Cavalry nearly captured Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade. “Myer’s Hill is one of the…

Omar Ibn-Said, captured from the Fullah people of Senegambia in 1807 and sold in Charleston, S.C., penned a memoir in Arabic that has now been preserved and digitized at the Library of Congress. Ibn-Said stood out for his literacy, and in 1831, at age 66, he wrote the story of his life. In it, Ibn-Said apologizes that he cannot write well of his life, as he has forgotten much of both his native language and Arabic. The details include his affiliation with the Fullah people; lengthy Muslim schooling in West Africa; his 1807 capture; his six-week Transatlantic voyage; his sale in Charleston; and his escape to Fayetteville, N.C. The book was purchased at auction in London in 2017. Specialists at the Library of Congress have restored it, and due to…