Civil War Times October 2019

RELIEF MISSION Union naval officer Gustavus Fox raced against time to organize a relief mission for besieged Fort Sumter. bit.ly/SumterRelief MEADE IN ALLEGORY The year’s long struggle to erect a Washington, D.C., memorial to the victor of Gettysburg. bit.ly/MeadeMonument RIVALRY RENEWED A showdown between Brig. Gens. Joe Wheeler and Judson Kilpatrick added drama to the March to the Sea. bit.ly/GeorgiaShowdown HISTORYNETNow Sign up for our FREE monthly e-newsletter at: historynet.com/newsletters LET’S CONNECT Like Civil War Times Magazine on Facebook FOLLOW US @CivilWarTimes GO DIGITAL Civil War Times is available on Zinio, Kindle, and Nook A Complete Civil War Times index from 1958 to present is available at aferguson.net…

I read with great interest the August 2019 piece about Robert E. Lee Jr. Ithoughtfellow readers might find this related item of interest. There was a Robert E. Lee III who was the son of the great general’s second son, William “Rooney” Lee, who became a major general in the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee III’s life would be relatively uneventful when compared to his father and grandfather. He became a lawyer practicing in Washington, D.C. Things perhaps became more interesting and dramatic after he died in 1922 at age 53. Lee was buried in Lexington, Va., at the Lee Chapel on the campus of what is today Washington and Lee University. His widow, Charleston grande dame Mary Wilkerson Middleton Pinckney Lee, would battle the Lee family for more…

In January 2018, Alabama reporter Ben Raines claimed he had discovered the wreck of Clotilda, the illegal slaving U.S. vessel that in 1860 delivered the last cargo of captive Africans to the United States. Raines turned out to be wrong, but he brought such international attention to the mystery of its location that it has finally been found. The Alabama Historical Commission and collaborators sponsored an investigation of the Mobile river where the Clotilda was long known to have been scuttled to destroy evidence of the illegal transport of 109 captives from Benin, West Africa. A study of the Clotilda’s construction revealed it to be an unusually large and fast schooner constructed by William Foster, a Nova Scotian shipbuilder who had moved to Mobile as a young man. Matching details…

When the Union blockade prevented the importation of supplies, including quinine for treating malaria, the Confederate Army turned to a tradition of plant remedies. Confederate Surgeon General Samuel Moore asked the 36-year-old botanist Francis Porcher, a professor of medicine in Columbia, S.C., to create a manual of medicinal and other useful plants available locally. The result was the 1863 publication, Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, which carefully outlined 37 plants that could serve as antiseptics. Fast forward more than 150 years and a team of medical researchers has tested three of Porcher’s suggested substitutes against a current threat: multi-drug-resistant bacterial strains linked to wound infections. In a Nature paper, they reported positive results. The team tested extracts from parts of three trees—oak, tulip tree, and a tree with…

PRIVATE JOHN SCHOOLBRED of the 2nd South Carolina Cavalry is ready to ride with two Navy revolvers in his belt and a Model 1842 musket. Schoolbred had an eventful service. Troopers of the 8th Illinois Cavalry captured him in March 1863 at Catlett’s Station, Va. He was later paroled and spent the last days of the war screening General William T. Sherman’s advance through South Carolina. It’s interesting to wonder if he might have even crossed paths with Union scout George Quimby (P. 46). Schoolbred was only 31 when he died in 1872.…

ON JULY 20, 2019, visitors to a commemoration of the Battle of Cool Spring at the Bluemont, Va., site got a new kind of blast from the past, donning Virtual Reality goggles to experience re-creations of battle scenes selected from accounts of the 13,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who fought there on July 17-18, 1864. Stemming from a collaboration between the McCormick Civil War Institute and the Center for Immersive Learning at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., the Virtual Reality experience was the culmination of a day-long public commemoration that combined 21st-century technology with lectures and a tour of the battlefield. The footage for the 360 Virtual Reality episodes was filmed over two days using some two dozen living history volunteers and two students in period-appropriate gear.…