Civil War Times June 2022

WWII AT GETTYSBURG Scrap drives, war rallies, and German POWs took over America’s preeminent battlefield. Historynet.com/WWIIGettysburg ‘THE COLONEL’S ORDERLY’ A soldier’s diary preserves the only known text of an Emory Upton speech. Historynet.com/UptonsOrderly HERO’S WELCOME At Gettysburg’s 1888 Grand Reunion, Confederate outcast James Longstreet turned man of the hour. Historynet.com/HerosWelcome HISTORYNET Now! 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 historymagazinearticles.com…

WEAVER’S GRIM WORK Insightful and informative April issue article on Dr. Rufus Weaver, a figure of importance in the tangled history of Civil War Reunion and “Reunification” who has been largely forgotten. I was especially interested in his connection to Ada Egerton of Baltimore; one of the items in my collection is an envelope addressed to Dr. Weaver at a Baltimore address that’s always been somewhat of a mystery to me. Perhaps it was Ms. Egerton’s boarding house? On the back of the envelope are penciled notations, no doubt in Weaver’s hand, of some gravesites of Confederate prisoners who died at Fort Delaware, and were buried at Finn’s Point, N.J., during the war. He apparently did not confine his efforts to identify and return Confederate remains solely to the Gettysburg battlefield. Charles…

A Virginia state park focused on the battlefields of Brandy Station and Cedar Mountain, as well as the site of a ridgetop Union encampment near Stevensburg is on the verge of creation. First outlined in 2015, the proposal for Culpeper Battlefield State Park has gained ground through local support and advocacy. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin submitted an amendment to the state budget regarding the proposed park on January 21, and both chambers of the Virginia legislatures approved budgets for establishing the park. Although the exact details are still in the works, 1,700 acres already preserved by the American Battlefield Trust will be donated to the park. Another 4,000 acres are now held in conservation easements on private land, and more land may be acquired. Advocates for the park note that it…

AFTER DEVOTING YEARS to the Ulysses S. Grant Association, John Marszalek and Chief Justice Frank Williams retired from the organization in March. Marszalek, executive director of the association since 2006, oversaw the transfer of Grant’s papers to Mississippi State University (MSU) in Starkville in 2009. Marszalek will serve as a contributing editor for the association. Williams was president of the association for more than 30 years. Anne Marshall, associate professor of history at MSU, is the new executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and Presidential Library. She is the author of the 2010 Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State and is at work on a biography of Kentucky farmer, politician, and antislavery activist Cassius Marcellus Clay.…

STRUCK BY HOW MANY miles were between his lover and himself, this Civil War soldier not only took the effort to send this 1/6th plate tintype of himself back home, he also tucked inside the case several slips of paper with verses of poetry. “Forget me not,” one poem implores. “When oceans us do sever, and when once death the eye doth close…forget me not.” The poet private also scribbled inside the case desperate pleas for the recipient, possibly named Mary, to remember him, including a popular sentiment of the time: “When this you see remember me.” Some historians have mused that the tender phrase coupled with a soldier’s portrait sent back home was one way for these men, faced with the possibility of death in the war, to establish…

A MONUMENT TO Maine soldiers was dedicated on the Third Winchester battlefield on September 25, 2021. The monument project was spearheaded by Nicholas Picerno, Chairman Emeritus of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, and Pete and Cyndi Dalton, Maine Civil War historians and authors who recently moved to the Shenandoah Valley. The rear of the monument contains a quote from Major John Mead Gould of the 29th Maine Infantry, which reads: “We are glad that we could suffer for our country’s good; we glory in our strength and in all that is creditable to a soldier, but war we hate; it shall never exist again if we can prevent it.” In 1905, veterans of the 7th Georgia Infantry placed seven marble markers at Manassas Battlefield Park to mark their positions during the battles…