Category: biography
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Command of the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry at Antietam
Eric Wittenberg has put up a fine post featuring James Childs, Colonel, 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry, killed at Antietam on 17 September 1862. Elements of the Fourth were among the few Union cavalrymen engaged at Sharpsburg that day – the Federal mounted arm was not a major factor in the battle. Eric’s study – and that…
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On the trail of the Corn Exchange Regiment
146 years to the day after the historical events, a lucky group of us tracked the unlucky 118th Pennsylvania Volunteers to the places and views of the Battle of Shepherdstown Ford (20 September 1862). Under the capable guidance of Dr Tom Clemens and members of the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association (SBPA), we waded the Potomac,…
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Stalking the wild model 1857 12-pound light gun-howitzer
Mannie sneaks up on the prey I drove through the fog to Sharpsburg yesterday, much earlier than is usual for me to be up on a Saturday. Arrived too early for the ANB Visitor’s Center to be open, in fact, but in time to catch Mr. Mumma cutting blossoms to place inside. Ranger Mannie was…
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Horatio Gibson of the Flying Artillery (1)
James F. Gibson, of Mathew Brady’s Washington studio, took a lot of photographs as he traveled with the Federal Army on the Virginia Peninsula in early summer 1862. Among these are a number with particular interest in artillery and artillerymen. Well represented among them are Horatio Gates Gibson and his command, the combined Companies C…
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Whisky affects him as usual
Private Patrick Hughes, 4th New York Volunteers (by E. Stauch, 1863, collection NMHM) I hope Patrick felt as good as his expression suggests … his wound looks awful in this vivid image. He was painted propped up in a bed at Mount Pleasant Hospital in Washington DC in January 1863 shortly before his discharge from…
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12th Virginia Infantry in Maryland
The sad story of the officers and men of the 12th Virginia Infantry Regiment of late 1862 is typical for a number of the tattered units of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia (ANV) who were at Sharpsburg that September. The Crater (c. 1866, J. Elder) The Fourth Battalion as it left Petersburg on the…
