tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90242354631828593212024-03-13T05:32:15.550-07:00New England's Civil WarSharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-71653978897458024942017-05-11T13:27:00.004-07:002017-05-11T13:27:57.745-07:00John Sedgwick and Cornwall Hollow<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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This week marked the 153<sup>rd</sup>
anniversary of the death of Major General John Sedgwick, the highest-ranking
Union general to be killed during the Civil War. Sedgwick is still remembered
in Cornwall, Connecticut, a tiny town in the Northwest Hills of the state.
Sedgwick loved Cornwall, which consists of five little Cornwalls—including
Cornwall Hollow, the place where Sedgwick was born and was buried.</div>
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Sedgwick, who served in the pre-war
army in Mexico, Florida, and in the Indian Wars, often said that Cornwall was
the most beautiful place he had ever seen and that he looked forward to retiring
there. He was not to enjoy retirement.</div>
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Sedgwick died May 9, 1864, on the
second day of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. He was a determined and
respected corps commander and died urging his staff and the soldiers of his VI
Corps to persevere in the face of sniper fire. Among his last words was what
turned out to be an ironic phrase: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this
distance."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seconds later he was
shot through the head and died instantly.</div>
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U.S. Grant considered the loss of
Sedgwick to be a terrible blow, as did President Lincoln. Sedgwick has been well
remembered with monuments. There are statues at Spotsylvania, Gettysburg, and
West Point. There are also two in Cornwall Hollow—both huge. One features a cannon
from 1839 and an array of cannon balls (now made of cement, since the originals
were melted down during World War II. </div>
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The other his his grave marker, a tall obelisk in the cemetery across the street from the monument. </div>
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The town of Cornwall itself has less than 1500 people, and Cornwall Hollow accounts for only a fraction of that. The two monuments dominate the center of the town and ensure that John Sedgwick won't be forgotten in his beloved hometown.</div>
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-9491256765505035702017-04-05T14:53:00.002-07:002017-04-05T14:53:52.338-07:00Was Little Sorrel a Racehorse?<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
April and May are the months when
horse racing takes center stage (or at least moves out of the shadows) in the
sports world and it’s an appropriate time to talk about one of the most
intriguing aspects of the story of Stonewall Jackson’s favorite warhorse Little
Sorrel. The odd-looking, undersized horse may actually have been a racehorse.</div>
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It’s unproven and, at this point in
history, probably can’t ever be proven, but there is a modest amount of
circumstantial evidence that places him on a racetrack before he went to war. </div>
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Here’s what we know for sure about
Little Sorrel. He was purchased by a livestock broker in southern Ohio and
placed aboard a Baltimore and Ohio freight train in early May 1861. He, about a
dozen other horses, plus a carload of beef cattle, were destined for the
gathering Union troops in the Baltimore area. On May 10 the train was stopped
at Harpers Ferry. Thomas Jackson, then in command of Virginia troops at that
critical place, needed a horse and chose two off the train.</div>
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Here’s what we know about the horse
himself. He was a small sorrel (or chestnut) gelding, about eleven years old, a
pacer, with a pacer’s conformation. He was odd-looking only to those who had
never seen a pacer.</div>
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Here’s what we <i>think</i> we know
about Little Sorrel. He was foaled (probably) in 1850 in (probably) Somers,
Connecticut, a small town in the north-central part of the state, an area of
extraordinary importance in the history of pacing horses in America. The last
full-blooded Narragansett Pacer stallions stood at stud in the area. In the
neighboring town of Stafford one of the founders of the Standardbred breed, the
great Pilot, stood at stud before heading west. He’s the ancestor of most
pacing racehorses today as are the Narragansett Pacers (which he may actually have
been himself).</div>
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At some point prior to the Civil War, the horse who became Little
Sorrel was shipped to southern Ohio to (probably) the small town of Hillsboro.
That town was the home of the brother of the man who (probably) bred him in
Somers. That region of Ohio was then the center of pacing racing, at the time
the less popular form of harness racing. In the 1950’s a pacing racehorse would
have to ship to the Midwest to have a decent racing career. Today, the opposite
is true. About 80 percent of harness racing features pacers, but in the 1850’s
about 80 percent were trotters. </div>
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We will never know if he raced
there because we don’t know his name when he was put aboard the livestock
train. But we do know this: William
Thomas Pogue, an artillery officer under Stonewall Jackson, was a close and
admiring observer of Little Sorrel. In his memoir <i>Gunner with Stonewall </i>Pogue
remarked that Little Sorrel was a remarkably fast pacer—that he could “make a
mile in about 2-40,” meaning two minutes and forty seconds. That would have
been easily good enough for him to have had a successful racing career in Ohio
in the 1850’s. It obviously could not have been successful enough to prevent
his sale to a horse broker in 1861. Perhaps age had caught up with him.</div>
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There is more circumstantial evidence about Little Sorrel’s
pre-war history and the possibility of him having raced in my book <i>Stonewall
Jackson’s Little Sorrel.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-29097394348572209152016-11-12T18:20:00.002-08:002016-11-12T18:20:43.918-08:00Abner Doubleday and Stonewall Jackson<div class="MsoNormal">
General Abner Doubleday had nothing to do with the invention
of baseball, even though a hand-picked commission gave him credit for it in
1907. He did, however, have something
to do with Stonewall Jackson and his horse Little Sorrel.</div>
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Doubleday was a professional soldier, a West Pointer who saw
action in the Mexican War and the Seminole War in Florida. His combat
experience in the Civil War began just as the conflict did when, as a major and
second-in-command of Federal troops at Fort Sumter, he ordered the first shot
fired in defense of the doomed fort.</div>
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He gave respectable if not spectacular service during the
war, rising to Brigadier General and then to Major General. One of his most
important actions took place on August 28, 1862. That was either the first day
of a three-day Battle ofSecond Bull Run or, depending on how you look at it, a separate
battle that took place the day before a two-day Second Bull Run. Late in the
afternoon of the 28<sup>th</sup> Doubleday led his brigade east along the
Warrenton Turnpike in Northern Virginia, expecting—as the rest of the Union army
did—that they would soon face Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Doubleday stopped briefly on the march near a farm operated by John
Brawner and noticed a scruffy man on a scruffy horse on a hillside overlooking
the turnpike. </div>
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“I at once came to
the conclusion that it was a rebel officer,’ Doubleday wrote later. Another Union officer disagreed, thinking that the man looked like a poor farmer. The
lone rider turned and was allowed to ride away unmolested, even though he was within easy
musket range of the Union soldiers.</div>
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Doubleday had been
right. It had been a Union officer, and quite an officer at that. Later
writings from both sides identified the scruffy horse and rider as Stonewall
Jackson and Little Sorrel. Jackson, as he often did, wanted so see the Union
troops for himself. If the Union army had known, the course of the war—but
probably not its outcome—might have changed. As it was, Jackson attacked
shortly after, resulting in the bloody and inconclusive Battle of Brawner’s
Farm. Second Bull Run, which took place the following two days, was definitely
conclusive, resulting in a resounding Confederate victory.</div>
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The marker at Doubleday’s birthplace in Ballston Spa, NY,
refers to the baseball myth and his outstanding service at Gettysburg. The
story of what he saw on the hillside at John Brawner’s farm is not mentioned.</div>
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-1635908681311211712016-10-10T11:50:00.003-07:002016-10-10T11:57:05.809-07:00Why I wrote a book about Stonewall Jackson's horse<div class="MsoNormal">
Seven years ago, shortly before the Civil War sesquicentennial, I wrote a book that was eventually published as <i>Connecticut’s Civil War.</i> It was a guidebook to sites in the state related to Civil War people and events. Given the size pf the state. I initially expected it to be a booklet but quit assembling entries after about 250 pages. Even so, I had to leave some things out.</div>
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Among the people who did make the cut: Nathaniel Lyon (the first Union general killed in the war), Joseph Mansfield (the oldest Union general killed in the war), John Sedgwick (among the highest ranking generals on either side killed in the war), Alfred Howe Terry, who at the time of his retirement years after the war held the highest rank of any non-West Pointer in US Army history. Also generals Horatio Wright, Joseph Hawley, and others. The great Confederate cavalry general Joseph Wheeler was the son of two Connecticut natives and himself grew up in the state.</div>
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Other Connecticut figures of importance in the Civil War won places in the book: Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, gunmakers Eli Whitney, Samuel Colt, Tyler Henry, Christopher Spencer, Christian Sharps, even Smith and Wesson. All were either Connecticut natives or did some of all of their work in the state.</div>
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Then there were gunpowder manufacturer Augustus Hazard, projectile maker Andrew Hotchkiss, ironclad builder Cornelius Bushnell, and many more. Space ran out before I got to one of the most intriguing figures with a Connecticut history: Stonewall Jackson’s favorite warhorse, Little Sorrel. </div>
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He certainly qualified for a place in the book. But without a long look at his circumstances I decided that there was insufficient proof that he was, as legend has it, foaled in Connecticut, although the story is surely believed in tiny Somers, where his name is on a sign in front of Town Hall. I thought I would look further for a second edition of <i>Connecticut’s Civil War.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1S7J08fJAig/V_vj0bUFOwI/AAAAAAAAAQk/lRu8umKYZ0UdfPEJd6epvbWo_T0XvfutwCPcB/s1600/sorrel%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1S7J08fJAig/V_vj0bUFOwI/AAAAAAAAAQk/lRu8umKYZ0UdfPEJd6epvbWo_T0XvfutwCPcB/s1600/sorrel%2Bcover.jpg" /></a>I did look further. The result was that there’s no second edition of that book but there is instead a new book, officially published today: <i>Stonewall Jackson’s Little Sorrel: An Unlikely Hero of the Civil War.</i> In looking into the little horse’s background, I found a captivating figure, an animal whose persona was so perfectly in tune with that of his rider that each helped create the legend the other enjoyed. Little Sorrel was a well-known figure during the war and became even more famous afterwards. He figures in every Jackson biography, but much of what’s been printed is simply untrue, even in the books of the best of the biographers. </div>
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The book is now available at almost all online sources and in many bookstores. It’s a full-length hardcover book but even so, there is some material that I was unable to include. Must be a habit. Over the next few months, I’ll post some of that extra information.</div>
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<!--[endif]-->Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-35117358387173362852016-09-08T11:02:00.000-07:002016-09-08T11:02:01.499-07:00In Search of Mathew Brady<div class="MsoNormal">
As an addendum to a month in upstate New York my husband and
I went in search of the birthplace of Mathew Brady, the preeminent photographer
of the Civil War. We found it, since it’s well-marked and in a location that
doesn’t have to compete with other monuments. Or did we?</div>
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The marker is on the south side of NY 28 in Johnsburg,
Warren County, a few miles beyond Warrensburg, maybe fifteen miles from Lake
George Village. Turn left at the wax
museum and you’ll find it. (I made that part up. You actually have to head
north out of Lake George and turn northwest).</div>
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Brady himself was apparently confused (or untruthful) about
where he was actually born. He wasn’t entirely sure of the date either. Through
most of his life he claimed to have been born in Warren County, in either 1822
or 1823. A few years ago local historians located the foundation of Brady’s
supposed birthplace, on private property in the woods a few hundred yards in
back of the marker site.</div>
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The story took a strange turn during the summer of 2015 when
the metal marker, post and all, disappeared. It required a backhoe or other
heavy equipment to dislodge, so the thief must have been looking for something
more than the value of the scrap metal. Perhaps it was somebody to whom
photography was really, really important. Or perhaps it was an Irish
nationalist.</div>
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During the campaign to raise money to replace the sign and
the discussions that surrounded it, a pesky little almost-fact emerged. There
was no written evidence to support the idea that Mathew Brady was born in
Johnsburg, just Brady’s repeated word for it, but there was some evidence that
the famous photographer was actually born in Ireland. Brady himself included
his Irish origin in his draft registration in 1863. The local historians
compromised by noting that the foundation was of Brady’s childhood home.
There’s no longer a statement on the birthplace.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcu-2_dxLRR_UN_zHbiGMpDH3QSEqhLh09glNLLKadpB_-R1kWJtDM8CR10LFcTM64Xbbf20HmJtnb56aX2xZOOkE0NiG5E_xPdeYa2gE5uS_1NYJKnvDGIbR1kGYst0bseirL1okgk0s/s1600/mathew+brady.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcu-2_dxLRR_UN_zHbiGMpDH3QSEqhLh09glNLLKadpB_-R1kWJtDM8CR10LFcTM64Xbbf20HmJtnb56aX2xZOOkE0NiG5E_xPdeYa2gE5uS_1NYJKnvDGIbR1kGYst0bseirL1okgk0s/s200/mathew+brady.jpg" width="148" /></a>There is a growing consensus that Brady fibbed for most of
his adult life and that he really was Irish-born. It’s a surprising realization
about the man who described his art as the “great and truthful medium of
history.”</div>
Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-80757651656729628472016-03-03T16:16:00.000-08:002016-03-03T16:17:00.801-08:00William T. Sherman and Connecticut's Scorched Earth<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "centschbook bt";">William T.
Sherman was well into his Carolinas campaign 151 years ago this week as his
60,000 men neared the end of a destructive march through South Carolina.
Sherman’s ultimate goal was to destroy the one significant Confederate army
still in the field when he got to northern North Carolina. When Sherman met and
defeated Joseph Johnston in April the war was essentially over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "centschbook bt";">Sherman’s guiding
principle in the initial march through Georgia during late 1864, and to a
lesser extent in the Carolinas, was to wage war on everything except the very
lives of civilians. It was scorched earth and total war and it earned Sherman a
reputation that survives today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "centschbook bt";">Sherman’s
ancestors actually had experience with scorched earth long before the Union
general began his Civil War career. His grandfather Taylor Sherman and father
Charles Sherman had left their homes in Norwalk. Connecticut, to move to Ohio,
primarily to work on land claims in the Firelands. This 500,000 acre area in
northern Ohio was also known as the Sufferers’ Lands and was the surviving part
of millions of acres of land claimed by Connecticut, thanks to a 17<sup>th</sup>
century royal patent. In exchange for the federal assumption of debt run up
during the Revolutionary War the new state gave up most of the claims,
retaining only the Western Reserve, a part of Ohio soon sold to a land company.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "centschbook bt";">Connecticut did
retain the half million acres of the so-called Firelands to compensate state
residents for the losses of their homes, barns, shops, and other property burned
by the British in several raids during the Revolution. Connecticut was never
controlled by the British but it certainly was damaged. Four separate raids,
each including several towns, occurred between April 1777 and September 1781.
Nearly a thousand structures, mostly houses, were burned in Norwalk, Danbury,
Ridgefield, Greenwich, Fairfield, New Haven, East Haven, New London, and
Groton. Benedict Arnold, having turned coat, led the attack on the last two
towns, near neighbors of his birthplace in Norwich.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZgKRpRhxckBEE8swco-i78Exr7MSrN0H9xDxoaMrRgqnflS6VaM8BIQ6ilLPWeeKPsH9fpY1NBaWrBLVugpgGyKIIW_ud8TmA5hWU5D0oqf5S79Td1syWt34snJ9GHgf4Ty6DIk2lnPs/s1600/arnold+birthplace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZgKRpRhxckBEE8swco-i78Exr7MSrN0H9xDxoaMrRgqnflS6VaM8BIQ6ilLPWeeKPsH9fpY1NBaWrBLVugpgGyKIIW_ud8TmA5hWU5D0oqf5S79Td1syWt34snJ9GHgf4Ty6DIk2lnPs/s200/arnold+birthplace.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arnold's birthplace in Norwich was 15 miles <br />
from the Groton Massacre</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "centschbook bt";">The purpose of
the earlier raids was similar to that of William T. Sherman—to destroy supplies
and provisions and to break the will of the civilians supporting the army. Few
civilians died. In New London, Arnold proved a little more bloodthirsty.
Although he wasn’t present, his subordinate in Groton ordered the massacre of
50 Connecticut militia members who had already surrendered. The Ohio Firelands
were intended as recompense for the losses from the four British raids. Taylor
Sherman went west to help survey the Firelands while Charles arrived in 1810 to
prove title and do other legal work to help the eligible sufferers. As it turned out, Charles found more
lucrative work further south in Ohio, and his third son William Tecumseh was
born there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "centschbook bt";">William was only
ten when his father died and by then his grandfather was also gone, so he
probably heard few first-hand stories of the British destruction in
Connecticut. He mentions the Firelands only briefly in his memoir but was aware
that scorched earth was responsible for his family being in Ohio.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-62416137245825748582016-01-26T09:25:00.000-08:002016-01-26T09:25:27.677-08:00New Englander Joseph Hooker<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> <br />
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Today marks another important Civil War anniversary for a son of New England. On January 26. 1863, Joseph Hooker of Hadley, Massachusetts, became commander of the Army of the Potomac. He succeeded Ambrose Burnside, born in Indiana but better known as the Rhode Island manufacturer of the Burnside Carbine. Burnside failed as an arms manufacturer and he also failed with the Army of the Potomac. The disaster at Fredericksburg in December 1862 led to Burnside’s replacement by Hooker.</div>
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Joseph Hooker descended from two famous names of early New England and, by extension, of Colonial America. He was probably distantly related (most likely through common ancestors in England) to Rev. Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford, Connecticut, and one of the earliest settlers of that state. The general was more closely related through his mother Mary Seymour to Thomas Seymour, one of Connecticut’s governors during the 1850s. That relationship was not particularly close, and that was probably a good thing for Joseph Hooker’s reputation, particularly in the latter part of the war. Thomas Seymour thought that there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with slavery (not an unique attitude in pre-war New England) and once the war started he was just one tiny step short of being a Connecticut Copperhead. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtcEUY0JENPNU1aLB0VJ5ZWEAdzGa5g3H_iL18wx16_jdz0062umKaXWFchxbVvrSJUQcoita67ByZKYtlZSP4EcE8rMYWme1eyce6n_hBVevA-Z_q0BvMHZM3hMT3VUHpKVrilr7_T38/s1600/joe+hooker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtcEUY0JENPNU1aLB0VJ5ZWEAdzGa5g3H_iL18wx16_jdz0062umKaXWFchxbVvrSJUQcoita67ByZKYtlZSP4EcE8rMYWme1eyce6n_hBVevA-Z_q0BvMHZM3hMT3VUHpKVrilr7_T38/s320/joe+hooker.jpg" width="203" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gen. Joseph Hooker</td></tr>
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Thomas Seymour thought enough of himself to run for governor in 1863 against Lincoln loyalist William Buckingham and, after failing there, to try to take the Democratic nomination for President away from George McClellan in 1864, failing there as well.</div>
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Joseph Hooker didn’t last long at the head of the Army of the Potomac. He was outmaneuvered by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville three months after he took command and Chancellorsville proved to be an expensive defeat for his army. Hooker was replaced in the east but regained much of his reputation at Lookout Mountain and Chattanooga. He spent very little time in New England after the war, dividing his postwar years between Cincinnati and New York.</div>
Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-27187811002367663902016-01-25T16:34:00.002-08:002016-01-26T09:26:42.544-08:00Connecticut's ConfederateToday marks the 110th anniversary of the death of Connecticut's own Confederate general, Joseph Wheeler. The cavalry commander had a somewhat mixed reputation in the Confederacy, having performed admirably at Chicamauga and during the defense of Atlanta but earning the wrath of civilians in Georgia and the Carolinas for the poor behavior of his troopers while unsuccessfully resisting William T. Sherman's March to the Sea in 1865.<br />
<br />
Wheeler was born in Georgia and, when war came, decided he was a southerner, but he came from two hundred years of New England farmers, seamen, and businessmen and spent most of his formative years in Derby, Connecticut. Through his mother he was related to Revolutionary War hero General William Hull, War of 1812 hero Commodore Isaac Hull, and, more distantly, to Union Civil War hero Admiral Andrew Hull Foote.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin9X0WyQZoAzUM0Toe6_KCBvcP5TB-mkWI5_w7fVlyKDH70FH1cvjC9DjQoJoJYZF9CD6X9lojY4Dj3vZSGJLzriG6InmSS6Xzb2z_QPq-tKnHJWVNqnUm4ovCRHyzAoX-Hkqn7IvEXvw/s1600/joseph+wheeler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin9X0WyQZoAzUM0Toe6_KCBvcP5TB-mkWI5_w7fVlyKDH70FH1cvjC9DjQoJoJYZF9CD6X9lojY4Dj3vZSGJLzriG6InmSS6Xzb2z_QPq-tKnHJWVNqnUm4ovCRHyzAoX-Hkqn7IvEXvw/s320/joseph+wheeler.jpg" width="204" /></a>Wheeler's family moved back to Connecticut within a few years of his birth in 1836 He became an orphan at the age of 12, moving in with relatives in Derby. His wealthy aunts enrolled him at Cheshire Academy in nearby Cheshire, Connecticut, the alma mater of many of his Hull relatives as well as of Gideon Welles, who became Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy. Wheeler was living with Connecticut relatives in New York City when he applied to West Point.<br />
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After the war Joe Wheeler he served a number of terms as a member of congress from Alabama and became renowned for his conciliatory politics. In 1898 he was made a major general of volunteers in the U.S. Army in the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine Insurrection. He was one of a very small number of men to serve as officers in both the Confederate and United States armies in that order. He died in 1906 in New York.<br />
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Derby is well enough convinced that Joseph Wheeler belongs to the Housatonic Valley town that Wheeler was chosen to be among the original inductees into the city's Hall of Fame in 2007, along with Isaac Hull and David Humphreys, aide-de-camp to George Washington. Joe Wheeler's parents are buried right across the street from Humphrey's still-standing house.<br />
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<br />Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-67188367868418275612015-03-04T10:53:00.004-08:002015-03-04T10:53:54.407-08:00Grandsons of Connecticut and the end of the war<div class="MsoNormal">
The four-plus years of 150<sup>th</sup> anniversaries of Civil War events are drawing to a close but there a few big ones to go. Today, March 4, is the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, </div>
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It was, of course, one of the great speeches of human history, one in which he acknowledged the horrors of war but offered a roadmap to recovery.</div>
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Here are the most famous words of that famous address:</div>
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<i>With malice toward none; with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God givesus to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation;s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all others. </i></div>
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Lincoln was able to utter those words on that day thanks largely to two men who might be called “grandsons of Connecticut.” Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, who headed the largest Union armies in the field on March 4, 1865, were both Ohio-born. But each was the descendant of a famous old Connecticut family.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivwC4_s8Cq3hg95QEUKyq90htJ1LSRIr5nWRB5HmwWbGBe8-ZZARSqIdi4_obgyYC3P2yi8ktSkxddXbEWAVAtIdANkXhbH2lOGribJSGmvZU_uRaja_sof6H6WgqUlocvipn2HZhUwSg/s1600/grant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivwC4_s8Cq3hg95QEUKyq90htJ1LSRIr5nWRB5HmwWbGBe8-ZZARSqIdi4_obgyYC3P2yi8ktSkxddXbEWAVAtIdANkXhbH2lOGribJSGmvZU_uRaja_sof6H6WgqUlocvipn2HZhUwSg/s1600/grant.jpg" height="200" width="158" /></a></div>
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Grant was the grandson of Noah Grant of Tolland, Connecticut,
himself the descendant of Matthew Grant, one of the first settlers in the
state. Matthew Grant is particularly important in New England history. As town
clerk of Windsor, Connecticut, in the mid-17<sup>th</sup> century, he kept meticulous town
records as well as a personal diary that gives us one of the best and most
complete records of life in very early European America.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DQLESweo1rvybluSZ8cRea2BRGZZmWEFnIOwo7E1gEtgJO7rZYlF2KPSHcmp8OR7EKdU1KxAkx6nMo7Lgx3pozTBuhwZeDE8UCXX2FMHSPocAadMghGL2ChyphenhyphenikIW5MBnZBqEpWZVWQ0/s1600/sherman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DQLESweo1rvybluSZ8cRea2BRGZZmWEFnIOwo7E1gEtgJO7rZYlF2KPSHcmp8OR7EKdU1KxAkx6nMo7Lgx3pozTBuhwZeDE8UCXX2FMHSPocAadMghGL2ChyphenhyphenikIW5MBnZBqEpWZVWQ0/s1600/sherman.jpg" height="200" width="157" /></a></div>
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Sherman’s Connecticut connection was even closer. His father
and mother were Connecticut-born, as was the general’s oldest brother, all
coming from a very long line of New Englanders. The immigrant Sherman came to
Massachusetts in the 1630’s. General
Sherman’s more immediate ancestors arrived in Connecticut a century later. </div>
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Another grandson of Connecticut was less revered by the
closing weeks of the war. George B. McClellan great grandfather was General
Samuel McClellan of Woodstock, Connecticut, one of New England’s Revolutionary
War heroes. “General Sam,” of whom George McClellan bragged, was born in
Massachusetts but lived out his long life in Connecticut. His home still stands
in South Woodstock. George McClellan is not remembered with the same reverence
in New England.</div>
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-74617759572313170612014-10-14T10:42:00.001-07:002014-10-14T10:42:36.637-07:00THE FIGHTING 14th<br />
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October 14th marks the anniversary of the battle of Bristoe Station, the 151st as I write this. The 14th Connecticut saw action in this battle, which, although bloody, was minor by comparison to many of the unit’s other battles.<br />
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There was probably no regiment on either side that saw much more significant action than the 14th during its period of service. After mustering in on August 25, 1862, the thousand men of the regiment left immediately for the Virginia front, just missing Second Bull Run. But it was there in plenty of time for Antietam in September, suffering 137 casualties, continuing on to Fredericksburg in December, where it lost 122 men and officers in killed, wounded and missing.<br />
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In 1863 the 14th was engaged at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, at Bristoe Station on October 14, at Blackburn’s Ford on the 17th, and at Mine Run on November 20. In 1864, the regiment saw action at Morton’s Ford, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. What’s more, it was among the regiments involved in the final squeeze that forced Robert E. Lee to Appomattox Court House. The 14th Connecticut suffered nearly 800 casualties during its less than three years of existence.<br />
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As for Bristoe Station: on this date in 1863 the site just south of Manassas saw the first significant action between the armies of Generals Lee and George Meade after Gettysburg. The fighting resulted in another Union victory, but one with unsettling implications for each side. Generals A.P. Hill and Richard Ewell performed poorly for Lee, and Meade, although the winner, failed to follow up, allowing Lee to escape once again. That failure contributed to President Lincoln’s increasing determination to bring Ulysses Grant (the descendant of one of the founders of Connecticut) east the following year. The 14th Connecticut, in the heart of the battle, suffered 26 killed and wounded. This map of the action at Bristoe Station is the work of Confederate mapmaker Jed Hotchkiss, famous for his maps of the Shenandoah Valley for Stonewall Jackson.<br />
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-31794154529765853562014-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:002014-03-03T08:00:21.521-08:00Andersonville AnniversaryThe sesquicentennials go on. Last week marked the 150th anniversary of the arrivals of the first prisoners at Camp Sumter at Andersonville, Georgia. Andersonville is one of those iconic names in history that enjoy (or suffer) a meaning wider than their individual realities. A Judas is a betrayer. A Benedict Aernold is a traitor. An Andersonville is a horror among prisons and POW camps. In reality, Andersonville was one of several camps, north and south, that saw thousands of prisoners die, mostly of disease, but also of starvation and occasionally of murder. It was not necessarily the worst (although it way have been) but it certainly was the best known.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl6bh_wX8uuRxUl583_z-lwbCuFlerBF-9REL7GjUXuA1fm4KL7eqt-41LVrrAulzELQcYERiwXbswoPg4-RtUVkWCZ_H1EiCJ2A8596gQac9nWUvYzxIVkahWt8AXwtgv71YekrIDXTo/s1600/atwater.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" closure_lm_920012="null" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl6bh_wX8uuRxUl583_z-lwbCuFlerBF-9REL7GjUXuA1fm4KL7eqt-41LVrrAulzELQcYERiwXbswoPg4-RtUVkWCZ_H1EiCJ2A8596gQac9nWUvYzxIVkahWt8AXwtgv71YekrIDXTo/s1600/atwater.jpg" height="200" ota="true" width="147" /></a>Its infamy was partially due to a pair of New Englanders who arrived within a couple of months of its liberation. Dorence Atwater. a young cavalryman from the Terryville section of Plymouth, Connecticut, was captured late in 1863 and became among the first prisoners marched to Camp Sumter. Deaths came quickly in a wet and cold north Georgia winter, and camp officials chose Atwater, whose handwriting was excellent, to keep a record of the dead, both names and locations of burial. He became known as the “Clerk of the Dead” of Andersonville.</div>
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Although he was told to make two official copies, Atwater suspected rightly that neither list would survive intact. So he kept another list for himself. After the end of the war, with the assistance of others including Clara Barton of North Oxford, Massachusetts, he took his list and traveled to Andersonville.</div>
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Barton had already been inundated with requests from families to help track down missing Union prisoners. When she was contacted by Atwater she was eager to become part of the identification and recovery effort.</div>
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The party located and identified thousands of graves. Some were noted with markers. Other bodies were returned to families and towns. For example, the town of Norwich, Connecticut, sent a delegation south to recover the bodies of Andersonville dead from their town. The bodies were returned, reburied in the ancient Yantic cemetery, and marked by a Parrott rifle obtained from the U.S. government. It’s now known as the “Andersonville gun” and is a landmark in the town. Other war dead have been buried there since, but the site remains a monument to the victims of Andersonville.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Andersonville Gun in Norwich, CT</td></tr>
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-87847823664182924812014-02-27T07:06:00.002-08:002016-02-01T10:36:42.957-08:00The Little Woman, the Great War, and BeginningsAbraham Lincoln famously said to Harriet Beecher Stowe upon meeting her during the Civil War, "So you're the little woman who started this great war." To be honest, he may have not actually said this. And to be even more honest, the war would almost certainly have occurred even if <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> had not been published.<br />
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But Stowe certainly played a role in giving voice to thoughts and giving courage to people who were thinking them. This year marks an anniversary for Stowe and her most famous book, and it's possible to see early traces of <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> in the first work published under her own name. This month 180 years ago she was celebrating the news that she had won a $50 dollar prize and publication in <i>Western Monthly Magazine</i> for a story she had called "Uncle Lot." The magazine called it "A New England Sketch."<br />
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The story was about a prototypical New England farmer and was noted for its use of colloquial language--unusual for the time--and for putting dialect into the mouth of Uncle Lot. Both techniques were used nearly 20 years later for Uncle Tom. Slavery did not figure in the story although Stowe (then still Harriet Beecher) had taken the trip to Kentucky that showed her some of the sights and sounds of slavery the previous year.<br />
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Stowe wrote the story of Uncle Lot while living in Cincinnati with her father, but her most famous works were put to paper in New England, where several of the places connected to her life remain. Most of <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin<i i=""> </i></i>was written in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband Calvin Stowe was teaching at Bowdoin College. Their house still stands in Brunswick and is still a part of the college.<br />
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Litchfield, Connecticut, where she was born, retains several sites related to her and her famous family, although not her actual birthplace. The house was torn down several years ago (the pieces are supposedly in storage awaiting someone willing to pay for reassembly) but the site of the home is marked with a sign. You can see the church where the Puritan divine Lyman Beecher, Harriet's father, preached. There are several other monuments to the Beecher family in town as well.<br />
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In Guilford, Connecticut, there are several contemporary houses still standing in the Nut Plain section, where Harriet spent many months with her mother's family. It was at the grandfather's home in Guilford that she heard stories from an aunt who had married a planter from the Caribbean. The aunt was appalled at the reality of slavery and some of her stories found their way into Harriet Beecher Stowe's most famous work.<br />
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More information about these sites as well as directions to them are available in my book <i>Connecticut's Civil war.</i> More information is on the book's website <a href="http://www.ctcivilwar.com/">www.ctcivilwar.com. </a>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-81007260607472125612014-02-20T12:17:00.001-08:002014-02-20T12:23:18.650-08:00What was the 77th New England?The 77th New England didn’t exist, of course, since Union army volunteer regiments were identified by the states rather than the regions that produced them. The “77th New England” was a nickname for the 7th Connecticut and the 7th New Hampshire, two regiments usually brigaded together during the campaigns of 1862-1865 in the southeast,.<br />
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Today, February 20, 2014, is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Olustee in northern Florida, perhaps the least successful day in the history of the 77th New England. Earlier in February of 1864 Brigadier General Truman Seymour had arrived in Jacksonville, tasked with destroying Confederate supply routes and securing modest union influences in northern Florida. Otherwise, that part of the Confederacy was insignificant.<br />
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Seymour led his small 5,000-plus man expedition (including the 77th New England) westward along existing rail lines, expecting to meet nothing more than Florida militia, composed primarily of young boys and older men. Instead, on the afternoon of February 20, the force met up with 5,000 entrenched Confederate soldiers near the town of Olustee, just east of Lake City.<br />
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After hours of battle, the Union expedition was forced to retreat towards Jacksonvile, leaving the Confederates in control of the field. The 77th New England performed poory, particularly the 7th New Hampshire. The 7th Connecticut was never fully engaged. Both regiments were part of the brigade under the command of then-Colonel Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut, who was enjoying (or not) his first command independent of General Alfred Howe Terry, also of Connecticut.<br />
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One regiment did perform admirably. The 54th Massachusetts, the regiment of black soldiers so honored in the 151 years since its glory in defeat at Battery Wagner near Charleston, played the key role in saving a broken down train carrying wounded Union soldiers back to Jacksonville.<br />
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Otherwise, the day was a disaster for the Union. With 1,800 men killed, wounded, or missing, the expedition suffered a 34 percent casualty rate—among the worst of any battle of the war.<br />
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News of the victory elated the South, for whom successful days were becoming fewer and fewer. The 77th New England left Florida for Virginia where the two regiments became part of the seige of Petersburg. Then,in January of 1865,they were sent to join Terry's Provisional Corps. They participated in the relentless move of Sherman’s Union army across the Carolinas to the real end of the war, which happened in North Carolina rather than at Appomattox.<br />
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-79619101215944330862014-01-28T14:21:00.001-08:002014-01-28T14:21:56.346-08:00Happy Anniversary Kansas-Nebraska Act<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
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We are well into the Civil War 150th anniversaries. Last year: Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and Chicamauga. This year: the Wilderness and Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor and the seige of Petersburg. But there are other anniversaries to consider this year. This week marks the 160th anniversary of a milestone event, one that played a part in the inevitablity of war. And a man from Connecticut was watching closely to see what happened.<br />
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The milestone was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. On January 30, 1854, after months of negotiations, failed amendments, and succesful additions, debate opened in the Senate on the final version of the act. The bill passed the Senate in March and,after much further debate, got through the House of Representatives in May. President Franklin Pierce signed it into law the final week of May, 1854.</div>
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The Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively threw out the Missouri Compromise, which had kept slavery out of land above the 36 degree 30' parallel, with the exception of the new state of Missouri. The country had managed to avoid war over slavery for more than 30 years, thanks to the Compromise. But the new act permitted Kansas and Nebraska to come into the Union either slave or free, depending on the vote of white male settlers.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXAwYL3r5mIovgxzC0hOtiCuMbMhvY7CA8A-ff2_dEmvafB97DMQSEJ_3blPI3WLiR8H4BMc7hIXRIp2m9MhpNt0vwBUXSUMAtpXVY512EOBaPaxEJ4Jk1lImm0i_uBt2rE-9HuHwA7qU/s1600/john+brown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" closure_lm_465327="null" cua="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXAwYL3r5mIovgxzC0hOtiCuMbMhvY7CA8A-ff2_dEmvafB97DMQSEJ_3blPI3WLiR8H4BMc7hIXRIp2m9MhpNt0vwBUXSUMAtpXVY512EOBaPaxEJ4Jk1lImm0i_uBt2rE-9HuHwA7qU/s1600/john+brown.jpg" height="189" width="200" /></a>John Brown,a 54-year-old native of Torrington, Connecticut,was living--after a checkered personal and business career in the midwest--on a small farm in the rugged and cold Adirondack Mountains of New York. Not surprisingly, the farm was doing poorly, as was a settlement of free blacks that the ardent abolitionist supported in the area. When he heard that pro-slavery settlers were pouring into Kansas from slave-holding Missouri, Brown, his sons, and other supporters moved to Kansas to settle temporarily and to encourage anti-slavery sentiment. The Brown movement felt obligated to match violence on the part of pro-slavery settlers with equal violence of their own. Kansas became a bloody microcosm of national sentiment.</div>
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Later, Brown returned to the east where he traveled through New England, particularly Connecticut and Massachusetts, raising money for a new bold plan. That turned out to be his raid on the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, then in Virginia. The raid, in October 1859, failed, but Brown, who was hanged six weeks later, made himself into a martyr to the cause of the abolition of slavery. The war could not then be avoided.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRwh2CcJlcUu1vkK2Zc0EF6ccyAqWJgxb4jWeBbZn2VFlxMPR8mCdLh6uc5SBey2atvLLzmIBItc3iK58GxM2HbAL7OWLIJ46UPH4BykBw26RoRD3Cs1H6Ws0EIdE0GVMjZ-F9zThzIsg/s1600/brownplaque.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" closure_lm_465327="null" cua="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRwh2CcJlcUu1vkK2Zc0EF6ccyAqWJgxb4jWeBbZn2VFlxMPR8mCdLh6uc5SBey2atvLLzmIBItc3iK58GxM2HbAL7OWLIJ46UPH4BykBw26RoRD3Cs1H6Ws0EIdE0GVMjZ-F9zThzIsg/s1600/brownplaque.jpg" height="133" width="200" /></a>The house where John Brown was born is long gone, but there is a state historic sign at the location, a few miles west of Torrington just off Route 4. There is also a haunting reminder of the man who started the Civil War (or at least who assured that it would start when it did). The stone front steps to the old house remain. John Brown left Torrington as a child of five in 1805, but he was certainly old enough to have walked up those steps hundreds of times. So, two days from now, remember the 160th anniversary of a event that a righteous and violent descendant of New England puritans used to force his country to reach a goal that he knew in his soul was right. </div>
<br />Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-32574702590480718952013-11-14T06:54:00.002-08:002013-11-26T13:38:39.232-08:00<div style="font-family: inherit;">
I've got a new website up dealing with Connecticut in the Civil War. It's primarily to promote my book <i>Connecticut's Civil War</i>, but there's plenty of information and some interesting photos.Please check it out:</div>
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<a href="http://www.ctcivilwar.com/">www.ctcivilwar.com</a><br />
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-39224866359844346002013-11-07T10:31:00.000-08:002013-11-07T10:43:15.252-08:00Joseph Hawley's House<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: left;">
After a long break for a harness racing book (<i>The Best There Ever Was: Dan Patch and the Dawn of the American Century) </i>I'm back to my other favorite topic. The Connecticut house of one of the state's Civil War heroes is threatened. First, here's the essay I wrote about him as part of the effort to save the house.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">JOSPEH R. HAWLEY (1826-1905)</td></tr>
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There was no better-known public figure in Connecticut during the last half of the 19th century than Joseph R. Hawley, crusading abolitionist newspaper editor, Civil War brevet Major General, Connecticut governor, congressman, and U.S. Senator.</div>
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Ironically, this ardent anti-slavery crusader was born in North Carolina, the son of a Connecticut-born minister who had been hired by a congregation in that slave-holding state. The family returned to Connecticut when Hawley was eleven, but he was old enough to bring with him an abiding hatred of slavery.<br />
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Hawley trained to be an attorney and briefly practiced law, but he turned to politics at the age of 25, becoming an active member of the Free Soil party, an organization whose aim was to prevent the spread of slavery to the new states of the west.<br />
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In 1852 Hawley became the editor of the <i>Charter Oak</i>, an abolitionist newspaper published in Hartford. It was not as well-known as William Lloyd Garrison’s <i>Liberator</i>, published in Boston, but it was still widely reviled in the South.<br />
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In 1857 the <i>Charter Oak</i> was folded into the Hartford <i>Evening Press</i>, a more conventional newspaper created by Gideon Welles, soon to become Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. Hawley became editor of the <i>Press</i>, which was still enthusiasticallt abolitionist. <br />
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The Connecticut branch of the new Republican Party was organized in Hawley’s office in 1856 and in 1860, when Lincoln was testing the waters for a possible presidential run, Hawley asked the Illinois lawyer to visit Hartford and helped organize Lincoln’s speaking tour that year.<br />
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The day after the fall of Ft. Sumter, when the newly elected Lincoln asked for troops, Joseph Hawley became one of the first New England men to volunteer. He joined the First Connecticut Infantry, one of the few Union regiments that performed well at the first battle of Bull Run, a fiasco for the North. He then joined the 7th Connecticut, which was sent south to take part in the recovery of the Atlantic coast forts that had fallen to the Confederacy during the early months of the war.<br />
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Hawley rose to Brigadier General and eventually to Major General as the 7th was involved in the recovery of Fort Pulaski, James Island, Fort Wagner, and Fort Fisher, He also saw action at Olustee in Florida and the battles surrounding the siege of Petersburg. During the last months of the war, General Hawley was military governor of North Carolina. For several months after Appomattox, Hawley served as second-in-command to General Alfred Terry of New Haven, military governor of Virginia.<br />
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A few months after mustering out in January of 1866, Joseph Hawley was elected governor of Connecticut. He failed in his reelection bid, mostly because of his uncompromising stance on full civil liberties for freed slaves. He returned to newspapers, where he supervised the consolidation of the <i>Press</i> and the Hartford <i>Courant</i>, becoming editor of the new <i>Courant</i>. But he left that job to run for Congress, serving three terms. In 1881 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, serving 24 years.<br />
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Immediately after the war Hawley’s primary home was in the Nook Farm section of Hartford, where he was a neighbor of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe (Hawley’s wife was Stowe’s cousin). In the 1890’s Hawley purchased a cottage in the Woodmont section of Milford, and eventually that cottage became his sole Connecticut residence. In the winters he lived in Washington D.C. where he attended to his senatorial duties.<br />
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Hawley became famous throughout the state for his appearances at monument dedications, ceremonies honoring Civil War veterans, and other public events, Even as his health failed late in his life he made an effort to speak wherever he was asked, although he often needed help to walk to the podium.<br />
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Hawley died in 1905 of heart disease and the lingering effects of the malaria he contracted during the war. His death was front page news around the country and he lay in state in the U.S. Capitol.<br />
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Now, about the house. His final house has been purchased by someone who wants to demolish it. It hasn't happened yet, but only because Milford, Connecicut's city historian has imposed a 90 day demolition delay which can be used to allow a little time to change minds or explore other options for historic houses. Unfortunately, the buyer wants the location: on a hill a block from Long Island Sound that was not touched by Superstorm Sandy. It's an attractive small Victorian cottage, with the operative words being "small" and "cottage." Although it's in decent shape, it's not what people today seem to want. It's not protected and will probably go. It will be a sad day when it does.<br />
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<br />Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-2695114270392044092010-01-20T14:44:00.000-08:002010-01-20T15:51:58.446-08:00<div align="center">DID ELI WHITNEY CAUSE THE CIVIL WAR?</div><br />Having successfully launched my book <em>Connecticut's Civil War: A Guide for Travelers </em>and having completed nearly a dozen speaking engagements I'm enjoying a little mid-winter downtime, with no more appearances scheduled until March. So it's time to get going on this blog which I hope turns into a dialog on my favorite subject.<br /><br />Here's one to start: how much responsibility should we give Massachusetts-born and Connecticut-educated Eli Whitney for the Civil War? His story in a nutshell: as a young Yale graduate he accepted a post as a tutor on a Georgia plantation where he observed the difficulty in harvesting the easily-grown short staple cotton. The hard-to-clean variety was the only kind that could be grown through much of the south and that fact limited the spreaed of cotton culture and concurrently the spread of slavery. Whitney's cleaning engine, the cotton gin, helped insure that both cotton and slavery would expand. And expand it did: at the time of his invention, early in the 1790's, there were about 800,000 slaves in North America. Seventy years later, there were nearly 4 million.<br /><br />On the <strong>not</strong> <strong>responsible</strong> side: what became cotton land might have been have been used for something else that needed slaves; other people had already designed gins (although none quite as effective as Eli's); an effective gin would almost certainly been invented later.<br /><br />On the<strong> responsible</strong> side: the earlier inventions didn't work well; we don't know if slaves would have been so important in the deep south without cotton; and a good gin might not have come before slavery was too far along towards extinction to make a difference. Slavery became so important to the economy of the southern states that war was inevitable.<br /><br />I tend towards the responsible side, or at least partially responsible.Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9024235463182859321.post-24150356825653814772009-12-22T11:17:00.000-08:002009-12-22T11:18:49.249-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGQN4UhP0PcVWREedZZ3lTeungLvdPXcCLa-BmZQJXDJfQv2vf9sTtKi1JJ4gZ-rQIMSCtGiZh36KGiAlsT3ygY5twN0T4RpmImCzB5Y27L50_C5g0BH015mLS8Ar32fRuMHShyphenhyphenMB99I/s1600-h/andersonvilleboy.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 225px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418142016721534450" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGQN4UhP0PcVWREedZZ3lTeungLvdPXcCLa-BmZQJXDJfQv2vf9sTtKi1JJ4gZ-rQIMSCtGiZh36KGiAlsT3ygY5twN0T4RpmImCzB5Y27L50_C5g0BH015mLS8Ar32fRuMHShyphenhyphenMB99I/s320/andersonvilleboy.jpg" /></a><br /><div></div>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18017191086124446075noreply@blogger.com0