9th Maine Infantry plays musical chairs at Hilton Head

The field staff played musical chairs at the 9th Maine Infantry Regiment’s Hilton Head camp in South Carolina in March 1863. The game began when Lt. Col. Horatio Bisbee Jr. mustered out March 19. Then Col. Rishworth Rich recommended Maj. Sabine Emery for Bisbee’s slot and Capt. Zina H. Robinson for major. Emery, an Eastport […]

The battle has begun to preserve the Manassas Gap Railroad

A battle’s brewing in Virginia over preserving 450 acres of historic land directly tied to the Civil War’s first major battle in 1861, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Phil Sheridan. And Maine soldiers certainly crossed this land during the war, the earliest units being the 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment and the 10th Maine Infantry Regiment in […]

Recent photos suggest the Little Round Top restoration is winding down

Photos recently released by the National Park Service suggest that the too-long-by-far closure and restoration of Little Round Top may soon end. The NPS closed LRT and its approach roads in July 2022 for a restoration project scheduled to take 12 to 18 months to complete (as advertised then). The project’s complexity obviously made 12 […]

Confederate cat kills a Maine soldier

The last Confederate that Corp. Nahum H. Hall ever thought could kill him was an angry tabby, perhaps Sgt. Puss N. Boots, First Florida Feline Regiment. Hall, a Rockland resident, was 33 when he enlisted as a private in in Co. G, 28th Maine Infantry Regiment, a nine-month regiment that mustered at Camp E.D. Keyes […]

Bath taxes the rich to recruit 90 soldiers

Known as the City of Ships, Bath on the lower Kennebec River already swarmed with soldiers when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton issued General Order No. 94 on August 4, 1862. The order called for the loyal states to draft 300,000 militia for nine months’ service in the army. On Tuesday, July 8, Maine […]

Maine responds when Lincoln Administration threatens to draft the militia

The immediate and historical attention given the New York draft riots suggest that July 1863 was the first time the Lincoln Administration organized a national draft. That’s incorrect. Let’s rewind the draft clock 11 months to Monday, August 4, 1862, when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton issued General Order No. 94. It mandated “that […]

Battle of Baton Rouge hero drowns courtesy of the U.S. Navy

Confederates shot Reverend Joseph P. French, and his own navy drowned him. Born in Solon in Somerset County, the 35-year-old French was a Methodist clergyman living in Old Town in 1860 with his 34-year-old wife, Lucretia. They had three daughters: Clara (5), Sarah (4), and Josie (2). Hannah French, 64, lived with the family; she […]

The Confederate standing watch at Frankfort, Kentucky

They were Americans who later called themselves Confederates. Killed in battle or by wounds, disease, or old age, they lie together for eternity, their graves placed circularly within the obscure Confederate Cemetery in the 100-acre Frankfort Cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. And they lie almost forgotten, except by Civil War buffs or those descendants remembering distant […]

Maine soldiers watch the army disintegrate in winter 1863, part 2

The arrival of Joe Hooker at Army of the Potomac headquarters in late January 1863 stirred interest, trepidation, and many questions. Within weeks he instituted morale-building improvements that restored the army’s elan. “Never was the magic influence of a single man more clearly shown than when Hooker assumed command,” said Capt. Charles P. Mattocks, 17th […]

Maine soldiers watch the army disintegrate in winter 1863, part 1

Despite all the immorality-related baggage (drinking, carousing with prostitutes, etc.) historically associated with him, Joseph Hooker helped save the Union in winter 1863. In the regimental camps sprinkled across Stafford County opposite Fredericksburg, morale all but collapsed that midwinter. Ambrose Burnside had ordered the Army of the Potomac to outflank the Confederates dug in at […]