Tag Archives: 19th Maine Infantry Regiment

Lottery winner catches the Maine-bound boat

However badly that Joseph Hooker blew the Battle of Chancellorsville, an order he issued on January 30, 1863 went over very well with the Army of the Potomac’s rank-and-file. “Orders were given on January 30th from the headquarters of the army that furloughs might be granted for fifteen days to one regimental and two line […]

Even the weather fights the Yankees: Mud March, part 2

His direct assaults on Confederate-defended Fredericksburg handily repulsed in mid-December 1862, Ambrose Burnside decided to outflank Robert E. Lee’s dug-in veterans 5½ weeks later. Burnside planned to wheel his Army of the Potomac over the Rappahannock River to flank Lee’s army and force it to fight on open ground, where the Yankees could surely outmaneuver […]

Yakking about Lincoln sinks a Phippsburg officer

There’s a time to yap and a time to shaddup, as a promising Maine officer discovered in winter 1863. Having toyed with its wording for months, President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in autumn 1862 and set January 1, 1863 as its effective date. All slaves in areas hostile to the United States government […]

Al Williams escapes a Gettysburg grave, part 2

As the sun swung westward over Gettysburg on Thursday, July 2, 1863, Sgt. Albert N. Williams of Augusta likely kept watch over the men of Co. G, 19th Maine Infantry Regiment. Commanded by Col. Francis E. Heath, the Maine boys could see blue-colored South Mountain on the western horizon and the Codori Farm buildings much […]

Al Williams escapes a Gettysburg grave, part 1

President Abraham Lincoln delivers his 271-word “Gettysburg Address” during the Nov. 19, 1863 dedication of the new Soldiers’ National Cemetery under development on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg. (National Park Service) Despite some 8 inches of snow dropped by what the Weather Fools dubbed “Winter Storm Avery” (real people don’t name snowstorms), the 155th anniversary of […]

Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated: Selden Connor

The news struck Kennebec Valley residents like a lightning bolt: Selden Connor, long associated with the vaunted 7th Maine Infantry Regiment, was dead, shot and mortally wounded on May 6, 1864, during the Battle of the Wilderness. “Gen. Seldon (sic) Connor, late of the 19th Maine … died last week in Washington,” reported the Daily […]

Keeping a date with a guy named Pickett

Waterville’s Francis Heath and his 19th Maine Infantry Regiment kept their July 3, 1863 date with a guy named Pickett. The experience left a sour taste in the mouths of everyone involved. Then a colonel, Heath and some 400 weary 19th Maine boys marched along Taneytown Road toward Gettysburg on Wednesday, July 1. A muster […]