Tag Archives: Abner Coburn

Button Man

In late January 1863 “a shrewd, sharp Connecticut Yankee made his appearance at the State House,” reported a Portland Daily Press correspondent using the handle “Jonathan.” He regularly reported legislative and political activity (not always one and the same) occurring in Augusta. The Connecticuter — yes, it’s a legitimate term — carried “a rubber blanket, […]

Trouble awaited Abner Coburn, Maine’s second war-time governor

Abner Coburn stepped into a political mess upon becoming Maine’s second war-time governor as the calendar transitioned to 1863. Born to farmers Eleazar and Polly Weston Coburn in Canaan in Somerset County in March 1803, Coburn studied at Bloomfield Academy in the town of Bloomfield, which lay across the Kennebec River from the upper section […]

Israel Washburn Jr. steps down as Maine’s first war-time governor

Late on Monday, January 5, 1863, a weary Governor Israel Washburn Jr. walked from his office to the Executive Council Chamber located elsewhere in the Maine State House in Augusta. But Washburn likely gave little thought to such concerns tonight. As he approached the Executive Council Chamber’s rosewood doors, the bespectacled and diminutive Washburn exchanged […]

Politicians’ anti-war resolutions angered returning Port Hudson veterans, part 1

Angered by resolutions passed during the Democratic State Convention held in Portland in early August 1863, “life long Democrat” Col. Elijah D. Johnson and his battle-hardened 21st Maine Infantry veterans organized an ad hoc meeting, discussed the situation, and “unanimously adopted” their own resolutions counterpointing the Democratic ones. The fact that the Maine lads held […]

Confederates raid Portland harbor, and Edwin Stanton does not care

Confederate sailors under Lt. Charles W. Read, CSN, had captured the Revenue Service cutter Caleb Cushing in Portland harbor early on June 27, 1863 and had almost gotten away. Unable to fire up the cutter’s steam engine and hampered by a fickle, apparently pro-Union breeze, Read and his crew were overtaken by two pursuing steamers […]

Free chowder and summer sun lured thousands to Fort Popham in 1862

Bad wartime news could not stop a shindig held in Phippsburg on Friday, August 29, 1862. Second Manassas raged in northern Virginia as people converged on “the mouth of the Kennebec river, on the spot anciently called the peninsula of Sabino” to observe “the 255th anniversary of the planting, by Sir George Popham and his […]

Disaffected Maine Republicans chuck their own governor, Part 2

Previous: Maine Governor Abner Coburn runs afoul of the special interests Married to Augusta native Harriet Stanwood, transplanted Pennsylvanian James G. Blaine wielded great power within the Maine Republican Party by summer 1863. Buying into the Kennebec Journal in 1853, he moved to Augusta and won election to the Maine House in 1858. Repeatedly re-elected, […]

Sitting governor runs afoul Republican opponents, Part 1

As Maine soldiers converged on Gettysburg, revengeful Republican politicians tossed aside the state’s sitting governor, Abner Coburn. A successful businessman from Skowhegan, he had beaten three opponents during the early June 1862 Republican state convention held in Portland. Winning the September election, he took office in January 1863 and soon collided with power-wielding politicians. Coburn […]

Fort Hell and the 7th Maine Battery, part 1

Ordered to shoot when he wasn’t supposed to, Senior 1st Lt. William Berry Lapham of the 7th Maine Battery promptly complied — and all hell quickly broke loose at the Petersburg position that Union soldiers called “Fort Hell.” An Oxford County man to his core — born in Greenwood, raised in Bethel, settled into a […]

Maine Supreme Court strikes down onerous draft-avoidance scheme

Maine Governor Abner Coburn scratched his head after Congress passed in March 1863 a law titled “An Act for enrolling and calling out the national forces and for other purposes.” This law established the national draft, which spawned its own problems by summer 1863. New Yorkers might riot, burn, and kill in the Draft Riots, […]