Tag Archives: George B. McClellan

The 7th Maine Infantry’s “gallant remnant” goes home

Portland raised a ruckus for one battered Maine infantry regiment in October ’62. With disease, the Peninsula Campaign, and their heroic and shot-to-pieces Antietam charge behind them, the 7th Maine’s survivors numbered around 350 men, with perhaps 150 fit for service by early October. Bestowing a rare wartime honor, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan ordered […]

Will the real John Smith please stand up?

NEW YORK, N.Y. — With kudos to a TV game show popular with Americans during the 1950s and 1960s … Whispers ripple through the live audience seated at Studio 54 on W. 54th St. as host Bud Collyer steps on stage at 7 p.m., Monday, December 18, 1865.1 Dressed elegantly despite the cold winter swirling […]

They Are Our Glory — the 7th Maine at Antietam, Part I

Wind-stirred flags attracted Confederate attention at Antietam, as Thomas Worcester Hyde realized by mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 1862. A Bowdoin College graduate and the only son of a Yankee trader from Bath, Hyde had commanded the 7th Maine Infantry Regiment during the Sept. 14 attack on Confederate-held Crampton’s Gap on South Mountain in Maryland. […]

Maine to New York: “Get your own artillerymen!”

  Reading the report he addressed to Gov. Israel Washburn Jr. on July 18, 1862, you can just “see” the steam venting from the ears of Maj. Robert F. Campbell. The 6-foot, 45-year-old Cherryfield lumberman was livid. Third in command of the 11th Maine Infantry Regiment, he was filling in for the ill Col. Harris […]

Eyewitness to slaughter

  What was Robert E. Lee thinking? Among the battlefields preserved by Richmond National Battlefield Park, Malvern Hill is my favorite site. Standing amidst the cannons aligned east of the Crew House, I can see the open fields across which Lee hurled his infantry on July 1, 1862. These cannons, sited to approximate the Federal […]