Tag Archives: White Oak Swamp

The last letter home, part 2

To many soldiers’ families in New England came a letter that, as events proved, would be the last letter, forever and a day, from a loved one in uniform. The White family living in Cambridge, Massachusetts received such a letter in mid-1862. George R. White, a tired private in Co. G of the 19th Massachusetts […]

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 […]