Of Causes and Casualties: Safeguarding the Legacy of the American Civil War

By Bryan Caswell ’15

750,000 and rising. 2.5 percent of the population. Greater than all other American wars combined. No matter how one describes them, the casualties incurred as a result of the American Civil War are nothing short of astounding. To those who study this devastating conflict, the numbers of the fallen can seem old friends, as the cost of great battles such as Antietam or Gettysburg are burned into memory. Yet is it possible that disproportionate emphasis has been placed on the bloody toll of the Civil War?

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Special Collections Roadshow at Gettysburg College: William B. McCreery’s POW Memoir

By Meg Sutter ’16

Episode Two of Special Collections Roadshow at Gettysburg College explores Colonel William B. McCreery’s Prisoner of War memoir and uses the text as a segway to discuss Libby Prison and POW experience. Filmed and edited by Val Merlina ’14

Folly at Fredericksburg: A Wound to the Pride of the 127th PA

By Kevin Lavery ’16

War games and drilling, though essential to military training, are no substitute for the real thing. They have their place: soldiers must be able to react automatically in the most straightforward of circumstances so that they can focus their energies on the less-predictable aspects of battle when the stakes become real. As the Dauphin County Regiment dove into its first battle, fresh from guard duty, the men had no idea of what they would face on the slopes of Marye’s Heights. The regiment showed courage and valor, but ultimately lacked discipline in the face of fire.

After three months in Washington, the Dauphin County Regiment was at last headed south. Resentment in the ranks at the last-minute transfer had been replaced by enthusiasm for the coming battle. At last, the men were to see the fight they had enlisted to join.

As the regiment marched across the Rappahannock River, General Oliver Howard chided the men who ducked away from shells, which were “‘not half as dangerous as they seem[ed].’” Perhaps not, but they were certainly dangerous enough to make Captain William Fox – a disinclined Confederate draftee who had deserted in favor of the Union – the regiment’s first casualty of battle. A shell landed directly beneath Jennings’ horse, but fortuitously it was a dud. Minutes later, when Howard himself was caught flinching away from an incoming shell, an anonymous member of the regiment smugly reminded him of his own advice. Humbled, Howard admitted that “dodging appears to be natural.”

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War Beyond the Battlefield: From the Potomac to the Rappahannock

By Kevin Lavery ’16

“Be careful what you wish for.” Had the volunteers of Dauphin County’s 127th Regiment heard this old adage before marching off to war in the summer of 1862? Undoubtedly. Even if they had, it was far from their minds as they drilled and waited and guarded the perimeter of Washington. These men had enlisted to fight, but now they found themselves consigned to guard duty for their first three months in the Army. Their fortunes would soon change, however, for better or for worse; unbeknownst to them, the Battle of Fredericksburg lurked in their future.

In autumn 1862, the members of the 127th Regiment at last found themselves departing dear Pennsylvania. But, if they believed that battle was in their immediate future, they were sorely mistaken. Samuel P. Conrad of Company C described the underwhelming experience in a set of letters to his friend Lewis Strickler back in Hummelstown. Although Conrad was enjoying the overall experience and had even gotten the opportunity to see the magnificence of the unfinished Capitol dome, he knew that he and his companions were not there on vacation. “I came down here to kill Rebels,” he grumbled, but the government “brought us down here to cut wood.” Washington had to be ready for siege if the Army of the Potomac failed, and someone had to be responsible for preparing for that contingency.

New Picture (2)

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Warriors of Dauphin County: The 127th Pennsylvania Volunteers

By Kevin Lavery ’16

By war’s end, one would command the 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Militia Regiment during the Battle of Gettysburg. Another would serve as military governor of the battlefield in the wake of the clash. Two brothers would become colonel and lieutenant colonel in another local regiment and be joined by others of their original outfit. Not all would survive the relatively brief duration of their service.

Those who did left a legacy beyond their contribution to the war effort: several had eminent careers in public service, while others found success as journalists, innkeepers, and physicians. One would even live to the ripe age of 98 years and was hailed as a local legend. But for nine months in late 1862 and early 1863, these men lived and fought together as the 127th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, “familiarly known as the Dauphin County Regiment.” Twice, the regiment would storm Marye’s Heights, and by the time it returned home, the patriotism and devotion of the men had only grown.

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Prisoner Experiences: Memoirs of Libby Prison

By Meg Sutter ’16

Numerous books have been written on the contested topic of Civil War prisons and prisoners of war. Scholars struggle with who to blame for the outrageous and horrible conditions of the prisons. Some speculate that the Southerners were crueller to their captives while others say the opposite. As well, scholars question whether the conditions of the Southern prisons were better or worse than the prisons in the North.

Once released, prisoners from both sides began to publish hundreds of memoirs describing their experiences. Some prisoners used these memoirs to vilify their captors. Therefore, historians must be careful when reading into the biases of these various memoirs. Some prisons have become better known than others, and therefore certain assumptions about the average prisons during the war have arisen. While Andersonville may be the most infamous of the Civil War prisons, it perhaps does not depict the average prison conditions during the war. There are many other prisons both North and South that could give the historian a better understanding of the lives of Civil War prisoners. This is the first segment in a series of Civil War prison posts and seeks to portray Confederate camp Libby Prison as various prisoners in their memoirs described it.

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Wartime Reminiscences: The Story of William R. Tanner’s Civil War Service

By Brianna Kirk ’15

Veteran war stories are some of the most fascinating windows into the past that students of history can experience. With World War II veteran numbers quickly diminishing and the risk of these accounts of history being lost, the importance of collecting and passing on veteran stories to future generations is vital. Such was the case with those who fought in the Civil War. As the twentieth century approached, droves of veterans began disappearing from the pages of history. The need for those veteran stories from America’s bloodiest war to be recorded and published became not only important to the veterans themselves but also to students like myself who have a genuine interest in studying how the Civil War was remembered by its soldiers.

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A Civil Rights Icon?: Edmund Pettus, From 1861 to 1965

By Logan Tapscott ’14

During my immersion trip to Alabama over the winter break, a group of students and I visited Selma, a city which was the center of the Civil Rights Movement in March 1965, and decided to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. On March 7, 1965, about 700 demonstrators, including Rev. Hosea Williams and John Lewis, attempted to march to Montgomery, the first capital of the Confederacy, to protest the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the lack of voting rights for African-Americans. Upon entering the bridge, Selma sheriff Jim Clark and state troopers stopped and then, a minute later, attacked the marchers. The attack known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ resulted in the death of a white minister. Seventy others were injured, including seventeen of whom were hospitalized. Two weeks later, on March 21, with protection from the federal government, about 8,000 demonstrators, including those from ‘Bloody Sunday,’ trekked from Selma to the former Confederate capital, arriving there four days later. While the bridge’s name evokes memories of the Civil Rights Era, the name Edmund Winston Pettus has a specific place in Civil War memory. Local residents decided to dedicate the bridge to him because of both his Civil War and post-Civil War career.

Edmund Pettus Bridge

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Lincoln’s Triumph: A Lecture by Allen C. Guelzo

By Avery Lentz ’14

On the night of March 5th, 2014, a crowd of Gettysburgians and devoted fans filtered into a small auditorium to hear Dr. Allen C. Guelzo who was giving his final lecture in his Abraham Lincoln lecture series, a four-part analysis about the president’s rise to power to his death. The fourth and final lecture focused on President Lincoln’s triumphs in his presidency and many of the challenges he overcame in the last two years of his life. Dr. Guelzo began with talking about the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and its reception in the Union and in the Confederacy. Lincoln received angry and confused questions about why the war should be fought for slave freedom rather than just the country’s reunion. Also, the Proclamation’s wider acceptance was hindered by the string of Union military failures that seemed to plague the eastern Army of the Potomac: George McClellan’s failure to pursue Lee’s Army of the Northern Virginia after the tactical draw at Antietam in September 1862, Ambrose Burnside’s major blunder at Fredericksburg in December 1862, and Joseph Hooker’s large failure at the hands of Lee at Chancellorsville in May 1863.

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