On August 3, General Pope told Halleck, with his usual healthy confidence, that he expected to take possession of Gordonsville and Charlottesville within ten days. Possibly looking for advice as to the best point at which to cross the Rapidan, Pope queried Banks regarding Barnett’s and Somerville Fords. “[Respecting] the character of Barnett’s ford on…
Col. Benjamin Franklin ‘Grimes’ Davis, 8th New York Cavalry, remains an intriguing figure, largely because he is so elusive. A Regular Army officer, Davis’s rigid adherence to strict discipline put him at odds with the volunteers who served under him. One perpetually disgruntled surgeon termed him “a proud tyrannical devil.” Upon learning that Davis had…
If the stories are true, William Parnell survived the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava unscathed, only to fall, gravely wounded, in the farms fields east of Upperville, on June 21, 1863. William Russell Parnell was born in Dublin, Ireland, reportedly, on August 13, 1836. An August 1863 account in the Albany Evening Journal…
The officer was a bit of an anomaly; a Union colonel with a Deep South accent, wearing a Mexican serape against the pre-dawn chill. Shortly after stepping into the saddle he spurred his horse into the Rappahannock River. The placid waters were soon churning, as hundreds of troopers in Union blue followed in his wake. …
As I prepared my last post describing Union attempts to burn the Waterloo Bridge, I was also reading Seizing Destiny, The Army of the Potomac’s “Valley Forge” and the Civil War Winter that Saved the Union, by Albert Conner Jr., and Chris Mackowski. One of the first offensive operations described by the authors is the…
Maj. Gen. John Pope, commanding the Army of Virginia, certainly thought the gods of war were smiling on him as the sun broke over the horizon on the morning of August 30, 1862. Most of the intelligence Pope was receiving indicated the Army of Northern Virginia was retreating. Overly confident, Pope not only made little effort…
Wilson Vanatta (aka Vannatta) was born in Steubenville, Ohio, just across Ohio River from, what is today, West Virginia, and only ten miles from the Pennsylvania line. Vanatta enlisted in the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry on August 26, 1861. He was a farmer, 22 years of age, five feet, ten inches tall, with a fair complexion and brown eyes and…
Small But Important Riots 