Maria Smith probably saw her son, Albion, for the last time in October 1861. Albion G. Smith, just 19 years of age, enlisted in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry on October 1, and was mustered into Company F, a few days later. On the evening of June 3, 1863, a gunshot split the night air along…
General Robert E. Lee began moving his army out of the lines near the Rappahannock River on June 3. His counterpart, General Joseph Hooker, must have considered the necessity of moving his army shortly thereafter, though exactly when he did so remains a bit of a mystery. Rather than going after Lee and bringing him…
Montgomery Meigs is, arguably, the most under-appreciated general in the Union army. West Point, Class of 1836, and 44 years old when the Civil War erupted, Meigs had spent his pre-war career in the engineers, working on several projects in Washington, including the dome and wings of the Capitol and the Potomac Aqueduct, which brought…
In April 1858, John Augustine Washington, George Washington’s great grandnephew, executed a contract to sell Mount Vernon to Miss. Ann Pamela Cunningham, Regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. As David Ribblett explains in his article, “Saviors of Mount Vernon,” Ann Cunningham’s mother had sailed past the deteriorating estate in 1853 and then asked her…
“For want of a nail the shoe was lost For want of a shoe a horse was lost” This well-known proverb, which continues for several more lines, and ends with the loss of a kingdom, reportedly dates back several centuries, and an internet search as to how the proverb has been used over the years,…
In my last post I examined Lt. Col. William LeDuc’s efforts to keep the XI Corps supplied with food, forage and ammunition in mid-December 1862. With his teamsters struggling valiantly to keep their wagons and animals moving along the mud-choked roads through Fairfax and Prince William Counties, LeDuc sought an alternative avenue by which to…
The movie Glory includes a scene in which Col. Robert Gould Shaw confronts a group of condescending, well-fed quartermasters sitting in a warm warehouse, overflowing with supplies, in an attempt to procure shoes for his men. While I cannot speak to the accuracy of this particular image as regards Colonel Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts,…
