It’s that time of year again, when we are on election overload with gaudy signs blotting the roadsides, mailers and seemingly non-stop TV spots either extolling the virtues of the candidates or letting us know how dishonest and corrupt they are. If we can believe everything we’re hearing and reading in these negative ads, we are in a whole lot of trouble.
Read the entire article in the Oct. 30th issue of the Express.
Union General Philip Sheridan had been chosen to lead the Army of the Shenandoah in an effort to sever the lifeline sustaining the south, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, as General Ulysses S Grant put a stranglehold on the Confederacy with the siege of Petersburg and General William T. Sherman closed off Atlanta. In September of 1864, Sheridan had won two major battles at Winchester and Fisher’s Hill.
Read the entire article in the October 16th edition of the Express.
The Union’s Army of the Potomac had suffered a terrible loss of men in May, 1864 in battles at The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse, but General Ulysses S. Grant was committed to bringing the bloody and costly War Between the States to an end before the year ended. The Confederates had suffered considerable losses as well. Grant’s plan to prevent Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia from being reinforced as Grant moved his troops toward Richmond was to have diversions in other places. Union General Franz Sigel had fought forces under Confederate General John Breckinridge at New Market in the Shenandoah Valley in mid-May. Greatly outnumbered, Breckinridge had called up cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, some of them boys as young as 15, and most of whom were killed or wounded. But they defeated Sigel.
Read the entire article in the June 19th issue of the Express.