Tag Archives: civil war

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This Month in the Civil War; Grant Takes Charge – by Sandy McBride

Through the winter of 1864, after the stalemate at Mine Run in December, the Union’s Army of the Potomac and the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia hunkered down in winter camp on opposite sides of the Rapidan River in Virginia.  A Federal move on Florida had met with failure in February, as had a cavalry raid on Richmond.  A campaign to traverse the Red River in Louisiana to cut off the flow of arms and goods from Europe to the Confederacy by way of Texas was getting off to a slow start, and an attempt by General William Tecumseh Sherman to link up with General William Sooy Smith and march troops from Meridian, Mississippi to Selma, Alabama had met with failure when Smith’s men were defeated by Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry in an engagement at Okolona.  Sherman burned the city of Meridian and returned to Vicksburg.

 

Full article in the March 13th edition of the Express.

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Andersonville Part II – by Sandy McBride

By midsummer of 1864, the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia, which had begun accepting inmates in February, had become a hellhole.  In August, the population of the prison, which was originally intended to house 10,000 prisoners, swelled to 33,000. The men were housed in tents, holes in the ground or rude huts.  They were poorly fed and had no sanitary facilities.  With the influx of new prisoners daily, the situation was becoming unbearable. Men were dying at the rate of 100 per day.

 

The entire article is in the 02-06 issue of the Express.

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This Month in the Civil War: Andersonville – by Sandy McBride

Here in February of 2014, I will step away from my established pattern of “this Month in the Civil War” in order to tell the story of Andersonville.

My interest in the history of Andersonville Prison in Georgia was piqued long ago.  As a teenager, I read the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Andersonville” by MacKinlay Kantor. My father, noticing the book, commented that his mother had relatives who died there, but that was all he knew. It would be many years before I learned the story of the Blair brothers, Hiram, David and Joseph, great-uncles of my grandmother, Gladys Holden Hosley, and many more years before I would finally be able to make the trip to the site of the prison where David and Joseph died and the cemetery where they are buried.

The entire article is in the January 30th issue of the Express

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The Express Newspaper – January 30th, 2014

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This Month in the Civil War – by Sandy McBride

As the War Between the States entered its fourth calendar year, both sides in this costly conflict were faced with shortages of manpower.  Casualties, both from combat and sickness, had been massive for both sides.

With civil war looming in 1861, the rebellious Confederate States of America had asked the men with whom they were building their armies to volunteer for a twelve-month commitment.  But in reality, this would mean that in the spring of 1862, the Confederate army could have conceivably disappeared while the rebellious southern states still struggled to become a separate nation.

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Civil War and Christmas – by Sandy McBride

1863 had been a hard year in the War Between the States.  Men had fought and died in places the names of which will never be forgotten . . . Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, Chickamauga, Chattanooga.  The tide of war throughout the bloody year had ebbed and flowed both ways, yet neither side seemed willing to give it up.

In the final days of November, General George Gordon Meade, commander of the Union’s Army of the Potomac, which had been victorious at Gettysburg, would have one more crack at the seemingly indomitable General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.  But as the two sides faced off along the Rapidan River in Virginia, Meade’s advance stalled, giving Lee time to prepare his defenses.  After skirmishes in the area around Mine Run at New Hope Church and Payne’s Farm, Meade thought better of it all. On December 2 he pulled back his forces before the skirmishes could lead to yet another full-scale bloodbath.  The fall campaign would come to an end without another devastating round of casualties.

The entire article is in the Dec. 19th issue of the Express.

 

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Battle of Chattanooga – By Sandy McBride

Staggering losses by both sides in the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia in September of 1863 had the leaders of both the United States of America and the rebellious Confederate States of America searching for answers.  127,000 men had converged on the valley of the Chickamauga River in the latter days of September in 1863, and more than 34,000 of them had been killed, wounded, captured or just gone missing.  It was the bloodiest conflict yet in a bloody civil war.

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