As Grant planned to get to the vital crossroads at Spotsylvania before Lee’s army could, Lee met the challenge. He sensed what Grant was thinking, and he was sure of the strategy the Union’s new commander would put in place. Lee sent Jeb Stuart’s cavalry to delay the advancing Federals at Todd’s Tavern, which gave his infantry time to go by back roads to reach the courthouse before the Union army got there.
Read the entire article in the May 22nd issue of the Express.
The annual 8th grade trip to visit Washington D. C. is always a much-anticipated and exciting time for the young students at Mechanicville Junior/Senior High School. They get to visit the renowned sites and experience the aura of this magnificent area where so much history has happened and is still happening today.
The trip was coordinated by 8th grade math teacher Mara Sweeter. It took the boys and girls to the Baltimore Aquarium and a Washington Nationals baseball game. They visited all the major monuments, took a trolley ride and narrated tour of Arlington National Cemetery, toured the Smithsonian Museums and delighted in the sights at the National Zoo.
Read the entire article in the May 22 issue of the Express.
When Ulysses S Grant arrived at the encampment of the Army of the Potomac north of the Rapidan River in Virginia in May of 1864, he was eyed by the veteran soldiers now under his command with a degree of curiosity. One officer, seeing the new supreme commander of all Union forces for the first time, commented that he was “stumpy, unmilitary, slouchy.” Indeed, he was a short man, not stately in demeanor, and he tended to be a bit frumpy in his attire. But the men who had faced defeat, retreat and failure time and again under more flamboyant generals noticed what many others had already noticed about Grant. Said one soldier, “We all felt that at last that the boss had arrived.”
Read the entire article in the May 15th issue of the Express.
Donna Volpe Perkins of Mechanicville and Elizabeth Close, the home and careers teacher at Stillwater Central School, are fighting the fight of their lives. Both are battling cancer. When our neighbors fight cancer, these close-knit communities of Mechanicville and Stillwater rally around to give all the love and support they can. And that love and support was palpable at the MHS gymnasium on Friday night.
It’s become a tradition here in our communities for the All Saints on the Hudson Youth Council to embrace the cause of a person in each community each year who needs financial as well as moral support by putting on a benefit basketball extravaganza.
When the results of the 2014 Boston Marathon came in, you couldn’t help but wonder at the irony of it.
Two brothers immigrated to the United States with their family in 2002 because of ethnic persecution in their homeland of Kyrgyzstan, one then a 16-year-old and the other a 9-year-old. They grew up in America, availing themselves of the chance to get an education, get a job and have a decent place to live. In 2013, the brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, blew up two bombs near the finish line at the Boston Marathon in an area crowded with spectators. Whatever supposed political or religious statement they were trying to make against their adoptive homeland, all they succeeded in doing was to kill an 8 year old child, two young women and a police officer while maiming 264 others.
Read the entire article in the May 1st edition of the Express.
“I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same.”
These words were written by 18 year old Rachel Joy Scott in 1999.
Today’s high school kids are too young to remember the feeling of horror and helplessness that gripped our nation on April 20 of that year when the news broke that two teen-age gunmen had gone on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Twelve students and one teacher died in that attack.
Read the entire article in the May 1st issue of the Express.
Although Ulysses S. Grant’s army had won a crucial victory at Vicksburg in July of 1863, taking control of trade and travel on the Mississippi River for the Union, the Confederacy had maintained control of the Trans-Mississippi region to the west of the river. They were able to continue trade through Texas and Mexico, selling cotton to the nations of Europe in exchange for guns, thereby keeping their efforts to gain their independence going.
Grant had been given control of all the Union armies in March, 1864, and he had a plan to end the War Between the States by November. He would concentrate the bulk of Union forces in the east to go after Robert E. Lee in Virginia and Joseph E. Johnston in Georgia. He would push them back and force them to give up the fight.
Read the entire article in the April 24th issue of the Express