“Pennsylvania Reserves” at February 24 Harrisburg Civil War Round Table

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Scott Mingus

Union Gen. Samuel W. Crawford commanded the Pennsylvania Reserves at the Battle of Gettysburg

Brigadier General Uzal Ent will speak on “The Pennsylvania Reserves in the Civil War” at the Friday, February 24, meeting of the Harrisburg Civil War Round Table. This special division, organized and equipped at state expense, fought with distinction during the Peninsula Campaign, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and part of the Overland Campaign when the three-year enlistments expired. General Ent will deliver his talk in the first person, speaking as if he was Colonel Wellington Ent, commander of the 6th Pennsylvania Reserves and the speaker’s great-great-uncle.

While serving in the United States Army for thirty-four years, General Ent saw combat with the 27th Infantry in Korea. He retired on November 1, 1980 with the rank of colonel and the following day was appointed brigadier general, Pennsylvania National Guard, retired. His awards and decorations include the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Legion of Merit, three Bronze Star medals–two for valor and one for meritorious achievement–and the Pennsylvania Distinguished Service medal.

General Ent’s writing has appeared in nineteen magazines and four encyclopedias. He has written several books, including Fighting on the Brink: Defense of the Pusan Perimeter and The Pennsylvania Reserves in the Civil War.

The Harrisburg Civil War Round Table meets at the Radisson Penn Harris Hotel & Convention Center, Camp Hill, PA, Camp Hill Bypass @ Routes 11&15. An informal reception starts at 6:00 PM, followed by dinner at 6:45. The cost of dinner is $20.00 and reservations must be made by no later than Tuesday, February 21, by calling 717-938-3706. The program begins at 8:00 PM and is free to the public.

Contact: Douglas Gibboney, HCWRT vice president, 717-243-1738

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Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Scott Mingus

Marye’s Heights, immediately west of Fredericksburg, Virginia, played an important and well publicized role in the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg. Confederate infantry and artillery posted on this rise devastated a series of charges by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Union forces. The plain across which the Yankees advanced is largely now covered with houses, businesses, and other urban growth, but much of Marye’s Heights commemorates the war years. A Federal cemetery dominates the eastern slope today.

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New book: Between War and Peace: How America Ends Its Wars

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Scott Mingus

Throughout its history, the United States of America has frequently been engaged in military warfare, against “foes, foreign and domestic.” Some of these conflicts have been uncontested victories, with the opponents signing formal peace treaties. Others have been mere cessations of hostilities or ceasefires, without any formal declaration of the end of the war itself. Some of the conflicts, like old soldiers, just faded away.

Colonel Matthew Moten, the deputy chairman of the history department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, has assembled and edited fifteen essays by leading American historians regarding various periods in the country’s history as war turned to peace. This collection offers keen insight, drawn upon primary sources and interpreted through the lens of hindsight and the consequences of decisions made during and after each war’s conclusion.

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More photos from the Fredericksburg battlefield – Howison Hill

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Scott Mingus

Howison Hill  in December 1862 provided a significant platform for Confederate artillery, including a 30-pounder Parrott Rifle, of the Army of Northern Virginia during the Battle of Fredericksburg. A wayside marker along Lee Drive in the national military park delineates the firing angles toward Union positions. Today a heavy growth of timber totally blocks the war-time view.

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Fredericksburg Battlefield – More Photos from Lee Drive

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Scott Mingus

Remnants of old Civil War earthworks line Lee Drive at the Fredericksburg battlefield in Northern Virginia. The National Park Service road follows the southern half of the nearly8-mile long Confederate line from the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg and the ensuing winter. At the extreme southern end of Lee Drive is the site of the war-time Hamilton’s Crossing. Driving north, our next stop was Prospect Hill. Now we are heading to the left of Stonewall Jackson’s line.

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Prospect Hill at Fredericksburg National Military Park

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Scott Mingus

In the fall of 1862, 150 years ago, Confederate Lt. Gen. Stonewall Jackson anchored the right of his defensive line at Fredericksburg on Prospect Hill and planted several batteries there. The 65-foot-high position dominated the plain leading down to the Rappahannock River, and provided a good artillery position, backed by a defense in depth with infantry divisions stacked in formation behind each other for almost a mile. Today much of the view toward the river is shrouded by a post-war growth of trees, but evidence of the old swampy plain remains.

The Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park comprises elements of several Civil War battles fought in 1862, 1863, and 1864, at times on the exact same ground. Among the battlefields and historic sites included in the park boundaries to different degrees are Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Second Fredericksburg, Salem Church, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House, as well as the Stonewall Jackson Shrine / death house and the impressive Ellwood and Chatham estates. Some 15,000 men died on or around these grounds, with 85,000 wounded, according to the National Park Service.

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Jubal Early’s invasion of York County PA began at Hamilton’s Crossing VA

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Scott Mingus

A late afternoon AMTRAK passenger train speeds through Hamilton’s Crossing just south of Fredericksburg, Virginia. During much of late 1862 through the spring of 1863, this ground was an important rail-head for Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Union guns across the Rappahannock River on Stafford Heights could bombard any train attempting to steam northward into the city of Fredericksburg, so the Confederates moved their supply base out to Hamilton’s Crossing, which was safely beyond the enemy artillery.

For much of that period, the veteran infantry division of Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early held this position. Early’s men departed Hamilton’s Crossing (for good as it turned out) on the evening of June 3, 1863, as they broke camp and headed west toward Culpeper. It was among the early moves of what would become the Gettysburg Campaign.

Not a single soldier that night at Hamilton’s Crossing could have guessed that their destiny would be the Battle of Gettysburg, or that they would claim the honor of capturing the largest Northern city to fall to the Confederate army in the entire Civil War — York, Pennsylvania.

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Southern Lady, Union Spy Elizabeth Van Lew to appear at York CWRT meeting

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Scott Mingus

220px-ElizabethVanLew.jpg
The York Civil War Round Table will feature living historian Suzanne Doucette portraying in first person “Elizabeth Van Lew, Civil War spy” at its monthly meeting on Wednesday, January 18, 2012.
Elizabeth Van Lew was a well-born resident of Richmond, Virginia, who built and operated an extensive spy ring for the United States during the American Civil War. Under the nose of the Confederate government, Van Lew gathered intelligence, hampered the Southern war effort, and helped scores of Union soldiers escape from Richmond prisons. A Northern sympathizer in the Confederate capital, Van Lew led what one historian called “the most productive espionage operation of the Civil War.”
Sue Doucette will portray Elizabeth Van Lew in first person and tell about her life and how events led up to her organizing a spy network for the Federal government in Richmond during the Civil War. She will relate Van Lew’s methods of gathering Confederate military information and smuggling dispatches to the Union army and her many ways of doing so safely. Also covered is her involvement in the Dahlgren affair, her placement of Mary Elizabeth Bowser in the White House of the Confederacy as a spy, and her home as a “safe house.”

Suzanne Doucette has been a Civil War living historian with her husband Cal since 2000. They reside in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Sue has presented to schools, Civil War Round Tables, the National Park Service, the David Wills House Museum, the Rupp House Museum, and various other venues. Sue belongs to the Civil War Preservation Trust, Gettysburg Civil War Round Table, and the Friends of the National Park at Gettysburg. She volunteers at the National Park Service, the Gettysburg Foundation, the David Wills House Museum, and the Rupp House Museum.
The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, in the auditorium of the York County Heritage Trust at 250 E. Market St., in downtown York, Pennsylvania.
For questions, please contact Lila Fourhman-Shaull at YCHT 717-848-1587, ext. 223.

There is no charge for admission, and the public is welcome!
Bring a friend!

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More Civil War Voices from York County being discovered

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Scott Mingus

Pvt. T. S. Mingus, Pennsylvania Home Guard Militia

One of my many motivations for studying the Civil War of York County, Pennsylvania, is for the children of the county, including my four York-born grandsons. I wanted to 1) learn as much as I could about the county’s ACW heritage (and I still very much consider myself a learner) and 2) preserve as much of the heritage and stories as possible for use by future generations.

Hence Jim McClure and I co-wrote Civil War Voices from York County, Pennsylvania: Remembering the Rebellion and the Gettysburg Campaign (2011, Colecraft Industries).  We have been gratified by the response since the book’s publication, both in terms of sales and the buzz it has created among people who have asked to submit their own stories and records.

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Hanover merchant lost record books after sending them to “safety” before Rebels came in 1863

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Scott Mingus

The above notice appeared in the October 1, 1864, edition of the Columbia Spy. It had been more than a year since the Confederate invasion of York County, Pennsylvania, during the Gettysburg Campaign, and Hanover merchant Henry M. Schmuck still had not located his missing records. Apparently someone took them from a railcar after Schmuck sent the records to safety across the Susquehanna River. Schmuck later owned a profitable coal and lumber business, Schmuck & Sons, the successor to Grove & Schmuck.

Schmuck for most of his adult life was an elder in the Reformed Church of the United States, Synod of the Potomac, and a very well respected businessman. With his business acumen, the church group elected him as their treasurer. His father Joseph Schmuck had been a preacher in the denomination and the owner/editor of one of the town’s earliest newspapers, The Guardian (Joseph died on the job at the age of 33 from overexertion from operating the old-style Franklin hand-press).

After the war, Schmuck was a director of the Hanover & York Railroad and the president of the First National Bank of Hanover. There is no record that he ever recovered his missing property.

Here is a little more on this Civil War personality from York County, Pa.

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