Yankees: October 2008 Archives

An image made popular in a later war.

Next Tuesday, November 4, is Election Day. I have exercised my right to vote in nearly every election since I was 18 and in college at Miami of Ohio, missing only a few years when I was unexpectedly on the road and could not cast an absentee ballot or when I was ill. As Americans, I believe it is our civic duty to have our voice heard in the government, and it is a privilege that some in this world do not share.

The presidential election of 1864 occurred during the heart of the Civil War. A string of late summer / autumn victories by the Union army cemented President Lincoln's reelection over the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, George B. McClellan. Little Mac's influence and popularity among the troops had waned, and Lincoln won a solid majority of the military vote, including that of the 24th Michigan of the famed Iron Brigade, a regiment that fought at the Battle of Gettysburg.

In a recent post, I mentioned the fact that Company G of the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves was raised in York County in 1861 and fought the following year at Antietam. Yesterday at the York Borders store, I picked up a small book by Mark Nesbitt entitled The Gettysburg Dairies: War Journals of Two American Adversaries, chronicling the daily events of two soldiers in the Gettysburg Campaign -- one Union, one Confederate. This has been previously published as 35 Days to Gettysburg. I read it on an airplane flight yesterday and was pleased to discover that one of the two adversaries is from a soldier in Company H of the 12th. The contrast between his movements and those of a Georgian in Benning's Brigade is quite interesting.

Confederate artillery from the high ground along the Hagerstown Pike near Dunker Church helped repulse the early morning attack of the Union I Corps, which included a company of York Countians serving in the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves.

The Battle of Antietam has been termed "America's Bloodiest Day," with more than 22,000 American casualties falling on September 17, 1862. More Americans fell that day than at D-Day, any single day of World Wars I or II, any day during Viet Nam, or any other day in any war in the country's history. Among those men to fall during the savage encounter at Antietam were some locals from York County, Pennsylvania.

The monument to the 32nd Massachusetts Infantry at the Loop on the Gettysburg National Military Park.

The men of the 32nd Massachusetts Infantry had been on the road for more than two weeks by the end of June, 1863. They had steadily tramped northward in alternating period of persistent downpours and intense sunshine. Men had dropped from the ranks suffering from heat exhaustion, sunstroke, badly blistered feet, and fatigue. Many hoped they would get some much needed rest and refreshment once they crossed the Mason-Dixon Line into south-central Pennsylvania.

Such would not be the case, however...