Wrightsville: June 2009 Archives

I will be signing copies of Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863 at the annual Wrightsville river festival on Sunday night, June 28, 2009 from 6:00 PM until 8:00 PM at the John Wright building on Front Street. This coincides with the actual burning of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge on Sunday evening, June 28, 1863. The co-author of the well received chapter on the bridge burning, Adjunct Professor Scott L. Mingus, Jr. of Harrisburg Area Community College, will also be signing the books in a special joint appearance.

Stop by and say hello!

Copyright 2007, Scott Mingus and Tom Poston, all rights reserved. Map of the June 28, 1863 skirmish of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. No reproduction without written permission.

On the late afternoon of Sunday June 28, 1863, more than 1500 Confederate soldiers under Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon of the Army of Northern Virginia marched from York, Pennsylvania, eastward through Hallam to Wrightsville on the river, a distance of some 10-11 miles. Their goal was to seize the mile-and-a-quarter-long covered bridge over the Susquehanna River, a key military target that would allow passage into Lancaster County where several important railroads could be interrupted. Defending the bridge was a motley collection of hastily trained Pennsylvania volunteer militia, invalided veteran soldiers emptied from the beds of the U.S. Army Hospital in York and their guards, a handful of active duty troops from the 87th Pennsylvania who had been badly embarrassed at the Second Battle of Winchester by these same oncoming Georgians, and three small cavalry units, one of which was a parade show group from Philadelphia.

Looking southwesterly toward the fields through which Gordon's Rebels advanced.

Gordon formed the 31st Georgia into battle line in the fields beyond the white farm and slowly advanced the veteran regiment, while two other regiments skirted to the hills north of Wrightsville in a flanking movement and three regiments performed a similar flanking march near Kreutz Creek to the south.

When Debi and I moved to this area in 2001, one of the more familiar aspects of the York-Lancaster region was the Amish and their communities. We lived for two decades in northeastern Ohio, where the Amish population rivals Lancaster County, albeit without the massive tourism and commercialization. The characteristic black, horse-drawn buggies of the Amish are a very common sight in much of Ohio, so we were quite prepared to see them (and drive on the same roads).

During the American Civil War, the Amish and their fellow Anabaptists such as the Mennonites were largely pacifists, preferring to stay away from secular politics and political movements, and the war created by regional differences within the country. Cannonball reader Jonathan Stayer, head of the reference section of the Pennsylvania State Archives, called my attention to a 2007 book that I was previously unaware of, Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War, a treatise that explores the religious minorities of this area. Jonathan wrote, "156 York Countians sought exemption from military service on grounds of conscience in 1862 (conscientious objectors), the sixth highest number in the counties of Pennsylvania. Even tiny Adams County was home to at least 129 conscientious objectors. The reason? Both counties were (and are) home to significant communities of Mennonites and Dunkards (Brethren), and to a lesser extent, Quakers. "

Authors James O. Lehman and Steven M. Nolt have written a fascinating book that examines the Amish and Mennonites of Pennsylvania and other states during the Civil War. Published by Johns Hopkins Press, this book is perhaps the first detailed study of the pacifistic perspective of the local Amish and Mennonite communities. The book is wonderfully written, flows well, and offers fresh information and a new perspective on the home front in the Civil War that is rarely (if ever) covered in other works.