After the Battle of Antietam, the Union Army took time to lick its wounds.  President Lincoln and many in the Washington command structure champed at the bit and wanted McClellan and the army in pursuit of the Confederates to follow up on the victory.  McClellan, though, stood by his decision to rest his battered forces and regroup.

The men of the 19^th Indiana and the Iron Brigade rejoiced at the break.  They’d been roughly handled in their first three battles, and their numbers depleted drastically.  Immediately after the battle the unit camped on the battlefield near the Dunker Church, their objective the morning of the battle.  As the fortunate began to trickle in from the hospital, the survivors walked the fields, burying the dead men and feeding huge bonfires to burn the dead horses and mules; inky black smoke towered skywards for weeks afterwards while Gardner’s photographers walked the battlefield and photographed the carnage.

As they sat in camp, Continue Reading »

I’d lived in Hoboken for a half-dozen years before I realized that Stevens Institute of Technology, right down the road from where we live, has a collection of original USS Monitor drawings.  It took a bit longer for me to get it together and query the school about visiting to view the plans.  Since then I’ve been going through their original letters and log books on the Stevens Battery, looking for elusive drawings of that cursed ship.

Yesterday, though, it was back to the USS Monitor, as I helped staff, students, and another volunteer, pull all of the drawings and begin photographing them.  Our photos are mere reminders of what is there, and their present condition, before they are to be packed up and sent to the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, VA, for full digitizing, so that others can see what is there.  And there are some amazing items: several drawings done in pencil by Ericsson himself, two plans that were obviously used in the machinist shop as they’re covered with fingerprints and spots of oil and dirt, and two color inked drawings of what appear to be Swedish gunboat prototypes that Ericsson designed and drew.

I’m really looking forward to finishing up the project and getting the plans to the Mariner’s, and I’m really hoping we’ll find some more cool stuff in the process.

Wars are about attrition.  They start out with patriotic slogans, promises to protect those who can’t protect themselves, or the notion of righting horrific wrongs, but the series of battles themselves come down to attrition: each side kills as many of the other side until one has lost too many lives or they’ve expended all of their resources in the contest, and they then surrender.  That’s it, and it’s rarely more evident than in the Civil War (although World War I has my vote for the most effective campaign to thin humanity’s population), and there’s no greater monument to the loss of life in the Civil War than the Battle of Antietam.

Following the Battle of South Mountain, Union General McClellan had the Confederate armies on the run.  Continue Reading »

The Battle of South Mountain is obscured and ignored by history, so much so that it’s difficult to write about it.  The reason to bring it up in discussion of the Iron Brigade is that they earned their permanent moniker during the battle.  While that happened, men fought there, died there.  No small skirmish — large portions of both the Union and Confederate armies engaged throughout the day of September 14^th in and around the three mountain passes named Fox’s, Crampton’s and Turner’s gap – the battle claimed over 2300 Union and 2600 Confederate casualties.

Unlike Brawner’s Farm, Antietam, or Gettysburg, Continue Reading »

Yesterday evening, August 28^th, I sat on our deck in Hoboken, New Jersey, right before sunset.  I watched the sun sink below the horizon and thought about what was kicking off down in Virginia, 150 years ago.  The battle at Brawner Farm began just before sunset, at about 6 p.m. in 1862, but now with time zones and other factors, it was nearly 8 p.m. here by the time the sky had turned to a gradient of orange upwards to dark blue, and everyday objects replaced their hard lines with shadows.

Brawner Farm was the first battle for the Union unit known as The Iron Brigade, a unit I’ve developed a particular fondness for.  They didn’t have that name 150 years ago at Brawner Farm, though, not yet.  They’d earn that at the battle of South Mountain in less than a month.  On August 28^th, they were known as the Black Hats.  The unit was made up of entirely “western” soldiers, men from Wisconsin and Indiana; the only brigade in the eastern theater to be made up so.  In order to further distinguish them, their commander John Gibbon outfit them in the regular army uniform of tall black hats, long blue frock coats, and even dress leggings.  Imagine going into battle wearing that.

The unit was formed in late 1861, Continue Reading »

This past Sunday marked the 200^th anniversary of USS Constitution’s victory over the British frigate HMS Guerriere.  During the battle Constitution earned her nickname “Old Ironsides” when enemy cannonballs bounced off of her oak hull.

In honor of the event, the old ship sailed under her own sail power again on Sunday, making it only the second time she has done so in the past 116 years.  It takes a lot of upkeep to keep a modern boat in good sailing shape, but make that boat 200+ years old, construct her of wood, and soak that wood in water for two centuries, and you can imagine how much of an achievement it was to get the old girl underway once more.

USS Constitution and her battle with the Guerriere was one of those major naval milestones for the United States (much like USS Monitor’s encounter with CSS Virginia during the Civil War), and after a visit to the ship herself in Boston when I was a child, it was a major formative milestone for me as well.  Continue Reading »

When I was in the sixth grade and at a book fair, I chose a book based on its cover: a listing ship ablaze, black smoke in the sky, aircraft hurtling overhead. It intrigued me, to say the least. I didn’t realize it then, but I’d just selected my first book of many about WWII in the Pacific.  That book wasn’t about Pearl Harbor, and I’ve never been a big student of that particular battle for several reasons, but I’ve always known the Arizona Memorial was one of the few places that I could “be where it happened” for a WWII naval battle. And so, for most of my adult life — and for a good chunk of my childhood — I’ve looked forward to visiting the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor.

We got to the memorial visitor’s center early, and even at 8 a.m., Continue Reading »

In a state-of-the-art museum and conservation lab in Newport News, Virginia, sit large tanks of fresh water that hold large rusting chunks of iron that are over 150 years old.  150 years isn’t a long time for some museum artifacts; in Manhattan one can visit the Metropolitan Museum and see Buddhist statues over 500 years old, then walk several yards down the hall and see mummies thousands of years old.  But the significance of the rusted iron from USS Monitor that rests in The Mariner’s Museum in Virginia isn’t in its age; it’s in the revolution that it brought.

The battle between USS Monitor and CSS Virginia 150 years ago today is one of the few naval battles, Continue Reading »

I wouldn’t say being in Hawaii particularly reminded me of my Navy days, but there were triggers, prompts to my memory of how, once upon a time, I sailed in large gray aluminum and steel warships, not unlike those that were stationed nearby at Pearl Harbor.  But it wasn’t the proximity of those warships that brought back my Navy days.  It was the Fruit Loops.

I hadn’t had them in years, but at the breakfast buffet our first morning in Waikiki, there they were.  In one of those tall clear glass cylinders that look like a gumball machine.  You turn a knob and out comes the sweet, crispy goodness inside.

As I munched on my cereal and my wife gave me the “really, you’re eating that?” look,  I was reminded Continue Reading »

I’d never really thought about wedding rings much before.  But, after getting engaged, it dawned on me that I might need one.  Tradition and all that.  I’ve had friends that had custom made items that look like the One Ring from “The Lord of the Rings” books, friends who wear family heirlooms, and others who have bought antique jewelry to suit their purposes.  I came to realize fairly quickly that I wanted something historical to wear, something with some time behind it.  I’ve always been interested in what once-was, and at the time of my shopping for a ring, I was well into my research period for a Civil War novel.  I’d been spending a lot of time in Gettysburg.

148 years ago this past Saturday, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address to officially dedicate the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA, four months after the famous battle of 1863.  The speech is noteworthy both for its historical significance, as well as its literary importance; very rarely have so few words said so much.

Edward Everett was the first to speak at the dedication and spoke for nearly two hours, and so, when Lincoln then stood to deliver his address, the photographers were prepared for another long presentation.  They were caught off guard when Lincoln delivered his under-three hundred work piece in mere minutes.  As such, there is only one known photo of Lincoln during the ceremony, shown below.  Lincoln is highlighted in the very center, just sitting down after speaking.

My interest in the photo and the speech, for this post, though, is not on Lincoln.  See the small tree in the background of the photo?  That tree still stands in the cemetery in Gettysburg.  In 2008 a storm brought down a large portion of it (it still survives, though, and is even showing new growth), and I was able to acquire part of it (Thanks, Bill!).  Through a friend’s recommendation, I found Minter & Richter Designs on Etsy.  A few emails were exchanged, I sent them the wood sample, and after various discussions and a few weeks time, they delivered my bronze-sheathed ring, with an inlay of wood from that tree that watched Lincoln speak 148 years.

The ring has developed a nice patina since the above photo was taken, and the bronze blends very well with the wood inlay.  I’ve since moved on to other projects and and haven’t had the time to visit Gettysburg for the past two years, but it is nice to carry with me a piece of such a momentous historical event.  Oh, and it’s nice to be married, too.