Unknown to the family who built their homestead at the time, the Mount Joseph Plantation would serve as a pivotal intersection for supply routes during the American Revolution. Situated on the western banks of the Congaree River, the site became valuable for its access to the waterways connected Charleston to the Carolina interior. It would be here, at the site of the plantation house owned by the Motte family, the British would capture, occupy, and hold as a supply depot during the hotly contested fighting in South Carolina.
Forts played important roles in American history from the moment the Spanish, French, and English settlers landed in North America. One of the first things that these settlers did was to build a palisade fort. Forts existed in the American colonies throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to defend seaports from foreign navies and to defend the frontier from Native American attacks. They often played critical roles in the frontier warfare of the French and Indian War between 1754 and 1763. When fighting broke out in 1775 between the British empire and the American colonists, many of these forts immediately became important military targets.
Following the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, General Stonewall Jackson established his winter headquarters at Moss Neck Manor, a stately plantation home located twelve miles east of the city.
Forty-one-year-old Robert Selden Garnett was a newly minted brigadier general in the Confederate army when he was sent to western Virginia in June 1861 to command the Department of Northwestern Virginia.
The Christmas that Americans celebrate today seems like a timeless weaving of custom and feeling beyond the reach of history. Yet the familiar mix of carols, cards, presents, trees, multiplicities of Santas and holiday neuroses that have come to define December 25th in the United States is little more than a hundred years old.
Quakers in the Civil War seems like an inherently contradictory idea; the Society of Friends practices pacifism and nonviolence, and, for many, putting money or resources toward war efforts goes against the faith.
The American Revolutionary War, also known as the American War of Independence was fought between Great Britain and the thirteen British colonies between the years 1775 and 1783. The mutinous colonists declared themselves no longer allied with the crown and kicked off an eight year struggle against the political and economic policies of the British Empire. The Declaration of Independence was signed during the revolution in 1776 and declared the thirteen colonies, now to be separately chartered and governed, the United States of America.
It can be difficult to relate to the men and women of the Civil War era. Despite the extraordinarily different circumstances in which they found themselves, however, we can connect with our forebears in traditions such as the celebration of Christmas.
Confederate troops were rushed by rail to confront the Union army led by Brigadier General Irwin McDowell at Bull Run. Among those who rode by rail was a brigade under an eccentric professor from Virginia Military Institute. That brigade delivered the battle’s knockout blow and its general, Brigadier General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, would gain his sobriquet “Stonewall”.
As the morning sun burned through the fog along the New Market Road about eight miles southeast of Richmond on the autumn morning of September 29, 1864, it revealed a scene of carnage and human wreckage. Dead infantrymen in coats that were a familiar shade of Union blue covered the slopes before New Market Heights. But most of the faces of the dead and maimed were black.
The author of the children's poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was persistent in arguing that establishing the national November holiday could help heal wounds from the Civil War.
The Mayflower Compact is the agreement between the 41 male passengers of the ship Mayflower establishing the form of government of the Plymouth Colony (1620-1691 CE), signed on 11 November 1620 CE off the coast of present-day Massachusetts, USA.
