H. T. KEIRSEY Pictured is Private Hiram Taylor Kersey of Cannon County, Tennessee who was only thirteen years old in May of 1861 when he enlisted in Company A of Colonel John Savage’s 16th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment. A mere boy, Kersey was the youngest son of the widow Margaret (Peggy) Kersey. His older brother…
Few ties are as strong as the military bands of brotherhood. The Gist of the Matter Two soldiers, close friends for years, had the unlikely distinction of meeting (sort of) for the last time at Gettysburg. One fought for the Union, one for the Confederacy. One died in battle. The other nearly became President of…
Horace Porter, Brevet Brigadier General, U.S.A. A little before noon on the 7th of April, 1865, General Grant, with his staff, rode into the little village of Farmville, on the south side of the Appomattox River, a town that will be memorable in history as the place where he opened the correspondence with Lee which…
Little Rock, Ark., 19th Dec., ’49. My dear, dear wife: I can hardly express to you the happiness I feel at being again on dry land and able to address you. And yet it will appear strange that I can be happy when away from my Elisa, my wife. Well, my dear wife, I am…
John Lincoln “Johnny” Clem (1851-1937) Born in Newark, Ohio, 13 Aug. 1851, Clem ran away from home in May 1861 to join the army and found the army was not interested in 9-year-old boys. When he applied to the commander of the 3d Ohio Regiment, the officer said he “wasn’t enlisting infants,” and turned him…
When Grant broke his lines around Petersburg on April 2nd and Lee put his army into retreat, his plan was to keep ahead of the Federals and join Joseph Johnston’s army in North Carolina. He was very low on supplies, so he would have to resupply his army along the way. He pushed his men…
July 13, 1864, At the Battle of the Crater, the Union’s ingenious attempt to break the Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia, by blowing up a tunnel that had been dug under the Rebel trenches fails. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly planned Yankee attack wasted the effort and the…
On July 6, 1865 the convicted assassins of President Abraham Lincoln, Payne, David Herold, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt, languish in their cells at the Washington Arsenal in Washington, DC. They have been sentenced to die, but they do not know when. At midday their uncertainty is dispelled as they are informed that the next…
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest .. Suffers his biggest defeat when Union General Andrew J. Smith routs his force in Tupelo, Mississippi. The battle came just a month after the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, Mississippi, in which Forrest engineered a brilliant victory over a larger Union force from Memphis that was designed to keep him…
Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and 272 of his troops are killed in an assault on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. Shaw was commander of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, perhaps the most famous regiment of African-American troops during the war. Fort Wagner stood on Morris Island, guarding the approach to Charleston harbor. It was…
