By Gary Farrow, Danville Historical Society
September brought news about how the Union dealt with its deserters. Two men on opposite sides, whose twisted souls were fired earlier in the cauldron that was the Kansas-Missouri Border War, led their “troops” on a mission of murdering, ransacking and plundering non-combatants. The battle for Eastern Tennessee — Northern Georgia continued to heave to and fro.
Military Expectations
Headquarters Army of the Potomac Aug 29 – The execution of substitute deserters sentenced to death in General Orders No. 84 took place today. More than ordinary interest was exhibited on the execution of military law, and it is estimated that not less than 25,000 persons were present…The ground was selected, and every arrangement so complete that no accidents occurred to mar the solemnity of the proceedings….
The criminals were sitting upon their respective coffins with yawning graves in their rear…. At the order to fire, 86 muskets were discharged, and instant death was announced by the Surgeons in attendance as a result. The bodies were then placed in their respective graves, and the clergy performed the last religious rites over the deceased.
by Mark Moore, Historian and Archivist, Danville Historical Society
1863. The third year of the war. The music exalting medal-bedecked glory and the bloodless romance of a quick 90-day war had faded long ago. In its place was endless, mindless slogging–the cleaning of weapons, large and small, marching with no discernible purpose—the killing and dying with an equally pointless objective.
This proved to be the rule in the war in the west. The bloodletting at Fredericksburg and Antietam, to name two, proved early on that there would be no quick, dramatic, glittering northern victories. Chancellorsville had shown the superiority of some southern commanding generals so Lincoln would have to engage on a continuous revolving door of command for the Army of the Potomac replacing the useless Major General Joe Hooker with fish-eyed Pennsylvanian George Meade, known to his troops as Old Snapping Turtle. Confederate General Robert E. Lee, on other hand, lost his second-in-command, his boldest tactician and architect of the victory at Chancellorsville, “Stonewall” Jackson, to the gunfire of his own troops in the evening twilight.
By Gary Farrow, Danville Historical Society
Tensions between national security and civil liberties are not an unfamiliar topic to modern day readers. So what led to a former US Congressman from Ohio and potential candidate for governor to be rousted out of his house at 2:30 AM on May 5, 1863 and arrested by the federal troops?
Although Clement Vallandigham had lost his reelection bid for the House the prior year, he was still a leading light for the “Copperheads,” the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party. He had run afoul of Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s mid-April “General Order Number 38,” which stated that the “habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy would not be tolerated in the Military District of Ohio.” Offenders would be subject to execution.
By Patty Conly, President of the Danville Historical Society
For a video of the event, produced by Kingdom Access, click here.
Despite a spectacular spring day in the Northeast Kingdom and a vast array of events in competition, a large crowd was on hand at St. Johnsbury Academy’s Fuller Hall Saturday evening May 4, for a screening of the recent film Lincoln. This free public event was hosted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who began the evening by introducing three students from the Thaddeus Stevens School in Lyndonville. The students spoke eloquently, giving a brief summary of the life and times of Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens and the period during the Civil War.
Senator Sanders told the audience how he became intrigued with the life and career of Thaddeus Stevens, particularly after his first viewing of the movie. It became apparent to him that Stevens was a much more monumental figure in the political issues of the period during the Civil War, of which he was previously unaware. He found it amazing that a constituent who was born, raised and educated in two very small towns in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, as well as being from a poor family, could rise to become one of the most influential and instrumental congressional representatives for the abolitionist movement. Stevens was passionate about his cause and deeply dedicated to ensuring the passage of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution to abolish slavery.
By Gary Farrow, Danville Historical Society
May 9, 1863 North Star–Radicalism
Nothing is more common now, when everything depends on a united North, than for the Radicals to fulminate their extreme abolition notions – ignoring both the Constitution and the Union. Their leaders in Congress have boldly proclaimed this sentiment. “Who,” shouted the Abolitionist Bingham, Ohio member of Congress, at the last session, “in the name of God wants the Cotton States, or any other State this side of perdition, to remain in the Union, if slavery is to continue.” Thaddeus Stevens has uttered, if possible, still more extreme sentiments. It tells the whole story. They do not want and do not mean to have the Old Union. It is a direct assault upon the loyalty of the Border States, which have furnished thousands of troops for the Federal army – of States which have ever claimed the right to regulate their own internal negro policy. But the Radicals make no distinction between those slave states which remain true to the Old Flag, and those which have fought against it so long. Were the seceded states to lay down their arms to-day, and propose a full return to loyalty and the Union, these men would say “No” to their submission. And what is more, this class of radicals has always wanted, in some way or somehow, to drive off the slave states.
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