Monthly Archives: February 2012

General Humphreys’ honorable mention

General Benjamin Grubb Humphreys, commander of the Mississippi Brigade after the death at Gettysburg of its fiery brigadier General William Barksdale, wasn’t as aggressive as his predecessor. In fact, in the first big battle of his command, Chickamauga, Humphreys played … Continue reading

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Colors of the 79th New York

Battle banner of the 79th New York Cameron Highlanders, principal defenders of the Northwest Bastion of Fort Sanders.

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Reprise: Federal troops originally fought only for the Union

In the novel, Sergeant Timothy Chase uses his eyewitness experience of the Monitor and Merrimack battle of 1862 as an entertaining dramatic narrative to deflect the anger some other federal troops occasionally turned on him and his comrades of the … Continue reading

Posted in "Knoxville 1863", The Sesquicentennial, Twenty-Ninth Massachusetts, USS Monitor | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Embalming the dead

The novel’s fictional Sergeant Timothy Chase of the 29th Massachusettes Infantry Regiment was detailed to see to the embalming and transportation of the regiment’s dead after the battle of Fort Sanders. Chase’s “scientific curiosity” led him to closely inspect the … Continue reading

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