Reprise: William Tatum Wofford

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

Wofford’s Brigade cooperated with the Mississippi Brigade in the attack on Fort Sanders, as it had on the second day at Gettysburg five months earlier.

But brigade commander William Tatum Wofford was absent, home in Georgia attending the unexpected funeral of a beloved daughter who had died of diphtheria.

Originally the colonel of what would become the Eighteenth Georgia Infantry Regiment, Wofford had the dubious distinction of surrendering the last unit of southern troops east of the Mississippi, on May 12, 1865, in Resaca, Georgia.

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One in ten deaths in the Civil War?

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

Newly revised statistical measure of the Civil War has the numbers of male deaths and consequent widows and orphans much higher than previously believed.

“Even as Civil War history has gone through several cycles of revision, one thing has remained fixed: the number of dead. Since about 1900, historians and the general public have assumed that 618,222 men died on both sides. That number is probably a significant undercount, however. New estimates, based on Census data, indicate that the death toll was approximately 750,000, and may have been as high as 850,000.”

Adjusted for today’s population that would be about seven and a half million.

Go here for the whole story. And more here on YouTube.

In Houston, in 1867, Confederate veterans famously organized a home for 250 orphans of deceased Confederate soldiers.

Via The Civil War Gazette.

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Blaz’d the helmet of Navarre

Posted on January 12, 2012 by

In the novel, 13th Mississippi private Romy Lowe adds to his mess’s reminesence of the death of General Barksdale at Gettysburg by declaiming from Thomas Babington MacCauley’s poem “Ivry”:

“A thousand spurs are striking deep; a thousand spears in rest,

“A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;

“And in they burst, and on they rush’d, while, like a guiding star,

“Amidst the thickest carnage blaz’d the helmet of Navarre.”

The complete poem, which was popular before the war and known to most educated people, as Romy was, is here.

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Kershaw’s Brigade

Posted on January 5, 2012 by

Kerhsaw’s Brigade of South Carolinians didn’t actually fight in the Fort Sanders attack. They were held in reserve.

But they provided plenty of sharpshooting (i.e. snipers) during the weeks-long runup to the battle. And there’s a dandy bio about them here.

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WordPress 2011 summary

Posted on December 31, 2011 by

“A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.”

Heh. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Read it all here, and have a good 2012.

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Gay Street 1910

Posted on December 28, 2011 by

Knoxville’s Gay Street, fifty-one years after it was the scene of Rebel and Union recruiting, as recalled by the novel’s Parthenia Leila Ellis.

Via Instapundit.

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Reprise: The LeMat revolver

Posted on December 18, 2011 by

The revolver which the historical Lt. Col. Alfred George Washington O’Brien pointed at the novel’s fictional Sergeant Timothy Chase’s nose was a curious one.

The LeMat,first made in New Orleans in 1856, had two barrels: the upper one was a smoothbore normally reserved for a .36 or .42 caliber ball, and the one below it was a 20-gauge shotgun.

Hence the popular Southern weapon’s apt nickname: The “grapeshot revolver.” O’Brien’s was a late-model .44 caliber. Cabela’s sells a nine shot, rifled .44 caliber working reproduction. And there are several videos of loading and firing the weapon here.

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