For the past month, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, en route to the Confederate capital of Virginia, has besieged Yorktown, Virginia. McClellan’s drive to Richmond, known as the Peninsula campaign (having begun March 17), has not proceeded as planned. Caution on the part of McClellan, the logistics of moving a…
Amidst the desolation and death of war, moments of beauty remain. Today, Benjamin Johnson Lang (1837-1909) makes his debut as a conductor in Boston with the city’s first performance with orchestra of Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht. Lang is the organist of one of the most musically-talented Baptist congregations in America: the first Baptist Church of…
Fires burn brightly through the night, followed by a smoky sunrise over the town of Princeton, (present-day) West Virginia in Mercer County. (At the moment, West Virginia is in the process of official recognition as a state carved out of Virginia.) Princeton lies near the Virginia and Tennessee rail line, and is thus considered strategic…