Winter is setting in following decisive summer Union victories at Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) and Vicksburg (Mississippi) and a series of major victories in Tennessee during the autumn months. While far from settled, momentum now resides with the United States as armies North and South settle into winter camps. On the home front, Kentuckians remain caught between…
A large crowd assembles in the Masonic Hall in Savannah, Georgia to hear the reading of an essay written by local hero and popular orator George Anderson Gordon, a colonel in the 63rd Georgia Regiment. Gordon’s regiment is charged with defending the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, whose waterways are now largely blockaded by the…
In churches throughout both nations, soldier wives worship and wonder–wonder if their husbands will one day return safely. Outside, the weather is cold, warning all of impending winter. Philadelphia is “very cold and dreary,” relates Emilie Davis, an African-American young woman who today attends church services. Her concerns are for the many blacks for whom…