Today in Putnam County, West Virginia–a border county in a border state–Northern and Southern forces clash in the Skirmish of Hurricane Bridge. Fortified for the winter months west of the river near Point Pleasant and the Hurricane Baptist Church are federal forces under the command of Union Captain J. W. Johnson. In recent weeks the…
Today Joseph Andrew Jackson Lightburn, a Baptist minister and boyhood friend of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, is appointed a brigadier general and ordered to report to the Army of Tennessee. He serves admirably throughout the war, afterwards retiring to spend the rest of his life serving as a minister, including at the Broad Run…
The fate of West Virginia, comprised of land carved out of the state of Virginia in a citizen-initiated process that began in June 1861 in opposition to secession, will officially be determined on March 26, at which time a popular vote is to be held on the matter of formal statehood. Excitement is in the…