Female reporter on Gettysburg Address gets her recognition 78 later

Mary Shaw Leader of Hanover got up early on November 19, 1863, and started off on her walk to work. Hours later, after a cold 15-mile walk, she arrived in Gettysburg to attend the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Since the Battle of Gettysburg in July, the cemetery had been laid out and the remains of the soldiers killed in the battle had been reinterred. She, along with hundreds of other people, stood through U.S. statesman Edward Everett’s two-hour-long speech and President Abraham Lincoln’s less-than-three-minute speech. Eyewitness accounts of Lincoln’s speech, which would become known as “The Gettysburg Address”, have said that initial reaction to it was mixed. Historian Shelby Foote has said that applause was “barely polite.” Sarah Cooke Myers, who attended the speech, recalled in 1931, “There was no applause when he stopped speaking.” However, the New Read more…

Excerpt from "The Last to Fall"

Here is the preface from my upcoming book, “The Last to Fall: The 1922 Marine March, Battles, & Deaths at Gettysburg.” It is due out in early April. Confederate M1917 tanks lumber across the fields, moving on the Union position behind a stone wall on Cemetery Ridge in Gettysburg, Pa. The Union soldiers fire machine guns not so much at the massive metal vehicles approaching them, but at the Confederate soldiers using the tanks as cover in order to make their way across the open ground. In the face of an unstoppable weapon, the Union soldiers begin falling back. Hearing loud buzzing sounds from above, the Confederates stare upward as Union DeHavilland DH-4B biplanes fly out of the clouds. The airplanes level off safely out of range of the Confederate rifle fire. Then the explosions commence as the bombs rain Read more…

New museum remembering Battle of Monterey Pass in Blue Ridge Summit

As the Confederate Army retreated from Gettysburg, Pa., on July 4, 1863, they encountered Union troops in the area of Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., and a two-day battle ensued in the middle of a thunderstorm that eventually spilled over the Mason-Dixon Line into Maryland. “It is the only battle fought on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line,” said John Miller, director of the Monterey Pass Battlefield Museum in Blue Ridge Summit. While lots of books, movies and stories have focused on the importance of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, little light has been shined on how the Confederate Army made its retreat south from the battlefield through enemy troops with weary men. The Battle of Monterey Pass involved about 4,500 men with 1,300 of them winding up as Union prisoners and 43 soldiers being killed, wounded or missing. Major Charles Read more…

The "Last to Fall" is now available for pre-order

It can be said that the last deaths at the Battle of Gettysburg were two marines who fell from the sky in an airplane in 1922. Confused? Are you starting to type a comment to tell me that the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in 1863 and there weren’t any marines there? You would be right on both counts. However, during the first week of July 1922, nearly a quarter of the U.S. Marine Corps re-enacted Pickett’s Charge in a historical way and also using modern equipment, such as tanks and airplanes. Think about that for a second. There’s a whole sub-genre of science fiction based on alternative history. One of the standards of the genre is Harry Turtledove’s “Guns of the South.” In it, time travelers give the Confederacy Uzis to use in their Civil War battles. That is Read more…

Moby Dick and Gettysburg

I was doing some research for my local history column in the Gettysburg Times last week and stumbled on this poem. It had nothing to do with my topic. I wasn’t writing about the Battle of Gettysburg and I’m not a big fan of poetry. What caught my attention is who wrote the poem. Herman Melville. For those who don’t know he’s the man who wrote Moby Dick. Given Melville’s sea-faring background, I didn’t picture him in relation to the Civil War. Melville didn’t fight in the war, but it influenced him as it must have anyone alive at that time. The poem is his version of Pickett’s Charge, the Confederate Army’s last-ditch effort to win the Battle of Gettysburg. So here’s the poem.   Gettysburg O Pride of the days in prime of the months Now trebled in great Read more…

Stepping outside my comfort zone

I am still trying to get my head around an interview I conducted this afternoon. It was the first of what will probably be many as I start working on a biography of a WWII veteran. There’s so much information to take in and digest that it’s overwhelming me at the moment. I need to digest what he told me and start to shape how I want to present his story. I’m looking at a few different directions that don’t seem like they would connect—World War II, Civil War, Art. Yet, they all do connect with this man. I want to do this man’s story justice. I think it is pretty interesting. This is the first time that I’ve worked on a true biography. Saving Shallmar was sort of a biography about a coal town. This book will be a Read more…

Radio interview about Civil War nursing

Here’s a radio interview I did about my book, Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity Work as Civil War Nurses”. I’ve done a few of these over the years. I always wonder if I’ll have enough to say, but then I get talking about subjects that I enjoy and it’s easy to keep going. In this case, I shared some of the stories about the Daughters of Charity, who were the only trained nurses in the country at the start of the Civil War. They were allowed to cross the border between North and South early in war because both governments trusted them and their services were needed. My part of the show starts around the 20 minute mark. http://reasonablycatholic.com/2014/09/02/battlefield-angels-civil-war-wounded-on-the-north-and-south-relied-on-the-daughters-of-charity/

The C&O Canal during the Civil War

While the Mason-Dixon Line being the dividing line between the North and the South, an argument could be made that the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was the dividing line between the Union and Confederacy. Running alongside the Potomac River as it does, Virginia was directly south of the canal and Maryland was to the north. Whenever you read about an army crossing the Potomac River, it also had to cross the canal. The unlucky location meant that the canal was vulnerable to destruction by both the Union and Confederate armies “In some instances, battles were fought so close to the canal that the company’s property was hurriedly made into hospitals and morgues,” Elizabeth Kytle wrote in Home on the Canal. The canal boats were considered military targets and Confederate soldiers made a habit of commandeering them at the start of Read more…

Cover art for "Lock Ready"

Here’s the cover art for my new historical novel that coming out next month. Lock Ready is my first historical novel in seven years. It’s also been 10 years since I wrote my last Canawlers novel. Lock Ready once again return to the Civil War and the Fitzgerald Family. The war has split them up. Although George Fitzgerald has returned from the war, his sister Elizabeth Fitzgerald has chosen to remain in Washington to volunteer as a nurse. The ex-Confederate spy, David Windover, has given up on his dream of being with Alice Fitzgerald and is trying to move on with his life in Cumberland, Md. Alice and her sons continue to haul coal along the 184.5-mile-long C&O Canal. It is dangerous work, though, during war time because the canal runs along the Potomac River and between the North and Read more…

First draft of "Lock Ready!" complete

I finished the first draft of my latest historical novel and sent it off to my beta readers. It was a relief to have the project finished, at least this first step. I’m surprised it has taken me so long to finish it. “Lock Ready!” is the third book in the Canawlers series. The second book came out in 2003 so it has been 10 years. Wow! Typing that made me realize just how long it has been. It’s not that I’ve haven’t written other things in the interim, but I’ve known the title of the third book in the series since probably 2004. I’ve even had bits and pieces of the story written. Pulling it all together had escaped me, though. Now, I think I’ve finally got it. “Lock Ready!” continues to follow the Fitzgerald family as they boat Read more…