The Backchat Blog

After the death of George Washington in 1799 and his wife Martha in 1802, their home, Mount Vernon, was passed down through the family.  By the late 1840’s the home was owned by John Augustine Washington and had fallen into great disrepair.  One observer...

Why did a bright, young man who was consistently at the top of his class at West Point and who was credited with rescuing the Union Army “from imminent peril” at Gettysburg in 1863, plummet to being called “a very loathsome, profane, ungentlemanly and disgusting...

Six-year-old Glenn Worthington and his family took refuge in the cellar of their home while the Battle of Monocacy raged on the fields surrounding them.  The battle, fought near Frederick, Maryland, is credited with delaying Confederate troops – led by General...

There are many recorded instances of civilian and soldier interactions during the American Civil War, but surely one of the most touching sessions was recorded by a Pennsylvania infantryman in March 1864 at Warrenton Junction, Virginia. Sergeant George P. McClelland...

Most women who actively supported the Union cause during the Civil War used the pen as their “weapon” of choice.  One notable exception to this was Harriet Tubman.  She took on the role as an armed participant in a Union raid on a site deep in Confederate territory in...

Were the actual facts not so ghastly and heart wrenching, LeRoy Pope Walker’s comments just prior to the start of the Civil War would be laughable: “All the blood spilled as a result of the secession could be wiped up with a handkerchief.”  Walker, an Alabama state...

“When the Civil War ended, woman was at least fifty years in advance of the normal position which confirmed peace would have assigned her.” Clara Barton The seed for women’s suffrage was planted in the small upstate New York town of Seneca Falls thirteen years prior...

Washington City, as the District of Columbia was commonly referred to in the mid-nineteenth century, was frequently under threat during the Civil War. The two Battles of Bull Run (Manassas) in July 1861 and August of the following year caused citizens and Union...

Despite the devastating impact the Civil War had on those who participated in it, when the war was over veterans were eager to find a vehicle for retaining the camaraderie created during the conflict.  In April 1866 all Union veterans who served in the Union Army,...

In addition to the exhausting forced marches that Civil War soldiers undertook as they pursued or were pursued by their enemies, the soldiers’ diets during these marches were equally onerous.  More often than not, soldiers in both armies subsisted on hardtack while in...