Portrait, Soldier With Kepi  ca. 1870 From: Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection

Black soldiers played a crucial role not only in winning the Civil War, but in defining the war’s consequences. The army, moreover, was a major source of postwar black leadership. Of the African-Americans who served in Congress, state legislatures, and other posts during Reconstruction, many had fought as soldiers and sailors during the war

In his last public speech, shortly before his death in April 1865, President Lincoln endorsed the idea of limited black suffrage, singling out army veterans, along with the educated, as most worthy.

America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhibits/reconstruction/section1/section1_soldiers.html

Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Bettman Archive reproduction In ink, verso: Cockfighting at General Orlando B. Wilcox’s head quarters before Petersburg. Photo by T.H. O'Sullivan

Two boys prepare to release roosters in space before tents as officers and civilians look on

From: Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American collection

Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

A welcome home kiss, Sydney, NSW, 1919

@Neoprusiano Polish soldiers 1576-1586 Jan Matejko

Civil War Apple Sauce Cookie Recipe

A recipe that was a favorite among soldiers during the Civil War. LuJuana Hood for the Pan African Historical Museum shared a recipe for Applesauce Cookies.

The English, Scotch, and Dutch immigrants originally brought the first cookies to the United States.

Ingredients:

Directions:

Unidentified Soldier in Union Cavalry Uniform with Stocked Colt Pistol, Remington, and Cavalry Saber

[between 1861 and 1865] sixth-plate tintype, hand-colored ; 9.5 x 8.4 cm (case)

Kentucky, being a border state, was among the chief places where the "Brother against brother" scenario was prevalent. Kentucky was officially neutral at the beginning of the war, but after a failed attempt by Confederate General Leonidas Polk to take the state of Kentucky for the Confederacy, the legislature petitioned the Union for assistance, and thereafter became solidly under Union control. Kentucky was the site of fierce battles, such as Mill Springs and Perryville.

Notes: Soldier possibly from Kentucky. photo lightenedbyCivilWarParlor

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Sassy soldiers, WWI (via World of Wonder)

Tribute from stranger to a fallen soldier

(Source: Express)

A carte-de-visite portrait of Isaac Newton Snively (1839-1913). According to the source, Snively “served as an assistant surgeon in the Twentieth Pennsylvania Emergency Infantry, a regiment organized after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia invaded the North in the summer of 1863. Snively left the army after the Battle of Gettysburg ended the Southern threat, and rejoined the military after Confederate cavalry burned his Chambersburg home in 1864."

(Ronald S. Coddington)

A/7K Gun (via Archives Search - Library and Archives Canada)

No place, unknown, or undetermined 

Credit: Canada: Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada /e003525456

WWI German Alpenkorps Soldier and Romanian Villager, cca. 1917-1918.

Beaufort, S.C. Gen. Isaac I. Stevens on Porch

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Stevens was commissioned as a Colonel of the 79th New York, known as the “Highlanders.”  He was promoted to Brigadier General on September 28, 1861, and led troops during the Port Royal Expedition.  He led a division during the Battle of Secessionville, but after suffering heavy casualties, was transferred to Virginia.  He took command of the IX Corps, and led them during the Second Battle of Manassas.

He was killed in action at the Battle of Chantilly on September 1, 1862 after picking up the fallen regimental colors of his old regiment, shouting “Highlanders, my Highlanders, follow your general!” Charging with his troops while carrying the banner of Saint Andrew’s Cross, Stevens was struck in the temple by a bullet and died instantly.

He was buried in Newport, Rhode Island at Island Cemetery. In March 1863, he was posthumously promoted to major general„ backdated to July 18, 1862

ca. 1861-65, [tintype portrait of Pennsylvania Zouave soldiers in a field]

via the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Frances Hook a Female Soldier who Fought in Major Battles at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson and Shiloh aka “Frank Miller” &  ”Frank Henderson”

Frances and her brother decided to enlist for the Union Army when the Civil War started. She lied about her age, and cut her hair. They joined the 11th Illinois Infantry Regiment. Frances’ brother was killed in the battle of Shiloh. 

Soldier Frances Hook who as Private Frank Miller, 90th Illinois (not confirmed on rolls) was wounded in the thigh and captured near Florence, Alabama in early 1864 and incarcerated at Atlanta. A Confederate doctor tending to Union wounded exposed Frank Miller as a female and she was soon exchanged at Graysville, Georgia on February 17, 1864 and subsequently convalesced in Nashville where this likeness was taken.

She was taken prisoner by Confederate troops while walking along a trail while her regiment was awaiting deployment. She attempted to make a daring escape, but was shot, and again imprisoned. The Confederates were impressed with her courage, and offered her commission to join their side. She told them that she would rather be hanged then to fight along side the Confederate troops.

Later she was discharged and sent home to Illinois but speculation remains that with nowhere else to go she reenlisted and continued to serve until the end of the war.

Frances Hook ultimately married in 1908, and her daughter later applied for a military pension based on her mother’s Civil War military service. Contemporary authors of social history and those focusing in women’s studies have put the number of female soldiers serving in Northern and Southern armies as high as several thousand, but the true identities of only a handful are actually known. Frances Hook alias Frank Miller is a legitimate example of a female warrior.

Price Realized: $3,105.00 at Cowan’s Auctions http://www.cowanauctions.com/auctions/item.aspx?ItemId=36196

Sarah Rosetta Wakemann (alias Private Lyons Wakeman) A Female Civil War Soldier that Fought Disguised as a Man

Because she died while still enlisted, no one in the Union Army knew that she was a woman until long after. Sarah Wakeman served in the 153rd regiment of the New York State Volunteers. Her letters written during her service remained unread for nearly a century because they were stored in the attic of her relatives.

The description on her enlistment papers stated that she was five feet tall, fair-skinned, with blue eyes. Rosetta (as she preferred to be called) enlisted 1862. Like tens of thousands of her “fellow” soldiers, Sarah faithfully performed her duties until she died from chronic diarrhea in the federal army hospital in New Orleans on June 19, 1864.  Wakeman was not the only one; thousands of Union soldiers were killed by drinking water contaminated by rotting animals. Buried in Chalmette National Cemetery in Metairie, Louisiana, Rosetta’s grave marker identifies her by alias: “Lyons Wakeman, NY.”

Of the deceased soldiers Rosetta wrote, they lay “sometimes in heaps and in rows… with distorted features, among mangled and dead horses, trampled in mud, and thrown in all conceivable sorts of places. You can distinctly hear, over the whole field, the hum and hissing of decomposition.” The Red River campaign claimed several lives including Wakeman’s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Rosetta_Wakeman

Teen Soldier Recounts Confinement in a Confederate Prison Camp

Michael Dougherty was the only member of his company to survive imprisonment at Andersonville Prison in Georgia.

No one, except he was there in the prison can form anything like a correct idea of our appearance about this time. We had been in prison nearly five months and our clothing was worn out. A number were entire naked; some would have a ragged shirt and no pants; some had pants and no shirt; another would have shoes and a cap and nothing else. Their flesh was wasted away, leaving the chaffy, weather beaten skin drawn tight over the bones, the hip bones and shoulders standing out. Their faces and exposed parts of their bodies were covered with smoky black soot, from the dense smoke of pitch pine we had hovered over, and our long matted hair was stiff and black with the same substance, which water would have no effect on, and soap was not to be had. I would not attempt to describe the sick and dying, who could now be seen on every side.

Michael Dougherty, who was 16 when he joined the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry, Diary of a Civil War Hero, p. 43.

American soldier replacing a street sign honouring Hitler, Krefeld, Germany, 1945