Lancaster, Pennsylvania native John F. Reynolds was a West Point graduate and instructor at that institution when the Civil War began. Initially, he was the Lieutenant Colonel of the 14th U.S. Infantry, but was soon promoted to brigadier general of volunteers. Reynolds saw action as a brigade commander in the Fifth Corps during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign in [...]
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The Model 1841 12 Pounder Mountain Howitzer was a lightweight, scaled down field artillery weapon that was used by both the Union and Confederate armies. Most field artillery in the Civil War was transported by using teams of horses to pull the weapons, but mountain howitzers were designed to be taken apart and the components [...]
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Pennsylvania contributed extensively to the Union cause in the Civil War. Over 425.000 Pennsylvanians served in the Union Army and Navy, in well over 200 regiments of infantry, cavalry and artillery. Although a few units served with the western armies, the vast majority served in the Army of the Potomac. There were numerous distinguished and [...]
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In August 1864, Major General Phillip Sheridan launched a campaign to drive Confederate forces out of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan organized his Army of the Shenandoah as it was called, in the northern end of the valley, in the vicinity of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. This was an area where Lieutenant Colonel John S. Mosby [...]
Continue reading about John S. Mosby, George A. Custer and the Front Royal Executions of 1864
Elon J. Farnsworth was born in Michigan in 1837. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the 8th Illinois Cavalry as a 1st lieutenant. He served as an aide to the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps commander, Major General Alfred Pleasonton. Farnsworth was promoted to brigadier general on June 29, 1863. [...]
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John S. Mosby was a Virginia lawyer when the Civil War broke out in 1861. He was a member of a Virginia militia company at the time, and went off to war. His militia company became Company D of the 1st Virginia Cavalry, and Mosby saw some minor action at the First Battle of Bull [...]
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