We had something close to a perfect storm here yesterday.

Three things converged to create a disastrous windstorm. The combination of a shift in the jet stream, a powerful cold front, and the remnants of Hurricane Ike all came together north and west of Ohio to create a windstorm of absolutely epic proportions. For nearly four hours yesterday, the winds howled like nothing I have ever heard. 75 mile per hour gusts–Category 1 hurricane winds–were recorded at Port Columbus International Airport, which is about five miles from my house. The destruction and devastation is remarkable.

Trees are down everywhere you can imagine. About 500,000 homes in Central Ohio are without power here today, including mine. Virtually all of the schools …

Continue reading

The closing of the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. has opened up a new opportunity to save a significant portion of the Fort Stevens battlefield. For those unfamiliar with the fight at Fort Stevens, Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s Confederate army arrived in Silver Spring, Maryland on July 12, 1864, ready to try to assault the works and then enter the defenses of Washington. The proximity of the Confederate army prompted a response by Grant, who sent the 6th, 19th, and 8th Corps to defend the nation’s capital. Elements of the 6th Corps arrived on July 12, as Early was preparing his assault, and a very significant skirmish, witnessed in person by President Abraham Lincoln, occurred. Early, realizing …

Continue reading

Today marks seven years since the terrorist attacks that changed our world forever. Consequently, I’m going to stray into contemporary events for one day before returning to the normal business of this blog tomorrow.

I’ve already recounted my experiences on 9/11 here, so I won’t bore you with doing so again.

Instead, I want to focus on another issue.

In prior conflicts, it was always easy to define “win”. In the Civil War, for the North, “win” meant putting down the rebellion. In the South, “win” meant separation from the rest of the Union. In World War II, it meant defeating the forces of fascism and removing the militaristic regimes. Even in the Korean War, “win” meant to maintain …

Continue reading

From the September 5 edition of Winchester Star newspaper, it appears that the fight against the mining company is heating up at Cedar Creek. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, unlike the Cedar Creek Battlefield Association, has stepped up to the plate to use the courts to try to prevent the demolition of the battlefield’s viewshed. The Association unfortunately sold its soul for eight lousy acres of marginal land.

National Trust seeks to join quarry litigation
By Erica M. Stocks

9-5-2008
Winchester Star (VA)
http://www.winchesterstar.com/

Winchester — The National Trust for Historic Preservation is seeking to join 20 local property owners in challenging the Frederick County Board of Supervisors’ decision to allow the expansion of a Middletown quarry.

The trust

Continue reading

Susan and I live on the border between the City of Columbus, and its neighboring suburb of Reynoldsburg. Reynoldsburg touts itself as the “Birthplace of the Tomato”, although I’m not entirely sure why. Every year, the city hosts the Tomato Festival, a celebration of everything tomato.

For reasons that are completely lost to me, they’ve included a Civil War encampment this year. What reenactors and tomatoes have in common is really a mystery to me, but somebody has made that connection.

I learned about it at 9:30 tonight, when they started night firing artillery at their encampment, which is less than a mile away. It rattled the windows, scared the living daylights out of Nero and Aurora, who …

Continue reading

On September 1, 1862, the important Battle of Chantilly was fought in Fairfax County, Virginia. The battle was a classic meeting engagement, where Pope’s bedraggled Army of Virginia and Stonewall Jackson’s command tangled in a blinding rainstorm. Two important Union generals, Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny and Maj. Gen. Isaac Stevens, were killed in the confused fighting that day. Unfortunately, the bulk of the battlefield was lost to commercial development in the 1980’s, and only a small fragment of the battlefield, featuring twin monuments to Kearny and Stevens, was saved. Our friend Paul Taylor has written an excellent book about the Battle of Chantilly that I commend to you.

Only one good thing came out of the loss of the Chantilly …

Continue reading

Our friend, Ranger Mannie Gentile, has THE coolest blog post ever on his blog this weekend. If you’ve ever wondered about the fight for the Sunken Road at Antietam, I guarantee you that Mannie’s post will answer those questions forever.

Check it out.

Continue reading

Mike Block of the Brandy Station Foundation passed this item from the Shreveport Times newspaper along:

Louisianans headed to Poland to honor cavalry officer
Heros Von Borcke was a larger-than-life figure.

BY JOHN ANDREW PRIME JPRIME@GANNETT.COM AUGUST 25, 2008

In a tribute to diversity, two Louisianans are headed to Poland to honor a Prussian aristocrat who fought for the Confederacy almost 150 years ago.

Chuck Rand, of Monroe, and Michael Bergeron, of Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, are en route to Eastern Europe to help dedicate a new U.S.-supplied military gravestone for Col. Johann August Heinrich Heros von Borcke, a soldier who served with the South in the 1860s and became a heroic figure among its cavalry corps. A 6-foot

Continue reading

Since I’ve profiled a Union cavalry officer who was an alumnus of Dickinson College, fairness requires that I similarly profile a Confederate Dickinsonian.

Richard Lee Turberville Beale was born into a prominent Virginia family on May 22, 1819. Young Beale attended private schools in Westmoreland County, Northumberland Academy and Rappahannock Academy, Virginia. He enrolled in Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1838 and was elected to the Union Philosophical Society. He later left Dickinson and then completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia in 1837. He was admitted to the bar in 1839 and opened a private a practice in his hometown of Hague.

Beale also entered politics. Active in the Democratic Party, he …

Continue reading

Today, I am going to profile a forgotten cavalryman named Bvt. Brig. Gen. Thomas Jefferson Jordan, who, like me, was an alumnus of Dickinson College, one of a number of notable cavalry officers who graduated from Dickinson.

Thomas Jefferson Jordan was born in December 3rd, 1821, to Benjamin Jordan and Mary Crouch on the family farm, Walnut Hill, in Paxtang, Dauphin County Pennsylvania. The family was of Scottish origin and came to this country in 1720, first settling in King and Queen County, Virginia. In 1742, his great-grandfather, James, left Virginia, and with his slaves came to Pennsylvania, where he bought a large tract of land on the Susquehanna River, near Wrightsville, York county. His grandfather, Thomas Jordan, was …

Continue reading