;

Civil War Blog

A project of PA Historian

Events of the World: February 1864

| February 28, 2014

February 1. Danish-Prussian War (known as the Second Schleswig War) begins when 57,000 Austrian and Prussian troops cross the Eider River into Denmark. Like the First Schleswig War (1848–51), it was fought for control of the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg due to the succession disputes concerning them when the Danish king died without an heir acceptable to the German Confederation. Decisive […]

Crimes Committed on and by Returning Soldiers (Part 3 of 3)

| February 25, 2014

As soldiers were released from military service in 1865, they flooded into the three major discharge points in Pennsylvania:  Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh.  Frequently, these soldiers were the victims of local residents who sought to “relieve” them of their discharge money; sometimes the soldiers were themselves the perpetrators of crimes against the residents of these […]

The Shamokin Soldiers’ Circle – Mapping the Circle

| February 22, 2014

The G.A.R. Soldiers’ Circle at the Shamokin Cemetery, Shamokin, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, was described and pictured in the previous blog post in this series.  In today’s post, the map will be pictured which was drawn from the sequential series of photographs taken at the Circle in 2012 by the Civil War Research Project.  The maps […]

Crimes Committed on and by Returning Soldiers (Part 2 of 3)

| February 20, 2014

As soldiers were released from military service in 1865, they flooded into the three major discharge points in Pennsylvania:  Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh.  Frequently, these soldiers were the victims of local residents who sought to “relieve” them of their discharge money; sometimes the soldiers were themselves the perpetrators of crimes against the residents of these […]

The Pennsylvania Ancestry of Jefferson Davis

| February 18, 2014

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, was born 3 June 1808 in Christian County (now Todd County), Kentucky.  What is not well-known about him is that his family had roots in Pennsylvania. Samuel Emory Davis, the father of Jefferson Davis, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1756, and served in the Revolutionary […]