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Civil War Blog

A project of PA Historian

How Far Was the Battle of Gettysburg Heard?

| July 6, 2013

Multiple stories have been passed down over a century and a half related to the Battle of Gettysburg. The stories go that citizens of Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia heard the sound of cannon fire from the battle in south-central Pennsylvania. These distances vary from dozens of miles to over a hundred miles distant from […]

Henry Keiser: After Gettysburg

| July 4, 2013

For the Army of the Potomac, Gettysburg didn’t mean the end of campaigning in the summer of ’63. Henry Keiser and the rest of the 96th PA waited on the battlefield until Lee’s army left the area. Then the long pursuit began which required tough marching in the infamously muddy conditions from Gettysburg. Here is […]

Charles Coffin’s Pennsylvania Campaign

| June 23, 2013

The following comes from Charles Coffin’s book The Boys of ’61, which told of his experiences in the different armies of the Civil War. He was the war correspondent for the Boston Journal during the Civil War. Here is a chapter that tells specifically of his time in Pennsylvania and Maryland as the Confederates entered the North […]

Constructing Harrisburg’s Defenses

| June 20, 2013

Almost as soon as the threat to Harrisburg became apparent in June 1863, preparations were made to properly defend the city from the Confederate advance. Civilian and military leaders in Washington approved the creation of a new military district that included Central Pennsylvania. Known as the Department of the Susquehanna, this new district would be […]

“The Panic:” Unprecedented Chaos in Harrisburg

| June 18, 2013

As yesterday’s post illustrated, the state government felt it necessary to begin evacuating the archives found within the state library in the midst of the crisis. Today, we will examine the situation in Harrisburg from a different perspective… Today’s post will allow the people who were in the city on June 16, 1863 to tell […]