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Civil War Blog

A project of PA Historian

Abraham Lincoln Statue in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia

| October 4, 2012

    On 22 September 1871 a statue was dedicated in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, “To Abraham Lincoln – From a Grateful People.”  The statue had been commissioned with $22,000 that had been raised by the public.  The bronze figure of a seated Lincoln was created by Randolph Rogers and placed on a traffic island near […]

James Nagle of Pottsville

| September 30, 2012

The following biographical sketch of Gen. James Nagle of Pottsville, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, is adapted with annotations from the Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Schuylkll County Pennsylvania, pages 298-230.  The work was compiled by Samuel Wiley and published in 1893 by Rush, West and Company of Philadelphia.  The full work is also available as a […]

Understanding Walt Whitman

| August 31, 2012

The largest, single monument honoring a Civil War-era personage in Pennsylvania, is not a stone temple on the Gettysburg battlefield but is a bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  Named the “Walt Whitman Bridge” when it opened in 1957, it is today one of the largest suspension bridges on the east coast of the United […]

Correcting Errors on the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monument

| August 25, 2012

Several readers of this blog have written requesting information on how to have changes made to the plaques on the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monument.  All the regimental plaques have previously been presented here on this blog and descendants of some of those whose names were missing from the plaques inquired as to how to get the […]

The Credibility of William Withers Jr. – Lincoln Assassination Witness

| August 5, 2012

On the evening of 14 April 1865, William Withers Jr. was the leader of the orchestra at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.  When John Wilkes Booth fled the theatre after firing the pistol shot that would result in the first assassination of a U.S. president, he supposedly encountered Withers who was standing near the rear […]