Author Archives: Mark

First Wednesdays: A North Carolinian’s Experience During the Overland Campaign, Part 4

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Mark

I apologize for getting behind on this as I had a busy Memorial Day weekend so I decided to delay the next part of Pearsall’s letters until today to coincide with First Wednesday. George W. Pearsall’s regiment had not seen … Continue reading →

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A North Carolinian’s Experience During the Overland Campaign, Part 3

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Mark

George W. Pearsall’s third letter relating his experiences during the 1864 Overland Campaign was written on the 16th of May, addressed to his wife, Sarah.  Pearsall’s regiment, the 55th North Carolina of Joseph Davis’s (the Confederate president’s nephew) brigade, had … Continue reading →

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A North Carolinian’s Experience During the Overland Campaign, Part 2

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Mark

The second letter in the George W. Pearsall collection which chronicles his experiences in the Overland Campaign takes us to May 11 and the initial battles around Spotsylvania Court House. Pearsall and his regiment, the 55th North Carolina, had marched … Continue reading →

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First Wednesdays – A North Carolinian’s Experience During the Overland Campaign

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Mark

Grant and Lee’s Overland Campaign (the name typically given by scholars to describe the series of battles from the Wilderness until Grant’s crossing of the James River, May-June, 1864) was arguably the hardest-fought campaign of the entire war.  The fighting … Continue reading →

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First Wednesdays – Deathbed Confessional: “I Shot Stonewall Jackson”

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Mark

“I at once said who goes there?”  Or at least that’s how “Little Bill” Kirk’s version of Stonewall Jackson’s fatal wounding began.  The legend of Stonewall Jackson is one of the most enduring hallmarks of the Lost Cause of the … Continue reading →

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First Wednesdays – Lee’s Lost Order

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Mark

Perhaps no other document from the American Civil War has engendered as much speculation or controversy as the infamous Special Order 191, or as it is more generally known, the “Lost Order” or the “Lost Dispatch.”  Historians have argued for … Continue reading →

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First Wednesdays – The Peninsula Campaign: A North Carolinian’s View from the Field

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Mark

The Peninsula Campaign was significant for many reasons:  it was the first concerted, large-scale attempt by Union forces to capture Richmond; it solidified General Robert E. Lee’s place in history as the preeminent southern general; and, upon its completion, was … Continue reading →

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