Top 3 posts of 2021

It has been a slow year at Civil Discourse, but here are the top three posts of 2021.

#3 The Industrial Confederacy: The Augusta Powder Works, by Katie Thompson

Early in the Civil War, in spring/summer 1861, the Confederacy needed to establish a local supply of gunpowder in order to fight the Union armies. President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, tasked Colonel George Washington Rains with creating that local supply and Rains left Richmond, Virginia on July 10, 1861 to find a location to establish a powder works for the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis gave Rains this assignment before the armies clashed at the Battle of First Manassas, but after fighting had already started in smaller engagements such as the 1861 Western Virginia Campaign. George Rains was a graduate of West Point with engineering, chemistry, and mineralogy experience. By the end of July, he had chosen Augusta, GA as the location for the Confederate powder works. The city was somewhat insulated from the movement of the armies but connected to much of the south through rail lines. The Augusta Canal also provided for water power to run the manufacturing equipment in the works. Read more here…

#2 “The ‘Milk and Water’ Policy…Is To Be Abandoned”: The Battle of Lewisburg, the Yankee, and Hard War in Western Virginia, by Zac Cowsert

In late May 1862, United States soldiers of the 44th Ohio Infantry occupied the abandoned offices of the Greenbrier Weekly Era in Lewisburg, western Virginia. Having recently emerged victorious in the Battle of Lewisburg and perhaps faced with the boredom of occupation, the soldiers set about publishing a newspaper they christened the Yankee. Though the Federals only managed to print a single issue before evacuating the town, the Yankee’s four pages reveal the hardening attitudes of Federal soldiers and the arrival of “hard war” in 1862 western Virginia. Read more here…

#1 Retreat from Antietam: The Battle of Shepherdstown, September 19-20, 1862, by Katie Thompson

On September 17, 1862 the armies of Generals George McClellan and Robert E. Lee fought to a bloody stalemate at the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, MD. On September 18, Lee ordered the Confederate army to withdraw from the battlefield and retreat back to Virginia. They used the ford near Shepherdstown, VA (now WV) known as Blackford’s, Pack Horse, or Boteler’s/Butler’s Ford. Cavalry under Fitzhugh Lee guarded Lee’s crossing at the ford while the rest of the Confederate cavalry rode to Williamsport. The Confederate army finished crossing the ford without any resistance on the morning of September 19th. Read more here…