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Civil War

Rhode Islanders Insist on No Compromise with the South after Lincoln’s Election
3 weeks ago

Rhode Islanders Insist on No Compromise with the South after Lincoln’s Election

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the victor in a tight, four-way race for president. The country was bitterly at odds—more divided than an any point of its history. …
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Rhode Island Fails to Vote for Lincoln for President at Nominating Convention!
4 weeks ago

Rhode Island Fails to Vote for Lincoln for President at Nominating Convention!

I believe that one of the most remarkable (and fortuitous) events in American history was Abraham Lincoln’s nomination as the presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 1860. Early in …
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The Last Dozen: The Final Survivors of the Seventh Rhode Island Volunteers
7 months ago

The Last Dozen: The Final Survivors of the Seventh Rhode Island Volunteers

There is something special in being last, especially when it comes to being the last survivor of a particular event. From Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the Titanic to …
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General Isaac Peace Rodman, Citizen-Soldier and Martyr for the Union Cause
9 months ago

General Isaac Peace Rodman, Citizen-Soldier and Martyr for the Union Cause

At the outbreak of the Civil War, thousands of men flocked to enlist in newly established companies and regiments in the Union Army then organizing in small towns throughout the …
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Foster Boys in the Seventh Rhode Island
1 year ago

Foster Boys in the Seventh Rhode Island

Foster, Rhode Island is one of the few places in Rhode Island that maintains a Nineteenth Century charm. Indeed if the Civil War veterans of Foster were to return, they …
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“Ours was a desperate position to hold:” The First Rhode Island Cavalry at Middleburg
2 years ago

“Ours was a desperate position to hold:” The First Rhode Island Cavalry at Middleburg

On the night of June 17, 1863, a small group of men galloped for their lives out of Middleburg, Virginia. Tired, out of ammunition, and surrounded deep behind enemy lines, …
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A Kingston Woman Supports Lincoln During the Civil War
2 years ago

A Kingston Woman Supports Lincoln During the Civil War

After I published my book on the history of Kingston in 2004, a Narragansett Times reporter asked me who my favorite character in the book was. She expected me to …
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The Numbers Game: The Curious Numbering of Rhode Island’s Civil War Units
3 years ago

The Numbers Game: The Curious Numbering of Rhode Island’s Civil War Units

Firstly, I must confess that math is not my biggest strength. As a student at Coventry High School in the early 2000s, I sat through countless hours of algebra and …
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Mutiny! The Case of the Fighting Fourth in the Civil War
4 years ago

Mutiny! The Case of the Fighting Fourth in the Civil War

In the beginning of the 1993 movie Gettysburg, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the Twentieth Maine receives orders assigning 120 men of the Second Maine Regiment who had recently been …
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Writing Rhode Island Civil War History and a Critique of the Sesquicentennial
4 years ago

Writing Rhode Island Civil War History and a Critique of the Sesquicentennial

With the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Rhode Islanders eagerly answered the call to arms. From Westerly to Woonsocket, and from Wallum Lake to Little Compton, the …
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