Pennsylvania’s War Governor

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania’s War Governor On September 14, 1862, Pennsylvania’s Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin invited the governors of the northern and border states to a meeting to be held at Altoona, Blair County, in ten days. The purpose of the meeting that became known as the Loyal War Governors’ Conference — or, simply, the Altoona Conference – was to “take measures for a more active support of the government’s prosecution of...
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A Forgotten Hero of the Civil War

Posted by John Hoptak on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Forgotten Hero of the Civil War At seven o’clock on Thursday evening, April 18, 1861, approximately 475 Pennsylvania citizens-turned-soldiers, comprising the ranks of five volunteer militia companies, arrived in Washington D.C., to protect the nation’s capital. The first shots of the American Civil War were fired less than a week earlier at Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and it had been just...
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The Grand Review Revisited

Posted by John Logan on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Grand Review Revisited To celebrate its victory in the American Civil War, the federal government hosted a Grand Review of Union veterans in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 23, 1865. Although the war preserved the Union and ended slavery, the parade was organized exclusively for white soldiers, and veterans of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) were not invited to participate. Refusing to be ignored, former...
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Pioneering the Civil Rights Movement

Posted by Todd Mealy on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pioneering the Civil Rights Movement Many individuals tend to overlook the political work championed by Black abolitionists during the second half of the nineteenth century. Instead, they celebrate slavery’s demise and then suddenly move on to the civil rights movement of the twentieth century, possibly unaware of what took place on the nation’s streets and in legislative offices and courtrooms from the 1860s through the 1890s. The...
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