American Battlefield Trust

03/25/2025

In the newest episode of our podcast, Boom Goes the History, we are joined by Dennis Frye for our coverage of the 162nd Anniversary of the Battle of Antietam! We focus on the "highlights" of the battlefield, detailing the bloodiest day in American history from start to finish, and begin at the Epicenter of the battlefield, preserved forever by the members of the American Battlefield Trust.

🎧 Listen now: https://spoti.fi/4hUCmjC

03/25/2025

The Medal of Honor Valor Trail™ App is now live in the App Store and Google Play! Developed by the American Battlefield Trust and the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, this app provides access to a global network of sites tied to the lives and legacies of those who have received the nation’s highest military honor. Users can:

⭐ Explore Our Interactive Map
⭐ Learn About Medal of Honor Recipients
⭐ Discover Historic Sites
⭐ Connect to History Anywhere

Few Americans can visit remote battlefields like Iwo Jima, but with the Valor Trail™ App, you will be connected to a vast network of places that tell these powerful stories. Download the app today: https://www.valortrail.org/app

03/25/2025

Though not honored for any specific deed or gallantry, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker remains to this day the only female recipient of the Medal of Honor.

After working briefly as a schoolteacher, Walker enrolled in the Syracuse Medical College, which had accepted female students since the 1840s, and graduated with a medical degree in 1855. She settled in Rome, New York, and ran a private practice until getting involved with the Union war effort after the firing on Fort Sumter. In 1862, Walker left Upstate New York for Virginia to work in a Union medical camp. She worked for a time in several temporary hospitals near battles like Fredericksburg and Chickamauga, treating Union soldiers as well as civilians and some Confederates where she could.

Throughout the war, Walker had proved her mettle many times over, especially as a prisoner of war. Arrested as a spy while assisting a Confederate doctor to perform an amputation, she spent around four months imprisoned at Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, until she was released in a prisoner exchange in the summer of 1864. After her release, she was assigned to the 52nd Ohio Infantry as an assistant to the regimental doctor. It was her willingness to go behind enemy lines and serve all those in need of care, even at the risk of imprisonment, that may have influenced Congress’ decision to award her the Medal of Honor on November 11, 1865.

After the war, Walker returned to private practice but continued to make headlines as a lecturer and activist. Unfortunately for Walker, in 1916, Congress revoked her Medal of Honor, along with up to 900 others who received the medal as civilians during the war. Walker and many others protested the decision, and the government reinstated her medal at the behest of her surviving relatives in 1977. Walker herself did not live to see the reversal, as she passed away in 1919.

Though not honored for any specific deed or gallantry, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker remains to this day the only female recipient of the Medal of Honor. However,...

03/24/2025

Boone Hall, located near Charleston, South Carolina, was first established in 1681 by colonist Major John Boone. The Boone family owned the plantation for more than 130 years. During this time, there were three different houses built on the site. The first two were destroyed by a fire and a hurricane, respectively. Two of the Boone family descendants were John and Edward Rutledge, prominent Patriots in the American Revolution. The plantation was sold to Thomas Vardell in 1811 and sold again in 1817 to the Horlbeck family. The Horlbecks were descended from German immigrants to the Charleston area. Unlike most of the wealthy plantations in the Lowcountry that grew rice or indigo, the Horlbeck family grew cotton on the plantation and had a cotton gin for processing the cash crop. They also had a brick-making business on the plantation as well. Clay was dug up and molded into bricks and fired in brick kilns. Many bricks made at Boone Hall were used in buildings in downtown Charleston and places like Fort Sumter in the antebellum period. After the American Civil War, numerous pecan trees were planted on the plantation, and it became a major cash crop. In 1935, the plantation was sold to a Canadian, Thomas Stone. Stone demolished the dilapidated house on the plantation and built a new house on the site in a colonial revival style that stands today. The plantation had several different owners until the McRae family acquired the property in the 1950s. They worked to restore the property and open it up to the public for tours.

Today, the plantation has become world famous not only for its history but also for being frequently filmed in television and films. The plantation was the home of Orry Main (Patrick Swayze) in the popular 1985 miniseries North and South. It also was featured in the 2004 romance movie, The Notebook.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/4bQaFXF

03/24/2025

Elizabeth Van Lew and her mother, Eliza, held anti-slavery sentiments in Richmond, Virginia. They toed the line between their more radical politics of abolition and maintaining their position in high-class society within a slave-holding state and city. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Elizabeth and Eliza had to be more cautious with these dueling ideals while supporting the Union cause.

Libby Prison, an old to***co factory turned prisoner-of-war jail, was located on the outskirts of Richmond. Elizabeth and Eliza convinced General John H. Winder to allow them to bring food and provisions to the Union soldiers imprisoned there under the guise of female benevolence. With this position, they were able to pass messages to and from the prison, help prisoners access extra food and water, and help prisoners escape at a great financial and social expense to themselves.
In December 1863, General Benjamin Butler heard of Van Lew’s aid in helping escaped Union Soldiers. He recruited her as a spy for the Union army. Throughout the war, she amassed a spy network of 12 people, both black and white, to help her collect information from the Confederates to bring to the Union.

While she was conducting espionage operations, she was still involved with Libby Prison. On March 1, 1864, Brig. Gen. Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and Col. Ulric Dahlgren attempted to free the prisoners as part of the ill-fated Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. Dahlgren was killed, and his body was hung on display by the railroad depot and then secretly buried. Using her spy network, she was able to locate the secret burial, recover the body, and rebury it to a safe location so it could be given to Dahlgren’s family at the conclusion of the war.

After the war, she became Postmaster of Richmond during Ulysses. S. Grant’s presidency from 1869-1877, and served as a clerk in the postmaster’s office from 1883-1887. She passed away in 1900.

Elizabeth Van Lew was born on October 12, 1818, in Richmond, Virginia to two north-born parents. Her mother Eliza Louise Baker Van Lew was born in...

03/23/2025

Sarah Broadhead, who lived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with her husband and daughter, started her weekly bread baking in the morning on July 1, 1863. By the time she put the bread in her oven, she heard cannons and the beginning of a battle. An avid diarist, she wrote about the moment: “What to do or where to go, I did not know.” Broadhead and her family took shelter in a cellar and waited out the three-day battle while she continued to write:

“July 3 – Again the battle began with unearthly fury. Nearly all the afternoon it seemed as if the heavens and earth were crashing together. The time that we sat in the cellar seemed long, listening to the terrific sound of the strife, more terrible never greeted human ears. We knew that with every explosion, and the scream of each shell, human beings were hurried, through excruciating pain, into another world, and that many more were torn, and mangled, and lying in torment worse than death, and no one able to extend relief. The thought made me very sad, and feel that, if it was God’s will, I would rather be taken away than remain to see the misery that would follow. Some thought this awful afternoon would never come to a close. We knew that the Rebels were putting forth all their might, and it was a dreadful thought that they might succeed. Who is victorious, or with whom the advantage rests, no one here can tell…”

The Battle of Gettysburg ended with a Union victory. Confederates retreated, and Union troops entered the town on July 4, 1863. Broadhead continued journaling during the aftermath of the battle. She cooked for the soldiers. She went to the Lutheran Theological Seminary, volunteering to care for the wounded there and helping to save nearly 100 wounded soldiers from drowning in the flooded basement of the Seminary. She also tried to assist and comfort a widow who came to Gettysburg looking for her fallen husband. Around mid-July, wounded and hungry soldiers departed from the Broadhead’s home, and the organization of better hospital facilities eased some of the burdens on the Gettysburg community.

The following year—1864—Broadhead published selected portions of her diary, but she did not publish it with her name, choosing instead the pseudonym “A Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.” She donated 75 copies of the 200 printed to the United States Sanitary Commission to be used at the fundraising fair in Philadelphia in June 1864.

Sarah Broadhead lived in Gettysburg in 1863 and kept a diary about her experiences during the battle and aftermath.

03/23/2025

The newly free African Americans who came to Nashville during and after the Civil War thirsted for knowledge. By January 1866, federal and religious leaders changed a Union hospital into a school serving 900 students of all ages. In 1867, it became Fisk University, aiming to provide “American education at its best” to all, regardless of race. When mounting debt threatened to close the school, Nine Black students guided by the school’s treasurer and music teacher left Nashville in October 1871, following traces of the Underground Railroad north and east on a fundraising concert tour.

Well-trained to share classical and popular music, the vocal group found growing and generous audiences only after they added songs that combined African rhythms and biblical themes. Now called spirituals, enslaved communities created this folk music and passed it down through families, churches, and friends. The group, led primarily by a teenaged Ella Sheppard, collected and arranged these songs — preserving well over a hundred by 1881.

Funds raised from their early tours enabled the purchase of land where Fisk University now stands. Subsequent tours took them to Europe, where they received wide acclaim and entertained royalty while raising money to complete Jubilee Hall in 1876. Queen Victoria was so impressed she reportedly said they must be from “a city of music.”

By 1878, the group disbanded, having achieved fame, faced persistent discrimination, and sacrificed educational opportunities (most did not graduate from Fisk), their health, and their relationships to a demanding schedule. Reorganized and revived over the years, the Fisk Jubilee Singers still represent the university and share haunting and hopeful spirituals with the world.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/4bPpvxB

Explore more stories about the Black Experience in Civil War-Era Virginia with our Road to Freedom: TN Tour Guide: https://bit.ly/3EUypgH

The original Fisk Jubilee Singers® preserved the spirituals as an African American art form, helped save Fisk University, demonstrated Black excellence to...

03/22/2025

By the outbreak of the War of 1812, Stephen Decatur had been promoted to Commodore, then the highest rank in the United States Navy. During the war, he fought mostly in command of the USS United States in single-ship actions like most American frigate commanders. He captured the British frigate HMS Macedonian of the Azores Islands and helped uncover a British plot to warn the Royal Navy of American blockade-runners out of New London, Connecticut. However, while commanding the USS President, Decatur was caught by four British vessels, and though he fought the fastest of his pursuers, the HMS Endymion, to a standstill, Decatur realized that he was outgunned, outnumbered and now severely damaged. He surrendered to the British and was taken prisoner. He languished in his Bermuda prison until the end of the war, and despite his defeat, Congress granted him the Congressional Gold Medal and a ceremonial sword for his service.

He died March 22, 1820, due to a fatal duel with Commodore James Barron, who blamed Decatur for his court-marshal in 1807. He i buried in St. Peter’s Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

One of America’s earliest naval heroes, Stephen Decatur made himself, and the fledgling American Navy, famous through his exploits around the globe....

03/22/2025

When the Civil War broke out, Clara Barton was one of the first volunteers to appear at the Washington Infirmary to care for wounded soldiers, and in late 1861, Barton left the city hospitals to go among the soldiers in the field. Her presence—and the supplies she brought with her in three army wagons—was particularly welcome at the Battle of Antietam, where overworked surgeons were trying to make bandages out of corn husks. Barton organized able-bodied men to perform first aid, carry water, and prepare food for the wounded. Throughout the war, Barton and her supply wagons traveled with the Union army, giving aid to Union casualties and Confederate prisoners. Some of the supplies, like transportation, were provided by the army quartermaster in Washington, D.C., but most were purchased with donations solicited by Barton or by her own funds. It wasn’t until after the war that she was reimbursed by Congress for her expenses.

After the war, in March 1865, President Abraham Lincoln appointed her General Correspondent for the Friends of Paroled Prisoners. Her job was to respond to anxious inquiries from the friends and relatives of missing soldiers by locating them among the prison rolls, parole rolls, or casualty lists at the camps in Annapolis, Maryland. To assist in this enormous task, Barton established the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States and published Rolls of Missing Men to be posted across the country. It was at her insistence that the anonymous graves at Andersonville prison were identified and marked.

Clara Barton Biography

03/21/2025

From March 19-21, 1865, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston and what remained of the Confederate army attacked and were defeated by Union General William T. Sherman’s army in the Battle of Bentonville, the last large-scale battle of the Civil War.

After the battle, knowing that Sherman could easily threaten his supply lines and his only avenue of retreat, Johnson decided to retreat from the battlefield and head toward Smithfield. Sherman chose not to pursue Johnson and moved on to Goldsboro. After regrouping, Sherman pursued Johnston’s army toward Raleigh. On April 26, Johnston formally surrendered his army.

Our Battle of Bentonville page includes history articles, battle maps, photos, an animated map, helpful web links, and recommended books for this important 1865 Civil War battle in North Carolina.

03/21/2025

Mary Smith Kelsey Peake dedicated her life to empowering Black men, women, and children with access to education before and during the Civil War. She founded the first school for Black students in Hampton, Virginia, leaving a legacy that impacted generations.

Peake, the daughter of a free Black woman and an Englishman, was born free in 1823 in Norfolk. As a young girl, she attended a school for Black children in Washington, D.C (now present-day Alexandria). In retaliation for Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, however, many states passed laws that barred free and enslaved Black people from learning to read or write. By the time Peake was sixteen, she had returned to Virginia, where it was now illegal for free Black people to meet for purposes of obtaining an education.

Despite the possible danger to herself, Peake committed the rest of her life to defying these laws. She taught Black children and adults, both free and enslaved, to read and write in secret. In 1847, her family moved to Hampton, Virginia, where she made clothes by day and continued to teach classes at night. She also founded the Daughters of Zion, an organization dedicated to helping people suffering from poverty or illness.

The trials of war did not deter Peake from teaching. A few months after the start of the Civil War, hundreds of enslaved people seeking freedom fled to the Union-held Fort Monroe near Hampton. Peake – who lost her home when Confederates burned the city – began to hold classes for refugeed children and adults under a large oak near the fort. She partnered with the American Missionary Association and moved her school into a cottage next to the oak, thus founding the first school for Black students in Hampton. This oak is now known as the Emancipation Oak. Peake continued to teach even after she contracted tuberculosis and was in poor health. She died in February 1862 when she was just 39 years old.

Today, the Emancipation Oak and a seated statue of Peake by artist John Hair on the campus of Hampton University serve as reminders of Peake’s fortitude and her belief in the power of education.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3Y28AlB

Explore more stories about the Black Experience in Civil War-Era Virginia with our Road to Freedom: VA Tour Guide: https://bit.ly/3WW4smU

Mary Smith Kelsey Peake (1823-1862) was a pioneering educator and humanitarian who dedicated her life to empowering Black men, women, and children with...

03/20/2025

A lesser known but no less distinguished Union commander with the surname Grant, Lewis Addison Grant abandoned his law practice when the Civil War began and was commissioned as a major of the 5th Regiment Vermont Infantry Volunteers. He was mustered into service on September 16, 1861, for a three-year term. However, Grant went on to serve for the rest of the Civil War, seeing action at nearly every major engagement in the Eastern Theater. During the Chancellorsville Campaign, he earned a Medal of Honor for “personal gallantry and intrepidity displayed in the management of his brigade and in leading it in the assault in which he was wounded” at Salem Church, Virginia, on May 3, 1863.

After the war, Grant was offered a lieutenant colonel’s commission of the 36th United States Infantry, but he declined, preferring to retire to private life. He was a famous man in his hometown of Bellow Fall and was invited by many veterans’ groups to speak about his experience in the war. Grant remained modest about his achievements and “talked unwillingly of his own military distinction.” He “believed in deeds, not words.” When he died March 20, 1918, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Grant was said to be the last surviving member of the Old Vermont Brigade.

A lesser known but no less distinguished Union commander with the surname Grant, Lewis Addison was born in Winhall Hollow, Vermont, on January 17, 1829. His...

03/20/2025

An ardent Unionist, Sarah Emma Edmonds decided the best way to help the Union cause was to enlist in the Union Army under the alias “Franklin Thompson.” On May 25, 1861, she mustered into the 2nd Michigan Infantry as a 3-year recruit. While disguised as Thompson, she served as a solider, a nurse, a mail carrier for the regiment, and even, according to her memoir, a Union spy.

In the spring of 1863, Edmonds and the 2nd Michigan were assigned to the Army of the Cumberland and sent to Kentucky. Edmonds contracted malaria and requested a furlough, which was denied. Not wanting to seek medical attention from the army for fear of discovery, Edmonds left her comrades in mid-April, never to return. “Franklin Thompson” was subsequently charged with desertion.

After her recovery, Edmonds, no longer in disguise, worked with the United States Christian Commission as a female nurse from June 1863 until the end of the war. She wrote and published her memoirs, “Nurse and Spy in the Union Army,” the first edition being released in 1864.

In 1876, she attended a reunion of the 2nd Michigan and was warmly received by her comrades, who aided her in having the charge of desertion removed from her military records and supported her application for a military pension. After an eight-year battle and an Act of Congress, “Franklin Thompson” was cleared of desertion charges and awarded a pension in 1884.

In 1897, Edmonds was admitted into the Grand Army of the Republic, the only woman member. One year later, on September 5, 1898, Edmonds died at her home in La Porte, Texas. In 1901, she was re-buried with military honors at Washington Cemetery in Houston.

Biography of Sarah Emma Edmonds Union soldier

03/19/2025

At the onset of the Civil War, Dorothea Lynde Dix traveled to Washington, DC, and offered her services as a nurse in the War Department. Despite having no formal education in medicine and no formal training as a nurse, Dix was appointed by the United States government to serve as the Superintendent of Army Nurses in June of 1861. As the Superintendent, Dix found herself charged with organizing and overseeing the nurses in the Union Army hospitals. She quickly earned the nickname of “Dragon Dix” with her strict and domineering approach. At the start of the Civil War, nursing was primarily a male-dominated profession. The sharp and massive influx of female volunteers wanting to serve as nurses in the hospitals was not without controversy, and Dix quickly established guidelines to protect the women serving under her. In order for a woman to become a nurse, she had to be between the age of 35-50, be in good health, be of decent character or “plain looking,” be able to commit to at least three months of service and be able to follow regulations and the directions of supervisors. Dix even went so far as to say that women had to wear unhooped black or brown dresses with no jewelry or cosmetics. Despite her sharp nature, she and her nurses treated soldiers from both North and South. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Dix and her nurses helped care for approximately 5,000 Confederate soldiers who were left behind.

She served with the Union Army until August 1865. After the war, she became a social reformer championing the care of prisoners and the mentally ill. Dix died in the New Jersey State Hospital on July 17, 1887, and was buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. As a young child, Dorothea moved to Worchester, Massachusetts, to live with her extended...

03/18/2025

Has your battlefield or historic site registered to be a part of ? March 20, 2025, is the registration deadline to be listed in Trust-led national media outreach. Register now to ensure you make it in!

Interested in attending a Park Day event near you on April 26, 2025? Check out the more than 100 battlefields and historic sites that have already registered to take part in this nationwide event to keep America’s battlefields beautiful!

Join us April 26, 2025, for our annual event that brings history enthusiasts and community volunteers together in an effort to help keep our nation’s...

03/18/2025

The Gettysburg Film Festival returns May 8-11, 2025! This year’s festival will be bigger and better than ever, as the event brings together renowned filmmakers, actors, historians, and authors to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (V-E) Day. The Award-winning documentarian Ken Burns headlines a star-studded group of actors, writers, and historians. Featured guests include Martin Sheen, Stephen Lang, Anna Deavere Smith, and Susan Eisenhower. Tickets are limited, so make sure to secure your spot today!

Learn more: https://gettysburgfilmfestival.org/2025-festival/

03/18/2025

"Dearest Julia." Mrs. General Grant. First Lady Julia Grant. As the years of her life passed, she had many societal titles as she supported and encouraged her husband, Ulysses S. Grant, for nearly four decades.

When the American Civil War began in 1861, Ulysses quickly spoke up for the Union cause, and by June 1861, he was colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteer Regiment. Over the next four years as her husband received promotions and eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant general, Julia Grant supported him by taking the children and traveling to his headquarters as frequently as possible. She oversaw the education of their children and also supported the Union war effort, recognized as Mrs. General Grant. She saved correspondence from her husband, and like almost all his letters since their marriage, he signed them with "love and kisses for you and the children."

By the end of the war, Ulysses Grant had been promoted to the rank of full general. Three years later—in 1868—Grant ran for President to succeed Andrew Johnson and decisively defeated Horatio Seymour. This began what Julia Grant called the “happiest period” of her life. During her time as First Lady during her husband's two presidential terms (1869-1877), Julia Grant became widely known for her generosity and skill as a hostess. She hosted the first state dinner held at the White House, welcoming the king of Hawaii, Kalakaua, in 1874, leading to a treaty for trade reciprocity between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1875. Occasions like these allowed Julia Grant’s personality to shine, and her social skills strengthened her husband’s diplomatic and domestic efforts.

When Grant’s second term as President came to a close, Julia and her husband embarked on a grand world tour that took them across the globe from France to Germany, Italy, Russia, Greece, India, and China. They returned home to the United States in 1879. With Julia and their children near him, Ulysses died on July 23, 1885. In a final letter, which she discovered after his death, Ulysses acknowledged, "I have your love and affections...I bid you a final farewell until we meet in another, and I trust better, world." Julia Grant died on December 14, 1902, and was buried beside her husband.

First Lady Julia Grant supported her husband Ulysses S. Grant through his difficult days, the Civil War years, and in the White House.

03/18/2025

Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood began his Tennessee Campaign with lofty, if not impossible, aspirations: if he could take Nashville — the base of Union operations in the West — he could prolong the war and force Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s recall from Georgia.

Join Garry Adelman and Kris White of the American Battlefield Trust and Dr. Chris Mackowski of Emerging Civil War as they detail the beginning of the Battle of Nashville from a small but important preserved part of the battlefield.

🎧 Listen now in this week’s podcast of Boom Goes the History: https://spoti.fi/3ReuCOa