Category Archives: 150 Years Ago This Week

News from 150 years ago

merry Christmas?

For a time when I was growing up I loved playing and playing Christmas records on our family’s hi-fi – day after day throughout pre-Christmas December. I especially remember a couple of the W.T. Grant’s “A Very Merry Christmas” albums … Continue reading

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the ball was up

Emancipation was the word in 1863. The NY Times was pleased to see women skating expertly, not needing to be accompanied by men. From The New-York Times December 24, 1863: Skating on Central Park Lakes and Fifth-avenue and Other Ponds. … Continue reading

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enemies among us

A Richmond editorial found it very suspicious that 400 paroled Yankee prisoners would choose to stay in Richmond instead of heading north back to the Union’s relative abundance. If organized they could kidnap Jefferson Davis. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch … Continue reading

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credit the ranks

It had been quite a twelve months for Ambrose Burnside – getting whipped at Fredericksburg, the Mud March, Clement Vallandigham, Knoxville. General Burnside and his troops managed to hang on to Knoxville for the Union. After John Foster replaced him … Continue reading

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just “a tithe of the patriotism”

As the main armies in the Virginia Theater retired to winter quarters, a Richmond paper’s “X” correspondent reported from the Army of Northern Virginia. The troops were pretty well fed and clothed but still lack blankets. The reporter believed this … Continue reading

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Hoosier press

death and taxes … and politics? From The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Seven: TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT. WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, December 19, 1863. GENERAL GRANT, Chattanooga, Tennessee: The Indiana delegation in Congress, or at least a … Continue reading

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celebrity autograph

Here’s some evidence that 150 years ago today exiled Copperhead Clement L. Vallandigham responded to a request for support of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. In lauding the commission’s work Mr. Vallandigham did a pretty thorough job cataloging the horrors or … Continue reading

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Tigers in a blanket …

Not! or at least, not all, not yet. Some more evidence that Confederate government wasn’t supplying enough blankets for its troops in the field. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch December 17, 1863: To the patriotic. –As numbers of the soldiers … Continue reading

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hitting home

I know the feeling. When I read current events, I’m aware I don’t have the energy to feel compassion for all the constant death and destruction around our world. Also, for the most part, I’m very analytic reading about that … Continue reading

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those duplicitous abolitionists

Nowadays Voodoo economics is a well-known phrase to question your political opponent’s intellectual ability or honesty. 150 years ago a Southern editorial said abolitionists’ claims that they wanted to free slaves was “moonshine philanthropy” – abolitionists really just wanted to … Continue reading

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