John Brown's Birthday Celebration

Come join us for a day of fun and learning!! From 10 - 5, Mary Buster, the great, great granddaughter of the Adair's and great, great grand niece of John Brown will be giving tours of the Adair Cabin/John Brown Museum. During this time you'll want to see the Mountain Men, their teepee and how living was in the 1850's!! Fun kids activities and lots of music will be happening from 12 - 3. Bring your family and friends for a fun time at the John Brown Museum!!

I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: “Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.”

A quote by Thaddeus Stevens who was born on April 4, 1792 in Danville, Vermont

Image of Stevens by Mathew Brady via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Calling History | a podcast by Anthony Dean The Calling History Podcast is an unscripted, interview style phone conversation with the heroes, the villains, and the great thinkers of history. It’s an opportunity to ask them anything, in their time, while they are living it. How did Benjamin Franklin...

From 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘴 by Charles Dickens, 1842, https://amzn.to/3kybRIC

"From John Brown to James Brown": A Conversation with Ed Maliskas - John Brown Today In this episode, Lou shares a conversation with author Ed Maliskas, a musician, clergyman, and researcher, the author of John Brown to James Brown: The Little Farm Where Liberty Budded, Blossomed, and Boogied (2016). In this fascinating discussio...

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”- Frederick Douglass

Last week, we noted the connection between Edgar Allan Poe and General Horatio Van Cleve, and how Chickamauga was like a horror story for him. Here is Van Cleve's description he penned to his wife on October 23,1863:

“There may be romance in all this to those who read the news in the morning papers, but to us who march and fight by day, and march and fight by night, who lie down to broken slumbers and eat our meals while in our saddles, to us it is a mournful reality, and when our bosom companions are struck down by our side, and when the wounded and slain be around us, it is fearfully mournful.”

It does sound like he was in one of Poe's tales.

(Photo of General Van Cleve, Source: NPS)

This rare image of Ulysses S. Grant seated while smoking a cigar is from a series of "photosculptures" taken by Huston and Kurtz Studio. Using twenty-four cameras arranged in a circle, photographers could create a negative from which molds could be made to construct a bronze statue.

This and many other images will be examined by USGA President James Bultema in his upcoming book "Ulysses S. Grant: A Photographic History."

This John Brown statue by George Fite Waters is located in John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, Kansas. It was cast by the Borbedine Foundery in Paris, which made the Statue of Liberty.

"January 1st, 1862.

"Today is the first of the new year. Welcome to the bright, young, and lovely "New Year," may thy short reign bring with it peace, prosperity, and plenty. May the dark clouds that have gathered about us pass away, may the sunshine of peace and prosperity illuminate our darkened land."

Private Van Willard, 3rd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry

Private Willard recorded this passage in his diary while stationed in the hospital wards of U.S. General Hospital #1 in Frederick, Maryland. Despite his hopes, 1862 proved to be a perilous year for Willard and his comrades in the 3rd Wisconsin. He experienced combat for the first time and was severely wounded during the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. He eventually recovered in another hospital in Frederick.

Image credit:
Interior of a Civil War hospital tent, Harper's Weekly, March 11, 1865.

"All Quiet on the Potomac"

This 1864 reproduction of a haunting painting by George Douglas Brewerton depicts a sentry standing next to graves on the snow-covered banks of the Potomac River. The name of the painting refers to a telegram by General George McClellan early in the Civil War.

Image credit:
Library of Congress.

Christmas on the frontier Christmas at the Adair Cabin was like most Christmas celebrations in most pioneer homes in Osawatomie and Miami County with simple gifts given to children and family members, but Christmas

Lobscouse was a common part of the Civil War soldier's diet:

"Take a bit of fat pork and melt it over the fire in a frying-pan or tin plate. Break up the hard-tack into small pieces and drop it into the frying fat. Let the whole mess sizzle together until the cracker is saturated with the fat and the result is a product that looks and tastes like pie crust. It is quite palatable...

"Indigestible stuff, you say? Well, who ever heard of a soldier having dyspepsia? Of all the ailments that came along to make the soldier’s life miserable, indigestion was one of the things he never complained of. Ye dyspeptics, who swallow nostrums and patent medicines by the barrel, consider the ways of the soldiers and be wise. Go to the war and be shot, and you’ll have no more dyspepsia. Nor will you have any more even if you are not shot.”

Source: "The Young Volunteer," by Joseph Edgar Crowell, pages 72 and 73. Crowell served in the 13th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry and the Veteran Reserve Corps during the Civil War.

Image credits:
Joseph Edgar Crowell from "The Young Volunteer," and a soldier of the 153rd New York cooking in camp during the Civil War from the Library of Congress.

159 YEARS AGO
Battle of Chickamauga
September 19-20, 1863

Silent sentinels mark Confederate artillery positions opposite the Union defenses along Battleline Road. There was very heavy fighting here during the first day of the battle on September 19.

Photo by Matthew Holzman

What would a soldier dream about after being wounded during the Civil War?

Private Charles Johnson was shot in the hip during the Battle of Antietam. The following day, he wrote this in his diary:

“Slept a little last night, and was troubled by a dream in which demons, rattlesnakes, Hell, brimstone, cannon-balls, and railroad iron, bayonets and pitchforks, powder and smoke were all conglomerated into one shapeless, endless whirl, with me in the midst, though suffering no particular harm.”

Image credit:
Self-portrait of Charles Johnson