"What a terrible thing a battle is..." On July 21, 1861, the Civil War turned truly bloody at Bull Run. A soldier with ties to Pittston was there - among the first onto the field, and the last to leave - and wrote home to describe the retreat, the dead left behind, and the moment the war became something no one could take back. Read the full letter.
"The battle lasted half an hour" After months of drilling at Camp Slifer and a long march south, Charles Cyphers finally had a battle to report. Writing fast from Martinsburg on July 7, he gave Pittston Gazette readers their first eyewitness account of Hoke's Run — and the dozens of locomotives the rebels had burned on their way out of Martinsburg, VA. Read the full letter.
"The enemy's balls whistled like hail about our ears." Sergeant Francis Woodhouse stood his ground as cannon fire tore through the lines at Hoke's Run and watched two Pittston men fall wounded beside him. He came through without a scratch and wrote home four days later with one of the most vivid firsthand accounts in this series. Read the full letter.
Charles Cyphers and the 8th Pennsylvania have left Camp Slifer behind. Soldiers are everywhere he looks, Harpers Ferry looms on the horizon, and Cyphers tells his editor to expect news of a battle soon — provided no secessionist puts a bullet through him first. Read the full letter.
Men bathing in a stream, spreading out under the trees for a nap, watching an eagle pass overhead — Charles Cyphers' fourth letter from Camp Slifer captures the quiet, restless rhythm of soldiers waiting for the war to find them. Read the full letter.
“Profane swearing is… a most debasing practice.” In the middle of the Civil War, a Coal Region newspaper turned its attention from the battlefield to something closer to home: the language of local workers. Its advice was simple, direct, and a little out of touch with reality. Read the Full Story.
A young student from Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, PA traded his classroom for an army camp near Chambersburg in the spring of 1861. He and wrote back to a classmate about the food, the boredom, and his burning desire to meet the rebels in battle. Read the full letter.
When the women of Pittston sent bandages and lint to their soldiers at Camp Curtin in May 1861, two officers wrote back to say thank you. Their letters are a moving window into the bond between the home front and the front lines in the war's early months. Read the full letters.
On the morning of May 4, 1861, Sergeant Charles Cyphers stepped out of his tent at Camp Slifer near Chambersburg and found five inches of fresh snow on the ground. He picked up his pen and wrote home — and what he captured is a vivid snapshot of soldiers waiting, wondering, and trying to stay warm. Read the full letter.
“Our country needs the aid of every young man, in this, its hour of need.” Writing from Harrisburg, PA in April 1861, a 19-year-old Scottish immigrant tried to explain why he had volunteered for service in the Civil War - framing the conflict as both a duty and a test of loyalty to his adopted country at the very moment it was on the verge of fracturing. Read the letter.