"Doubly armed against both Satan and seceders..." Luzerne County attorney Caleb E. Wright visited the encampment of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves near Washington in October 1861. He described camp life for the regiment and some of the characters he met during his visit, before musing on the consequences of the Civil War. Read the full letter.
A soldier writing under the pen name "Shoulder Arms" describes conditions at the camp of Company F, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves in the woods along the Potomac River north of Washington, DC. He described the sound of distant cannon fire, friendly fire incidents, and the hope that the time would some come to "strike a death-blow to traitors, secession, and treason." Read the full letter.
"Now commenced the really grand spectacle." In a letter to a friend in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Sgt. Louis Roth described the Battle of Hatteras Inlet on North Carolina's Outer Banks in August 1861. He described the fighting, the Union victory, and the terrible conditions as follows. Roth also writes a great passage about his regiment's consumption of lager beer, a favorite among the German regiments. Read the full letter.
New regiments, new volunteers | The Coal Region rebuilds the Union Army after Bull Run | 1861 After the disaster at Bull Run, the Union's three-year recruiting effort reached deep into the anthracite coal fields. Four new companies were forming at Mauch Chunk, a Hazleton coal operator was outfitting a regiment, and the war that everyone thought would be short was quickly escalating. Read the story.
Last month I walked the ground above Krinkelt and Rocherath in Belgium's Ardennes, where the 99th Division held the line in December 1944. The foxholes are still there. So are the shell craters. And so is the story of a Wilkes-Barre soldier who earned a Bronze Star here — and didn't make it home. Read the full story.
When the 8th Pennsylvania's chaplain declared that bad army liquor should warn Civil War soldiers off drinking altogether, the editors of the Luzerne Union had a different takeaway — and used the opportunity to recommend their favorite local distillery. Read the story.
A Luzerne County soldier sat down in a just-vacated Confederate camp at Bunker Hill, Virginia and wrote home to a woman in Wilkes-Barre in July 1861. The rebels had left so fast they didn't take their food. The writer shares his unvarnished thoughts about his rebel foes. Read the letter.
In the spring of 1933, Rabbi Louis Levitsky of Wilkes-Barre stood before a women’s club and said what much of the world wasn’t ready to hear. Across the Coal Region, Jewish communities were already organizing, writing, and raising money — while the rest of the world looked away. Read my latest for RealClear Pennsylvania.
"The Christian men to whom God has given control..." Reading Railroad president George Baer meant his reply to a Wilkes-Barre photographer to be private. Within weeks it had been telegraphed across the country and handed the striking miners of 1902 the perfect villain. Read both letters in full.
Two stuffed figures swayed above a street in Wilkes-Barre, PA street in the summer of 1902. The message to every "scab" in Luzerne County was unmistakable. A photograph from the Coal Strike captures how close the tension was to boiling over. Read the story.