"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.
George Shafer was 17 years old and had just survived his first Civil War battle when he sat down to write his mother in Carbondale, PA. He wanted her to know he was safe — and wondered what the town was doing to celebrate the Fourth of July. Read the full letter.
On July 2, 1861, the men of the 11th Pennsylvania finally met the enemy. Writing from Williamsport, MD two days later, Private William Ferris of Pittston, PA became the first soldier in this series to report from an actual battlefield — and the news from the front was only getting more serious. Read the full letter.
In a letter to the "Miners' Journal," Private James K. Helms of the 6th Pennsylvania describes the scenes as the US Army crossed the Potomac River at Williamsport, MD in June 1861. The young soldier's account vividly describes their first march toward the enemy in Virginia. Read the full letter.