Joseph N. Geiger, Jr.

As part of the State of West Virginia’s sesquicentennial events, Joseph N. Geiger, Jr. will  present a lecture on “A State of Convenience: The Creation of West Virginia” in the West Virginia Archives and History Library at the Culture Center in Charleston on Thursday, June 20, 2013, at 12:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Geiger will outline the major conventions and other events that shaped the creation of the new state from Virginia in the midst of the Civil War. He also will discuss the importance of the Civil War to the statehood movement and review the reasons why many questioned the legality of West Virginia’s formation.

Joe Geiger has been the director of West Virginia Archives and History since 2007. He is the author of Holding the Line: The Battle of Allegheny Mountain and Confederate Defense of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, 1861-62 (2012) and currently is working on a revised edition of his Civil War in Cabell County, West Virginia, 1861-1865 (1991). Geiger has taught West Virginia history at Marshall University since 1997.

For additional information, contact Bryan Ward, assistant director of Archives and History, at (304) 558-0230, ext 723, or Bryan.E.Ward@wv.gov.

When western Virginians remained loyal to the United States in the Civil War, they were among the only white people living in the slave states who refused to join the Confederacy. Sheehan-Dean will discuss the reasons for their decision. Understanding their motivation helps solve one of the continuing puzzles at the heart of the Civil War: why people stayed loyal to the U.S. He will explore what the United States represented that compelled such sacrifice from its loyal citizens. Sheehan-Dean also will explore what other northerners thought about West Virginia statehood. Beyond the technical question of state creation and the strategic importance of securing the territory of western Virginia, he will discuss how Americans understood what West Virginians’ loyalty meant.

Aaron Sheehan-Dean is the Eberly Professor of Civil War Studies at West Virginia University. He is the author of Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia (2007) and the Concise Historical Atlas of the U.S. Civil War (2008), and he is also the editor of several books. He teaches courses on 19-century U.S. history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Southern History.

For additional information, contact Bryan Ward, assistant director of Archives and History, at (304) 558-0230, ext 723, or Bryan.E.Ward@wv.gov.

Calamity at Chancellorsville: The Wounding and Death of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson is the first full-length examination of Jackson’s final days. Contrary to popular belief, eyewitnesses often disagreed regarding key facts relating to the events surrounding Jackson’s reconnaissance, wounding, harrowing journey out of harm’s way, medical care, and death. These accounts, for example, conflict regarding where Jackson was fatally wounded and even the road he was on when struck. If he wasn’t wounded where history has recorded, then who delivered the fatal volley? How many times did he fall from the stretcher? What medical treatment did he receive? What type of amputation did Dr. Hunter McGuire perform? Did Jackson really utter his famous last words, “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees?” What was the cause of his death?

Author Mathew W. Lively utilizes extensive primary source material and a firm understanding of the area to re-examine the gripping story of the final days of one of the Confederacy’s greatest generals, and how Southerners came to view Jackson’s death during and after the conflict. Dr. Lively begins his compelling narrative with a visit from Jackson’s family prior to the battle of Chancellorsville, then follows his course through the conflict to its fatal outcome.

Instead of revising history, Dr. Lively offers up a fresh new perspective. Calamity at Chancellorsville will stand as the definitive account of one of the most important and surprisingly misunderstood events of the American Civil War.

About the Author:  Mathew W. Lively is a West Virginia native and practicing physician. He currently serves as a Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the West Virginia University School of Medicine. The recipient of two master’s degrees in addition to his medical degree, he has been an active teacher of medical students and resident physicians for the past fifteen years. He is the author of numerous scientific articles in the medical literature, several of which focus on medical history topics. A life-long student of Civil War history, he has combined his interests and medical knowledge in a book on the death of Stonewall Jackson.

Jon Averill has recently released a new documentary film, Averell’s Raiders and the 35th Star. The film features several prominent historians, including Eric J. Wittenberg, Scott C. Patchan, Dr. David Bard, and Howard R. McManus. It will be available on DVD in July 2013. Watch the trailer below, and visit www.averellsraiders.com for more information.

Eric J. Wittenberg

UPDATE:  Listen to an interview with Eric Wittenberg on West Virginia Public Radio.

Eric Wittenberg, one of the nation’s leading experts on Civil War cavalry, is the guest speaker for the May meeting of the Kanawha Valley Civil War Roundtable. Wittenberg is the author of The Battle of White Sulphur Springs: Averell Fails to Secure West Virginia. The book is the focus of Wittenberg’s lecture at the May meeting of the Kanawha Valley Civil War Roundtable. The meeting will be Tuesday, May 21 at 7:00 p.m. at the South Charleston Public Library. The meeting is free and open to the public.

The Battle of White Sulphur Springs is one of the first in 1863 to involve Gen. William Woods Averell’s 4th Separate Brigade. Averell, a West Point graduate who had risen to command a division in the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps, assumed command of the brigade in May 1863. It was comprised of infantry, mounted infantry, cavalry and artillery batteries. The mounted infantry regiments were the 2nd, 3rd and 8th West Virginia, regiments which began the war as infantry, became mounted infantry in 1863 and finished the war as the 5th, 6th and 7th West Virginia Cavalry regiments respectively.

Averell’s command was sent to Lewisburg to capture the Virginia Supreme Court law library housed in the Greenbrier County Courthouse. Because the Virginia Supreme Court met at least once each year in western Virginia, the courthouse had a law library that was a duplicate of the one in Richmond. When West Virginia became a state, the library was needed in Wheeling to help establish the new West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Because of this mission, the Battle of White Sulphur Springs is sometimes referred to as the Battle of the Law Books.

“There is a misperception that Averell was afraid to fight. That he was too cautious. The truth is that he was a bold gambler who did what he needed to do. This was a brutal slugging match, and Averell and his troops were up to the task,” Wittenberg said.

Eric Wittenberg is an attorney in Columbus, Ohio. His other books include The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station; The Battle of Brandy Station; Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions; Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkeroff’s Ridge and East Cavalry Field; One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia;Lil Phil: A Reassessment of the Civil War Generalship of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan; and Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads and the Civil War’s Final Campaign. His new books include one on Gen. John Buford’s division in the Gettysburg Campaign and Buckeyes Forward, a book on Ohio troops in the Antietam Campaign.

Copies of The Battle of White Sulphur Springs will be available for purchase at the meeting. For more information, phone (304)389-8587.

Over 400 photographs, maps, and drawings. Includes 230 sites connected to the Civil War such as battlefields, cemeteries, buildings, and houses. The book divides the sites by county, giving the significance of and directions to each site. This guidebook provides an opportunity for a hands on approach to learning about the Civil War.

The book can be ordered online at The West Virginia Book Company.

West Virginia celebrates its Sesquicentennial on June 20, 2013.

West Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission

Events and information from West Virginia Culture and History

Greg Carroll

Greg Carroll presented the talk “Slavery in Virginia: 1619-1860″ on Thursday, April 11, 2013, in the Archives and History Library at the Culture Center, State Capitol Complex in Charleston.

Carroll addressed the development and spread of slavery from Virginia’s early years to the Civil War. He discussed how the slavery system in Virginia differed from the types of slavery practiced in South Carolina, the Caribbean, South America, and even the serfdom techniques used in Russia. Carroll explained the main aspects of slavery in economic and social terms. He also explained the contradictions that the system fostered, especially in Virginia, and how the reliance on a slave economy in the southern states split the U.S. in 1860 and brought about the Civil War.

Carroll is a graduate of Marshall University. He was a staff historian for the West Virginia Division of Culture and History’s Archives and History Section for 23 years until his retirement in October 2012. His primary focus was on Native Americans, African Americans and Civil War history.

View the video here…

Mr. Lowry is one of West Virginia’s leading historians, a member of the staff at the West Virginia State Archives, and is the author of several books and articles on West Virginia and the Civil War.

The Mason-Dixon Civil War Round Table’s annual Civil War Symposium will be held at the Erickson Alumni Center located on the West Virginia University Evansdale Campus, on Saturday, April 6, 2013. The Symposium registration cost is $25.00. Registration includes lunch and breakfast pastries.  Registration starts at 8:30 AM and the presentations begin at 9:00 AM.

The day-long symposium will include several presentations:

• West Virginia Statehood, by Joe Geiger
• The Jones and Imboden Raid, by Steve French
• The Battle of White Sulphur Springs, by Eric J. Wittenberg
• Lincoln’s Statemanship, by Dr. Joseph Fornieri

More information:  West Virginia Mason-Dixon Civil War Roundtable

Click here to read his obituary via the Charleston Daily Mail….

The members of SBPA have expended about $165,000 in legal costs challenging a real estate developer who is attempting to build 152 houses on 123 acres in the core of the battlefield. A recent Circuit Court decision ruled in favor of a SBPA petition that the Jefferson County’s Planning Commission violated the WV Open Government Proceedings Act by granting the developer a 3 year extension to build the proposed development. In saving the 102 acres, SBPA has raised more that $800,000 through grants and funds provided by the West Virginia state government, the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service, the Civil War Trust, the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Program, and the Land Trust of the Eastern Panhandle. In December 2012, another battlefield property has been placed on the market and SBPA has pledged to donate $10,000 to aid the Civil War Trust in its purchase.

Click here to learn more about the Battle of Shepherdstown and how you can get involved!

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — For some Civil War soldiers, the motivation for enlisting had as much to do with satisfying a sense of adventure and helping to shape history as it did with patriotism and regional pride.

Such was the case with Private Harry Fitzallen, who went to extraordinary lengths to join the 23rd Kentucky Volunteer Infantry and serve in two other Union Army regiments before his military career hit a series of serious snags, including his arrest in Charleston 150 years ago today.

Fitzallen, as it turned out, was really a 19-year old woman named Marian McKenzie, a native of Scotland, and a former acting student.

According to Larry Eggleston’s “Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories of Soldiers, Spies, Nurses, Doctors, Crusaders and Others,” McKenzie immigrated to the United States with her father as a young child shortly after her mother died.

“Her father died shortly after they arrived in New York, leaving her and several brothers and sisters orphaned,” according to the book. “Marian educated herself and studied to become an actress but soon found that the life of an actress was not suitable for her. She began traveling from place to place earning a living the best she could.”

When the Civil War broke out, according to the book, McKenzie was living in northern Kentucky, where, at the age of 18, she “cropped her hair short, put on men’s clothing and enlisted in the 23rd Kentucky Infantry Regiment as Pvt. Harry Fitzallen.”

Her first few months serving the Union cause took her to southern Kentucky and central Tennessee, where her regiment performed guard and garrison chores. After four months in the field, her true gender was discovered, and she was brought before regimental authorities.

McKenzie pleaded with the regimental commander to let her stay with the unit, if not as a soldier, as a non-combatant. The commander relented, assigning her to a new role as a nurse’s aide attached to the regimental hospital.

But after two months, McKenzie left the 23rd, and in a bid to return to her former role as a male soldier in the Union Army, joined the 92nd Ohio Infantry, again as Pvt. Harry Fitzallen. From Oct. 14 to Nov. 16, 1862, Fitzallen and the 92nd marched from Marietta, Ohio, to Charleston. But on Dec. 20, while in Charleston, then under Union occupation, she was again discovered to be a woman, and was suspected of being a Confederate spy.

On orders of Brig. Gen. George Crook, commander of the Kanawha Division, Fitzallen/McKenzie was placed under guard, put aboard the packet steamer Bostona No. 2, and sent to the provost marshal general’s office in Wheeling.

“I have the honor to report the receipt of a prisoner of war sent here by Brigadier-General Crook in the shape of a female wearing male apparel charged as a spy for the rebels, arrested in the streets of Charleston, Va.,” Maj. Joseph Darr Jr., the provost marshal general, wrote on Christmas Eve of 1862 from his office in Wheeling. Darr’s letter to the 3rd Infantry Division’s commissary-general of prisoners went on to describe the dark-haired, 5-foot, 2-inch prisoner as a stocky, “coarse-looking creature, scarcely answering the description of la fille du regiment,” or daughter of the regiment.

Darr’s comments on McKenzie’s appearance seem a bit uncharitable, since a march from Ohio to Charleston, followed by a few weeks of camp life during a wet winter in the Kanawha Valley, would make a “coarse-looking creature” out of most soldiers.

McKenzie was lodged in the Ohio County Jail, and ordered to change from her Union Army uniform into a civilian dress that was provided for her, minus the customary hoops needed to deploy it in the style of the day.

“She adamantly refused to change into the woman’s clothing until that oversight was corrected,” Eggleston wrote in his book.

According to a Wheeling newspaper account, when told she would be detained until her story could be corroborated, McKenzie replied, “Very well, I cannot help it. The only way in which I have violated the law is in assuming men’s apparel. The injury that I have done is principally to myself.”

The newspaper quoted McKenzie as saying she “went into the army for the love of excitement and from no motive in connection with the war, one way or another.”

According to Eggleston’s book, McKenzie “was discharged from the 92nd Ohio Infantry, but soon joined another Union regiment, the 8th Ohio Infantry. She lasted only a few weeks with the new Ohio regiment before again being discovered to be a woman.

According to the book, she enlisted in at least one more Union regiment before being mustered out of the Army for good in January of 1865.

“Marian McKenzie served many different regiments in the three years she was in the Army,” wrote Eggleston. “She only expressed adventure as her motive, but the fact that she served for three years and continually re-enlisted makes one believe that there were other, more patriotic motives involved in her decisions.”

According to Eggleston’s research, between 400 and 700 women were known to have disguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers on both sides during the Civil War. About 60 of them were killed or wounded.

To view correspondence between military officials in Charleston and Wheeling following McKenzie’s arrest, visit the West Virginia Division of Culture and History’s sesquicentennial website at www.wvculture.org/history/sesquicentennial/18621224.html.

To learn more about the campaign and to donate, visit: http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/yearend2012/a-message-from-jim-lighthizer.html

For more info on the Battle of Cool Springs, click here….

Dr. Kenneth R. Bailey

On November 13, 2012, Dr. Kenneth R. Bailey presented ‘“Scratch ‘em and Sue ‘em’: Post Civil War Legal Issues” at the Tuesday evening lecture in the Archives and History Library in the Culture Center in Charleston.

Civil War legal issues consumed much of West Virginia’s court system for several years following the war. Using a PowerPoint program, Bailey discussed legal cases at the Supreme Court dealing with Reconstruction Era issues of voting, false arrest, belligerent rights, acts of Confederate county officers, the value of Confederate money, etc., from the end of the war until rights were restored to former rebels. Former Confederates were “scratched” from the voting rolls and sued for alleged wrongs on civilians during the war. Pictures of individuals and documents were used to illustrate topics covered.

Dr. Bailey is a graduate of West Virginia Institute of Technology (now WVU Tech), Marshall University, and The Ohio State University, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1976. He is retired Dean of the College of Business, Humanities and Sciences and Emeritus Professor of History and Geography at WVU Tech. Bailey is the author of Kanawha County Public Library: A History (2004), Alleged Evil Genius: The Life and Times of Judge James H. Ferguson (2006), Raising the Bar: A History of the West Virginia Bar Association (2007), and Mountaineers are Free: A History of the West Virginia National Guard (1979, revised and expanded 2008).

View the video here….

The Civil War medals were authorized by the state legislature in 1866 as “tokens of respect” for Union veterans of West Virginia military units. Many were unclaimed, however, and eventually were turned over to Archives and History, which began a program to distribute remaining medals to descendants who file a properly documented line of descent from the veteran to themselves.

Greg Carroll is a graduate of Marshall University and recently retired as a staff historian at West Virginia Archives and History, where he worked for 23 years. He had been working with the Civil War medal claims for about two decades.

View the video here….

For more on the West Virginia Civil War Medals, click here….

The new title, Rebel Chronicles: Raiders, Scouts, and Train Robbers of the Upper Potomac, is divided into three parts, and includes a foreword by Edwin C. Bearrs.

Part 1:  8 chapters dealing with Potomac Scouts Captain Redmond Burke and Lieutenant Andrew Leopold, and 4 chapters covering the Valley Scout Captain John Corbin Blackford.

Part 2:  3 chapters on the Highland Raiders and the Raids on Little Cacapon, Paw Paw, Capon Bridge, South Fork and Saint George.

Part 3:  3 chapters of Train Robberies. The Winchester & Potomac Robbery, The Brown’s Shop Robbery and the Greenback Raid Robbery.

Read a book review by Gregg Clemmer at examiner.com

Ted Alexander, Chief Historian, Antietam National Battlefield says: “Steve’s book is buttressed by a vast array of sources, many of them never before utilized in any other studies. The bibliography alone is worth the price of this book. Some scholars have thrown out the challenge that there is nothing new to write about on the Civil War. Let them read Rebel Chronicles. Steve French has provided us with a fresh look at an often ignored phase of Civil War History.”

Rebel Chronicles is available for purchase at Battlefields and Beyond, Butternut and Blue, Confederate Shop, or by contacting the author. [Send $22.95 + $3 s/h to 8604 Martinsburg Rd., Hedgesville, WV 25427]

About the author:  Steve French is the author of Imboden’s Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign, winner of the 2008 Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award and the 2009 Gettysburg Civil War Round Table Book Award, and The Jones-Imboden Raid Against the B&O Railroad at Rowlesburg, Virginia, April 1863. He is also the editor of Four Years Along the Tilhance: The Diary of Elisha Manor. His more than seventy Civil War and other historical articles have appeared in The Washington Times, Gettysburg Magazine, North &South Magazine, The Southern Cavalry Review, Maryland Cracker Barrel Magazine, The Morgan Messenger, and Crossfire: The Magazine of the American Civil War Round Table (UK).

Holding the Line: The Battle of Allegheny Mountain and Confederate Defense of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, 1861-62

By Joe Geiger, Jr.

Now available from the West Virginia Book Company…..

This book seeks to provide a detailed look at military activities along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike from mid-September 1861 to the first week of April 1862. This campaign, fought primarily in Pocahontas County, Virginia, included the Battle of Greenbrier River, in which nearly 7,000 soldiers clashed in what was primarily an artillery duel; the Battle of Allegheny Mountain, the bloodiest battle of the first year of the war in present-day West Virginia; the January 1862 raid on Huntersville; and numerous other skirmishes, raids, expeditions, incidents and events.

The evidence shows that although Union forces never planned an offensive eastward along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike after Major General George B. McClellan departed from western Virginia, Confederate leaders were convinced that failure to defend this road would result in a Union advance toward Staunton, a belief that doomed hundreds of Confederate soldiers to spend a winter in a most inhospitable land.

The soldiers who lived through these tumultuous times would remember their experiences in this remote region for the rest of their lives, and this endeavor was undertaken and completed so that their sacrifices and experiences are documented and preserved for future generations. They would undoubtedly be pleased to be remembered.

About the Author: Joe Geiger is the director of Archives and History at the West Virginia Division of Culture. Geiger has published numerous scholarly articles and a book, Civil War in Cabell County, West Virginia, 1861-1865.

Click here to review or purchase from the West Virginia Book Company….