Antietam Overview: Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW

See Jespersen’s full collection of Civil War maps. Great reference source.

Howard, O. O. (Oliver Otis), 1830-1909

Oliver Otis Howard, born November 8th, 1830, in Leeds, Maine, was a star-crossed general in the federal Army during the Civil War. He was an officer of unquestioned bravery, with a deep devotion to his Christian faith, and terribly maligned for actions that, in the main, were beyond his ability to control. Despite the political ravages of his enemies, his life was one of great accomplishment in the face of adversity, and for the benefit of others.

Howard lost his father at the age of 9, and with it the innocence of youth. His schooling included Monmouth Academy, Yarmouth Academy, and Kent’s Hill School, prior to graduating from Bowdoin College at the age of 19, in 1850. Afterwards, he gained acceptance to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated in 1854, 4th in a class of 46 cadets. He was commissioned as a brevet 2nd Lieutenant of Ordnance, and posted to Watervliet Arsenal in New York. Shortly thereafter, he became the commander of the Kennebec Arsenal, in Augusta, Maine.

It was at Kennebec that Howard started his real career. Maine, with it’s many rivers and tidal estuaries, had 11 rolling mills producing black powder. By 1865, those mills had produced a staggering 1/3 of ALL the black powder used for small arms ammunition in the federal Armies during the civil war. The oversight by Howard set the Kennebec Arsenal in good stead to start production of small arms cartridges, which it did, along qith other items, through the course of the war.

In 1861, Howard was granted a leave of absence from the Regular Army to accept a volunteer commission as a Colonel, leading the newly-formed 3rd Regiment, Maine Volunteer Infantry. Shortly after arriving in Washington, DC, Howard was placed in charge of the brigade to which the 3rd was attached, and for his conduct at Bull Run in July, 1861, he was promoted on September 3rd to Brigadier General.
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April 1865. Ruins of the State Arsenal at Richmond showing stacked and scattered ammunition. From photographs of the main Eastern theater of war after the fall of Richmond, compiled by Hirst Milhollen and Donald Mugridge.

Found at Shorpy.

Tim’s unable to do a full write up this week (I think it might be weather-related power issues) but here’s a photo I happened across:

Capt. Schwartz (The Sharpshooter). 39th N. Y. Vol. (Garibaldi Guard)

Sarah S. Sampson. Maine State Archives.

“They also serve, who only stand and wait”.

As the last line in John Milton’s Poem “On His Blindness”, he uses the phrase to point out that, despite his seeming disability, he has a place in God’s plans for the world.

Sarah S. Sampson also had a bar to serving her country: She was a woman. Born in Maine in 1832, she married Charles A.L. Sampson, of Bath, Maine, on Valentine’s day of 1855. Theirs was a happy, if childless, marriage, with Charles being noted as a sculptor of figureheads for sailing ships. One of his works still survives today in Mystic Seaport’s museum.

When war broke out in 1861, Charles was commissioned into the 3rd Maine Infantry, two of whose companies (A&D) were recruited from the city of Bath. The original Colonel of the 3rd was Oliver Otis Howard, later to command the 11th Corps and then the Army of the Tennessee on the march through Georgia. All that was to come much later, though.

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