Civil War Anecdotes – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

Rhode Island: The Smallest State’s Contribution to the Union Cause

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2026, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in January 2026.

During the Civil War, Rhode Island provided 25,236 volunteers to the Union’s armed forces. That included 8 infantry regiments, 3 cavalry regiments, and 14 artillery batteries. Of the over 25,000 Rhode Islanders who served, 1,685 died, including Brigadier General Isaac Peace Rodman at the battle of Antietam.

“Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dula”

By D. Kent Fonner
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2026 All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in May 2026.

Tom Dula (pronounced “Dooley” based on the Appalachian dialect that pronounces a letter “a” ending a word like a “y” – “Grand Ole Opry” for example) served in Company K, 42nd North Carolina Volunteers. Dula, after his service in the Civil War, including time as a POW at Point Lookout, Maryland, returned to Wilkes County, North Carolina, to his home in Happy Valley on the Yadkin River. Prior to the war, Dula had an affair with a woman named Ann Melton, the wife of a local farmer, James Melton. When Dula returned in 1865, he soon resumed his relationship with Ann Melton, but eventually cohabitated in a cabin in the woods with Ann’s cousin, Laura Foster.

Armistead, Ashby, and “The Star-Spangled Banner”

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in October 2025.

On September 14, 1814, lawyer Francis Scott Key stood aboard a truce ship outside Baltimore Harbor and watched through the night as the British bombarded American-held Fort McHenry. As the sky lightened and he glimpsed the American flag still waving above the ramparts, the inspired Key removed a letter from his pocket and began to write verses upon the back. The finished poem was later titled “Defense of Fort McHenry” and put to music as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”¹

A Civil War-Era Invention That Literally Was a Game-Changer

By David A. Carrino
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2026, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in February 2026.

The Civil War is often called the first modern war because many advances in technology and in military practices had their first widespread use during the Civil War. This is articulated nicely and succinctly in an article on the website of the Chicago Historical Society: “The Civil War demonstrated for the first time how industrial technology had transformed the nature of warfare.” After the Civil War, wars and the methodology of waging war would never be the same as before, a fact that European nations cruelly learned in World War I. Rifled muskets, ironclad warships, the use of railroads to transport troops and supplies, faster and better medical treatment of the wounded, the use of the telegraph to enhance the speed of communication, surveillance balloons, and trench warfare all experienced their first widespread wartime use in the Civil War. Moreover, the practice of total war came to prominence during the Civil War, which also saw the first sinking of an enemy warship by a submarine. The Union war effort was even aided by the mass production of horseshoes with a machine that could make a horseshoe per second.

Brothers in Arms: Edgar and William Abbott at Stones River – In Their Own Words

By Thomas M. Cooper
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in October 2025.

This is a story of discovery, of happenstance, of survival, of collaboration – and of gratitude.

Directly after Dan Masters’ March 13, 2024 presentation to our Cleveland Civil War Roundtable on the Battle of Stones River, I approached him about my having had two great-great grandfathers involved in that engagement – one from Ohio and one from Indiana. He asked which Indiana unit, and I recalled the 4th Battery, Light Artillery. Dan said in fact he had posted information about Capt. Asahel Bush’s 4th Indiana Battery on his website just the day before his CCWRT presentation. (See reference and website: “Reminders of the 4th Indiana Battery’s Fight along the Wilkinson Pike,” March 12, 2024.)

Bushrod Johnson’s Final Resting Places

By David A. Carrino
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2016, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in October 2016.

The Civil War is occasionally referred to as the North vs. the South. However, people who are knowledgeable about the Civil War know that that is not entirely correct on an individual level. This is because quite a few of the combatants were from the opposite part of the country, but felt loyalty to the other side and chose to fight on that side. One such person is General Bushrod R. Johnson, who was a Northerner by birth, but who fought for the Confederacy. Ironically, just like Johnson’s life had a geographic dichotomy across the Civil War’s sectional divide, Johnson has two final resting places with a similar geographic duality, one in the North and one in the South.

Clara Barton and Clevelander John J. Elwell: A Civil War Romance

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in March 2025.

In my book Cleveland and the Civil War, I mention the relationship formed in 1863 between Clara Barton and Clevelander John J. Elwell (pp. 43-44). Born in Massachusetts, Barton moved to Washington City and was employed in the U.S. Patent Office. When the Civil War broke out, she volunteered with the Union Army, first bringing medical supplies after battles beginning with First Bull Run and then also nursing wounded soldiers at Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. She became known as “The Angel of the Battlefield,” but she did not join the official Union nurses corps headed by Dorothea Dix.

Gutzon Borglum: Part Deux

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in January 2025.

After writing my article about Gutzon Borglum and his work on Mount Rushmore and at Stone Mountain, I wondered what other Civil War monuments Borglum sculpted. Turns out quite a few.

Gutzon Borglum vs. UDC and the State of Georgia

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in December 2024.

This past summer my wife and I traveled to South Dakota. We visited Mount Rushmore and were awestruck by the magnificence of the sculpted mountain with the visages of Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, and Lincoln – all done under the skilled guidance of sculptor Gutzon Borglum. This was not Borglum’s first try carving heroes on a mountain’s face.

An Angel from Richmond, the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the Long Path of Discovery

By Thomas M. Cooper
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in December 2024.

The biographical details of our ancestors emerge slowly, and perhaps this is a good thing. History needs to marinate some events over time so that their meaning can be understood by the living, in deeper, broader contexts. This is especially true for wartime histories involving trauma and the years required to remember-and-resolve. This is one of the reasons we study these periods and come together to talk about them.