Author: Brian D. Kowell – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

Edwin Cole Bearss, 1923-2020

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2026, All Rights Reserved

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

Edwin Cole Bearss was born on June 26, 1923 in Billings, Montana. His parents were Omar Effinger Bearss (1896-1981) and Virginia Louise Morse Bearss (1901-1964). He had one younger brother, Robert (Pat) Bearss. Ed was raised on a 10,000-acre cattle ranch that was 90 miles west of Billings and was named the E bar S. He grew up with kerosene lamps and horse-drawn plows. Ed and his brother Pat worked on the ranch when not attending school. Their first school, a one-room schoolhouse, Sarpy School, was six miles away, and sometimes the boys rode together on horseback to and from the school.

Brave Buckeye Women in Blue: Ohio Women Soldiers in the Civil War

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 October 2024.

No one knows the exact number of women soldiers who served in the American Civil War. Historians DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, who chronicled 240 women in uniform in their book They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, estimate that over 400 served North and South. The American Battlefield Trust estimates that the number could be as high as 700 women who served in uniform. “The full extent of women’s participation as armed combatants in America’s bloodiest and most costly conflict will never be known with certainty,” wrote Blanton and Cook, “because women soldiers fought for the most part in secrecy.” Some followed their husbands or sweethearts off to war, some escaped from domestic abuse or poverty, and others served for patriotic reasons. Many women soldiers hailed from Ohio.¹

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.

The Sweetheart of a Sigma Chi

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in December 2023.

“If I could only see her once more, I feel that exile would lose its terror.”¹

“[I] am growing very anxious to rec. letters, especially . . . fr. VBM . . . [she] is my chief source of anxiety. I fear I may have to go to some foreign land without ever bidding adieu to my best & most loved friend.”²

“Am at a loss to hear from VBM. Must see her on my release at all events.”³

So wrote Ohio soldier James Parks Caldwell in his diary. Countless soldiers in the Civil War wrote to their wives and sweethearts, longing to see them. What makes Caldwell’s situation unique is that he was imprisoned at Johnson’s Island Prison in Sandusky Bay, Ohio, and his sweetheart was a rebel spy.

Horseshoes Win the Civil War

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in November 2023 and was subsequently published on the Emerging Civil War website.

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

Benjamin Franklin quoting an old proverb in Poor Richard’s Almanac

Before 1835 all horseshoes were made by hand by blacksmiths. It was a labor-intensive process. A blacksmith could make four horseshoes in about an hour. That all changed because of one man, Scotsman Henry Burden. “It was astonishing. [Henry] Burden was one of the most inventive men of the 19th century…Now, no one knows who he is,” said one historian. The fact is Henry Burden greatly aided the North in winning the American Civil War with his invention of a machine that mass-produced horseshoes.

No Caps, No Guns: The Struggle for Confederate Copper

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in October 2023.

In the dark, the Yankee colonel heard the popping sounds from along his picket line and ordered his troopers to their support. As dawn broke, he was surprised by the booming of rebel cannon followed by a Confederate charge to test his lines. As the Confederates withdrew, the colonel inspected his lines, noticing a large copper rolling mill that anchored his right flank. As the colonel clenched his pipe, he needed to make some decisions before the Confederates tried again.

The Case of Lucy Bagby: The Last Fugitive Slave

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2022, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in November 2022.

The saga of Sara Lucinda (“Lucy”) Bagby begins in Richmond, Virginia. In 1850 Virginia’s population of 1.12 million people included 479,000 slaves, seven-year-old Sara Lucinda (“Lucy”) Bagby among them. The slave trade in Virginia was far and away the state’s largest industry, and in Richmond the traffic in slaves surpassed all other areas in the state. In 1850 more than 80,000 men, women, and children were sold in the Virginia slave markets.¹

Doubleday’s Revenge

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in April 2023.

If you stand on the ramparts of Fort Moultrie in South Carolina and look down the beach west of the fort’s massive guns, in the direction of Mount Pleasant, you will see the place where 162 years ago there once stood a luxurious beachfront hotel. In the evening, with a little imagination, you might see its bright lights and hear the sounds of music and laughter of the well-to-do people dancing at one of its extravagant balls, or sitting along its wide veranda, or strolling along its sandy beachfront.

A Zouave Summer in Cleveland

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2022, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in December 2022.

“They have paraded and drilled and in so doing have astonished and delighted beyond measure thousands of spectators.”¹ And now they were coming to Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1860, Cleveland had a population of 43,417, making it the 19th largest city in the United States. It was a bustling commercial city. With its Port of Cleveland on Lake Erie and goods transported via the Cuyahoga River and the Ohio & Erie Canal, in addition to its train connections with New York, Chicago, and the South, commerce was booming. It became an important city not only in Ohio, but in the nation.²