It was a time of oratory and a time when Ohioans became President. James Garfield was a product of the time. He was born into “a poor family” and “an intellectual in love with books.”[i] He attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute as a student and janitor, and by the following year, he became an assistant professor.[ii] Garfield was a man who treasured intellect. When William Dean Howells came to Garfield’s home in Hiram, Ohio in 1870, he sat on the porch and told a story about New England’s poets; Garfield “stopped him, ran out into his yard, and hallooed the neighbors sitting on their porches: ‘He’s telling about Holmes, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and Whittier.’”[iii] At a time when the Midwest fostered “a strong tradition of vernacular intellectualism” that manifested itself in “crowds for the touring lectures, the lyceums, and later the Chautauquas,” the neighbors gathered and listened “to Howells while the whippoorwills flew and sang in the evening air.”[iv]
(more…)Tag: Battle of Chickamauga
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The Battle of Chickamauga
The Site of the Outbreak of the Battle of Chickamauga. Courtesy: Library Photograph Collection. Near the end of September 1863, Union General William Rosecrans had gathered his men in the valley of West Chickamauga Creek in Georgia, and Confederate General Braxton Bragg was preparing to attack the Union left flank and force a reversal into a nearby valley from which Rosecrans could not escape.[i] The maneuver would be the ideal Confederate response to the federal successes at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Fortunately for the federal troops, September 18 brought Confederate inaction and allowed General George Thomas, known as “Old Slow Trot” or “Pap” to his men, to reinforce Rosecrans’ left line.[ii] The next morning dawned what would become the “bloodiest battle in the western theater of the war.”[iii] (more…)
Last Best Hope of Earth 