(1) Virginia Group Seeking Marker - Chattanooga Times Free Press

 (2) Rare Photo of Slave Children Found in North Carolina Attic ­ Associated Press

 (3) Town Seeks Vintage Locomotive - Washington Post

 (4) Urban Sprawl Threatens Civil War Battlefields ­ The World Today

 (5) Crusade against Gettysburg Casino Plans Takes on Tones of a Holy War ­ Harrisburg Patriot-News

 (6) Members of Civil War Preservation Trust Visit Richmond Battlefield - Richmond Register

 (7) Civil War Preservers Take in Local History - Frankfort State Journal

 (8) Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site Grows by 54 Acres - Lexington Herald-Leader

 (9) Region Getting Ready to Show Its Respect - Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

(10) National Register Application for South Mountain Moves Forward - Hagerstown Herald Mail

(11) Texas State Astronomers Solve Walt Whitman Meteor Mystery - University News Service

--(1)  Virginia Group Seeking Marker -----------------------------------------------------

Virginia Group Seeking Marker
By Andy Johns
6/11/2010
Chattanooga Times Free Press (TN)
http://www.tfponline.com/news/2010/jun/11/virginia-group-seeking-marker/?local

A Southwest Virginia Civil War group hopes to accomplish in three years what its state legislators haven't been able to do in 115.
James Christman, a resident of Grayson County, Va., has launched a nonprofit group that aims to build a monument to his state's troops at Chickamauga Battlefield by that battle's 150th anniversary in 2013.
The Virginia Legislature voted in 1895 to authorize a monument to the state's troops at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park but never funded it.
A visit to the park inspired the effort, Mr. Christman said on the website SWVAToday.com.
"I looked at all the monuments on the battlefield and there was no marker for the 54th or the 63rd regiment," he said. "When I got home, I got to thinking about it. Other states had markers but Virginia didn't."
Attempts to reach Mr. Christman by phone Thursday were unsuccessful.
Jim Ogden, historian at the park, said troops from 29 states were involved in Civil War action in or around Chattanooga and Chickamauga. Most have monuments, but states including Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Maine and West Virginia do not, he said.
Adding a new monument will be a challenge, Mr. Ogden said. He's had a different group approach him about building monuments nearly each of his 28 years at the park, and all have failed to meet National Park Service guidelines, he said.
"There have not been many new monuments built in the last century in the national military park," Mr. Ogden said. "Most groups find that their ideas are not possible."
But Mr. Christman's group, called the 63rd and 54th Virginia Military Descendants Association, "has certainly gone at this point further than other groups have," Mr. Ogden said.
The park service guidelines say only states can build the monuments, which has disqualified most past efforts. This group, however, recently became an authorized agent of the state thanks to a bill written by Virginia state delegate Bill Carrico, a self-described "big Civil War buff."
The Virginia House of Delegates approved the resolution Feb. 19, and the Senate followed March 9.
On Thursday, Mr. Carrico said the group planned to raise about $60,000 and would design the monument based on input from the Park Service and the style of the other markers.
Mr. Ogden said the group has work to do but could get it done by the anniversary.
"They've got some time, but they're also going to have to do a fair amount of their homework and groundwork sooner rather than later," he said. "It's not an impossibility at this point."

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--(2)  Rare Photo of Slave Children Found in North Carolina Attic -----------------------------------------------------

Rare Photo of Slave Children Found in North Carolina Attic
By Nicole Norfleet
6/10/2010
Associated Press (NAT)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061003993.html?hpid=sec-nation

A haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy.
Art historians believe it's an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated.
The photo, which may have been taken in the early 1860s, was a testament to a dark part of American history, said Will Stapp, a photographic historian and founding curator of the National Portrait Gallery's photographs department at the Smithsonian Institution.
"It's a very difficult and poignant piece of American history," he said. "What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history."
In April, the photo was found at a moving sale in Charlotte, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of John for $1,150, not a small sum in 1854.
New York collector Keya Morgan said he paid $30,000 for the photo album including the photo of the young boys and several family pictures and $20,000 for the sale document. Morgan said the deceased owner of the home where the photo was found was thought to be a descendant of John.
A portrait of slave children is rare, Morgan said.
"I buy stuff all the time, but this shocked me," he said.
What makes the picture an even more compelling find is that several art experts said it was created by the photography studio of Mathew Brady, a famous 19th-century photographer known for his portraits of historical figures such as President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Stapp said the photo was probably not taken by Brady himself but by Timothy O'Sullivan, one of Brady's apprentices. O'Sullivan took a multitude of photos depicting the carnage of the Civil War.
In 1862, O'Sullivan famously photographed a group of some of the first slaves liberated after Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
Such photos were circulated in the North by abolitionists to garner support for the Union during the Civil War, said Harold Holzer, an author of several books about Lincoln. Holzer works as an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Most of the photos depicted adult slaves who had been beaten or whipped, he said.
The photo of the two boys is more subtle, Holzer said, which may be why it wasn't widely circulated and remained unpublished for so long.
"To me, it's such a moving and astonishing picture," he said.
Ron Soodalter, an author and member of the board of directors at the Abraham Lincoln Institute in Washington, D.C., said the photo depicts the reality of slavery.
"I think this picture shows that the institution of slavery didn't pick or choose," said Soodalter, who has written several books on historic and modern slavery. "This was a generic horror. It victimized the old, the young."
For now, Morgan said, he is keeping the photo in his personal collection, but he said he has had an inquiry to sell the photo to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He said he is considering participating in the creation of a video documentary about John.
"This kid was abused and mistreated and people forgot about him," Morgan said. "He doesn't even exist in history. And to know that there were a million children who were like him. I've never seen another photo like that that speaks so much for children."

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--(3)  Town Seeks Vintage Locomotive -----------------------------------------------------

Town Seeks Vintage Locomotive
By Linda Wheeler
6/10/2010
Washington Post (DC)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/house-divided/2010/06/town_seeks_vintage_locomotive.html#more

The small Virginia town of Strasburg, about 80 miles west of Washington, needs a Civil War-era locomotive to help tell its part of the story of the Great Train Raid of May 23, 1861. Col. Thomas Jackson stole some 50 locomotives and 380 railroad cars from the B&O Railroad in Martinsburg (now WVa.) and transported some of them over rail and road to Strasburg, where they were sent south to Richmond.
"I need a locomotive," is how Strasburg Councilwoman Sarah Mauck began an organizational meeting yesterday with local historians, tourism officials and others with an interest in re-creating the historic event next year.
Strasburg, a busy crossroads during the war, is participating in the sesquicentennial commemoration of the war that begins officially in April, 2011.
Mauck's plan calls for an actual vintage locomotive to be dragged about five miles along Rt. 11 (Old Valley Pike) by teams of horses from the Cedar Creek battlefield in Middletown to Strasburg. She said the reenactment would be a strong draw for tourists interested in the Civil War as well as those who like horses. Coordinated events would be planned for both the battlefield and the town.
However, historians in the audience objected to changing the historic account, saying Jackson transported pieces of the locomotive to reduce the weight. Another concern was voiced about getting the Virginia Department of Transportation to approve the movement of anything as heavy as a locomotive along the pike and over its narrow bridges.
Discussion turned to creating light-weight replicas of the locomotive pieces. Although Mauck appeared to like that proposal, she wasn't giving up on a real locomotive. "If we could find one and someone was willing to bring it here by rail, we could park it at the old depot," she said. "That would be really good."

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--(4)  Urban Sprawl Threatens Civil War Battlefields -----------------------------------------------------

Urban Sprawl Threatens Civil War Battlefields
By Craig McMurtrie
6/7/2010
The World Today ­ Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2920327.htm

ELEANOR HALL: With the 150th anniversary of the US civil war approaching historians and civil war enthusiasts are waging a new fight to save battlefields under threat from urban sprawl. The Civil War Preservation Trust has published a list of America's 10 most endangered battlefields, and it includes the famous battleground of Gettysburg.
Craig McMurtrie visited a less well known civil war site high on the list - Fort Stevens - in suburban Washington.
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: The grass is ankle height. The park in Washington's north-west covers a block. It's surrounded by houses and other buildings and looks like any other suburban park - except for the giant flagpole and the civil war cannons.
GARRY ADELMAN: This ball could go through me, go through you and hit somebody else and this would be one of 12 to 27 that would be fired at once out of a cannon.
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: Historian Garry Adelman is holding a large grape shot in his hand. He points to a plaque on top of a nearby parapet.
GARRY ADELMAN: Abraham Lincoln came out here to meet with the troops on more than one occasion and on at least one occasion and maybe two he actually came up to the parapet here that I'm looking at, at Fort Stevens, a plaque marks the spot where supposedly it took place, and he was a tall guy and the Confederates are firing and people are dropping around him actually. A surgeon was shot right next to Abraham Lincoln when he was told to get down.
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: Because of that moment Washington's Fort Stevens holds a unique place in civil war history, but it's also one of America's 10 most endangered battlefields. The Civil War Preservation Trust says the country is losing battlegrounds at a rate of 12 hectares a day.
In this case a local church group plans a new housing development next door. Alexa Viets of the National Park Service shows me the plan.
ALEXA VIETS: Well, we're looking at a proposal from the neighbouring Emory Church to build low-income housing and a community centre essentially. It's a very admirable project.
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: The drawing shows the church and a few surrounding buildings replaced by one four-storey complex, running the length of the block.
What do you think?
ALEXA VIETS: Well you know I admire that the church is really trying to do something good for the community and its an important project for the community but I think from our perspective the goal is to find balance.
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: It's a highly sensitive local issue and our attempts to talk to a church spokesman were unsuccessful. But other civil war battlefields are also under threat from shopping centres and windmill farms. Garry Adelman:
GARRY ADELMAN: This is not just cute windmills that like in Holland or anything. These are giant windmills taller than the St Louis arch in some cases and with a footprint the size of a football field.
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: Even Gettysburg is under pressure - from a development application for a casino.
Do they want to build the casino next door to the battlefield?
GARRY ADELMAN: Yeah, within a half mile of the park and not only a half mile from the park but a half mile of some very significant parts of the park, where the second days attack of the battle of Gettysburg was launched. The bloodiest of the three days at Gettysburg.
(Sound of children playing)
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: Children are playing just across the street. Alexa Viets says the National Parks Service has plans for Fort Stevens.
ALEXA VIETS: Gun platforms which are also concrete but would have historically been wood are being re-laid in concrete and the flag pole will be lit.
CRAIG MCMURTRIE: The civil war faithful acknowledge that few people outside of Washington know much about this small block of history that seems in constant danger of being gobbled up by a sprawling city, but in the tradition of their forebears, they aren't about to surrender.
This is Craig McMurtrie for The World Today.

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--(5)  Crusade against Gettysburg Casino Plans Takes on Tones of a Holy War --------------------------------------------------

Crusade Against Gettysburg Casino Plans Takes on Tones of a Holy War
By Donald Gilliland
6/6/2010
Harrisburg Patriot-News (PA)
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/06/crusade_against_gettysburg_cas.html

They are defending the "sanctity" of a national shrine.
   
Their foe is an "abomination."
  
The second crusade against a Gettysburg casino has taken on the unmistakable tones of a holy war.
  
Opponents already helped defeat plans for a 3,000-slot casino in 2005. Now, they are fighting a smaller "resort casino" with 600 slots and table games proposed for the Eisenhower Hotel & Conference Center more than a mile south of town.
  
National preservation groups have joined the fray, including the Civil War Preservation Trust, which recently included Gettysburg on its list of "most endangered battlefields" because of the casino plan nearby.
  
Nicholas Redding of the Civil War Preservation Trust said a casino would hurt "heritage tourism" at the Gettysburg National Military Park, which has spent $3.2 million to make the battlefield look more as it did in July 1863.
  
John Wega, a local museum operator, opened the vigil with a prayer "to protect the holy and hallowed ground of Gettysburg." He ended it with an exhortation and benediction "as we soldiers for the No Casino effort go back to our battlefield."
  
Such rhetoric "has led many people to believe we're going to drop a casino right in the middle of the battlefield," said David LaTorre, spokesman for the planned Mason-Dixon Resort & Casino.
  
The fact the casino would be in an existing building has been obscured by the anti-casino mantra that it will be "within cannon range" of the military park.
  
That sound bite has been devastatingly effective. Yet apply the "cannon range" measuring stick elsewhere on the battlefield and the result is an epic clash - not between Blue and Grey, but between rhetoric and reality.
Sanctity and souvenirs   
Susan Star Paddock, leader of No Casino Gettysburg, told the crowd at the candlelight vigil she is trying to save "the reverence for the historic nature of what happened here."
  
But just one good baseball pitch from where Pickett's men made their bloody charge, the General Pickett's Buffet gift shop offers Gettysburg generals shot glasses, "goofy hillbilly teeth," and plush cow keychains that moo and cackle when squeezed.
  
Walter Gallas of the National Trust for Historic Preservation told vigil-goers, "We owe it to those who suffered and died here .... never to trivialize this powerful place."
  
Further along the "Journey Through Hallowed Ground" tour, visitors can buy Abe Lincoln bobbleheads, commemorative pocket coolies for their beer cans and "wedgie-free Red Neck Woman bikini panties."
  
For $78, you can outfit your small dog with a woolen Confederate officer's uniform, and for another $25, the pooch can sport a gray cap as well.
  
According to Redding, "We should preserve the sanctified, dignified and reverent atmosphere of Gettysburg."
  
Amid the town's profusion of ghost tours and haunted basements, there's Doc Weitzel's Travelling Curiosity Show. Its two-headed raccoon, shrunken head and FeeJee Mermaid are mere preludes to the desiccated turd purportedly plucked from Abraham Lincoln's chamber pot at Ford's Theatre, and the jug of liquid containing something that may or may not be John Dillinger's private parts.
  
"Previous mistakes are not justification for future transgression," said Redding.
  
However, Doc Weitzel's shop highlights Gettysburg's quandary - a battle among visions of what the town was, is and ought to be.
  
Doc Weitzel's may be the most historically authentic hokum in town. At least, soldiers on both sides would have recognized it. They lived in the age of P.T. Barnum, whose New York "museum" had attracted thousands of people each year for more than two decades by the time South met North at Gettysburg.
  
The chasm between "reverence" and "authenticity" is treacherous.
  
While the park plants trees and builds fences to make the battlefield appear more as it did in 1863, park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon explains it is not a "restoration" since the "commemorative layer" of 1,300 monuments will remain. "They are historic in their own right," she said.
  
Demolition of the concrete Cyclorama building as part of the rehabilitation effort was recently halted by federal court order because the modernist 1962 design was determined to have architectural value.
  
Historical authenticity spurs the million-dollar effort to rehabilitate the battlefield, yet gambling is part of Gettysburg's Civil War heritage. According to the National Military Park's website, "Like soldiers of all wars, games of chance and the exchange of money were popular in both armies. ... The most popular game was poker, which was usually played for stakes."
  
Such arguments are a "distraction" from the real issue, said Paddock.
If protecting history from modern development is the issue, however, casino developers want to know where the outrage was earlier.
  
"The Civil War Preservation Trust stood by and did nothing when a high-density housing developer purchased the 121-acre Gettysburg Country Club earlier this year, which is located on one of the most historic areas of the battlefield," said LaTorre.
  
The rear rooms of the recently opened Comfort Suites Hotel are only three coffin-lengths from the nearest headstone in Evergreen Cemetery and just a few hundred yards from where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.
  
Redding said his group is concerned about all development near the park. He said the group stands on its record of preserving 29,000 acres across the country in the last 20 years.
  
Development is a fact of life in Gettysburg, said anti-casino activist Keith Miller of Fairfield County, Conn.
  
Miller is an example of how Gettysburg's reputation generates resources for its anti-casino movement that such efforts lack in other places. Miller is a business and economic consultant with a degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
  
He has produced an economic analysis of the casino proposal. Though opposed to the plan, Miller acknowledges that casinos can have a positive economic impact. One of the keys is the degree to which a casino brings more money into the local area.
  
Mason-Dixon projects that more than half its casino visitors would come from within a 30-minute drive.
  
With an estimated annual revenue of $82.1 million, the casino could extract more than $49 million from the area.
  
Mason-Dixon projects it would directly put as much as $42 million back into the local economy through new jobs and purchasing, as well as an additional $3 million in local taxes, not counting the indirect economic impact which it estimates in the tens of millions.
  
Miller disputes some of these estimates and concludes that, in extracting more than it returns, the casino would actually harm the local economy.
  
His analysis of potential social costs cites a variety of studies conducted by the casino industry, Harvard Medical School and the American Psychiatric Association. Iowa Department of Public Health statistics show a clear correlation between calls to gambling crisis hotlines and proximity to a casino.
  
Miller said the day an Adams County commissioner told him social costs weren't really an issue, a local newspaper reported that a Gettysburg bank teller had pleaded guilty to embezzling $19,000 to pay off gambling losses.
  
Casino advocates dispute Miller's conclusions, but there is little question his approach is more rational than the "sacred ground" argument.
  
It may not be as effective.
Public input matters
The Gaming Control Board will determine who gets the last casino license in Pennsylvania, and they are unlikely to consider the kind of social costs or hyperlocal economics outlined by Miller.
  
"The governor and Legislature have decreed gambling legal adult entertainment in Pennsylvania," said board chairman Gregory Fajt. "Give me another industry that has created over 12,000 jobs in the last four years. You don't have to think long - there aren't any."
  
The Gettysburg casino is vying for the final "resort casino" license with another local developer hoping to build a casino at the Holiday Inn Harrisburg West in Hampden Twp. Others in the running are the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Fayette County and the Fernwood Hotel and Resort in the Poconos.
  
The gaming board does consider public input.
  
Paddock told people at the candlelight vigil, "The best thing you can do to stop this travesty, this abomination .... is write a letter to the Gaming Control Board."
  
She said she had pre-stamped postcards for people who didn't want to write, and said, "We'll even send them for you!"
  
While two surveys have indicated a majority of Adams County residents support the casino, Paddock is focusing on people elsewhere in the United States and other countries who respond to emotional arguments about the impropriety of a casino within "cannon range" of the battlefield.
  
It worked last time. In 2005, more than 60,000 petition signatures and comments were submitted to the Gaming Control Board opposing a Gettysburg casino.
  
That response dwarfed public comment - both pro and con - of all the other casino proposals combined.
  
The No Casino Gettysburg Facebook page currently has more than 4,700 members.
  
"You can pull a lot of heartstrings because of Gettysburg," said Miller.
And all's fair in love and holy war.

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--(6)  Members of Civil War Preservation Trust Visit Richmond Battlefield -----------------------------------------------------

Members of Civil War Preservation Trust Visit Richmond Battlefield
By Bill Robinson
6/5/2010
Richmond Register (KY)
http://richmondregister.com/localnews/x1996914292/Members-of-Civil-War-Preservation-Trust-visit-Battlefield-Park

About 50 people who are attending the Civil War Preservation Trust's annual conference in Lexington this week visited Madison County's Battlefield Park on Friday.
Another group is scheduled to visit today.
The visitors, who came from across the country - from California to Connecticut, were served lunch by Clark-Moores Middle School history students dressed in period costumes.
The students, in American History classes taught by Sharon Graves, often participate in living history events at the park.
The conferees also visited the site of a small pre-battle engagement and burial site near Big Hill, as well as the county's Visitors Center and Museum near the entrance to the Bluegrass Army Depot.
"It's fabulous what has been accomplished here in just eight years," said Anne Fry of Mt. Washington, Ohio, as she and a group of other conferees looked over the battlefield from a cemetery that sits on the highest point in the park.
The laser-lighted map of the battlefield in the visitors center is "stunning," said Fry's husband Norm.
Norm Sondheimer of Avon, Conn., said the Richmond Battlefields was more well preserved than some Revolutionary War battlefields in the Northeast.
"It's a great honor for the Civil War Preservation Trust to visit Kentucky," said Phillip Seyfrit, Madison County Historic Properties director, "and especially the Richmond Battlefield."
The Civil War Preservation Trust was instrumental, Seyfrit said, along with a string of other partners, in preserving the land where Union and Confederate soldiers clashed in late August 1862 during an ill-fated Confederate attempt to bring Kentucky into the Southern fold.
The trust alternates its annual conference between sites in the Eastern and Western theaters of the war. Last year's conference was conducted in Gettysburg, Pa., said Kevin Mulligan of Bryan, Texas, who visited the Richmond Battlefield on Friday.
"I was pleasantly surprised to see what has been accomplished here and just how many local people were involved in the preservation effort," Mulligan said.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, he said he previously had been unaware a Civil War battle was fought here.
Win Ahrens of Louisville said he was impressed by the cooperation of the Blue Grass Army Depot in making a portion of the battlefield on its property accessible to the public.
"It's also great to see the school kids involved in activities at the battlefield," he said.
Ahrens said he got involved with the trust because of its emphasis on battlefield preservation.
Richmond was the only Civil War Battlefield in Kentucky that he had not visited, Ahrens said.
"I hadn't visited before because I didn't think there was anything here to see," he said. "But, an excellent job has been to preserve the site and make it interesting for visitors."

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--(7)  Civil War Preservers Take in Local History -----------------------------------------------------

Civil War Preservers Take in Local History
By Charlie Pearl
6/4/2010
Frankfort State Journal (KY)
http://www.state-journal.com/news/article/4838780

Frankfort's Charles Bogart says giving Ed Bearss a tour of Fort Hill Wednesday was "like me leading God around.
"He's the pinnacle," the consummate Civil War and military history tour guide, says Bogart, Fort Hill historian and retired state military affairs employee.
Wednesday's walk in the verdant city park overlooking downtown and the Capitol district was a warm-up to Thursday morning's official tour as a part of the Civil War Preservation Trust's Annual Conference in Lexington.
The energetic Bearss, almost 87, has an encyclopedic knowledge of history and always brings it alive with rich and colorful anecdotes.
He led about 50 members of the CWPT Color Bearer Society ­ "the big donors, the heavy hitters," says Bogart ­ to Fort Hill.
The group also visited the Old Capitol, Daniel Boone's grave and the Kentucky Military Monument in Frankfort Cemetery. They viewed Greenhill Cemetery on East Main Street before heading back by bus to Lexington for lunch.
"This is a real coup for us getting the Civil War Preservation Trust here," Bogart says. "These people testify in Congress and push preservation. They buy and donate land around Civil War battlefield sites.
"This puts us on the map," meaning military history tourism will benefit.
Bearss, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran severely wounded in World War II by a Japanese machine gunner, grew up in Montana near the Little Big Horn battlefield where Gen. George Custer troops were massacred.
Bearss served as chief historian of the National Park Service from 1981 to 1994.
Before enlisting in the Marines, he hitchhiked around the U.S. visiting his first Civil War battlefields.
He used the G.I. Bill to go to Georgetown University where he earned a bachelor's in foreign service studies. He has a master's in history from Indiana University.
Before working in Washington, D.C., he was historian at Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi.
Dale Nevius, of Lawrence, Kan., was in Bearss' tour group Thursday. He was with his son, Gary, a member of CWPT.
"I started collecting Civil War guns about 20 years ago," said Dale Nevius. "But it got to be such an expensive hobby I turned it over to my son. He's visited probably 90 percent of the major Civil War sites."
A retired electrical engineer and history buff, Dale Nevius said his wife's great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier from Tennessee killed at Vicksburg, "and I had a distant cousin from northern Illinois, fighting for the Union, killed there."
He said he's been to Frankfort two other times but hadn't seen the city from Fort Hill.
"It's beautiful country but I never knew the terrain was this rough."
Pat Cochran ­ from Hudson, Ohio, near Cleveland ­ said she enjoys seeing the battlefield sites. But she said she isn't nearly as interested in the specific details of each battle as is her husband, Jim.
She said CWPT does outstanding work.
Bob Rinehart, a middle school teacher from Forest Hill, Md., was a CWPT tour volunteer. He teaches social studies and American history and has been honored as a Teacher of the Year by the trust.
Rinehart said he tries to teach students "the ownership part of their history, and the parallels of the 1860s with the 21st century. We're currently fighting a war, not on home soil, but many of my students are from military families."
David Duncan, director of membership and development for CWPT, says the trust is the largest nonprofit battlefield preservation organization in the U.S.
The trust has preserved more than 29,000 acres of battlefield land across the nation, including more than 1,500 in Kentucky, he said.
Earlier this week, CWPT donated 54 acres near the site of the October 1862 Battle of Perryville to the state for integration into the Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site.
Tonight about 225 from the trust will be touring the Old Capitol, Kentucky Military History Museum and Fort Hill.
The group will arrive around 6:30 for barbecue in the Cralle Day Garden at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History. Then they'll board buses and tour the three sites.
Saturday at the conference in Lexington the Kentucky Historical Society will receive the Brian Pohanka Preservation Organization of the Year Award.
The late Pohanka was a noted historian and one of the founders of the modern battlefield preservation movement.

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--(8)  Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site Grows by 54 Acres -----------------------------------------------------

Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site Grows by 54 Acres
By Greg Kocher
6/2/2010
Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
http://www.kentucky.com/2010/06/01/1288541/perryville-battlefield-historic.html

Kentucky's largest Civil War battlefield continues to get bigger.
On Tuesday the state accepted a 54-acre addition to Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site from the Civil War Preservation Trust, the largest nonprofit battlefield preservation organization in the United States. That brings the total acreage of Perryville battlefield to 745 acres.
In addition, James Lighthizer, president of the preservation trust, said the organization is raising money for another 327 acres.
John Nau III, the chairman of the trust, said Perryville had only 17 or 19 acres when he first visited there in 1957 or 1958.
"My hat's off to everyone who has been able to grow this park," Nau said. He called Perryville "an absolute jewel" because its vistas have remained relatively unchanged since the Civil War.
The preservation trust paid $156,679 for the 54-acre tract ceremonially donated Tuesday. The cost was partially offset by a federal grant for historic landscape protection.
The site marks where Confederate G. William J. Hardee launched an assault against the Union center. From the high ground, Capt. T.J. Stanford's Mississippi battery engaged in a lengthy artillery barrage with Gen. Don Carlos Buell's federal army.
More than 7,500 soldiers were killed or wounded in the Battle of Perryville in October 1862. The lack of a decisive Confederate victory meant Kentucky remained in Union hands for the rest of the war.
"Here in these fields ended the longest and most complex military operation ever undertaken by Confederate forces in the entire Civil War," said Kent Masterson Brown, a historian, Civil War author and Lexington attorney.
The preservation trust has preserved more than 29,000 acres of battlefield across the country, including 385 acres at Perryville.
The trust's annual conference starts Wednesday in Lexington and ends Sunday. Members will be touring various Civil War sites in Richmond, Camp Nelson and elsewhere.
The battlefield is an important tourism draw for Boyle County. Some 20,000 people paid admission to its museum last year, but the total number of visitors to the park may be four times that.

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--(9)  Region Getting Ready to Show Its Respect -----------------------------------------------------

Region Getting Ready to Show Its Respect
By Jason Beals
5/30/2010
Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star (VA) 
http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2010/052010/05302010/551757

In Fredericksburg, Memorial Day weekend is marked by lingering, distant echoes. The fading rumble of a Harley-Davidson engine. The haunting silence after the last note of taps clears the air.
History reverberates here--from George Washington's home at Ferry Farm to Marye's Heights above Sunken Road, where the bodies of Civil War soldiers were piled like cordwood in 1862.
This is the weekend when families and friends of those lost in war gather to catch a whisper of the past, and Fredericksburg is where many of them come to hear it.
"This weekend is dedicated to those who gave their lives," said Eric Black, an Army veteran who brought his friends in the Veterans Motorcycle Club to a ceremony yesterday at the Fredericksburg Area War Memorial.
"I know people whose names are on that wall," Black said of the imposing granite monument at George and Liberty streets.
Every year, Fredericksburg National Cemetery puts the cost of war on display. More than 16,000 white-paper luminarias burn in the darkness, representing the more than 15,000 Union soldiers interred there after the Civil War.
Yesterday morning, Brent Hudson was in charge of about 300 Boy and Girl Scouts who marked every headstone and pathway at the hilltop cemetery with candles.
"They don't necessarily like the hard work," Hudson said. "But when you see it lit up, it's amazing."
Perhaps as amazing is the cemetery itself, which saw its first burial in 1866, more than a year after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.
Fredericksburg National Cemetery was designed as a proper burial site for Union soldiers killed in battles in and around Fredericksburg, including the battles of the Wilderness, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania Court House, Mine Run and North Anna River.
Many of those soldiers had not received a proper burial--or any burial at all--and it was a challenging two-year process to scour the city and countryside, identify soldiers if possible, and reinter them in an organized fashion in the cemetery.
It was hardly a popular undertaking among the locals, who had little love for Northerners or their army after the war.
According to research by National Park Service historian Donald Pfanz, the first people to gather for Decoration Day (later Memorial Day) at Fredericksburg National Cemetery were black residents in 1868. They wished "to honor those who had died for their freedom," and came from as far away as Washington and Richmond to do so, according to Pfanz, who is staff historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Tomorrow, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will make a similar pilgrimage. He is the keynote speaker for the 11 a.m. Memorial Day observance at the cemetery.
"We're pleased and surprised to have him," park Superintendent Russ Smith said. "We sent an invite, expecting it would not be accepted."
McDonnell generated national controversy last month when he declared April to be Confederate History Month in a proclamation that did not mention slavery. McDonnell later apologized and amended the proclamation.
Smith said he does not know the content of McDonnell's speech, which will be delivered with thousands of Union soldiers' graves as a backdrop.
"I'm sure that will bring a number of people who will want to hear what he has to say," Smith said.

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--(10)  National Register Application for South Mountain Moves Forward -----------------------------------------------------

National Register Application for South Mountain Moves Forward
By Heather Keels
5/30/2010
Hagerstown Herald Mail (MD)
http://www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=246351&format=html

An application to add the South Mountain Battlefields to the National Register of Historic Places is moving forward despite not getting a recommendation from the Washington County Commissioners.
The state review board for the National Register voted March 16 to recommend the battlefields' nomination to the register, said Peter Kurtze, National Register administrator for the Maryland Historical Trust.
Kurtze said Thursday he was preparing to forward the application to the National Register office of the National Park Service, which will make the final decision. That office has 45 days from the date it receives the nomination to make a decision, he said.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the nation's historic places worthy of preservation. Inclusion carries prestige, as well as benefits such as grant eligibility and tax credits for approved rehabilitation projects.
The South Mountain Battlefields, which include the land around Crampton's, Turner's and Fox's gaps, were submitted for consideration because the Civil War conflicts that occurred there Sept. 14, 1862, set the stage for the larger Battle of Antietam three days later, according to the application.
The Washington County Commissioners declined Tuesday to give the battlefields' nomination their recommendation, saying they had not heard support from enough of the property owners whose land would be included in the listing.
The commissioners' support was not needed for the application to move forward and the lack of a recommendation from them probably will not influence the final decision, Kurtze said.
"The register makes its decisions based on the merits of the property nominated, so I don't think the lack of a recommendation from the commissioners would affect the consideration of the nomination at all," he said.
The application was taken before the commissioners as part of a local review process that requires notification of property owners, and hearings before the local historic preservation commission and the local governing body.
"If either the historic preservation commission or the chief elected official or commissioners make a positive recommendation, the nomination can continue to be processed, and that's what's happened in this case," Kurtze said.
Because the battlefields' listing would span Washington and Frederick counties, local reviews were conducted in both counties, he said.
The Washington County Historic District Commission, the Frederick County Historic Preservation Commission and the Frederick County Commissioners all recommended approval of the listing, he said.
The Washington County Commissioners' reluctance to extend their recommendation arose amid questions about whether a listing on the National Register posed any potential limitations for property owners.
According to a Maryland Historical Trust fact sheet, listing "does not mean the federal government or the State of Maryland wants to acquire the property, place restrictions on the property, or dictate the colors or materials used on individual buildings."
Listing "does not require the owner to preserve or maintain the property or seek approval of the federal government or the State of Maryland to alter the property," the fact sheet says. "Unless the owner applies for and accepts special federal or state tax, licensing or funding benefits, the owner can do anything with his property he wishes, so long as it is permitted by state and local law."
It was this "unless" clause that led some of the Washington County Commissioners to conclude there might be potential limitations associated with listing and to seek more information about whether the affected property owners wanted to be included.
However, Kurtze said, listing does not create any new limitations on property rights.
Whenever a project involves state or federal funding or permits, that triggers a review of whether the project will affect historic resources, regardless of whether the property is listed on the historic register, Kurtze said.
Jonathan Sager, preservation officer for the Maryland Historical Trust, said this review process, known as "section 106," can compel the agency issuing the funding or permit to "consider alternatives that might avoid, minimize or mitigate adverse impacts."
The process treats properties that are eligible for listing in the national register, but not listed, the same as properties that are actually listed on the register.
"So actual listing doesn't affect that review at all," Sager said. "The actual listing is just an honor that might make a place eligible for more grants or tax credits."
Jeremiah Hornbaker, president of Friends of South Mountain State Battlefield, said he carefully researched the effects of listing before his group initiated the application process.
As a libertarian, Hornbaker said he is normally against government involvement, but he concluded that listing on the National Register carried significant benefits for the battlefields, and no negative effects for the lands or their owners.
"It opens the South Mountain State Battlefield to receive grant money," Hornbaker said. "They're not eligible for a lot of these grants that they write for, everything from wildlife habitat grants to land purchase grants, historic home restoration grants ... because the registry's not there."
Friends of South Mountain is a group of donors and volunteers who support and promote the South Mountain State Battlefield.
Daniel Spedden, park manager for the South Mountain Recreation Area, said officials from the state battlefield park supported the application and are excited about the battlefields' possible listing.
"It brings the battlefield an enormous amount of prestige, and it makes it ... a much more marketable entity for visitors," Spedden said. "And it gives us a certain level of protection against things like power lines, natural gas compression stations, cell phone towers and other things that you generally would rather locate outside the historic district."
Spedden said park officials are sensitive to private property owners' rights and are convinced that individuals would not be affected by the listing.
"You could paint your shutters blue, you could pave your driveway, you could add on a deck or build a mini barn," he said.
Hornbaker said he didn't think the groups would continue to seek the Washington County Commissioners' support because the application had already progressed beyond that level.
The commissioners suggested the Friends of South Mountain follow up with nonresponsive property owners to get their feedback. Of 68 included properties in Maryland, owners of 34 responded to a letter seeking feedback and 19 of those wanted their properties included.
"I don't know what more to do," Hornbaker said. "If the people don't respond to it- for us to go around and knock on every door- we could try, but a lot of the private property owners don't even live in the area."
In addition to the 68 properties in Washington County, there were more than 200 properties in Frederick County included in the application, he said.

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--(11)  Texas State Astronomers Solve Walt Whitman Meteor Mystery -----------------------------------------------------

Texas State Astronomers Solve Walt Whitman Meteor Mystery
By Jayme Blaschke
5/28/2010
University News Service
http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2010/06/YearOfMeteors060110.html

In his landmark collection Leaves of Grass, famed poet Walt Whitman wrote of a "strange huge meteor-procession" in such vivid detail that scholars have debated the possible inspiration for decades.
Now, a team of astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos has applied its unique brand of forensic astronomy to the question, rediscovering one of the most famous celestial events of Whitman's day--one that inspired both Whitman and famed landscape painter Frederic Church--yet became inexplicably forgotten by modern times.
Texas State physics professors Donald Olson and Russell Doescher, English professor Marilynn S. Olson and Honors Program student Ava G. Pope publish their findings in the July 2010 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine, on newsstands now.
"This is the 150th anniversary of the event that inspired both Whitman and Church," Donald Olson said. "It was an Earth-grazing meteor procession."
Fires in the sky
Whitman, known as a keen observer of the sky, included significant references to contemporary as well as cosmic events in his poem "Year of Meteors. (1859-60.)" published in Leaves of Grass. A "great comet" in the poem that appeared unexpectedly in the northern sky is readily identified as the Great Comet of 1860, which follows the path Whitman described and was seen by most of the world.
From Whitman's description, the Texas State research team immediately suspected the other celestial event he wrote about was the rare phenomenon known as an Earth-grazing meteor procession.
"Meteor processions are so rare most people have never heard of them," Olson said. "There was one in 1783 and a Canadian fireball procession in 1913. Those were all the meteor processions we knew of."
An Earth-grazing meteor is one where the trajectory takes the meteor through the Earth's atmosphere and back out into interplanetary space without ever striking the ground. A meteor procession occurs when a meteor breaks up upon entering the atmosphere, creating multiple meteors traveling in nearly identical paths.
The rarity of meteor processions, however, has proven problematic to scholars. Whitman's description has alternately been ascribed to the 1833 Leonid meteor storm, the 1858 Leonids and a widely-observed fireball in 1859. Although Whitman is documented as having observed the 1833 Leonids, the Texas State researchers were able to discount that meteor storm because the timeframe conflicts with the poem's, and Whitman's descriptions of the two events are very different. The 1858 Leonids were also discounted after the research team discovered a dating error misattributing some of Whitman's observations of the 1833 Leonids to the latter year.
By contrast, the 1859 fireball was well-documented and happened during the timeframe of the poem. The fireball, however, was a single meteor, not a procession. Compounding the problem, the 1859 fireball was a daylight meteor, whereas Whitman describes the procession as happening at night.
The art of rediscovery
A chance clue from the 19th century artist Frederic Church proved key to unraveling the mystery. A decade ago, Olson saw a painting on the back cover of an exhibition catalog which showed the scene Whitman had described. Church's painting, titled "The Meteor of 1860," clearly depicted a meteor procession. Not only that, but the catalog gave the date of Church's observance: July 20, 1860, well within the timeframe of Whitman's poem. An accomplished landscape painter, Church was a member of the Hudson River School, living beneath the same skies as Whitman.
"We went to Church's house, and the people who know him and his art well, who've studied him, say, 'Oh, he wouldn't have painted it like that based on somebody's say-so. He must have seen it,'" Olson said. "The artist and his wife, who were honeymooning that summer, kept the painting in their bedroom for many years."
"We went to a small research library and found old diaries of Theodore Cole, a friend of Church's, from July of 1860," Pope said. "They tell us Church was, in fact, in Catskill, New York, so he wasn't off in some far distant land."
Armed with this intriguing new date, the Texas State researchers began poring through newspapers of the time for verification. What they found surprised even them. A large Earth-grazing meteor broke apart on the evening of July 20, 1860, creating a spectacular procession of multiple fireballs visible from the Great Lakes to New York State as it burned through the atmosphere and continued out over the Atlantic Ocean.
"Any town that had a newspaper within all those states is going have a story on this," Olson said. "We have hundreds of eyewitness accounts, but there are probably hundreds more we don't even have.
"From all the observations in towns up and down the Hudson River Valley, we're able to determine the meteor's appearance down to the hour and minute," Olson said. "Church observed it at 9:49 p.m. when the meteor passed overhead, and Walt Whitman would've seen it at the same time, give or take one minute."
Some of the most influential publications in the U.S.--including the New York Times, Smithsonian and Harper's Weekly--devoted major coverage to the event, and countless letters about it were published. Scientific American went so far as to declare it "the largest meteor that has ever been seen."
"They describe it just as Church painted it. It was visible for about 30 seconds, and passing horizontally, so it was, in fact, an Earth-grazer," Pope said. "A really cool part is that the Catskill newspaper describes it as dividing into two parts with scintillations, exactly like the painting."
This broad public attention, as well as study by many professional astronomers of the day, made the meteor procession of 1860 one of the single most famous celestial events of its day, and quite possibly the most documented meteor appearance in history. Despite this, memory of the dazzling event faded so much that by the middle of the 20th century scholars were left puzzled over what Whitman had actually seen.
"Its appearance, right before the Civil War, at a time growth and anxiety for America, made it a metaphor and portent in the public imagination," Marilynn Olson said.

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