Hits, sleepers and a host of visitors from Kimball Union

Among the KUA grads who went to war was
Herbert B. Titus of Chesterfield, N.H. He served
in the 2nd and the 9th New Hampshire regiments,
wrote letters from the front to the Keene Sentinel
and was badly wounded at Antietam. Just after the
war he was promoted to brevet brigadier general.

Students at Kimball Union Academy used the Our War blog in their Civil War studies during the last few weeks. Nothing is more gratifying to me as a historian than to know that my work is reaching rising generations.

Graduates of Kimball Union in Meriden, N.H., played a huge role in New Hampshire’s Civil War history. Many of them have both major and minor roles in my book.As I’ve learned more about these soldiers, I’ve written several blog posts about them. Here, here, here, here and here, you’ll find individual posts about graduates of KUA, and here is a listing of many from the school who served in the war.

The blog now has well over 200 posts. To this month’s lists of entries that have generated the most hits, I’m adding a list of posts I especially like that are not on the most popular lists. As usual, you can click on any title on the lists to go directly to the post. Let’s start with . . .

10 sleepers

‘I feel as though I could not turn my back on the Army til the last gun was fired’

 ‘We were in the open without a thing better than a wheat straw to catch a bullet’

The rise and fall of James Willis Patterson

‘The whole face of nature smiled at harvest-time’

‘It would be a pleasure to linger here and write of theheroic deeds of those who fought’

A mother’s dying wish, a son’s destiny

From Fredericksburg to the war’s end, Private Scott believed God was by his side

‘There is more fighting to be done and hard fighting too and many lives will be lost’

A Yankee sergeant’s great escape

Caught sleeping on Pinckney Island

Recent hits

This list of the top 10 posts from the last two months includes all three parts of the edited 1861-63 diary of the Exeter, N.H., pastor Elias Nason. I’m not surprised these have been popular. Nason provides a clear window into life on the home-front during the first three years of the war.

1. Life is a valuable sacrifice

2. ‘The reputation of a regiment is always made by the bad men in it’

3. Elias Nason’s 1863 Exeter diary

4. Richard Ager, storyteller

5. Elias Nason’s 1861 Exeter diary

6. Elias Nason’s 1862 Exeter diary

7. His march is done, his camp is here

8. Human stories bring history home

9. More space for diverse voices

10. ‘Straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel’

All-time Top 25

The biggest change on this list during the last month was the move of the post on Kimball Union Academy’s Civil War history from the 22nd spot to the 12th. Hits on of these posts range from 160 to 539. The number in parentheses is last month’s ranking.

1. Urgent! Telegram from Gettysburg (1)

2. Farewell, my teacher (2)

3. Exeter’s Civil War general (3)

4. A Gettysburg journal (4)

5. Did Abraham Lincoln really free the slaves? (5)

6. A Gettysburg veteran who knew the battlefield by heart (7)

7. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part I (6)

8. Unpacking the new ‘Gettysburg’ (8)

9. Faces of Fort Wagner, Olustee and Andersonville (10)

10. The Civil War: ‘It was not my fault,’ Buchanan insists (9)

11. A gift from the heart (11)

12. One school’s proud Civil War heritage (22)

13. Gallery: Faces of the Fighting Fifth (part one) (12)

14. Backstage with Billy Collins (13t)

15. Kennedy gave FDR too much credit, shortchanged Ike (13t)

16. History’s touch (15)

17. Killing the Southerners with kindness (19)

18. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part II  (16)

19. Harnessing the power of the telling detail (17)

20. My friend Chester (18)

21. Gallery: Old soldiers (2), a New England brigade (21)

22. July 2, 1863, Rose’s Woods, Gettysburg (20)

23. A riddle wrapped up in an enigma (23)

24. ‘Curses to Old Abe’ (25t)

25. How did Lincoln Republicans morph into Obama Democrats? (24)