“Nearly a thousand men were falling over each other in their efforts to reach the rail and ‘feed the fish’.” Pvt. Joseph Ignacious Markey, wrote in 1900 about the 51st Infantry Volunteers, Company M, from Red Oak, Iowa. Iowa History, a weekly column, appears at IowaWatch on Saturdays.
Mary Virginia “Jennie” Wade was the only civilian killed at the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, but her sacrifice would have been overlooked if not for a group of Iowa women.
Rev. George Cyphert Tally of Keokuk County was described as having as a “rugged, forceful, crude” man with “more zeal than discretion” but also a gifted orator. In the midst of the Civil War, the preacher started a confrontation between local Copperheads and Union supporters that required interventi
An Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem, "Enoch Arden," tells the story of a man shipwrecked on an island for 10 years who returns home to find his wife happily married to his childhood friend. Never revealing himself to his wife, he dies of a broken heart. During the U.S. Civil War, this work of fiction came
