![]() ![]() Of the Potomac: The Civil War Experience of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson. Gregory Acken served for twelve years on the Board of Governors of theCivil War Library and Museum of Philadelphia. As the first full-length, published memoir to deal with Civil War Signal Corps service, this book provides a glimpse into the most tumultuous era in the nation’s history from an underexplored new perspective. Gregory Acken to place events in chronological order and make the text as complete and accessible to the reader as possible, this remarkable record of Fortescue’s Civil War service fills a much-needed void in the historiography of the conflict. Fortescue’s ardent opinions on the war, President Lincoln, army commanders, and the South are expressed without reservation, making this account a must-read for anyone interested in how Civil War veterans understood their cause and interpreted their experiences.Įxpertly edited by J. Fortescue experienced the conflict from several perspectives-infantry subaltern, signal officer, aide-de-camp (briefly), and prisoner of war-and took an active role in a number of significant campaigns and battles. Fortescue’s memoir not only presents a unique look at the corps, but it also provides important insights into the war as a whole. For long-distance communication, it installed. The Signal Corps originally met with resistance, particularly from high-ranking Regular Army officers, but the men who served in the corps-including Fortescue-took great pride in their duties and eventually succeeded in changing the minds of their unit’s detractors by achieving the most basic, but often bedeviling, strategic objective on any battlefield: effective communication. For tactical purposes, the Signal Corps established telephone communication within camps and headquarters. Fortescue’s memoir, written in the postwar years but based on his wartime diaries, offers a rare view of this lesser-known support arm of the Union army. Major Myer selected only educated men for this new arm of the military, and among these was twenty-three-year-old Louis R. His flag-and-torch system led to the formation of the U.S. Myer entered the Union Army and created a system of transmitting information that would revolutionize military communications. In 1854 an assistant surgeon named Albert J. A battle star in the center of the laurel wreath stands both for the work of Signal Corps units in combat operations and the inextricable bond between Signal Corps personnel and combined arms units.“This book provides very informative and fascinating insight into the experiences of a Signal Corps officer of the Union Army.” -Steven J. 132 photographic prints) Includes wagons of various types, some loaded with cable portable radio communication equipment and field phones. Technical arms and services like the Signal Corps, which must enter a war with. Army Signal Corps Regiment, and Signal units throughout the. Beneath the motto is a gold eagle clutching a Signal flag with a white square on a red field, one of just two flags used in Meyer’s “wig-wag” system of flag communications (the other flag has a white background and red square). Army the Signal Corps is the agency charged with developing. The Signal Corps Regimental Association, or SCRA, is a private, nonprofit organization that provides an opportunity for all active, reserve, and national guard, officers, warrant officers, enlisted members and civilians, as well as any former members of the Signal Corps to aid in preserving for posterity the proud heritage of the U.S. The motto of “Pro Patria Vigilan,” Latin for “Watchful for the Country, was taken from the insignia of the Signal School. Army included seven different flags in three different sizes-2x2, 4x4, and 6圆. The Signal Corps Regimental Distinctive Insignia, referred to by many as a “unit crest,” was born out of an 1865 meeting of top officers in the Signal Corps that included Albert Meyer. Army that was established with only one person serving in it, the Signal Corps is also the branch of Adolphus Greely, a one-time Chief Signal Officer of the Army and the only person to win the Medal of Honor for a “life of splendid public service” rather than a single act of bravery or courage above and beyond the call of duty. ![]() ![]() Meyer to be Signal Officer, with the rank of Major, June 27, 1860, to fill an original vacancy.”īesides being the only branch of the U.S. It was on that day that Congress issued the appointment of a single Signal Officer in the Army, which was followed six days later by a War Department order declaring “Assistant Surgeon Albert J. ![]() Although the Signal Corps was made a branch of the United States Army through an act of Congress on 3 March 1863, the Corps points to 21 June 1860 as its official birthday. ![]()
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