E. P. Holland – Part 3: Holland at War
Part of Series: E. P. Holland – The Veteran Who Kept the Record The first official record of Enoch P. Holland’s war preserves none of the difficulty with which he had reached it. On May 1, 1861, a military clerk recorded that Holland had enrolled at Pittsburgh for a term of…
Keep readingE. P. Holland – Part 2: The St. Clair Guards
Part of Series: E. P. Holland – The Veteran Who Kept the Record Enoch P. Holland was only about five years old when, by his own later recollection, he first marched at the head of a militia company. No one could have mistaken the child for a soldier. He was far…
Keep readingE. P. Holland – Part 1: The World That Formed Him
Part of Series: E. P. Holland – The Veteran Who Kept the Record Enoch Philips Holland wrote those words in an undated Memoir of Capt. Espy, preserved today within the archival collections of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, and addressed to the “Commander and Comrades of Capt.…
Keep readingThe Pennsylvania Teachers’ Cannon
The lost, bizarre, and somehow true story of the time Pennsylvania’s teachers bought a cannon for Abe Lincoln Throughout the article you will find links to an interactive timeline and source explorer. Jump to it as you read, or explore afterwards. I haven’t taken a poll on this. But if…
Keep readingE. P. Holland – Introduction: “I Did Not Put Down the Rebellion”
Part of Series: E. P. Holland – The Veteran Who Kept the Record Enoch Philips Holland wrote those words late in life, after a fellow veteran asked him to record his memories of the Civil War. He might have begun with enlistment, battle, hardship, or service. Instead, he began by…
Keep readingNewsletter — July 30, 2026
To Our Subscribers, Thank you for following So Nobly Advanced and for joining us in our effort to carry forward the stories of the Civil War generation. We are sincerely grateful for your interest, encouragement, and continued support. Over the past several weeks, we have been working on something both…
Keep readingHidden in the Woods but Not Lost to Memory: Oakdale Old German Cemetery
There are cemeteries meant to be seen, and there are cemeteries one almost has to be told are there. Oakdale Old German Cemetery belongs to the second kind. It lies back in the woods off Union Avenue in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, removed from the formal order of larger burial grounds. There…
Keep readingUpon the Soil of Old Pennsylvania: The Life and Letters of Captain Edwin H. Little
Final Part : “The Kittanning Regiments – A Portrait of Service” The men in camp all knew each other. Their work was hard, but it was shared. The seasons brought a rhythm to their business. In the winter they harvested the white pine and hemlock that grew abundantly in the forests…
Keep readingDecoration Day & Civic Mourning After the American Civil War
By the spring of 1865, the United States had become a republic of graves. Wooden markers leaned over shallow trenches while work crews still moved among battlefields gathering the dead. Families searched casualty lists for familiar names, often receiving only fragments of information – a hurried burial location, a letter…
Keep readingSlavery, Secession, and the Constitutional Argument of the Confederacy
There are few questions in American history more persistently debated, more politically burdened, or more vulnerable to inherited memory than the cause of the Civil War. For generations, Americans have argued over whether the Confederacy was formed primarily in defense of “states’ rights” or in defense of slavery. The argument…
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