Celebrations muted in the Valley when the Civil War ended
Readers of newspapers across America 160 years ago this week would have seen two similar headlines on the front page of their paper trumpeting the end of the Civil War: 'Victory, Victory' and 'The Rebellion has Ended.'
On April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
Any celebration planned in the Valley was muted and somber because President Abraham Lincoln was shot five days later, on April 14, Mike Sanders, a teacher at Midd-West High School and a Civil War buff who owns more than 900 books on the subject, said.
'In Lewisburg, they had banners put up and were ready for the Union County guys to come home,' Sanders said. 'But when they got here, the banners were all taken down and replaced by black crepe, as Lincoln was assassinated before they got home. All the decorative stuff they would have put up was now replaced. People were in mourning, and that diminished the celebration.'
The Road to Victory
Before coming home, Samuel Klinger, of Upper Augusta, Rockefeller Township, had to survive the Battle of Gettysburg.
Letters written during the war to Samuel by his wife, Magdalena have been preserved by Steven Klinger, of Northumberland Borough. Steven is Samuel's great-great-great-grandson.
The letters reveal Magdalena's concerns about the outcome of the battle and her husband's safety.
lees surrender NOAD.pdf
'The thought that you were in the great battle (Gettysburg) below Harrisburg. You wrote that ... you heard the report that the Rebels had taken Harrisburg, but it is not true,' Magdalena wrote in a letter. 'Still, they are not far from Harrisburg but how far away I cannot tell. They began on the first of July, I do not know whether it is over. Some say that the rebels lost 40,000, including those that they have caught. Some say that now that they have them entirely surrounded that the Rebels have no more army ammunition, but whether it is true I do not know. It would be good if our people would have them firmly enclosed.'
Later, she writes, 'It is again reported that they will have another enlistment of soldiers before long; they only go around taking names. In our place, they want to go around this week, they say 80 have to be drafted from our township and the report is 5,000 have to go forth, if that is so I do not know what will happen to us to get people to make hay and to cut the grain.'
Coming home
Harry Keiffer, of Mifflinburg was a soldier in the war from the 'Little village of M' as he called Mifflinburg in his memoirs. Years after the Civil War, Keiffer wrote 'Recollections of a Drummer Boy,' a book republished by Mike Sanders under his imprint, Bucktail Books.
Keiffer's family had moved to a farm outside Mifflinburg, Sanders said.
'The family is still around,' he said. 'There are Keiffers who are directly related to Harry in this area.'
Keiffer trained for the war in Montandon when he joined. After the war, his unit was sent to Elmira, N.Y., as guards at the Elmira prison (where prisoners of war were kept).
'We always deemed it a pity that we were not left in the field until the great Civil War came to an end with the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, and that we had no part in the final gathering of the troops in Washington, where the Grand Old Army of the Potomac passed in review for the last time,' Keiffer wrote.
'But so it was that after some months of monotonous garrison duty the great and good news came at last one day that peace had been declared and that the war was over,' he wrote. 'My young readers can scarcely imagine what joy instantly burst forth all over the land. Bells were rung all day long, bonfires burned and people paraded in the streets.'
Days later, after the surrender, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., while attending the play 'Our American Cousin.' Lincoln died the next day.
Before returning to Mifflinburg, Keiffer wrote, he had to return to the state capitol 'to be paid, finally discharged and to say goodbye to our comrades in arms, the great majority of whom we would never see again.'
Of the 13 men who had come from the village of Mifflinburg to fight only three lived to return, Keiffer wrote.
'Some had been discharged because of sickness or war wounds,' he said. 'Four had been killed.
'As we rode along to Mifflinburg in a stagecoach in June, we could not help thinking how painful it would be for the friends of Joe Gutelius, Jonny Lucas and Joe Ruhl to see us return without their brave boys. Reaching the village at dusk we found gathered at the hotel, when the stagecoach arrived a great crowd of our school fellows and friends who had come to meet us. When I laid down that night in a clean bed for the first time in three long years I thanked God for peace and home.'
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