Lancaster Civil War Round Table

08/21/2026

The interior of the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley after it was successfully found and raised from the seabed. This submarine is famous as one of the significant milestones in the history of underwater warfare because on February 17, 1864, this submarine successfully attacked and sank the USS Housatonic off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina a strike often considered the first successful submarine attack to sink an enemy warship. 🕊⚓🇺🇸

Hunley was powered entirely by human muscle. Inside its very narrow hull, eight crew members turned a long crankshaft connected to the propulsion system to slowly move the ship underwater, while one person acted as the commander. On the nite of the attack, Hunley approached the Housatonic and rammed a spar torpedo filled with explosives into the hull of the ship. The explosion destroyed the Housatonic, but Hunley never returned to its base and sank along with its entire crew. 🕊⚓🇺🇸

The tragedy turned the CSS Hunley into a revolutionary weapon as well as a tomb for its crew. The wreck of the ship was finally discovered in 1995 and successfully raised in 2000, allowing researchers to study the interior of the submarine directly for the first time, witnessing one of the most historic moments in the development of underwater warfare.

08/03/2026

A Mississippi man found more than 200 Civil War-era cannonballs on his property, and the artifacts may be tied to two 1862 battles.

08/02/2026

07/21/2026

Not long after the original 72nd Pennsylvania Monument was placed along Hancock Avenue in 1883, William Tipton set up his camera on the dirt road and captured a scene that included the future route of Hancock Avenue, the newly erected monument, the Copse of Trees, and the Round Tops in the distance—just twenty years after the Battle of Gettysburg.
Since I don't have a modern photograph framed from exactly the same location, I turned to Google Earth and matched the view as closely as possible. Unfortunately, Hancock Avenue happened to be crowded with tour buses when the Google camera passed through.
In the then-and-now comparison below, the top image is a colorized version of Tipton's circa 1883 photograph facing south, while the bottom image is the closest modern view from Google Earth. The 72nd Pennsylvania Monument is now partially hidden behind a tree, and the Round Tops appear smaller in the modern image because of differences in camera position, lenses, and perspective. For comparison, I'll post the original, unedited Tipton photograph in the first comment.