Creative History

  By July of 1864 the Union Army’s assault on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia though massive and determined, had ground to a complete and bloody halt. Tens of thousands of young American soldiers lay dead scattered across the fields and woodlands of northern Virginia.  A veritable state of siege, centered around the strategically important railroad town of Petersburg, had begun to settle in between the two opposing armies.  Public outcry in the north started calling Ulysses S. Grant -Commanding General of the Union Army of the Potomac-a drunkard and a butcher.  The press clamored for President Lincoln to fire or demote his erstwhile General. Sensing an opportunity, and seeking to capitalize on the bloody stalemate that was the American Civil War in July of 1864,  a Confederate Army composed of 10,000 elite troops led by the audacious and flamboyant General Jubal Early moved north towards Washington DC.  The Confederacy hoped to take the Union forces by surprise and to

  During the unbearably hot summer of 1916--while the horrors of the First World War raged across the Atlantic in Europe--Americans, who as yet were still considered neutrals in the Great War to End All Wars, flocked to the beaches along the eastern seaboard in record numbers. Nowhere was this early twentieth century summer holiday craze more apparent than along the Jersey Shore and at the beaches that were in close proximity to New York City--most notably Coney Island.  By July of 1916 Brooklyn’s Coney Island had already begun to come into its own known worldwide as America’s most popular summertime playground for both children and adults.  Coney Island’s nearest competitor for the title of America’s Beach in 1916 was about one hundred miles south, with a boardwalk all its own and just as famous in its own right, New Jersey’s Atlantic City. During the monumental summer of 1916 in France soldiers from all over Europe were slaughtering one another by the thousands in the trenches of