Your Friend and Classmate: Following the West Point Class of June 1861 Through the American Civil War

Julia Wall (Gettysburg College)

June 24th, 1861, 34 young men graduated from the United States Military Academy a year early to answer the need for more officers in the United States Army. Four had already dropped out of their class before graduation to join the Confederacy, and three more resigned to join the rebelling forces. Of these 38 men, only 28 would live to see the end of the war. Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow Julia Wall’s project “Your Friend and Classmate” tells the story of these cadets, collectively and individually, based on a yearbook that belonged to William H. Harris, one of the June 1861 cadets. In that yearbook, Harris annotated the pictures of his classmates with what the cadets did in the war, keeping up with those that he could. Using the yearbook and Harris’ annotations, Wall created a Scalar site incorporating StoryMapJS and TimelineJS to track the activities of each cadet.

Julia Wall is a sophomore at Gettysburg College. She is majoring in History with a focus on Military History and minoring in Civil War Era Studies. As a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow at Musselman Library, she created a database of West Point cadets of the class of June 1861 including interactive timelines for each cadet and a comprehensive map of battles.

Your Friend and Classmate: Following the West Point Class of June 1861 Through the American Civil War