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HISTORICAL NEW HAMPSHIRE

Published by the New Hampshire Historical Society since 1944, Historical New Hampshire is the only statewide journal devoted to New Hampshire history. The publication is a benefit of membership in the Society. Join today and you will receive the most recent issue with your membership.

In the newest issue of Historical New Hampshire, well-known New Hampshire historians Michael J. Birkner and Mike Pride present a pair of articles that explore the state's history at critical moments, albeit 100 years apart. Birkner’s photo essay, “Bringing Out the Vote,” captures the spirit of the state’s first modern presidential primary election, highlighting the quirkiness and fun of political campaigning at the birth of retail politics. Birkner traces the pivotal roles of Granite Staters throughout the presidential campaign of 1952, including the New Hampshire primary, the tumultuous Republican National Convention, and the eventual inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Photographers E. Harold Young of Pittsfield and Whitman Levansaler of Concord captured these events in two remarkable collections of rarely seen images. Given the current precariousness of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, this photo essay reminds us how it all got started in the Granite State. 

Pride’s article, “‘The Great Army of the Sick,’” follows the story of Civil War nurse Harriet P. Dame, who spent the winter of 1862–63 caring for wounded and sick New Hampshire soldiers in Washington, D.C., hospitals. Dame’s network of aid workers, many of whom were women serving as volunteers, kept track of the state’s ailing men, corresponded with their families, and all too often oversaw their burial. Pride’s research provides a window on an aspect of the Civil War that does not usually receive much attention: the story of what happens to men after the guns stop firing. Pride’s article, and his recently published book on which the article is based, No Place for a Woman: Harriet Dame’s Civil War, relied on a caché of Dame’s letters that were acquired by the New Hampshire Historical Society in 2019.

Volume 75, Nos. 1 & 2, 2022

Elizabeth Dubrulle, Editor
Joan E. Desmarais, Illustrations Editor

“The Great Army of the Sick”: Harriet Dame’s Season of Toil in the Nation’s Capital

Mike Pride

Bringing Out the Vote: New Hampshire and the Presidential Campaign of 1952

Michael J. Birkner

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