Cornman, Ephraim

News of General Lee’s Surrender Reaches Carlisle, Pennsylvania

On Monday, April 10, 1865, news of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia reached Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In response to this event one of the town’s newspapers, the American Volunteer, exclaimed, “Thank God! [T]he fearful and bloody rebellion that has desolated our land for over four long years, costing, as it did, hundreds of thousands of lives, thousands of millions of treasure, is, so far as fighting is concerned, over.”1 Lee’s surrender signaled an end to the fighting between the United States and the Southern Confederacy.

Dr. Charles M. Worthington (1835-1878)

Scan of Charles M. Worthington's obituary in the American Volunteer on October 17, 1878

A survivor of the infamous Libby Prison, Charles McClure Worthington was a man of many occupations; a telegraph operator on the Cumberland Valley Rail Road, a Civil War surgeon, a druggist, and finally, a Carlisle school teacher. Charles M. Worthington was born in Carlisle on September 22, 1835, the eldest son of Ann and Jefferson Worthington, a painter and County Commissioner. Worthington was educated in the Carlisle schools and read medicine with Dr. Baughman.