Civil War Veterans Reunited at the Rainier Hotel
Two former officers meet at the Rainier Hotel to recount the battles of the Civil War after decades of separation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Two old veterans of the Civil War met recently at the Rainier Hotel: Captain W. P. Lindsley, commanding the 13th Tennessee, and Captain H. E. Phelps, deputy treasurer of King County. Having been raised on the banks of the Mississippi and parted by the war—one fighting for the Army of the Cumberland and the other for the Army of Virginia—the two had not seen one another in thirty years. They spent several hours reminiscing about their experiences in battles from Nashville to Chattanooga, reliving the great conflict that had once divided them.
“They were boys together on the shores of the Mississippi river... The war came, and the boys were thrown together in the great struggle.”
The Rainier Hotel was a social anchor in early Seattle. This story captures the profound, lingering impact of the Civil War on the generation that built early Seattle, as veterans of both the North and South found common ground in the new West.
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