Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission (Stephen Puleo WH) Section - Civil War Guides “…an empty stone house and

“…an empty stone house and fenceless yard were all that was left the widow of seventy years

including a dozen newly discovered documents that have not been seen for 160 years

who had honed their fighting prowess earlier in the war against fearsome Confederate tacticians John Mosby and John Imboden

On March 10

they had cleared the Shenandoah Valley of Union soldiers and crossed the Potomac River

Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission (Stephen Puleo WH) Section - Civil War Guides “…an empty stone house andMore than 5,000 ships left Ireland during the great potato famine in the late 1840s, transporting the starving and the destitute away from their stricken homeland. The first vessel to sail in the other direction, to help the millions unable to escape, was the USS Jamestown, a converted warship, which left Boston in March 1847 loaded with precious food for Ireland. In an unprecedented move by Congress, the warship had been placed in civilian hands,