| Fishing Creek Confederacy | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 The Fishing Creek Confederacy took place in the vicinity of Fishing Creek | |||||
| |||||
| Designated | July 26, 2009[1] | ||||
The Fishing Creek Confederacy was an alleged military uprising in northern Columbia County, Pennsylvania and southern Sullivan County, Pennsylvania during the American Civil War. Residents of Columbia County strongly opposed military drafts that were being conducted there, leading to widespread desertion and draft evasion. In a Columbia County draft in July 1863, 618 people were drafted. Of these, approximately 75% evaded the draft.[2] On July 30, 1864, several people rode into northern Columbia County from Luzerne County to search for deserters, and one of the riders was shot. By the summer of 1864, rumors had begun to circulate that these deserters and draft evaders, as well as Confederate sympathizers, had built a fort with cannons on North Mountain, not far from the headwaters of Fishing Creek. This fort was supposedly manned by 500 people.[3] Upon hearing these rumors, 1000 soldiers gathered near Bloomsburg, in Columbia County.
On August 21, 1864, the soldiers began traveling up Fishing Creek. For the next week, they searched the northern portion of Columbia County for deserters and draft evaders. They were unable to find any, but on August 28 they arrested 100 local citizens. Most were released, although some were taken to Fort Mifflin. The soldiers continued heading into the northernmost reaches of the Fishing Creek watershed. Unable to find any evidence of a conspiracy, they returned to Bloomsburg and remained in the county until December 1864. The last of the prisoners were released from Fort Mifflin several months after their arrest.
The events of the Fishing Creek Confederacy were widely covered in both Democratic and Republican newspapers. In addition to contemporary coverage, the event was later reported by newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s. Professional historians began to do significant study on the confederacy in 1941, and it was mentioned in academic writings as late as 2009. Amateur historians have researched the event since the 1950s.
- ^ "PHMC Historical Markers Search". Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Archived from the original (Searchable database) on 2016-03-21. Retrieved 2014-01-25.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
dissentwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Sandow, Robert M. (2009), Deserter Country: Civil War Opposition in the Pennsylvania Appalachians, Fordham University Press, ISBN 9780823230532