Maine Gov. Paul LePage sensationally claimed this week that some 7,600 Maine residents fought for the Confederacy — but the Pine Tree State's official archivist says the number is really more like 30.
In an interview Tuesday with George Hale and Ric Tyler on Bangor's WVOM radio, LePage said:
"I'm a history buff. I think you learn from history … 7,600 Mainers fought for the Confederacy and they fought because they were concerned about the farmers and they were concerned about their land, their property. It was a property rights issue as it began."
But Maine State Archivist David Cheever told the Bangor Daily News that only approximately 30 people are confirmed to have gone from Maine to the Confederacy.
Cheever said that number included students who left Bowdoin College in Brunswick to fight, but whose hometowns may have been in other parts of the country.
"I'm pretty sure that the governor misspoke. He may have thought something, but 7,600's pretty strong," Cheever told the Bangor Daily News.
Jamie Kingman Rice, director of Library Services at the Maine Historical Society, told The Portland Press Herald: "There's no way to say he's right or wrong, but it's not a number I'd go with."
Rice added that about 72,000 Maine residents fought with the Union.
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