Civil War Meanderings

150 Years Ago -- The Battle of the Head of the Passes

2011-10-12T05:49:00.001-04:00

A lot of naval history occurred on Saturday, October 12, 1861.

The ironclad ram Manassas led a couple of armed steamers and other assorted vessels in an early morning raid against the Federal flotilla blockading the Mississippi at Head of the Passes.

The Manassas proved to be a big disappointment. The ship rammed the USS Richmond to open the engagement, piercing her hull below the waterline, but the collision actually did more damage to the Manassas, causing mechanical problems that kept the ram from striking again. But the guns still worked and the flotilla's shots were bouncing off her ironclad sides; the Manassas started firing back and the rest of the Confederate ships joined in. Into the melee, the Confederates released large fire rafts to drift downstream into the Federal vessels.

The Federal flotilla tried to retreat through the Southwest Pass, but the Richmond and the Vincennes ran aground. By this point, the battle had turned into a long-range trading of shots as the two Federal ships worked to get underway again.

The raid accomplished its short-term mission: to run the Federal flotilla out of Head of the Passes. And the Manassas gained a fearsome reputation. But the Federal fleet would soon return in far greater numbers.

Also on this date, at Carondelet, Missouri, the Federal ironclad St. Louis was launched. The ship would be the first of seven gunboats that would make up the core of the U.S. Navy 's Western Gunboat Flotilla. The "Pook Turtles," designed by Samuel Pook and constructed by James Eads, would see their first action at the Battle of Fort Henry in February 1862, and would participate in every major action on the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries.

And, at Charleston, South Carolina, James Mason and John Slidell, the Confederate commissioners to Great Britian and France, headed for their new posts. They ran the blockade at Charleston aboard the Theodora bound for Havana, Cuba. Before they would reach Europe, they would become embroiled in an international incident that would almost start a war between the United States and England and gain the Confederacy the foreign recognition it needed.

150 Years Ago -- No Letters of Marque

2011-10-01T02:02:00.000-04:00

Image of Gideon Welles via Wikipedia

On Tuesday, October 1, 1861, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles announced that the U.S. Navy would not be issuing letters of marque.

The Confederate Navy had been using privateers to disrupt Northern shipping since the earliest days of the war. It was state-sanctioned piracy -- letters of marque were issued to private ship captains to attack and capture enemy vessels and bring them before admiralty courts for prize money.

Privateering was a viable tactic for a weaker naval power such as the Confederacy, which had few ships and few resources to build a fleet. Armed ships and men could be mobilized to wreck havoc on Northern commerce, drawing U.S. resources away from the blockade and other duties. In many cases, the privateers were employed as blockade runners.

Welles kept has opinion on privateering to himself and no letters of marque were issued. Finally, on October 1, Welles's position was revealed and made official. His chief objection to privateering was that it would "be a recognition of the assumption of the insurgents that they are a distinct and independent nationality."

NAVY DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 1861.

SIR: In relation to the communication of R.B. FORBES, Esq., a copy of which was sent by you to this Department on the 16th ult., inquiring whether lettersof-marque cannot be furnished for the propeller Pembroke, which is about to be dispatched to China. I have the honor to state that it appears to me there are objections to, and no authority for, granting letters-of-marque in the present contest. I am not aware that Congress, which has the exclusive power of granting letters-of-marque and reprisal, has authorized such letters to be issued against the insurgents; and were such authorization, I am not prepared to advise its exercise, because it would, in my view, be a recognition of the assumption of the insurgents that they are a distinct and independent nationality.

Under the act of Aug. 5,1861, "supplementary to an act entitled 'An act to protect the commerce of the United States and to punish the crime of piracy,'" the President is authorized to instruct the commanders of "armed vessels sailing under the authority of any letters-of-marque and reprisal granted by the Congress of the United States, or the commanders of any other suitable vessels, to subdue, seize, take, and, if on the high seas, to send into any port of the United States any vessel or boat built, purchased, fitted out, or held," &c. This allusion to letters-of-marque does not authorize such letters to be issued, nor do I find any other act containing such authorization. But the same act, in the second section, as above quoted, gives the President power to authorize the "commanders of any suitable vessels to subdue, seize," &c. Under this clause letters permissive, under proper restrictions and guards against abuse, might be granted to the propeller Pembroke, so as to meet the views expressed by Mr. FORBES. This would seem to be lawful, and perhaps not liable to the objections of granting letters-of-marque against our own citizens, and that too without law of authority from the only constituted power that can grant it.

I have the honor to transmit herewith a copy of a letter from Messrs. J.M. FORBES & Co. and others, addressed to this Department, on the same subject.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, GIDEON WELLES.

Also on this date, the Confederates held a council of war at Centreville, Virginia. Confederate President Jefferson Davis conferred with Generals Joe Johnson and Beauregard. The Confederacy would remain on the defensive, concentrating the armies and awaiting McClelland's advance in the spring.

150 Years Ago -- A Contentious Cabinet Meeting

2011-09-27T02:19:00.000-04:00

On Friday, September 27, 1861, a contentious cabinet meeting was held in General Winfield Scott's office with Major General George McClellan attending. The main topics were the war and the inactivity of McClellan's army. There was a general feeling that the war should have been over by now and most present wanted to know why it wasn't. McClellan was still training and drilling his green recruits into a fighting force and would not be ready to move for several more months.

150 Years Ago -- Naval Contrabands

2011-09-25T02:31:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, September 25, 1861, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles laid out the naval policy on contrabands in a command to Flag Officer Samuel Du Pont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

"The Department finds it necessary to adopt aregulation with respect to the large and increasing number of persons of color,commonly known as 'contrabands.' now subsisted at the navy yards and on boardships-of-war. These can neither be expelled from the service, to which they haveresorted, nor can they be maintained unemployed, and it is not proper that theyshould be compelled to render necessary and regular services withoutcompensation. You are therefore authorized, when their services can be madeuseful, to enlist them for the naval service, under the same forms andregulations as apply to other enlistments. They will be allowed, however, nohigher rating than 'boys,' at a compensation of ten dollars per month and oneration per day."

150 Years Ago -- The Raid on Osceola

2011-09-22T02:46:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, September 22, 1861, Kansas Jayhawkers, led by James Lane, a radical abolitionist, raided the town of Osceola, Missouri. No military advantage was gained; it was a senseless two-day spree of looting, arson and drinking, just another chapter in the sordid guerrilla war along the Kansas-Missouri border. Several pro-Southern citizens were executed in the town square.

When the raid was over, Lane's jayhawkers looted the town of everything they could carry and burned the rest. The once prosperous town of 2500 was reduced to just 200 inhabitants and never again would have as many people as it did before the raid.

150 Years Ago -- Lincoln Orders Fremont to Modify Emancipation Proclamation

2011-09-11T02:48:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, September 11, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to Major General John Frémont in St. Louis ordering him to modify his August 30 proclamation to the people of Missouri.

The general had declared:

"The property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, and who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free."

On August 6, Lincoln had signed a Confiscation Act into law. This act allowed for the confiscation only of those "persons held to service" who were "employed in hostility to the United States." The act did not free the confiscated slaves. Their status was left undefined, presumably for Congress to decide at some future time. Lincoln found Frémont's emancipation proclamation to be dictatorial, far beyond the power of any general in the field. At this point, he was trying to limit the war to the question of preserving the Union. He asked Frémont to modify the order to conform with the Confiscation Act; the general refused. Now Lincoln was through asking:

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 11, 1861,
Major-Gen. John C. Fremont:
SIR: Yours of the 8th, in answer to mine of 2d inst., was just received. Assuming that you upon the ground could better judge of the necessities of your position, than I could at this distance, on seeing your proclamation of Aug. 30, I perceived no general objection to it; the particular objectionable clause, however, in relation to the confiscation of property, and the liberation of slaves, appeared to me to be objectionable in its non-conformity to the act of Congress, passed the 6th of last August upon the same subjects, and hence I wrote you expressing my wish that that clause should be modified accordingly. Your answer just received, expresses the preference on your part that I should make an open order for the modification, which I very cheerfully do. It is therefore ordered that the said clause of said proclamation be so modified, held and construed as to conform with and not to transcend the provisions on the same subject contained in the act of Congress, entitled "An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes, approved Aug. 6, 1861," and that said act be published at length with this order. Your obedient servant,
(Signed) A. LINCOLN.

Also on September 11, 1861, in Kentucky, the legislature passed a resolution calling on Governor Beriah Magoffin to order Confederate troops to leave the state. Another resolution calling for both armies to leave was defeated.

150 Years Ago -- Jessie Fremont's Audience with the President

2011-09-10T03:31:00.000-04:00

Image of Jessie Benton Frémont via Wikipedia

On Tuesday, September 10, 1861, Jessie Benton Frémont arrived in Washington to plead her husband's case for his August 30 emancipation proclamation.

John Frémont, commander of the Western Department, had issued a proclamation declaring martial law in the state of Missouri, but he had gone further, promising to free the slaves of anyone found to be in rebellion against the United States. There was also the matter of threatening to shoot anyone who was found guilty by a court-martial "who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these lines."

Lincoln had written to Frémont urging the general to modify his proclamation. He saw it as dictatorial, far beyond any authority a general in the field might have. The proclamation threatened to expand the war; Lincoln was trying to keep the war a simple matter of preserving the Union. Freeing slaves would have a disastrous effect on the war effort, alienating Northern Democrats and the few slave states that were still in the Union, especially Kentucky.

Frémont took six days before replying to Lincoln. He refused Lincoln's suggestion to modify the proclamation -- "If I were to retract of my own accord it would imply that I myself thought it wrong and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded. But I did not. I acted with full deliberation and upon the certain conviction that it was a measure right and necessary and I think so still." He would only modify the proclamation if ordered to do so by Lincoln.

Now Mrs. Frémont was in Washington to plead her husband's case. Jessie Benton Frémont was the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton. She was no stranger to Washington and had met with most of the leading politicians of the day. This trip would not be a pleasant one though.

After a tiring, two-day journey by train, she arrived at the Willard Hotel late in the evening of September 10 and sent a message to the White House, inquiring as to when she might meet with the president. The reply was surprising: "Now, at once. A. Lincoln." Mrs. Frémont hurried to the White House. Lincoln met her in the Red Room. He was standing and did not offer her a seat. She presented the general's letter. Lincoln "smiled with an expression that was not agreeable" and read it.

"(B)oth voice and manner made the impression that I was to be got rid of briefly...In answer to his question, 'Well?' I explained that the general wished so much to have his attention to the letter sent, that I had brought it to make sure it would reach him. He answered, not to that, but to the subject his own mind was upon, that 'It was a war for a great national idea, the Union, and that General Frémont should not have dragged the negro into it. -- that he never would if he had consulted with Frank Blair. I sent Frank there to advise him.'"

When Mrs. Frémont began to make the argument that emancipation would keep England and France from recognizing the Confederacy, Lincoln cut her off, noting "in a sneering tone," "You are quite a female politician."

Lincoln's side of the story was almost as equally unpleasant. He told his secretary John Hay,

"She sought an audience with me and tasked me so violently with so many things, that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarreling with her. She more than once intimated that if Gen. Frémont should conclude to try conclusions with me he could set up for himself."

The next day, Mrs. Frémont met with Francis Blair, a longtime friend. He scolded her, "Who would have expected you to do such a thing as this, to come here and find fault with the President?" He later added, "Look what Frémont has done; made the President his enemy!"

Also on September 10, 1861, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was appointed commander of the Western armies, commanding troops in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Kentucky.

150 Years Ago -- Lincoln Writes to David Hunter

2011-09-09T03:18:00.000-04:00

On Monday, September 9, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to Major General David Hunter, requesting that the general go to St. Louis to assist Major General John Frémont in administering the Western Department.

From his vantage point some 800 miles away, Lincoln felt that the situation in Missouri was getting out of hand and that Frémont was in over his head as commander of the department. Frémont had spent some $12 million to arm and equip his command, and as is usually the case when vast sums are spent in a big hurry, graft and corruption was rampant. The headquarters was too lavish and Frémont was too isolated within it. The military situation was unraveling after the defeat at Wilson's Creek; guerrilla warfare was becoming all too common. On top of everything else, the president was displeased with Frémont's emancipation proclamation.

Many of these negative reports were coming from the Blair family. One of the leading families in Missouri, the Blairs had urged the general's appointment, but had quickly fallen out with him.

David Hunter had graduated from West Point in 1822 and had been in the U.S. Army some 30+ years. In early 1861, concerned for Lincoln's safety, he had volunteered to join the party escorting the president-elect to Washington for his inauguration. Soon after the Civil War began, Hunter had been appointed colonel of the 3rd U.S. Cavalry, but just three days later had been promoted to brigadier general. Commanding the 2nd Division of General Irvin McDowell's army, Hunter had been severely wounded at the Battle of Bull Run. On August 13, he was promoted to major general.

Lincoln felt that Hunter could best assist Frémont as his chief of staff, but Hunter's rank was too high for Lincoln to order him to take the position. On September 9, Lincoln wrote to Hunter:

"Gen. Fremont needs assistance which it is difficult to give him. He is losing the confidence of men near him, whose support any man in his position must have to be successful. His cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself, & allows nobody to see him; and by which he does not know what is going on in the very matter he is dealing with. he needs to have, by his side, a man of large experience. Will you not, for me, take that place? Your rank is one grade too high to be ordered to it; but will you not serve the country, and oblige me, by taking it voluntarily?"

Hunter quickly agreed and set off for St. Louis, arriving there on September 13. Instead of chief of staff, Frémont would make him a division commander.

150 Years Ago -- Fremont's Reply to Lincoln

2011-09-08T01:37:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, September 8, 1861, Union Major General John Frémont replied to President Lincoln's "request" to modify his emancipation proclamation.

Frémont, commanding the Department of the West, had issued a proclamation on August 30, declaring martial law throughout the state of Missouri. Lincoln had problems with the third paragraph which went further than the Confiscation Act recently signed into law:

All persons who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these lines shall be tried by court-martial, and, if found guilty, will be shot. The property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, and who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free.

Lincoln, who just then was trying hard to keep Kentucky in the Union, wrote to Frémont on September 2, asking the general to modify his proclamation. Frémont finally replied on September 8:

HEADQUARTERS WESTERN DEPARTMENT,
Saint Louis, September 8, 1861.

The PRESIDENT.

MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 2d by special messenger I know to have been written before you had received my letter, and before my telegraphic dispatches and the rapid development of critical conditions here had informed you of affairs in this quarter. I had not written to you fully and frequently, first, because in the incessant change of affairs I would be exposed to give you contradictory accounts; and, secondly, because the amount of the subjects to be laid before you would demand too much of your time.

Trusting to have your confidence I have been leaving it to events themselves to show you whether or not I was shaping affairs here according to your ideas. The shortest communication between Washington and Saint Louis generally involves two days and the employment of two days in time of war goes largely toward success or disaster. I therefore went along according to my own judgment leaving the result of my movements to justify me with you.

And so in regard to my proclamation of the 30th. Between the rebel armies, the Provisional Government and home traitors I felt the position bad and saw danger. In the night I decided upon the proclamation and the form of it. I wrote it the next morning and printed it the same day. I did it without consultation or advice with any one, acting solely with my best judgment to serve the country and yourself and perfectly willing to receive the amount of censure which should be thought due if I had made a false movement. This is as much a movement in the war as a battle, and in going into these I shall have to act according to my judgment of the ground before me as I did on this occasion. If upon reflection your better judgment still decides that I am wrong in the article respecting the liberation of slaves I have to ask that you will openly direct me to make the correction. The implied censure will be received as a soldier always should the reprimand of his chief. If I were to retract of my own accord it would imply that I myself thought it wrong and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded. But I did not. I acted with full deliberation and upon the certain conviction that it was a measure right and necessary and I think so still.

In regard to the other point of the proclamation to which you refer I desire to say that I do not think the enemy can either misconstrue or urge anything against it, or undertake to make unusual retaliation. The shooting of men who shall rise in arms against an army in the military occupation of a country is merely a necessary measure of defense and entirely according to the usages of civilized warfare. The article does not at all refer to prisoners of war and certainly our enemies have no ground for requiring that we should waive in their benefit any of the ordinary advantages which the usages of war allow to us. As promptitude is itself an advantage in war I have also to ask that you will permit me to carry out upon the spot the provisions of the proclamation in this respect. Looking at affairs from this point of view I am satisfledthat strong and vigorous measures have now become necessary to the success of our arms; and hoping that my views may have the honor to meet your approval,

I am, with respect and regard, very truly, yours,

J. C. FRÉMONT.

In addition to sending the letter, Frémont sent his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, to Washington to plead his case. She would arrive in Washington on September 10.

150 Years Ago -- McClellan Goes Ballooning

2011-09-07T23:41:00.001-04:00

Image of Thaddeus Lowe via Wikipedia

On September 7, 1861, Union Major General George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, went ballooning with Thaddeus Lowe.

Lowe had been posted near Arlington, Virginia, at Fort Corcoran since his balloon was completed on August 28. He conducted aerial reconnaissance and took several generals, reporters and artists aloft. Just two days before McClellan's first flight, Lowe had gone aloft with Generals Irvin McDowell and Fitz John Porter.

McClellan observed the Confederate fortifications at nearby Munson's Hill and Clark's Hill, and got a view of Washington similar to this one that appeared in the July 27, 1861 edition of Harper's Weekly. It is unclear how many flights McClellan made, but he saw the value of the balloon as a military asset, and Lowe soon received an order to construct four more balloons and purchase portable gas generators.

150 Years Ago -- Grant Occupies Paducah

2011-09-06T06:42:00.003-04:00

Image of Ulysses S. Grant via Wikipedia

On Friday, September 6, 1861, Union troops under Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant occupied Paducah, Kentucky, at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, without resistance. This move was in response to the Confederate occupation of Columbus, Kentucky on September 3.

Kentucky's neutrality would have been violated in any case. Major General John Frémont, the commander of the Union Department of the West, had ordered Grant to occupy Columbus as soon as possible. While Confederate Major General Leonidas Polk didn't know about those orders, he had beaten Grant to the punch, but had unleashed a firestorm in Kentucky against the Confederacy by invading the state first.

Grant issued a proclamation to the people of Kentucky:

"I have come among you not as an enemy, but as your fellow-citizen. Not to maltreat or annoy you, but to respect and enforce the rights of all loyal citizens. An enemy, in rebellion against our common Government, has taken possession of, and planted its guns on the soil of Kentucky, and fired upon you. Columbus and Hickman are in his hands. He is moving upon your city. I am here to defend you against this enemy, to assist the authority and sovereignty of your Government. I have nothing to do with opinions, and shall deal only with armed rebellion and its aiders and abettors. You can pursue your usual avocations without fear. The strong arm of the Government is here to protect its friends and punish its enemies. Whenever it is manifest that you are able to defend yourselves and maintain the authority of the Government and protest the rights of loyal citizens I shall withdraw the forces under my command."

Polk's invasion of Kentucky was a major political blunder, but he also committed a strategic blunder. He had planned to occupy Paducah as well, but had moved too slowly and let Grant take the town. With Columbus, the Confederates could block the Mississippi with their big guns on the high bluffs, but Grant's occupation of Paducah gave the Federals another avenue for a Southern invasion: the Tennessee River. Grant would soon occupy Smithland, opening up the Cumberland River as well.

Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin would demand that both sides withdraw from Kentucky soil, but the state legislature would demand that only the Confederates withdraw, and would invite the Federals to give the state "that protection against invasion which is granted to each one of the states by the fourth section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States."

Magoffin vetoed the resolution, but both houses overrode the veto. The General Assembly declared its allegiance to the Union and ordered the United States flag to be raised over the state capitol.

150 Years Ago -- Foote Arrives in St. Louis

2011-09-05T02:39:00.000-04:00

Image of Andrew Foote via Wikipedia

On Thursday, September 5, 1861, Captain Andrew Foote arrived in St. Louis to take command of the Federal naval forces on the upper Mississippi. Foote superseded Commander John Rodgers. Foote would later work closely with General Ulysses S. Grant in combined army/navy operations on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.

Foote briefly attended West Point in 1822, but left to accept an appointment as a midshipman at Annapolis. He had a reputation as a fighter. During the Second Opium War, in the Battle of the Pearl River Forts in Canton, China, in 1856, Foote led a landing party of 287 men. They captured one fort and used the captured guns to attack and capture another fort. Then, with the help of the blockading ships, they fought off a counterattack by some 3000 Chinese soldiers and captured two more Pearl River forts.

Rodgers would head east to serve under Flag Officer Samuel Du Pont in the Port Royal Expedition in October. He would served in the U.S. Navy until his death in May 1882. At that time he was the Navy's oldest active rear admiral.

Also on this date, President Abraham Lincoln met with General Winfield Scott. The main topic of conversation was what to do about John Frémont, the commander of the Department of the West, who was becoming more of a headache for the administration with each passing day.

At Cairo, Illinois, General Ulysses S. Grant was looking to counter the Confederate position at Columbus, Kentucky. He recognized the important of Paducah, at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, and formed an expedition to occupy the town. The troops left that evening. Grant informed Frémont of his intentions, but had the troops in motion before receiving a reply.

150 Years Ago -- Grant Takes Command at Cairo

2011-09-04T20:33:00.000-04:00

Image of Ulysses S. Grant via Wikipedia

On Wednesday, September 4, 1861, Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant arrived in Cairo, Illinois, to take command of the Union forces there. Cairo was an important position near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. It was Grant's first major command of the war.

Grant was appointed to the position by General John Frémont, the commander of the Department of the West. Frémont was a career officer in the U.S. Army, but he had come up and achieved nationwide fame through the Topographical Corps. If he had been a member of the West Point clique, he probably would not have chosen Grant for this important assignment.

Grant had been typed as a drunk and a drifter. At West Point, he developed a reputation as a poor student with bad study habits. He graduated in 1843, ranked 21st out of 39 cadets. He fought in the Mexican War, winning brevets for gallantry at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, but after the war was posted at several remote garrisons where he fought boredom and loneliness by drinking. He resigned in 1854.

In civilian life, he moved from one failed venture to another. At one point, he was reduced to peddling firewood on the streets of St. Louis. When the war began, he was able to gain a position as colonel of the 21st Illinois Infantry only because Elihu Washburne, an influential congressman, took a liking to him.

Frémont also took a liking to him, describing him as as a man of "unassuming character not given to self elation, of dogged persistence, of iron will." It would be one of the best decisions of Frémont's troubled time in St. Louis. Grant arrived at Cairo and quickly began looking to counter the Confederate's position at nearby Columbus, Kentucky.

Also on this date, at Columbus, Confederate Major General Leonidas Polk issued a proclamation to the people of Kentucky, declaring that he had moved into Kentucky and occupied the town in order to protect it:

"The Federal government having, in defiance of the wishes of the people of Kentucky, disregarded their neutrality by establishing camp depots of armies, and by organizing military companies within her territory, and by constructing military works on the Missouri shore, immediately opposite and commanding Columbus, evidently intended to cover the landing of troops for the seizure of that town, it has become a military necessity, for the defence of the territory of the Confederate states, that the Confederates occupy Columbus in advance. The major-general commanding has, therefore, not felt himself at liberty to risk the loss of so important a position, but has decided to occupy it in pursuance of this decision. He has thrown sufficient force into the town, and ordered to fortify it. It is gratifying to know that the presence of his troops is acceptable to the people of Columbus, and on this occasion he assures them that every precaution shall be taken to insure their quiet, protection to their property, with personal and corporate rights."

150 Years Ago -- The Confederate Army Invades Kentucky

2011-09-03T20:03:00.000-04:00

Image of Leonida Polk via Wikipedia

Kentucky's position of neutrality in the Civil War was doomed to fail. It finally came to an end on Tuesday, September 3, 1861, when Confederate troops under Brigadier General Gideon Pillow crossed into the state from Tennessee to occupy Columbus. The troops soon placed guns on the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River.

The move was ordered by Pillow's superior, Major General Leonidas Polk. He feared the Federals were planning to occupy the town and was trying to beat them to the punch. He would soon announce that he had occupied the town to protect it.

Polk was correct in his assessment of the situation. The Federals were massed across the river in Missouri, and Major General John Frémont had ordered Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant to occupy Columbus as soon as possible.

Polk had signaled his intentions in a letter to pro-secessionist Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin on September 1: "I think it of the greatest consequence to the Southern cause in Kentucky or elsewhere that I should be ahead of the enemy in occupying Columbus and Paducah." When the troops were in motion, Polk wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis to tell him what he had done and why.

Pro-Unionist Kentuckians protested, but the greatest protests came from Tennessee Governor Isham Harris. As long as Kentucky could stay out of the war, it would act as a shield protecting Tennessee from invasion. Harris wrote to Confederate Secretary of War LeRoy Walker, who ordered Polk to withdraw immediately, but Davis countermanded the order, telling Polk that "the necessity justifies the action."

150 Years Ago -- Lincoln Writes to Fremont

2011-09-02T05:14:00.000-04:00

On Monday, September 2, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to Major General John C. Frémont regarding the general's August 31 proclamation to the people of Missouri.

Lincoln ordered Frémont not to shoot any prisoners without his (the president's) authorization. Lincoln feared that Frémont's threat that "all persons who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these lines shall be tried by court-martial, and, if found guilty, will be shot" would lead to the Confederates executing any prisoners they had taken in retaliation.

Lincoln did not order, but strongly suggested that Frémont modify his emancipation proclamation. In his letter, Lincoln said that he believed the proclamation "will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn themagainst us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky."

Kentucky, with its divided population, was still pursuing a policy of neutrality, and both sides were still tip-toeing around that neutrality, recruiting, arming and training men from the state, but avoiding overt acts that might push the state toward the opposing side. Lincoln feared that making the war about slavery would be just the thing to push Kentucky into the Confederacy.

Lincoln also feared that this proclamation would have an adverse affect on the slave states that were still in the Union and the Northern Democrats who were helping to fight the war.

On August 6, Lincoln had signed a confiscation act into law. This act, which passed the House 60-48 and the Senate 24-11, permitted the confiscation of any property, including slaves, that was used to support the Confederacy. The act stripped owners of their slaves, but left the status of the slaves unresolved. For the time being, they would be the property of the Federal government. Lincoln suggested that Frémont modify his proclamation to conform to the confiscation act.

Lincoln's letter to Frémont:

WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPTEMBER 2, 1861

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT.

MY DEAR SIR:--Two points in your proclamation of August 30 give me someanxiety.

First. Should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, theConfederates would very certainly shoot our best men in their hands inretaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely. It is, therefore, myorder that you allow no man to be shot under the proclamation withoutfirst having my approbation or consent.

Second. I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph, inrelation to the confiscation of property and the liberating slaves oftraitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn themagainst us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me,therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify thatparagraph so as to conform to the first and fourth sections of the act ofCongress entitled "An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionarypurposes," approved August 6, 1861, and a copy of which act I herewithsend you.

This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not of censure. I sendit by special messenger, in order that it may certainly and speedilyreach you.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

150 Years Ago -- Confederate Generals Confirmed

2011-08-31T04:04:00.000-04:00

There had been few full generals in American history -- George Washington was a rare exception -- but on Saturday, August 31, 1861, the Confederate Congress confirmed five full generals who had been appointed by President Jefferson Davis.

The five, in order of seniority, were Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert Edward Lee, Joseph Eggleston Johnston and Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard.

The appointments would cause some animosity between Davis and Joe Johnston. Confederate law stated that generals of identical commissions would have seniority according to the rank they had held in the U.S. Army. Johnston, who had held the rank of brigadier general in the old Army, was insulted to discover that he was now ranked fourth behind men who had been colonels in the U.S. Army.

In Davis's opinion, the determining factor was line commissions versus staff commissions. Johnston had held a staff position. Johnston was angered to discover that the three men who outranked him were all close friends of Davis.

Johnston, on September 12, would write a lengthy, passionate letter, "my earnest protest against the wrong which I conceive has been done me." Davis dismissed it with a two-sentence reply: "Sir: I have just received and read your letter of the 12th instant. Its language is, as you say, unusual; its arguments and its statements utterly one-sided, and its insinuations as unfounded as they are unbecoming."

150 Years Ago -- Fremont's Proclamation

2011-08-30T04:44:00.000-04:00

Image of John C. Frémont via Wikipedia

On August 30, 1861, Union General John Frémont, commanding the Department of the West, issued an emancipation proclamation and confiscation act, stating, "The property, real and personal, of all persons in the state of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared freemen."

Since Union General John Frémont had arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 25 to take command of the Department of the West, his reputation had quickly plummeted. The influential Blair family had urged his appointment, but had quickly turned against him, blaming him, among other things, for the death of Nathaniel Lyon, another Blair family favorite, and for the disaster that had befallen the main Union army in the west at Wilson's Creek.

Frémont had much to do -- he was expected to secure the state and plan an expedition down the Mississippi toward New Orleans -- but had little in the way of men or equipment to get the job done. Guerrilla warfare was rapidly becoming rampant in the state, St. Louis seemed to be a hotbed of secessionist activity --Frémont had declared martial law in the city and suppressed two local newspapers on August 14 -- and there was also the problem of the combined army of Confederate/Arkansas/Missouri militia that had defeated Lyon at Wilson's Creek.

Luckily for Frémont, the pro-Southern forces had not followed up on their victory. Ben McCulloch, commander of the Confederate forces, had not wanted to enter Missouri, and now couldn't be persuaded to pursue the defeated Federals to Rolla. The Arkansans, their terms of enlistment nearing an end, had returned home, leaving Sterling Price's state militia force to go it alone.

Frémont had the makings of a good plan to secure the state. Union troops under John Pope were already in the northeastern part of Missouri, stamping out the guerrilla warfare there. Frémont proposed to hold the railroads radiating out from St. Louis by fortifying and garrisoning Rolla, Jefferson City and Ironton. He would protect the Mississippi by fortifying Cape Girardeau, St. Louis and Cairo, Illinois. When all that was done "my plan is New Orleans straight."

One of the few good decisions Frémont would make during his time at St. Louis was to select the right man to command the force at Cairo, Illinois: Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was nominated as a brigadier general of volunteers on July 31. When his father learned of his promotion, he wrote, saying, "Ulyss, this is a good job, don''t lose it."

But two other problems were causing Washington to take a negative view of Frémont. The first was that he needed all kinds of military equipment in a big hurry. This would almost always cause a lot of irregularities and graft. In fact, the War Department was also experiencing some of the same problems on a national scale, which would soon lead to Simon Cameron's ouster from his position as Secretary of War.

This rapid arming of his troops probably exacerbated the problems Frémont was having with the Blairs. They were not getting what they thought was their rightful share of the action.

The other problem was Frémont's headquarters. From Terrible Swift Sword by Bruce Catton:

"It began with the headquarters itself -- with the look of it, the atmosphere that pervaded it, and the people who were visible there. Headquarters had been housed in a good three-story dwelling that lay behind a pleasant lawn enclosed by a stone wall, at Chouteau Avenue and Eighth Street, rented for $6000 a year. The building was not actually too big and although the price was high it perhaps was not really excessive, in view of the fact that this was one of the most important military departments in the United States; but somehow the place seemed a little too imposing. Frémont had guards all over the premises, and there were staff officers to sift his callers -- the unending stream of people who simply had to see the general, most of whom had no business getting within half a mile of him -- and presently people were muttering that the man lived in a vast mansion and surrounded himself with the barriers of a haughty aristocracy.

"Many of these complaints reflected nothing more than the inability of a young republic to understand that an overburdened executive must shield himself if he is to get any work done. (After all, this was the era when the White House itself was open to the general public, so that any persistent citizen could get in, shake the hand of the President and consume time which that harassed official could have used in more fruitful ways.) But it is also true that Frémont brought a great many of these complaints on himself by his inability to surround himself with the right kind of assistants.

"Frémont had a fatal attraction for foreigners -- displaced revolutionists from the German states, from Hungary and from France, fortune hunters from practically everywhere, men who had been trained and commissioned in European armies but who knew nothing at all about this western nation whose uniforms they wore and whose citizens they irritated with their heel-clickings and their outlandish mangling of the American idiom. Frémont was taking part in a peculiarly American sort of war -- Price's backwoods militia was wholly representative -- and Missouri had felt from the beginning that the German-born recruits from St. Louis were a little too prominent. Now headquarters had this profoundly foreign air, and when a man was told that he could not see the general -- to sell a load of hay or a tugboat, to apply for a commission, to give a little information about Rebel plots, or just to pass the time of day -- he was given the bad news in broken English by a dandified type who obviously belonged somewhere east of the Rhine. It was all rather hard to take."

By the end of August 1861, it was all getting to be rather hard to take for Frémont as well. He felt he needed some grand gesture that would set everything right, and thus came his proclamation to the people of Missouri:

Head-quarters of the Western Department,
St. Louis, August 31, 1861.

Circumstances, in my judgment of sufficient urgency, render it necessary that the Commanding General of this Department should assume the administrative powers of the State. Its disorganized condition, the helplessness of the civil authority, the total insecurity of life, and the devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders who infest nearly every county in the State and avail themselves of the public misfortunes and the vicinity of a hostile force to gratify private and neighborhood vengeance, and who find an enemy wherever they find plunder, finally demand the severest measure to repress the daily increasing crimes and outrages which are driving off the inhabitants and ruining the State. In this condition the public safety and the success of our arms require unity of purpose, without let or hindrance, to the prompt administration of affairs.

In order, therefore, to suppress disorders, to maintain as far as now practicable the public peace, and to give security and protection to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend, and declare established, martial law throughout the State of Missouri. The lines of the army of occupation in this State are for the present declared to extend from Leavenworth by way of the posts of Jefferson City, Rolla, and Ironton, to Cape Giradeau on the Mississippi River.

All persons who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these lines shall be tried by court-martial, and, if found guilty, will be shot. The property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, and who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free.

All persons who shall be proven to have destroyed, after the publication of this order, railroad tracks, bridges, or telegraphs, shall suffer the extreme penalty of the law.

All persons engaged in treasonable correspondence, in giving or procuring aid to the enemies of the United States, in disturbing the public tranquility by creating and circulating false reports or incendiary documents, are in their own interest warned that they are exposing themselves.

All persons who have been led away from their allegiance are required to return to their homes forthwith; any such absence without sufficient cause will be held to be presumptive evidence against them.

The object of this declaration is to place in the hands of the military authorities the power to give instantaneous effect to existing laws, and to supply such deficiencies as the conditions of war demand. But it is not intended to suspend the ordinary tribunals of the country, where the law will be administered by the civil officers in the usual manner and with their customary authority, while the same can be peaceably exercised.

The Commanding General will labor vigilantly for the public welfare, and in his efforts for their safety hopes to obtain not only the acquiescence, but the active support of the people of the country.
J. C. Fremont,
Major-General Commanding.

The proclamation was quickly printed and made public. Frémont also sent a copy to Washington for the president's input.

Related articles
150 Years Ago: Fremont Takes Command in the West (civilwarmeanderings.blogspot.com)
150 Years Ago: Changes (civilwarmeanderings.blogspot.com)
150 Years Ago -- A Lull (civilwarmeanderings.blogspot.com)
150 Years Ago -- The Battle of Wilson's Creek (civilwarmeanderings.blogspot.com)

150 Years Ago -- Establishing a Balloon Corps

2011-08-29T01:09:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Thaddeus Lowe had put his dream of making a transatlantic balloon flight on hold to offer his services to his country. In June 1861, he had demonstrated the military usefulness of his balloon to President Lincoln, then to a group of skeptical generals.

Lowe hoped to become the "chief aeronaut" of a balloon corps dedicated to aerial reconnaissance, but had competition from several other balloonists, including John Wise, John La Mountain, and the Allen brothers, Ezra and James. After his successful demonstrations, he was asked to submit an estimate for the cost of making suitable balloons, but was soon informed that he had been underbid by Wise.

In mid-July, Lowe was conducting experiments on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution when Captain Amiel Whipple of the U. S. Topographical Engineers sent him a message. General Irvin McDowell was at Centreville, Virginia, and needed a balloon to conduct aerial reconnaissance of the Confederate position at Bull Run. Wise had not shown up. Whipple asked Lowe to bring his balloon down.

Since Lowe did not have a portable hydrogen gas generator it was necessary to inflate the balloon in Washington and tow it south. Lowe was inflating his balloon at a gas main near the Columbian Armory when Wise finally showed up. Lowe was ordered to disconnect his balloon and make way for Wise to inflate his.

Wise inflated his balloon and twenty men from the 26th Pennsylvania began the task of towing the balloon into central Virginia. Along the way, Wise's balloon snagged on a low-hanging tree branch and burst.

Lowe inflated his balloon and started south. He made it as far as Fall Church, where he learned of the Union army's rout at Bull Run. Lowe remained where he was as the retreating army streamed past him. When the last of the Federal pickets withdrew, Lowe started back toward Arlington, dragging his balloon in a heavy rainstorm. He arrived at Fort Corcoran the evening after the battle with the balloon still fully inflated.

Two days later, when the weather finally cleared, Lowe made a free ascent and observed the victorious Rebel army still concentrated around the Manassas area. The news was welcome in Washington, relieving tensions of an expected invasion.

But before Lowe could get the news back to the city, he had a serious misadventure. As he returned to the Union lines, soldiers, thinking Confederates were piloting the craft, began firing on Lowe and demanding that he show his colors. Lowe had no flag to show, so he stayed aloft and finally landed in a grove of trees a couple of miles outside the Union lines. He was discovered by men from the 31st New York Volunteers, but he had twisted his ankle in the landing and could not walk out with them. It was up to his wife to rescue him. She procured a wagon, disguised herself as a farm woman and drove south to pick him up. Lowe and his balloon were hidden in the bottom of the wagon and driven past Confederate pickets at dusk.

Lincoln ordered General-in-Chief Winfield Scott to form a balloon corps with Lowe as chief aeronaut. On August 2, Lowe received his orders and instructions:

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF NORTHEASTERN VIRGINIA,
Arlington, August 2, 1861.
Mr. T. S. C. LOWE,
Aeronaut:
        SIR: You are hereby employed to construct a balloon for military purposes capable of containing at least 25,000 cubic feet of gas, to be made of the best India silk, not inferior to the sample which is divided between us, you retaining a part, with best linen network, and three guys of manilla cordage from 1,200 to 1,500 feet in length. The materials you will purchase immediately, the best the markets afford and at prices not exceeding ordinary rates; and the bills you will forward to me through Maj. Hartman Bache, chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. When these materials shall have been collected at Philadelphia, where the balloon is to be constructed, you will report to me, that I may send an officer of the corps to inspect them. You need not, however, wait for the inspecting officer, but go on rapidly with the work, with the understanding that it may be suspended, provided that upon examination the materials or work prove unsatisfactory.
        Your compensation from the day of collecting the materials and during the time of making the balloon shall be $5 per day, provided that a reasonable time be allowed for the collection and ten days for making. From and after the day that the balloon shall be ready for inflation at Washington, D.C., your compensation will be $10 per day as long as the Government may require your services.
        Inclosed herewith is an order authorizing the purchase of materials necessary for the operation with which you are charged.
Very respectfully,
A. W. WHIPPLE,
Captain, Topographical Engineers.

[Inclosure.]
HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF NORTHEASTERN VIRGINIA.
        Mr. T. S. C. Lowe, aeronaut, is hereby authorized to purchase 1,200 yards of best India silk and sufficient linen thread, cordage, &c., for the construction of a balloon, and all reasonable bills for the same, when presented to me through the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, will be paid.
A. W. WHIPPLE,
        Captain, Topographical Engineers.

Lowe began construction of this new balloon, the Union, and also began assembling and training a group of men in the art of military ballooning. The Union Army Balloon Corps remained a civilian contract organization without military commissions. This put the group in a somewhat precarious situation. If any of the men were ever captured by Confederate troops they could be classified as spies and executed. The Balloon Corps would eventually consist of seven aircraft.

The Union was completed on August 28, and Lowe was ordered to bring it to Fort Corcoran. Because he still did not have a portable gas generator, Lowe was confined to operations near Washington, but the balloon stayed in constant use for almost two months.

150 Years Ago -- Cross Lanes

2011-08-26T00:09:00.000-04:00

On Monday, August 26, 1861, the Battle of Cross Lanes took place in western Virginia.

Confederate troops under Brigadier General John Floyd crossed the Gauley River and attacked the 7th Ohio Regiment at Kessler's Cross Lanes. It was an overwhelming assault that surprised the Federals while they were having breakfast. It lasted just a few moments before the Federals broke and ran, leaving behind about 40 dead and 100 prisoners.

150 Years Ago -- European Commissioners

2011-08-24T23:38:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, August 24, 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis named his European commissioners -- Pierre Rost (Spain), James Mason (Great Britian) and John Slidell (France).

150 Years Ago -- Rose Greenhow Is Arrested

2011-08-23T23:27:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Friday, August 23, 1861, Allan Pinkerton apprehended Rose Greenhow for spying and placed her under house arrest.

Maria Rosatta O'Neal was born on a farm in southern Maryland in 1817. Her father was murdered by his slaves when Rose was just a child. The family became destitute. When Rose was 14, she and her sister Ellen went to live with an aunt, Maria Ann Hill, who ran the Congressional Boarding House across the street from the Capitol.

The boardinghouse was a center of Washington society. Senators, congressmen, and other dignitaries lodged there, including John C. Calhoun, who was an important influence on Rose, transforming her into a self-described "Southern woman, born with revolutionary blood in my veins."

Rose was initially snubbed as a nobody, but soon found her place in Washington society. When she was 18, she married one of Washington's most eligible bachelors, Dr. Robert Greenhow. He had a law degree and a medical degree and was one of the highest-ranking members of the State Department.

When the Civil War began, Rose was a widow and a grande dame of Washington society. At the center of everything that was anything in Washington, Rose soon was at the center of a vast espionage network. She was now in her mid-40's and still a striking beauty. She used her "almost irresistible seductive powers" to learn everything she could about General Irvin McDowell's army and passed the information along to General P. G. T. Beauregard in Virginia.

Acting on a tip, Allan Pinkerton, the head of the new Union Intelligence Service, placed Greenhow under surveillance. On the evening of August 22, Pinkerton witnessed a Union officer giving military information to Greenhow. She was arrested the next day. A search of her house turned up a diary with several pages of notes, copies of orders from the War Department, and other incriminating documents.

Although under house arrest, Greenhow barely slowed her espionage activities for the Confederacy. In January of 1862, she would be transferred to Old Capitol Prison.

150 Years Ago -- Ordinance of Dismemberment

2011-08-20T18:02:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

The Unionists of western Virginia were still trying to secede from the seceders. On Tuesday, August 20, 1861, the Wheeling Convention passed an "ordinance of dismemberment" by a vote of 50-28, creating a new state to be called "Kanawha" out of 39 Virginia counties west of the Shenandoah Valley. The ordinance provided for an election on October 24 to choose delegates to a constitution convention. The voters would also choose between "for a new State" or "against a new State."

150 Years Ago -- Henry Halleck's Promotion

2011-08-19T14:45:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

August 19, 1861: The effective date of Henry Halleck's promotion to major general, making him the fourth-highest ranking officer in the U.S. Army after General-in-chief Winfield Scott, George McClellan and John Frémont.

Scott recommended Halleck for the promotion in consideration of his reputation as a military genius. Halleck, a New Yorker, attended Hudson Academy and Union College, then West Point, graduating third in the class of 1839. During his 15 years of service in the U.S. Army, he constructed seacoast defenses, studied French military tactics, lectured, wrote, taught.

He was assigned to California during the Mexican War, eventually serving under General Bennet Riley, the governor general of the California Territory. Halleck was appointed military secretary of state and was one of the principal authors of the state constitution. Halleck retired from the army in 1854. When the Civil War began, he was amassing a fortune as a lawyer and land speculator in San Francisco.

Also on this date, the Confederate Congress passed a bill admitting Missouri into the Confederacy. The bill did not mean much as it recognized the government of Governor Claiborne Jackson as the legal authority to ratify the constitution. That government had been deposed and replaced with a more Unionist body.

150 Years Ago -- George Thomas's Promotion

2011-08-17T00:48:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On August 17, 1861, George Thomas was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers. This was his third promotion in the last four months. He would serve under Major General Robert Anderson in Kentucky, commanding an independent force in the eastern part of the state.

Thomas graduated from West Point in 1840, twelfth in his class, then served in the Seminole and Mexican Wars. Thomas suffered an arrow wound in the chest during a fight with a Comanche warrior in August 1860. Later that year, he fell off a train platform in Lynchburg, Virginia, severely injuring his back.

When the Civil War began, Thomas was serving in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry. 19 of the 36 regimental officers, including three of Thomas's superiors, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, and William Hardee, resigned to join the Confederacy, but Thomas, a Virginia native, remained loyal to the Union. Many members of his family never spoke to him again.

150 Years Ago -- Lincoln States the Obvious

2011-08-16T19:13:00.000-04:00

On Friday, August 16, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation officially declaring that the Confederate States "are in a state of insurrection against the United States." Lincoln also declared "that all commercial intercourse (between the North and South) should forthwith cease and desist."

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Whereas on the 15th day of April, 1861, the President of the United States, in view of an insurrection against the laws, Constitution, and Government of the United States which had broken out within the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and in pursuance of the provisions of the act entitled "An act to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions, and to repeal the act now in force for that purpose," approved February 28, 1795, did call forth the militia to suppress said insurrection and to cause the laws of the Union to be duly executed, and the insurgents have failed to disperse by the time directed by the President; and

Whereas such insurrection has since broken out, and yet exists, within the States of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas; and

Whereas the insurgents in all the said States claim to act under the authority thereof, and such claim is not disclaimed or repudiated by the persons exercising the functions of government in such State or States or in the part or parts thereof in which such combinations exist, nor has such insurrection been suppressed by said States:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in pursuance of an act of Congress approved July 13, 1861, do hereby declare that the inhabitants of the said States of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida (except the inhabitants of that part of the State of Virginia lying west of the Alleghany Mountains and of such other parts of that State and the other States hereinbefore named as may maintain a loyal adhesion to the Union and the Constitution or may be from time to time occupied and controlled by forces of the United States engaged in the dispersion of said insurgents) are in a state of insurrection against the United States, and that all commercial intercourse between the same and the inhabitants thereof, with the exceptions aforesaid, and the citizens of other States and other parts of the United States is unlawful, and will remain unlawful until such insurrection shall cease or has been suppressed; that all goods and chattels, wares and merchandise, coming from any of said States, with the exceptions aforesaid, into other parts of the United States without the special license and permission of the President, through the Secretary of the Treasury, or proceeding to any of said States, with the exceptions aforesaid, by land or water, together with the vessel or vehicle conveying the same or conveying persons to or from said States, with said exceptions, will be forfeited to the United States; and that from and after fifteen days from the issuing of this proclamation all ships and vessels belonging in whole or in part to any citizen or inhabitant of any of said States, with said exceptions, found at sea or in any port of the United States will be forfeited to the United States; and I hereby enjoin upon all district attorneys, marshals, and officers of the revenue and of the military and naval forces of the United States to be vigilant in the execution of said act and in the enforcement of the penalties and forfeitures imposed or declared by it, leaving any party who may think himself aggrieved thereby to his application to the Secretary of the Treasury for the remission of any penalty or forfeiture, which the said Secretary is authorized by law to grant if in his judgment the special circumstances of any case shall require such remission.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 16th day of August, A.D. 1861, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-sixth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.

Also on this date, in New York, a United States Circuit Court grand jury brought in an interesting presentment, accusing several newspapers of treason and asking the court's advice:

To the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York:
The Grand Inquest of the United States of America for the Southern District of New York, beg leave to present the following facts to the Court, and ask its advice thereon:

There are certain newspapers within this district which are in the frequent practice of encouraging the rebels now in arms against the Federal Government by expressing sympathy and agreement with them, the duty of acceding to their demands, and dissatisfaction with the employment of force to overcome them. These papers are the New York daily and weekly Journal of Commerce, the daily and weekly News, the daily and weekly Day Book, the Freeman's Journal, all published in the city of New York, and the daily and weekly Eagle, published in the city of Brooklyn. The first-named of these has just published a list of newspapers in the Free States opposed to what it calls “the present unholy war” --a war in defence of our country and its institutions, and our most sacred rights, and carried on solely for the restoration of the authority of the Government.

The Grand Jury are aware that free governments allow liberty of speech and of the press to their utmost limit, but there is, nevertheless, a limit. If a person in a fortress or an army were to preach to the soldiers submission to the enemy, he would be treated as an offender. Would he be more culpable than the citizen who, in the midst of the most formidable conspiracy and rebellion, tells the conspirators and rebels that they are right, encourages them to persevere in resistance, and condemns the effort of loyal citizens to overcome and punish them as an “unholy war” ? If the utterance of such language in the streets or through the press is not a crime, then there is a great defect in our laws, or they were not made for such an emergency.

The conduct of these disloyal presses is, of course, condemned and abhorred by all loyal men; but the Grand Jury will be glad to learn from the Court that it is also subject to indictment and condign punishment.

All which is respectfully presented.

New York, August 16, 1861.
Charles Gould, Foreman.

150 Years Ago -- Robert Anderson and the Department of the Cumberland

2011-08-15T15:57:00.000-04:00

Image of Robert Anderson via Wikipedia

On Thursday, August 15, 1861, Union Brigadier General Robert Anderson, the hero of Fort Sumter, was appointed to command of the newly-formed Department of the Cumberland, comprising most of the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Anderson would relinquish command of the department to Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman in October. Ill health is often cited as the reason for the change in command, but Anderson, who was reluctant to distribute arms to Kentucky Unionists, might have fallen out of favor with Lincoln.

The Department of the Cumberland would cease to exist in October, becoming a part of the Department of the Ohio, but would be resurrected in October 1862, with General William Rosecrans commanding.

150 Years Ago -- Mutiny

2011-08-14T03:47:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, August 14, 1861, Union General George McClellan put down a mutiny in his army by men of the 79th New York Infantry Regiment.

The 79th New York, originally organized in July 1859 as a Scottish-American fraternity in New York City, was quickly mobilized after Fort Sumter. Some recruitment brought the unit up to strength, then they marched down Broadway to Washington.

At the Battle of Bull Run, the 79th, then a part of Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman's Third Brigade, suffered heavy casualties. Their commander, Colonel James Cameron, brother of Secretary of War Simon Cameron, was killed in the fighting on Henry Hill.

After the battle, they were put to work building defensive works around Washington, digging trenches with picks and shovels. One New Yorker declared, "Spades were trumps and everyman had a full hand."

On the morning of August 14, the 79th New York rebelled, refusing to do any more work until their grievances were addressed. In addition to the back-breaking work, they were also upset that they hadn't been allowed to vote for a new colonel to lead them. Cameron's replacement, Colonel Isaac Stevens, had been appointed to lead them.

McClellan moved quickly to quash the mutiny. The 79th New York was quickly surrounded by a battalion of regular army troops with loaded firearms. The 79th gave up. Twenty-one soldiers, the ringleaders of the mutiny, were sent to prison in the Dry Tortugas.

Also on this date, in Missouri, Union General John Frémont declared martial law in St. Louis.

150 Years Ago -- Proclamations

2011-08-12T01:57:00.000-04:00

On Monday, August 12, 1861, Confederate General Ben McCulloch issued a proclamation to the people of Missouri. McCulloch had defeated General Nathaniel Lyon's forces at the Battle of Wilson's Creek just two days before. Now he was urging Missourians to pick a side:

TO THE PEOPLE OF MISSOURI: Having been called by the Governor of your State to assist in driving the National forces out of the State, and restoring the people to their just rights, I have come among you simply with the view of making war upon Northern foes and to drive them back. I give the oppressed of your State an opportunity of again standing up as freemen, and uttering their true sentiments. You have been overrun and trampled upon by the mercenary hordes of the North. Your beautiful State has been nearly subjugated, but those sons of Missouri who have continued in arms, together with my forces, came back upon the enemy, and we have gained over them a great and signal victory. Their General-in-Chief is slain, and many other of their other general officers wounded; their army is in full flight, and now if the true men of Missouri will rise up and rally around their standard, the State will be redeemed.

I do not come among you to make war upon any of your people, whether of Union or otherwise. The Union people will all be protected in their rights and property. It is earnestly recommended to them to return to their homes. Prisoners of the Union party, which have been arrested by the army will be released, and allowed to return to their friends.

Missouri must be allowed to choose her own destiny. No oaths binding your consciences will be administered.

I have driven the enemy from among you. The time has now arrived for the people of the State to act. There is no time to procrastinate. She must take her position, be it North or South.

BEN MCCULLOCH, Commanding.

In Washington, President Lincoln had a proclamation of his own, declaring the last Thursday in September to be "a day of humiliation, prayer and fasting for all the people of the nation," recommending to all that they "recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy, — to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of law, order and peace, throughout the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned under His guidance and blessing, by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence."

In West Texas, Mescalero Apaches raided Fort Davis, killing some cattle and scattering some horses. The Confederates now holding the fort sent Lieutenant Reuben Mays and 14 troopers in pursuit. The Apaches ambushed the cavalrymen in the Big Bend region, killing them all.

And, in Ilion, New York, Eliphalet Remington, the designer of the Remington Rifle, died of a heart attack while overseeing munitions manufacture at the E. Remington & Sons plant.

150 Years Ago -- The Battle of Wilson's Creek

2011-08-10T06:29:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Saturday, August 10, 1861, the Battle of Wilson's Creek was fought in southwestern Missouri.

Missouri had been a busy place during the opening months of the Civil War. Union Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon had done much to keep Missouri in the Union, including driving secessionist-minded Governor Claiborne Jackson out of the capital and routing the state militia at the Battle of Boonville.

Now Lyon was in a precarious situation. He had pursued the militia to the southwest corner of the state, but they had been reinforced by Confederate troops -- mostly Texans and Arkansans -- under General Ben McCulloch, and now outnumbered his force 2-to-1. Lyon was now twenty miles past his advance base of Springfield and suddenly realized that he could not advance, hold his ground, or even retreat without reinforcements, but his superior, John Frémont, had very few men to send him.

The commander of the state militia, Sterling Price, saw Lyon's predicament and tried to get McCulloch to attack, but the Confederate general demurred. McCulloch had a low opinion of Price and his troops, and wasn't sure he should even be in Missouri at all. The Confederate government did not want to wage war on foreign soil, which included Missouri. McCulloch and Price argued, and Price finally told him, "You must either fight beside us or look on at a safe distance and see us fight all alone the army you dare not attack even with our aid."

Price finally won the argument and McCulloch ordered the combined Confederate/Missouri/Arkansas army to move to attack Lyon on the night of August 9. But it rained that night and McCulloch cancelled the attack.

Lyon, meanwhile, decided that the best defense is a good offense, and launched his own attack, relying on surprise to overcome his lack of numbers.

In Terrible Swift Sword, historian Bruce Catton offers a lengthy, but entertaining summary of the armies involved in the Battle of Wilson's Creek:

"It was an odd sort of army, wholly representative of its time and place. Lyon had, to begin with, a handful of regular infantry and artillery, tough and disciplined, full of contempt for volunteers, home guards, and amateur soldiers generally, whether Union or Confederate. He also had several regiments of Missouri infantry, principally German levies from St. Louis, short of equipment and training, most of them grouped in a brigade commanded by Franz Sigel. Sigel was an émigré from the German revolutionary troubles of 1848, trained as a soldier, humorless, dedicated, unhappily lacking in the capacity to lead soldiers in action; a baffling sort, devoted but incapable, who induced many Germans to enlist but who was rarely able to use them properly after they had enlisted. There were two rough-hewn regiments from Kansas and there was a ninety-day outfit from Iowa, a happy-go-lucky regiment whose time was about to expire but whose members had agreed to stick around for a few days in case the general was going to have a battle. (The Iowans did not like Lyon at all but they trusted him, considering him a tough customer and competent.) There were also stray companies and detachments from here and there whose numbers were small and whose value was entirely problematic. In miniature, this was much like the Union army that had been so spectacularly routed at Bull Run except that it was even less well equipped and disciplined.

"Yet if this army was odd the army which it was about to fight was ever so much odder -- one of the very oddest, all things considered, that ever played a part in the Civil War. Lyon's army would have struck any precisionist as something out of a military nightmare, but it was a veritable Prussian guard compared to its foes. The Southerners were armed with everything from regulation army rifles to back-country fowling pieces, a few of them wore Confederate gray but most of them wore whatever homespun garments happened to be at hand when they left home, and for at least three fourths of them there were no commissary and quartermaster arrangements whatever. The various levies were tied together by a loose gentleman's agreement rather than by any formal military organization, and many of the men were not Confederates at all, owing no allegiance to Jefferson Davis, fighting for Missouri rather than for the Confederacy. The war was still a bit puzzling, in these parts.

"The core of this army (from a professional soldier's viewpoint, at any rate) was a brigade of some 3200 Confederate troops led by Brigadier General Ben McCulloch, veteran of the Mexican War and one-time Texas Ranger, an old pal of Davy Crockett who looked the part, an officer who liked to sling a rifle over his shoulder, get on his his horse, and do his scouting personally. His men were well armed, most of them wore uniforms, and they had had about as much military training as anybody got in those days -- enough to get by on, but nothing special. There were also 2200 state troops from Arkansas, one cavalry and three infantry regiments led by Brigadier General N. B. Pearce. These men had good weapons but no uniforms and little equipment -- they carried their ammunition in their haversacks for want of better containers -- and they brought along two batteries of artillery, guns which until quite recently had been reposed in the United States arsenal at Little Rock. And, in addition, there was the Missouri State Guard under Major General Sterling Price.

"No one quite knew how many men Price had -- between 9000 and 10,000, probably, of which number only about 7000 could be used in action; the rest had no weapons at all. There were a few regimental organizations, but for the most part the formations were nothing more than bands bearing the names of the men who led them -- Wingo's infantry, Kelly's infantry, Foster's infantry, and so on. The men had no tents, no supplies, no pay, hardly any ammunition and nothing whatever in the way of uniforms; an officer could be distinguished by the fact that he would have a strip of colored flannel on his shoulders, and one of the men described General Price himself with the words: "He is a large fine looking bald fellow dressed in common citizen clothes an oald linen coat yarn pants." None of them had been given anything which West Point would have recognized as drill; one group, led by former country lawyers, was called to quarters daily by the courtroom cry of "Oyez! Oyez!" and customarily addressed its commanding officer as "Jedge." Not even in the American Revolution was there ever a more completely backwoods army; these men were not so much soldiers as rangy characters who had come down from the north fork of the creek to get into a fight. Their commissary department consisted of the nearest cornfield, and their horses got their forage on the prairie; and a veteran of the State Guard wrote after the war that any regular soldier given command of the host would have spent a solid six months drilling, equipping, organizing, and provisioning it, during which time the Yankees would have overrun every last county in Missouri once and for all. He added that although Price's men had very poor weapons -- some of them actually carried ancient flintlocks -- they knew very well how to use them, and they did not scare easily."

Sigel convinced Lyon to try a pincer movement. Lyon would split his outnumbered army, sending Sigel with 1200 men on a night march around McCulloch's army to attack his rear. Lyon, meanwhile, would march straight ahead with the remainder of the army and attack McCulloch's center and left. Everyone was in position at daybreak and the battle began.

Sigel's movement took the Confederates by surprise, driving them back, but a case of mistaken identity ruined the attack. A unit in gray uniforms approached Sigel's position. They were thought to be the 1st Iowa from Lyon's command, but turned out to be a Louisiana regiment. They closed and fired a volley that disintegrated Sigel's forces. An artillery barrage and an infantry counterattack sealed the deal. Sigel's force broke and fled.

Once Sigel's flanking move dissolved, the battle turned into a bloody, head-on attack that lasted most of the morning.

Lyon was wounded twice and had a horse shot out from under him, but he found another horse and was attempting to rally his men when he was shot through the heart. The battle gradually petered out and the Federals disengaged from the fight. They soon discovered that their highest ranking officer on the field was Major Samuel D. Sturgis of the regulars. Sturgis took command and led the army back to Springfield.

Both sides suffered about the same number of casualties -- a little over 1300 for the Federals (25% of the total present) and just over 1200 for the Confederate/Missouri/Arkansas force.

The Federals would retreat to Rolla. Price tried to get McCulloch to pursue, but he refused, concerned about his own supply line back to Arkansas. The Confederate and Arkansas troops would withdraw from the state, leaving Price to go it alone. Price would begin an invasion of northern Missouri, culminating in the Battle of Lexington on September 20.

While Price's reputation soared, Frémont's plummeted. He seemed to have lost half the state in the short time he was in command.

150 Years Ago -- Butler Finally Gets an Answer

2011-08-08T12:14:00.003-04:00

Image of Simon Cameron via Wikipedia

On Thursday, August 8, 1861, Union General Benjamin Butler finally got a reply from the War Department to his July 30 inquiry. Butler had written to the War Department for instructions concerning the nine hundred fugitive slaves that had come into his lines.

Butler had argued against returning the slaves of disloyal masters, especially those that had been put to work on nearby Confederate entrenchments, claiming they were contraband of war. His wire to the War Department had focused on two important questions, "First. What shall be done with them? and, Second. What is their state and condition?"

The reply from Secretary of War Simon Cameron (in full after the jump) splits a few legal hairs, declaring, "The war now prosecuted on the part of the Federal Government is a war for the Union and for the preservation of all constitutional rights of States and the citizens of the States in the Union. Hence no question can arise as to fugitives from service within the States and Territories in which the authority of the Union is fully acknowledged. The ordinary forms of judicial proceeding which must be respected by military and civil authorities alike will suffice for the enforcement of all legal claims."

But Cameron points out that it is impossible to go through the proper legal proceedings "in States wholly or partially under insurrectionary control." Furthermore, the Confiscation Act signed into law on August 6 prohibits the return of "persons held to service" that are "employed in hostility to the United States."

Cameron orders Butler to keep and employ all fugitive slaves that come into his lines, even those from Union loyalists, and suggests that Congress will sort it all out when the war is over.

WASHINGTON, August 8, 1861.

Maj. Gen. B. F. BUTLER,
Commanding Department of Virginia, Fortress Monroe.

GENERAL: The important question of the proper disposition to be made of fugitives from service in States in insurrection against the Federal Government to which you have again directed my attention in your letter of July 30 has received my most attentive consideration.

It is the desire of the President that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected and maintained. The war now prosecuted on the part of the Federal Government is a war for the Union and for the preservation of all constitutional rights of States and the citizens of the States in the Union. Hence no question can arise as to fugitives from service within the States and Territories in which the authority of the Union is fully acknowledged. The ordinary forms of judicial proceeding which must be respected by military and civil authorities alike will suffice for the enforcement of all legal claims. But in States wholly or partially under insurrectionary control where the laws of the United States are so far opposed and resisted that they cannot be effectually enforced it is obvious that rights dependent on the execution of those laws must temporarily fail; and it is equally obvious that rights dependent on the laws of the States within which military operations are conducted must be necessarily subordinated to the military exigencies created by the insurrection if not wholly forfeited by the treasonable conduct of parties claiming them. To this general rule rights to services can form no exception.

The act of Congress approved August 6, 1861, declares that if persons held to service shall be employed in hostility to the United States the right to their services shall be forfeited and such persons shall be discharged therefrom. It follows of necessity that no claim can be recognized by the military authorities of the Union to the services of such persons when fugitives.

A more difficult question is presented in respect to persons escaping from the service of loyal masters. It is quite apparent that the laws of the State under which only the services of such fugitives can be claimed must needs be wholly or almost wholly suspended as to remedies by the insurrection and the military measures necessitated by it. And it is equally apparent that the substitution of military for judicial measures for the enforcement of such claims must be attended by great inconveniences, embarrassments and injuries.

Under these circumstances it seems quite clear that the substantial rights of loyal masters will be best protected by receiving such fugitives as well as fugitives from disloyal masters into the service of the United States, and employing them under such organizations and in such occupations as circumstances may suggest or require. Of course a record should be kept showing the name and description of the fugitives, the name and the character as loyal or disloyal of the master, and such facts as may be necessary to a correct understanding of the circumstances of each case after tranquility shall have been restored. Upon the return of peace Congress will doubtless properly provide for all the persons thus received into the service of the Union and for just compensation to loyal masters. In this way only it would seem can the duty and safety of the Government and the just rights of all be fully reconciled and harmonized.

You will therefore consider yourself as instructed to govern your future action in respect to fugitives from service by the principles herein stated, and will report from time to time - and at least twice in each month - your action in the premises to this Department. You will, however, neither authorize nor permit any interference by the troops under your command with the servants of peaceful citizens in house or field, nor will you in any way encourage such servants to leave the lawful service of their masters, nor will you except in cases where the public safety may seem to require prevent the voluntary return of any fugitive to the service from which he may have escaped.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War.

150 Years Ago -- The Burning of Hampton

2011-08-07T12:03:00.000-04:00

Image of John Magruder via Wikipedia

On Wednesday, August 7, 1861, a force of 500 men under Confederate General John Magruder burned the town of Hampton, Virginia.

Magruder learned from a copy of the New York Tribune, which contained a report from Union General Benjamin Butler to Secretary of War Simon Cameron, that Butler planned to use Hampton as a holding point for the thousands of runaway slaves that were coming into his lines. Butler also planned to fortify the town to protect his position at nearby Fort Monroe.

Just after midnight, Magruder's force fought off the picket force that was guarding the bridge into the town, then set about burning the town to the ground.

Magruder's force had to work quickly because they were within range of the Fort Monroe guns, but Magruder claims in his official report that "Notice was then given to the few remaining inhabitants of the place, and those who were aged or infirm were kindly cared for and taken to their friends, who occupied detached houses."

An Associated Press correspondent witnessed the episode and his account appeared in the August 31 issue of Harper's Weekly:

The greater part of the five hundred houses were built of wood, and no rain having fallen lately, the strong south wind soon produced a terrible conflagration. There were perhaps twenty white people and double that number of negroes remaining in the town from inability to move, some of whose houses were fired without waking the inmates. They gave Wilson Jones and his wife, both of them aged and infirm, but fifteen minutes to remove a few articles of furniture to the garden. Several of the whites and also of the negroes were hurried away to be pressed into the rebel service. Mr. Scofield, a merchant, took refuge in a swamp above the town. Two negroes were drowned while attempting to cross the creek. A company of rebels attempted to force the passage of the bridge, but were repulsed with a loss of three killed and six wounded.

The fire raged all night. The greater part of the rebels withdrew toward morning, and at noon to-day, when I visited the place, but seven or eight buildings were left standing.

The glare of the conflagration was so brilliant that I was enabled to write by it. A more sublime and awful spectacle has never yet been witnessed. The high south wind prevailing at the time fanned the flames into a lurid blaze, and lighted up the country for miles and miles around.

An illustration of the fire appears in the same issue.

Also on this date, the War Department entered into a contract with J. B. Eads for construction of seven ironclad river gunboats. The boats, the Cairo, Carondolet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, Pittsburg, and St. Louis, would see duty in Ulysses S. Grant's western campaigns.

150 Years Ago -- A Lull

2011-08-06T10:41:00.001-04:00

Events moved swiftly after the war began at Fort Sumter, but there was a lull in the aftermath of the Battle of Bull Run as both sides paused to reassess the situation. An update:

As the dog days of August 1861 began the war was starting to take shape along the border or what historian Bruce Catton called "that cross section of nineteenth-century America that ran for a thousand miles from Virginia tidewater to the plains of Kansas, reaching from the place of the nation's oldest traditions to the rude frontier where no tradition ran back farther than the day before yesterday."

In eastern Virginia, between the two capitols of Washington and Richmond, the two armies, both called the Army of the Potomac, were licking their wounds after Bull Run. The "Forward to Richmond" sentiment and the belief in a short war were over. Both commanders, George McClellan and Joe Johnston, were working hard now, organizing, drilling and equipping their men. It would be many months before they would face off again.

After resigning his commission in the U.S. Army and going south, Robert E. Lee had been put in charge of Virginia's state troops. He was briefly unemployed when those troops were put under Confederate control, but he became the top military adviser to Virginia Governor John Letcher, then to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Lee was sent to western Virginia to try to salvage the situation there after the Union victory at Rich Mountain. Lee arrived on August 1, charged with "combining all our forces in western Virginia on one plan of operations." Lee would soon find that it was impossible to get everyone on the same page.

The Federals had about 11,000 soldiers in the region. Brigadier General Jacob Cox commanded a force of 2700 in the Kanawha Valley. There were some small detachments in the north guarding key points along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the only direct link between Washington and the West. Brigadier General William Rosecrans commanded the rest near Cheat Mountain.

Brigadier General W. W. Loring commanded the principal Confederate force, some 10,000 men, at Huntersville. Lee joined up with this contingent that was facing Rosecrans's army. Farther south, two politicians, former Virginia Governor Henry Wise and former U.S. Secretary of War John Floyd, commanded separate forces facing Cox. Wise and Floyd would spend more time competing against each other for authority than they ever would against Cox.

Farther west, the war was not being fought at all in Kentucky as both sides endeavored for a time to respect the state's proclaimed neutrality. Both sides badly needed Kentucky. Lincoln would soon remark, "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game." The state served as a big shield separating the two powers. A Confederate Kentucky would move the border all the way up to the Ohio River, depriving the Federals of a base from which to launch an offensive in the Mississippi Valley. If the Union took the state, Tennessee and the Mississippi River would be threatened. Neither side could afford to antagonize the state and push it to the other side, but both sides had camps either in the state or just outside its borders, rallying Kentuckians to their respective causes.

The next major conflagration of the war would take place on the far west end of the border in Missouri. Union Major General John Frémont arrived on July 25 to take command of the Department of the West.

Frémont was a career U.S. Army officer, but he had come up through the Topographical Corps, where he had become famous as "The Pathfinder," charting trails to the West. In 1856, he had become the first presidential nominee of the new Republican Party. Now he was in over his head. As Catton put it in Terrible Swift Sword, "Now he was in Missouri, a bewildering jungle where a trail could be blazed only by a man gifted with a profound understanding of the American character, the talents of a canny politician, and enormous skill as an administrator. Of these gifts General Frémont had hardly a trace."

Frémont had a big job to do, but little to do it with. He was expected to secure the state and also to organize an army and lead it down the Mississippi toward New Orleans, reopening the river to commerce and isolating the western part of the Confederacy.

He had about 23,000 troops, but about a third of those were three-month volunteers whose terms were about to expire. He was receiving new recruits, but had few arms, uniforms or other equipment, few rations and no money. Guerrilla warfare was becoming rampant in the state, and like many other commanders he was exaggerating the number of enemy troops he was facing. He thought he faced about 25,000 state militia with another 50,000 Confederate soldiers in Arkansas and Tennessee ready to invade. In actuality, he faced about half that number of both.

Nathaniel Lyon had done much to keep Missouri in the Union, but he had been blunt about it, forcing almost everyone in the state to choose sides. He had moved quickly and thwarted a plot by Governor Claiborne Jackson to capture the arsenal at St. Louis. In May, he had surrounded and captured some state militia legally encamped near St. Louis, then when he marched them through the town, it touched off a riot that left some two dozen civilians dead. One of the Missourians who had chosen a side was Sterling Price, now in charge of most of the remaining state militia. Price was fighting not so much for the Confederacy but to try to keep the war from engulfing the state.

Lyon had gone on to declare war on Price and Jackson, and had driven them away from the capital of Jefferson City. Then he had routed the militia at Boonsville and pursued them to the southwest corner of the state. His actions had allowed the Union men of the state to declare state offices vacant and to set up a new pro-Union government with Hamilton Gamble as governor. But Lyon was now in a bad predicament. He had advanced too far and was at the end of a long, precarious supply line. He wrote to Frémont, asking for reinforcements and confessing that he now could not attack, stay where he was, or even conduct an orderly retreat.

Frémont, with much to do and little to do it with, decided his best bet was to reinforce the key town of Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River met the Mississippi. He told Lyon to do the best he could and sent a few reinforcements, but Lyon would not see them. He would die on August 10 at the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

150 Years Ago -- The First Aircraft Carrier

2011-08-03T18:30:00.000-04:00

Image of John LaMountain via Wikipedia

On Saturday, August 3, 1861, the concept of the aircraft carrier was born as balloonist John LaMountain began making tethered ascents from the deck of the Union tug Fanny, anchored in Hampton Roads near Fort Monroe, Virginia.

LaMountain would also make the first night ascension on August 10. He counted the campfires and tent lights he saw in an effort to determine the enemy's strength.

LaMountain competed with Thaddeus S. C. Lowe to become Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps. Lowe would win the competition, but an agreement was worked out wherein LaMountain would continue his work independent of Lowe, but would cooperate with him if necessary.

150 Years Ago -- Dug Springs

2011-08-02T01:43:00.000-04:00

On Friday, August 2, 1861, the Battle of Dug Springs took place in Missouri. Events were rapidly coming to a head in the state.

Union General Nathaniel Lyon had declared war on Governor Claiborne Jackson and Sterling Price, the commander of the state militia. He drove them away from Jefferson City, the state capital, routed the militia at Boonville, and pursued them to the southwest corner of the state.

Now Lyon was in a precarious situation. He was in Springfield, far from his home base of St. Louis, and outnumbered. Price's militia had joined with Confederate troops from Arkansas under General Ben McCulloch, giving them about a 2-to-1 advantage over Lyon. Also, many of Lyon's men were leaving or preparing to leave as their 90-day enlistments ran out.

On August 1, Lyon got the news that the large Southern force was advancing on his position. There were said to be three columns of troops with the main column advancing up the Wire road (named for the telegraph wires that lined it).

Lyon would have been wise to retreat, but did not want to do so without a fight. He put his forces on the road to meet this threat. They camped 12 miles south of Springfield that night, and continued the march the next morning. Lyon planned to attack the main column, and if all went well, take on the other columns in turn.

Advance units from the opposing forces ran into each other at 9 a.m. on August 2 on the Wire road. The Battle of Dug Springs lasted for about five hours, ebbing back and forth as both sides cautiously launched probing attacks to determine the size of the force they faced. Although he was outnumbered by the combined Southern forces, Lyon had the advantage with the troops that were present for this fight. His vanguard, composed of U.S. Army regulars, faced six companies of Missouri State Guard troops under General James Rains.

Eventually, a charge by troops from the 2nd U.S. Infantry scattered Rains's men, and they retreated back down the Wire road. The Southerners would call the battle "Rains' Scare," and it would reinforce McCulloch's low opinion of the fighting abilities of the Missouri troops, but they would regroup and continue the advance. Lyon would plan one more attack. The armies would meet on August 10 at Wilson's Creek.

Also on this date, Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman was promoted to brigadier general, dated from May 17. He was transferred to Kentucky where he was second in command under General Robert Anderson, the hero of Fort Sumter.

And, the U.S. Congress voted to impose the first national income tax. In addition to new tariffs, the bill called for a flat tax of 3% on income over $800 to help finance the war. President Lincoln would sign the bill into law on August 5. The Revenue Act of 1861 would be repealed by the Revenue Act of 1862, which replaced the flat rate with a progressive scale -- 3% on income over $600 and 5% on income over $10,000.

150 Years Ago -- Robert E. Lee and John Baylor

2011-08-01T22:54:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, August 1, 1861, Robert E. Lee arrived in western Virginia. After the recent defeats in the area, Lee had been sent by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to inspect the Confederate forces and to coordinate a counteroffensive. Lee would soon take command of the troops, supplanting General W. W. Loring.

Out west, John Baylor claimed the New Mexico Territory below the 34th parallel (the southern half of present-day New Mexico and Arizona) for the Confederacy. Baylor proclaimed himself the military governor of the new Confederate Arizona Territory and issued a proclamation:

"Proclamation to the People of the Territory of Arizona: The social and political condition of Arizona being little short of general anarchy, and the people being literally destitute of law, order, and protection, the said Territory, from the date hereof, is hereby declared temporarily organized as a military government until such time as Congress may otherwise provide.

I, John R. Baylor, lieutenant-colonel, commanding the Confederate Army in the Territory of Arizona, hereby take possession of said Territory in the name and behalf of the Confederate States of America. For all purposes herein specified, and until otherwise decreed or provided, the Territory of Arizona shall comprise all that portion of New Mexico lying south of the thirty-fourth parallel of north latitude."

150 Years Ago -- What Shall Be Done With Them?

2011-07-30T00:34:00.001-04:00

Image of Benjamin Butler via Wikipedia

On July 30, 1861, Union General Benjamin Butler wrote to the War Department about the nine hundred runaway slaves that were now residing within his lines, specifically, "First. What shall be done with them? and, Second. What is their state and condition?"

On May 24, three runaway slaves who were working on nearby Confederate fortifications escaped and fled into Butler's lines at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Their owner, Colonel Charles Mallory, came to Butler to demand them back. The fugitive slave law obliged Butler to return them, but he refused, claiming that the property of those in rebellion to the United States could be seized as contraband of war. Butler put them to work on his own lines.

Butler then wrote to the War Department, telling them what he had done and asking for further instructions. Secretary Simon Cameron finally approved of Butler's contraband reasoning and told him to keep any that came into his lines, but to do nothing to encourage more slaves to run away.

Butler didn't have to do anything. Word spread quickly through slave camps, and now, just two months later, Butler had nine hundred within his lines, "three hundred of whom are able-bodied men, thirty of whom are men substantially past hard labor, one hundred and seventy-five women, two hundred and twenty-five children under the age of ten years, and one hundred and seventy between ten and eighteen years, and many more coming in."

Butler's report (after the jump) gives his reasons for withdrawing from the village of Hampton and explains how that aggravated the problem. After asking the questions "What shall be done with them?" and "What is their state and condition?" Butler, a lawyer by trade, gave his answers.

From General Butler

Headquarters, Department of Virginia, Fortress Monroe, July 30th, 1861

Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War

Sir: By an order received on the morning of the 28th July from Major General Dix, by a telegraphic order from Lieutenant-General Scott, I was commanded to forward, of the troops of this department, four regiments, and a half, including Colonel Baker's California regiment, to Washington, via Baltimore. This order reached me at 2 o'clock a.m., by special boat from Baltimore. Believing that it emanated because of some pressing exigency for the defense of Washington, I issued my orders before daybreak for the embarkation of the troops, sending those who were among the very best regiments I had. In the course of the following day they were all embarked for Baltimore, with the exception of some four hundred for whom I had not transportation, although I had all the transport force in the hands of the quartermaster here to aid the Bay line of steamers, which, by the same order from the lieutenant-general, was directed to furnish transportation. Up to, and at the time of the order, I had been preparing for an advance movement, by which I hoped to cripple the resources of the enemy at Yorktown, and especially by seizing a large quantity of negroes who were being pressed into their service in building the intrenchments there. I had five days previously been enabled to mount, for the first time, the first company of light artillery, which I had been empowered to raise, and they had but a single rifled cannon, an iron six-pounder. Of course everything must and did yield to the supposed exigency and the orders. This ordering away the troops from this department, while it weakened the posts at Newport News, necessitated the withdrawal of the troops from Hampton, where I was then throwing up intrenched works to enable me to hold the town with a small force, while I advanced up the York or James River. In the village of Hampton there were a large number of negroes, composed in a great measure of women and children of the men who had fled thither within my lines for protection, who had escaped from marauding parties of rebels, who had been gathering up able-bodied blacks to aid them in constructing their batteries on the James and York Rivers. I had employed the men in Hampton in throwing up intrenchments, and they were working zealously and efficiently at that duty, saving our soldiers from that labor under the gleam of the mid-day sun. The women were earning substantially their own subsistence in washing, marketing, and taking care of the clothes of the soldiers, and rations were being served out to the men who worked for the support of the children. But by the evacuation of Hampton, rendered necessary by the withdrawal of troops, leaving me scarcely five thousand men outside the fort including the force at Newport News, all these black people were obliged to break up their homes at Hampton, fleeing across the creek within my lines for protection and support. Indeed, it was a most distressing sight to see these poor creatures, who had trusted to the protection of the arms of the United States, and who aided the troops of the United States in their enterprise, to be thus obliged to flee from their homes, and the homes of their masters who had deserted them, and become fugitives from fear of the return of the rebel soldiery, who had threatened to shoot the men who had wrought for us, and to carry off the women who had served us to a worse than Egyptian bondage. I have, therefore, now within the peninsula, this side of Hampton Creek, nine hundred negroes, three hundred of whom are able-bodied men, thirty of whom are men substantially past hard labor, one hundred and seventy-five women, two hundred and twenty-five children under the age of ten years, and one hundred and seventy between ten and eighteen years, and many more coming in. The questions which this state of facts present are very embarrassing.

First. What shall be done with them? and, Second. What is their state and condition? Upon these questions I desire the instructions of the department.

The first question, however, may perhaps be answered by considering the last. Are these men, women, and children slaves? Are they free? Is their condition that of men, women, and children, or of property, or is it a mixed relation? What their status was under the constitution and laws, we all know. What has been the effect of a rebellion and a state of war upon that status? When I adopted the theory of treating the able-bodied negro fit to work in the trenches as property liable to be used in aid of rebellion, and so contraband of war, that condition of things was in so far met, as I then and still believe, on a legal and constitutional basis. But now a new series of questions arise. Passing by women, the children, certainly, cannot be treated on that basis; if property, they must be considered the incumbrance rather than the auxiliary of an army, and, of course, in no possible legal relation could be treated as contraband. Are they property? If they were so, they have been left by their masters and owners, deserted, thrown away, abandoned, like the wrecked vessel upon the ocean. Their former possessors and owners have causelessly, traitorously, rebelliously, and, to carry out the figure, practically abandoned them to be swallowed up by the winter storm of starvation. If property, do they not become the property of salvors? But we, their salvors, do not need and will not hold such property, and will assume no such ownership: has not, therefore, all proprietary relation ceased? Have they not become, thereupon, men, women, and children? No longer under ownership of any kind, the fearful relicts of fugitive masters, have they not by their master's acts, and the state of war, assumed the condition, which we hold to be the normal one, of those made in God's image? Is not every constitutional, legal, and normal requirement, as well to the runaway master as their relinquished slaves, thus answered? I confess that my own mind is compelled by this reasoning to look upon them as men and women. If not free born, yet free, manumitted, sent forth from the hand that held them, never to be reclaimed.

Of course, if this reasoning, thus imperfectly set forth, is correct, my duty as a humane man is very plain. I should take the same care of these men, women, and children, houseless, homeless, and unprovided for, as I would of the same number of men, women, and children, who, for their attachment to the Union, had been driven or allowed to flee from the Confederate States. I should have no doubt on this question had I not seen it stated that an order had been issued by General McDowell in his department substantially forbidding all fugitive slaves from coming within his lines, or being harbored there. Is that order to be enforced in all military departments? If so, who are to be considered fugitive whose master runs away and leaves him? Is it forbidden to the troops to aid or harbor within their lines the negro children who are found therein, or is the soldier, when his march has destroyed their means of subsistence, to allow them to starve because he has driven off the rebel masters? Now, shall the commander of a regiment or battalion sit in judgment upon the question, whether any given black man has fled from his master, or his master fled from him? Indeed, how are the free born to be distinguished? Is one any more or less a fugitive slave because he has labored upon the rebel intrenchments? If he has so labored, if I understand it, he is to be harbored. By the reception of which are the rebels most to be distressed, by taking those who have wrought all their rebel masters desired, masked their battery, or those who have refused to labor and left the battery unmasked?

I have very decided opinions upon the subject of this order. It does not become me to criticise it, and I write in no spirit of criticism, but simply to explain the full difficulties that surround the enforcing it. If the enforcement of that order becomes the policy of the government, I, as a soldier, shall be bound to enforce it steadfastly, if not cheerfully. But if left to my own discretion, as you may have gathered from my reasoning, I should take a widely different course from that which it indicates.

In a loyal state, I would put down a servile insurrection. In a state of rebellion I would confiscate that which was used to oppose my arms—and take all that property which constituted the wealth of that state, and furnished the means by which the war is prosecuted, besides being the cause of the war; and if, in so doing, it should be objected that human beings were brought to the free enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, such objection might not require much consideration.

Pardon me for addressing the secretary of war directly upon this question, as it involves some political considerations as well as propriety of military action.

(Benj. F. Butler)

150 Years Ago: McClellan Takes Command

2011-07-27T04:14:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On July 27, 1861, Major General George McClellan was appointed commander of the Federal Division of the Potomac.

The Division of the Potomac consisted of Irvin McDowell's Department of Northeastern Virginia and Joseph Mansfield's Department of Washington. Nathaniel Banks's Department of the Shenandoah was also added to McClellan's purview. The armies of these departments were combined to form the Army of the Potomac.

McClellan, 34, was one of the first Northern heroes of the war after his recent successes in western Virginia. On the day he took command in Washington, he wrote home to his wife Ellen* about his experiences...

...I find myself in a new & strange position here -- Presdt, Cabinet, Genl Scott & all deferring to me -- by some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land. I almost think that were I to win some small success now I could become Dictator or anything else that might please me -- but nothing of that kind would please me -- therefore I won't be Dictator. Admirable self denial! I see already the main causes of our recent failure -- I am sure that I can remedy these & am confident that I can lead these armies of men to victory once more...

Just after the rout and panic at Bull Run, the War Department began the work of gathering up the scattered army by setting up rallying points around the city of Washington and announcing that they would be the only places where rations would be distributed. The three-month volunteers that did not reenlist were sent home and Northern governors hurried new three-year volunteers to the city.

McClellan quickly went to work shaping his new army -- rounding up stragglers, weeding out incompetent officers and training the new recruits to be soldiers.

*The letters from McClellan to his wife are widely quoted in books on the Civil War, but there is some controversy about their authenticity and accuracy. The originals are gone, but portions were copied into a notebook by McClellan. His daughter, working with the original letters, added to the transcripts later. For more on the letters, check out two posts at Civil War Bookshelf -- Dimitri Rotov's problems with the letters and Stephen Sears's response.

150 Years Ago: Changes

2011-07-25T06:55:00.001-04:00

On Thursday, July 25, 1861, several changes occurred in the wake of the Battle of Bull Run.

Union General George McClellan arrived in Washington to replace Irvin McDowell. A general order was issued outlining the extent of his new command. General William Rosecrans replaced McClellan as commander of the Department of the Ohio and the "Army of Occupation, Western Virginia."

Nathaniel Banks replaced Robert Patterson as commander of the Army of the Shenandoah. Patterson, 69, had done a poor job of containing General Joseph E. Johnston's army in the Shenandoah Valley, allowing the Confederates to join with Beauregard at Bull Run. Patterson was relieved of command and given an honorable discharge, ending his service in the Civil War.

General John Frémont finally arrived in St. Louis to take over the newly created Department of the West. Frémont had been named to the command on July 3, and had spent much of the intervening time in New York trying to buy weapons and supplies.

Union General Jacob Cox, commanding the Kanawha Brigade of the Department of the Ohio, got behind Henry Wise's position at Tyler Mountain on July 24, forcing Wise to retreat to Charleston, Virginia (now West Virginia). As Cox approached the town, Wise retreated again. The Federals occupied the town on July 25.

The U.S. Senate passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution by a vote of 30-to-5. The House had previously approved the measure on July 22. The resolution stated that the war was being fought "to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union" and not for "overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States." The measure was seen as necessary for keeping the slave states of Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland in the Union, but in a couple of weeks Lincoln would sign a confiscation act allowing for the seizure of property, including slaves, from rebellious citizens.

Robert M. T. Hunter replaced Robert Toombs as the Confederate Secretary of State. Toombs, the only member of Jefferson Davis's cabinet to voice opposition to the attack on Fort Sumter, had resigned to join the Confederate army. He received a commission as a brigadier general on July 19, and served as a brigade commander in Joe Johnston's Confederate Army of the Potomac.

At Mesilla, in New Mexico Territory, the Union garrison at Fort Fillmore attacked John Baylor's Confederates in a brief skirmish. The Union assault was repulsed and they eventually retreated back to the fort. When Baylor moved on the fort the following day, the Union troops abandoned it and retreated toward Fort Stanton. Baylor pursued, capturing stragglers by the dozens before overtaking the Federals and forcing their surrender at San Augustine Springs on July 27.

150 Years Ago: Quote of the Day

2011-07-23T19:37:00.000-04:00

"Witnessed for the first time a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say Mrs. Bartow fainted. The empty saddle and the led war-horse —we saw and heard it all, and now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes, until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream."

-- Mary Boykin Chesnut, A Diary from Dixie

150 Years Ago: The Aftermath of Bull Run

2011-07-22T16:55:00.002-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Monday, July 22, 1861. George Templeton Strong declared in his diary, "Today will be known as BLACK MONDAY. We are utterly and disgracefully routed, beaten, whipped by secessionists."

Union General Irvin McDowell's army had been routed by the Confederates at Bull Run. The rout met up with the mother of all traffic jams at the bridge over Cub Run, and suddenly the rout had become a panic. The army practically sprinted back to Washington. The citizens there were astonished to see this tired, beaten rabble stream back into the city, and feared that a Confederate invasion was imminent.

And the casualties were staggering -- 450-500 killed, 1100 wounded, and a staggering 1500-1800 missing. The hospitals were quickly filled to overflowing.

The bars were full too. Walt Whitman wrote in Memoranda During the War,

As afternoon pass'd, and evening came, the streets, the bar-rooms, knots everywhere, listeners, questioners, terrible yarns, bugaboo, mask'd batteries, our regiment all cut up, &c. -- stories and storytellers, windy, bragging, vain centres of street-crowds. Resolution, manliness, seem to have abandon'd Washington. The principle hotel, Willard's, is full of shoulder-straps -- thick, crush'd, creeping with shoulder-straps. (I see them, and must have a word with them. There you are shoulder-straps! -- but where are your companies? Where are your men? Incompetents! never tell me of chances of battle, of getting stray'd, and the like. I think this is your work, this retreat, after all. Sneak, blow, put on airs, there in Willard's sumptuous parlors and bar-rooms, or anywhere -- no explanation will save you. Bull Run is your work; had you been half or one-tenth worthy your men, this would never have happen'd.)

Horace Greeley, whose editorials and "Forward to Richmond" headlines in the New York Herald had helped bring this battle on, was beside himself with grief. In a few days he would write to Lincoln, "If it is best for the country and for mankind that we make peace with the Rebels at once and on their own terms, do not shrink even from that."

Confederate President Jefferson Davis finished work early on July 21st. He then chartered a train to Manassas Junction, arriving while the battle was raging. Coming up from the rear, he encountered the remnants of used up units, stragglers, malingerers, and concluded that the battle was lost. But he finally met up with his generals, Johnston and Beauregard, and discovered the true magnitude of the victory. He urged a vigorous pursuit. Johnston still had a few fresh troops, but nothing ever came of it.

The Confederate army was badly disorganized, and their casualties were staggering too -- 400 killed, 1600 wounded, some mortally, including Barnard Bee, who died on July 22. He was the one who had given Thomas Jackson the appellation "Stonewall."

There was some controversy about what Bee said, and whether he meant it in a complimentary manner. One witness claimed that Bee was complaining about Jackson not engaging his men in battle. "Look at Jackson standing there like a damned stone wall." Or did he realize that Jackson was forming the final line that must be held. "Look! There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!" Whatever the accurate quote or the meaning behind the quote, the name stuck to Jackson and Bee was not around to settle the controversy.

The Confederate army rounded up a whole horde of prisoners, some 1200, including a U.S. congressman, and collected all manner of equipment that had been abandoned by the Union soldiers in their flight.

This decisive battle would not decide the war. Far from it. The North would redouble its efforts.

Lincoln met with General-in-Chief Winfield Scott and his cabinet through the night of July 21-22. They sent wires to General George McClellan in the mountains of western Virginia first telling him to move his army into the Shenandoah Valley, then to stay where he was and await reinforcements, then telling McClellan to report to Washington.

The day after the battle, July 22, Lincoln signed a bill for the enlistment of 500,000 three-year volunteers, then three days later signed another bill for 500,000 more. McClellan would soon take command of a new army of these three-year volunteers, the Army of the Potomac.

In the South, the mood was jubilant, with many thinking that independence was just around the corner. In the coming weeks though, many would wonder why the Confederate army had not finished up the victory and driven on to Washington. Fingers would be pointed at each of the principals, Johnston, Beauregard, and Davis, and the controversy would swirl for many years. Each man wrote a postwar memoir that kept the issue alive.

A Bull Run Story -- Wilmer McLean

2011-07-22T01:54:00.000-04:00

Wilmer McLean lived by Blackburn's Ford, one of a few places where you could wade across Bull Run. On July 18, 1861, elements of Union General Irvin McDowell's army made a reconnaissance-in-force at the ford and were repulsed by the Confederates. Much of the action took place around McLean's house; a Federal shell landed in his fireplace during the artillery exchange.

Later, in 1863, McLean moved his family 200 miles away to a tiny one-horse two built up around a crossroads called Appomattox Court House. On April 8, 1865, a messenger knocked on the door and asked to use the house. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant needed a place to meet. Lee surrendered to Grant in the parlor of McLean's house. McLean thereafter was able to tell people that the war started in his front yard and ended in his front parlor.

150 Years Ago: The Battle of Bull Run

2011-07-21T06:02:00.000-04:00

Image by BattlefieldPortraits.com via Flickr

Continued from yesterday's post...

On Sunday, July 21, 1861, the Battle of Bull Run took place in northern Virginia. Union General Irvin McDowell's Army of Northeastern Virginia moved out of its Washington entrenchments and marched south to confront General P. G. T. Beauregard's Confederate Army just south of Centreville.

Because it was a Sunday, there was a big crowd of sightseers who had driven down from Washington for the day. There were a few congressmen and senators in the crowd, and even some Union officers who had somehow gotten separated from their men. They narrated the action for the civilians in attendance.

Beauregard's line stretched along the south side of a stream called Bull Run. The left of the line guarded a stone bridge where the Warrenton Turnpike crossed the stream. Far to the east, the right side of the line guarded the Orange and Alexandria Railroad bridge. Here and there along the line, masses of men guarded the fords, the few places where you could get to the stream to cross it.

McDowell's plan was to move off to his right, to the west, and cross Bull Run upstream at Sudley Springs Ford, far to the left of the Confederate line. He would then move back to the east and strike the Confederate left flank, hopefully rolling it up and smashing the Rebel army.

Unbeknownst to McDowell though was that General Joseph E. Johnston's army from the Shenandoah Valley had broken free of the Union army confronting it there and had hurried east to link up with Beauregard's army, evening up the odds. Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah had been coming in for the past two days and was still coming in while the battle was raging.

One thing that was working in McDowell's favor was that Beauregard had planned an attack on the enemy's left flank as well. To that end, he had the majority of his army on his right side, far away from McDowell's point of attack.

Union General Irvin McDowell had his army in motion by 2:30 a.m. on the 21st. Some 5000 men were held in Centreville in reserve. Some were sent to the fords and the stone bridge to make warlike moves, keeping the Confederates focused here instead of upstream where McDowell's main thrust, 14,000 men, would come.

The advance was as bad as the one that had put the army in Centreville, the one that took two and a half days to go 22 miles. The green troops were still having trouble marching, and there was a lot of starting and stopping, missed directions, snarls and bottlenecks. It took until 11 a.m. to get the entire flanking force across the stream.

Meanwhile, General Tyler's men moved up close to the stone bridge and opened fire with his artillery. Historian Bruce Catton describes this as "a slow, desultory cannonade which did little more than announce that the Yankees had got up early." One consequence of this action though was that a shell ripped through the tent where a young staff officer, Captain Edward Porter Alexander, was sleeping. Alexander was up quickly and scouted around until he discovered McDowell's flanking attack.

Alexander notified Colonel Nathan "Shanks" Evans, who commanded the extreme left of the Confederate line. Evans had two small regiments, some cavalry and artillery, about 1100 men in all. He left four companies to watch the stone bridge and took the rest of his men north. Around 9 a.m. they were waiting in an open field north of the bridge. When the Federal column appeared, they opened fire and the battle was underway.

McDowell's officers could never quite get the attack going right. Instead of a heavy blow, the attack was an uncoordinated series of light taps. It was proving quite difficult to get the green soldiers from a long marching column of fours into a fighting line four regiments wide. Evans was badly outnumbered, but holding his own.

But the Union attack gained some momentum. McDowell finally had his entire flanking force across at Sudley Springs Ford and enough units were getting into the fight now to cut up Evans's regiments. Evans sent back desperate appeals for help and Barnard Bee's brigade joined the fight.

McDowell sent word to Tyler at the stone bridge to make more of a fight there. Tyler sent William Tecumah Sherman's brigade forward. They waded across Bull Run north of the bridge and joined the attack against Evans and Bee and pushed them back south of the turnpike, across a muddy creek, and up an imposing hill. It was named for the Henry family who had a farmhouse on the crest.

Over on the right, the Confederate commander, now Johnston who outranked Beauregard, recognized what was going on and began shuffling more troops to the left. But it would take some effort for Johnston, even with Beauregard's help, to realign his entire army in the midst of the battle.

Wade Hampton and Francis Bartow added their men to the Confederate forces and the battle suddenly boiled down to a struggle for Henry House Hill. Evans's brigade was shattered, Bee's was falling back, and Bartow was trying to rally his Georgians when he was shot dead. Beauregard was suddenly there, rallying the line. A shell exploded nearby, killing his horse, but he was unhurt. They just had to hold on until Johnston could get fresh troops up.

Map: Morning, July 21, 1861

Then, Thomas Jackson's brigade deployed in a line just past the crest of the Henry House Hill. Jackson had found the perfect place for a defensive line. His fresh troops waited for the Yankee onslaught. Bee, his regiments now in almost complete disarray, rode back to Jackson and said, "General, they are beating us back." Jackson replied, "Sir, we will give them the bayonet." Bee rode back to what was left of his unit, gestured at Jackson's brigade, and yelled, "Look! There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!"

That was it for Bee. A bullet struck him in the abdomen, mortally wounding him, but the name would live on. From then on, Jackson would be known as Stonewall and the men with him on Henry House Hill would be the Stonewall Brigade.

A mixup in uniforms affected the outcome of the battle. McDowell sent two regular artillery batteries forward. These commanders, Captains J. B. Ricketts and Charles Griffin, got ahead of the infantry and were exposed to deadly musket fire, but were blowing Jackson's line apart. One of their shots went through the Henry house, killing 84-year-old Judith Henry, who was a helpless invalid in one of the bedrooms. These gunners saw some men in blue approaching. Thinking it was infantry help they had requested, they held their fire. The men were from the 33rd Virginia of Jackson's brigade. They opened fire and a Union officer who witnessed it from afar wrote later that "it seemed as though every man and horse of that battery just laid right down and died right off."

But as mid-afternoon approached, it seemed that the Union army might win the day. The breakthrough was imminent. Johnston and Beauregard had called in every available man. But the Union attack had lost all cohesion -- the units had broken down with officers separated from the men and stragglers heading for the rear.

The turning point came around 4 p.m., when the last of the fresh Confederate troops plunged into the battle. Jubal Early's brigade from the right and Edmund Kirby Smith's brigade, the last of Johnston's men from the Shenandoah Valley, fresh off the train joined Jackson's line. Beauregard launched a counterattack.

The three-month men in McDowell's army decided they had had enough and began to fall back. It was orderly at first with pockets of resistance, but suddenly the whole Federal army was in retreat, heading back across the bridges and fords of Bull Run.

The civilian onlookers got caught up in the retreat back to Centreville. At a bridge over a creek called Cub Run, a Confederate shell arced in and wrecked a wagon, blocking the bridge and adding to the panic and confusion.

From The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton...

"The bridge was blocked. Drivers on the Centreville side of it whipped up their horses to get out of danger, and the drivers on the Bull Run side incontinently did the same, getting guns and wagons and carriages into a complete tangle, with horses rearing and kicking, teamsters swearing, ladies from Washington beginning to scream, the press of civilian vehicles constantly feeding in new elements which killed any faint hope that this traffic jam could be resolved. Some carriages trundled down to the little stream, lurched up on the far side, and made off for Washington as fast as maddened horses could take them. Here and there a mounted officer took fire along with all the rest and tried to ride through everything at a bucketing gallop. People who were on foot began to run, cavalry was coming up to kill and maim -- and, all at once, utter panic descended on everybody in sight.

The great drifting mass of fugitive soldiers, already out from under what little discipline they had ever known, moved faster and faster and became a wild, frantic, scrambling mob which generated its own unendurable pressure. Teamsters cut their horses loose and scrambled on their backs to ride to safety, leaving guns, caissons, and military supplies for anyone who cared to pick them up. Ambulances carrying wounded men to hospitals were left by the roadside. Soldiers who had thought they were too exhausted to do more than put one heavy foot in front of another found they could run very nimbly, and they dropped whatever they were carrying -- muskets, haversacks, canteens, anything -- so that they could run even faster. It was gabbled up and down the wild rout that armed Rebels were close behind; for some odd reason, the pursuing Confederates, believed to be as ruthless as Cossacks, were all thought to be riding black horses and frightened men were forever shouting: "Black horse cavalry! Black horse cavalry!"

The 22-mile trip that had taken two and a half days one way took less than a day the other way. McDowell still had a reserve force in Centreville and hoped to form a line there. Around 6 p.m., he wired Washington to say that he had been driven from the battlefield and "we have now to hold Centreville until our men can get behind it." The men got behind Centreville and kept going. McDowell later wired to say, "The larger part of the men are a confused mob, entirely demoralized. It was the opinion of all the commanders that no stand could be made this side of the Potomac." Even later, after another attempt to regroup at Fairfax Court House failed, McDowell admitted, "Many of the volunteers did not wait for authority to proceed to the Potomac but left on their own decision."

Map: July 21, 4 p.m. to dusk

150 Years Ago: The Eve of the Big Battle

2011-07-20T05:29:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Saturday, July 20, 1861, was the eve of the largest battle to this point in the Civil War, the Battle of Bull Run.

The firing on Fort Sumter and President Lincoln's war proclamation was three months ago, in April, and so far there had not been a lot of action. Many people, in the North and the South, thought this would be a short, limited war. One decisive battle would show those damned Yankees (or Rebels, depending on your side) a thing or two, and then all this foolishness would be over.

It just seemed logical that the big battle would take place in northern Virginia between the two capitals, Washington and Richmond, and public opinion on both sides was pushing for the battle to happen soon. "Forward to Richmond" screamed banner headlines in the North. Now wasn't soon enough. Many had hoped that Richmond could be taken by today, July 20, when the Confederate Congress would be convening in their new capital for the first time.

Union General Irvin McDowell had been pushed into this battle. McDowell knew his army wasn't ready to fight. The belief that the war would be a quick one had led Lincoln, when he proclaimed war and called for 75,000 militia immediately after Fort Sumter, to sign these initial recruits to three-month enlistments. Now the three months was ending and the enlistments were expiring and many men in McDowell's army would be going home soon.

New recruits were pouring in to replace them, but it would take time to train them and organize them. The three-month men weren't even trained properly. Most of the officers, including McDowell himself, had never led troops in battle.

In late June, McDowell had submitted a plan of operations to the War Department. He had stayed away from the grandiose plan of taking Richmond and concentrated on the Confederate army in his front. He estimated that P. G. T. Beauregard had 25,000 men (he actually had closer to 20,000) amassed near Manassas Junction behind a stream called Bull Run, and that was as far as McDowell planned to go for the immediate future.

Two other armies, both called the Army of the Shenandoah, complicated the picture. The Union Army of the Shenandoah, led by Robert Patterson, faced General Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate Army of the Shenandoah. McDowell's plan called for Patterson to keep Johnston busy so that he could not rush to Beauregard's aid.

Map: July 1861 -- The Bull Run Campaign Overview

McDowell was ordered to begin his advance on July 9, but that wasn't much time and delays were inevitable. And McDowell was pushing for more time, knowing that his army was not ready for a fight, until Lincoln finally told him, "You are green, it is true; but they are green, also; you are all green alike." McDowell began his advance a week late.

Over in the Shenandoah Valley, Patterson was facing the same problem as McDowell with three-month men in his army whose enlistments were ending. Patterson had also been given vague orders -- he wasn't sure if he was supposed to attack Johnston or just maneuver against him. Johnston sent his cavalry, led by J. E. B. Stuart, to harass and confuse him, and Patterson maneuvered himself out of the campaign, settling in Charlestown, twenty miles away from the nearest Confederates, where he reported that "it would be ruinous to advance, or even to stay here, without immediate increase of force." Johnston marched his men to the Manassas Gap Railroad line and began shuffling them east to Beauregard.

That would not have mattered if McDowell had advanced quickly. He could have dealt with Beauregard's army before Johnston arrived, but his worst fears about his army were realized when they began to move. The line of advance crept forward with the men spending more time standing around than marching. Marching for miles with full packs in the hot July sun was beginning to seem much more complicated than marching around a parade ground.

When McDowell's army finally reached Centreville, just two or three miles from the Rebel position, they had eaten all their rations. McDowell paused for two more days to get his wagon trains and the rest of his army up, and all the while, more and more of Johnston's army was linking up with Beauregard's.

McDowell and his officers had also been spending the time doing reconnaissance of the Confederate position. Their line on the south side of Bull Run stretched from the stone bridge on the left where the Warrenton Turnpike crossed the stream to the Orange and Alexandria Railroad bridge on the right. A reconnaissance-in-force on Blackburn's Ford in the center of the Confederate line was repulsed on July 18, convincing McDowell to try a flanking attack. He would take a substantial part of his force to the right, around the Confederate left, crossing Bull Run upstream at Sudley Springs Ford.

Map: July 18, 1861 -- The Confederate line, the Union army concentrating at Centreville, the recon and skirmish at Blackburn's Ford

In fact, both commanders would plan attacks on the other's left. Beauregard had a grand Napoleonic plan to mass his men on his right and wheel them around to catch McDowell in the left flank. The plan didn't have much hope of success with his green army, but it didn't matter. McDowell would beat Beauregard to the punch and catch Beauregard with most of his men massed far away from the point of attack.

McDowell began getting his men into motion after dark. They would all be moving by 2:30 a.m., July 21.

150 Years Ago: Movements and Proclamations

2011-07-19T06:40:00.000-04:00

There would be a battle around Bull Run in the area around Manassas Junction soon, but on July 19, 1861, Union General Irvin McDowell was concerned about concentrating his army around Centreville, Virginia, and feeding them.

The Army of Northeastern Virginia had marched from the environs of Washington to within just a couple of miles of General P. G. T. Beauregard's position behind Bull Run, but the 22-mile march had taken two and a half days. The green troops led by green commanders had marched so slowly that they had eaten all their rations and now McDowell was waiting for wagon trains to resupply them. The line had also strung out through the north Virginia countryside, and McDowell would have to wait another couple of days for all the stragglers to catch up.

Out in the Shenandoah Valley, Union General Robert Patterson had maneuvered himself completely out of the action, leaving General Joe Johnston free to take his army out of the valley and link up with Beauregard's army at Manassas. Johnston marched south, then took the Manassas Gap Railroad straight to Beauregard. Some of his troops were already arriving at Manassas Junction, but some would still be arriving as the battle was raging on July 21.

After yesterday's reconnaissance-in-force at Blackburn's Ford had been repulsed, McDowell was considering a flanking move around the Confederate left.

Also on this date, in western Virginia, Union General George McClellan issued a proclamation praising his army for their recent victories:

Headquarters army of Occupation, Western Virginia, Beverly, Va., July 19, 1861.
soldiers of the army of the West:
I am more than satisfied with you. You have annihilated two armies, commanded by educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses and fortified at their leisure. You have taken five guns, twelve colors, fifteen hundred stand of arms, one thousand prisoners, including more than forty officers. One of the second commanders of the rebels is a prisoner, the other lost his life on the field of battle. You have killed more than two hundred and fifty of the enemy, who has lost all his baggage and camp equipage. All this has been accomplished with the loss of twenty brave men killed and sixty wounded on your part.

You have proved that Union men, fighting for the preservation of our Government, are more than a match for our misguided and erring brothers. More than this, you have shown mercy to the vanquished. You have made long and arduous marches, with insufficient food, frequently exposed to the inclemency of the weather. I have not hesitated to demand this of you, feeling that I could rely on your endurance, patriotism, and courage. In the future I may have still greater demands to make upon you, still greater sacrifices for you to offer. It shall be my care to provide for you to the extent of my ability; but I know now that, by your valor and endurance, you will accomplish all that is asked.

Soldiers! I have confidence in you, and I trust you have learned to confide in me. Remember that discipline and subordination are qualities of equal value with courage. I am proud to say that you have gained the highest reward that American troops can receive — the thanks of Congress and the applause of your fellow-citizens.

Geo. B. Mcclellan, Major-General.

Union General John Pope issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of northern Missouri:

St. Charles, Mo., July 19, 1861.
To the People of North Missouri:
By virtue of proper authority, I have assumed the command in North Missouri. I appear among you with force strong enough to maintain the authority of the Government, and too strong to be resisted by any means in your possession usual in warfare. Upon your own assurances that you would respect the laws of the United States and preserve peace, no troops have hitherto been sent into your section of the country. The occurrences of the last ten days have plainly exhibited that you lack either the power or the inclination to fulfil your pledges, and the Government, has, therefore, found it necessary to occupy North Missouri with a force large enough to compel obedience to the laws. So soon as it is made manifest that you will respect its authority and put down unlawful combinations against it, you will be relieved of the presence of the forces under my command, but not till then.

I, therefore, warn all persons taken in arms against the Federal authority, who attempt to commit depredation upon public or private property, or who molest unoffending and peaceful citizens, that they will be dealt with in the most summary manner, without awaiting civil process.

Jno. Pope, Brigadier.General U. S. A., Commanding.

Armies: The Army of the Shenandoah (CSA)

2011-07-18T04:58:00.000-04:00

Image of Joseph E. Johnston by BattlefieldPortraits.com via Flickr

The Confederate Army of the Shenandoah was a short-lived unit. It began as Virginia state troops that captured the U.S. Arsenal at Harper's Ferry in April 1861 and quickly grew into a 12,000-man force under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston. The army merged with Beauregard's Army of the Potomac at the First Battle of Bull Run, and eventually this new, larger Army of the Potomac would become the foundation of the Army of Northern Virginia.

On April 18, 1861, with 360 Virginia state troops advancing, the U.S. Army garrison abandoned the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harper's Ferry after an attempt to torch the buildings and destroy the machinery. Harper's Ferry residents doused the flames and saved the machinery. The state troops quickly occupied the arsenal and sent the gun-making machinery south.

Major General Kenton Harper of the Virginia Militia was placed in command, and some 2000 state troops were quickly concentrated in the area. Brigadier General Thomas Jackson succeeded Harper in command on April 28.

In May 1861, Virginia transferred her state forces to the Confederate government, and General Joseph E. Johnston took command of this force in the Shenandoah Valley. By July, he had almost 12,000 men under his command.

The Army of the Shenandoah was organized into four brigades with J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry and artillery support. The brigades were led by Brigadier General Thomas Jackson, Colonel Francis Bartow, Brigadier General Barnard Bee, and Brigadier General Kirby Smith.

This army was needed at Manassas to try to even up the odds as Union General Irvin McDowell advanced with the 35,000-man Army of Northeastern Virginia against the 20,000 men of General P. G. T. Beauregard's Confederate Army of the Potomac.

Johnston slipped away from the Union army in his front, also called the Army of the Shenandoah and led by General Robert Patterson, and transferred his men by rail to Manassas. The Army of the Shenandoah linked up with the Army of the Potomac on the battlefield, with most of Johnston's army arriving as the battle was raging.

After the Confederate victory, the merger was made permanent. On October 22, 1861, the Department of Northern Virginia was created with Johnston commanding. It combined the District of the Potomac (Beauregard), the Valley District (Jackson), and the Aquia District (Holmes), and officially ended the Army of the Shenandoah. Johnston's original Army of the Shenandoah would be a vital part of the new, larger Army of Northern Virginia. Johnston commanded until he was seriously wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines when he was replaced by Robert E. Lee.

150 Years Ago: Blackburn's Ford

2011-07-18T02:27:00.004-04:00

Map via Wikipedia (Click to enlarge)

On Thursday, July 18, 1861, around noon, Union troops under Irvin McDowell approached Centreville, Virginia. Expecting to find the enemy there, McDowell sent a brigade from Daniel Tyler's division, some 3000 men, to reconnoiter. They advanced into Centreville, found it empty, and marched on to Bull Run.

At Blackburn's Ford, one of the many crossings of Bull Run, Tyler ordered Colonel Israel Richardson to probe the position. This was the center of Beauregard's line, and Richardson ran into James Longstreet's brigade hidden in the dense woods south of the stream. Tyler had a hard time disengaging from the enemy, but eventually retreated back to Centreville with news for McDowell about the Confederate postion.

The Battle of Blackburn's Ford, a reconnaissance-in-force, was a fairly meaningless skirmish, a prelude to the much bigger First Battle of Bull Run on July 21. The skirmish led McDowell to decide against a frontal assault on the Confederate line. He would try to flank the left side of the Confederate line, crossing farther upstream to the north.

Also on this date, at Richmond, Virginia, Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory provided a report on the cost of converting the captured U.S.S. Merrimack into an ironclad.

The frigate Merrimack has been raised and docked at an expense of $6000, and the necessary repairs to hull and machinery to place her in her former condition is estimated by experts at $450,000. The vessel would then be in the river, and by the blockade of the enemy's fleets and batteries rendered comparatively useless. It has therefore been determined to shield her completely with 3-inch iron placed at such angles as to render her ball-proof, to complete her at the earliest moment, to arm her with the heaviest ordnance, and to send her at once against the enemy's fleet. It is believed that thus prepared she will be able to contend successfully against the heaviest of the enemy's ships and to drive them from Hampton Roads and the ports of Virginia. The cost of this work is estimated by the constructor and engineer in charge at $172,523, and as time is of the first consequence in this enterprise I have not hesitated to commence the work and to ask Congress for the necessary appropriation.

Armies: The Army of the Potomac (CSA)

2011-07-17T22:20:00.002-04:00

The Confederate Army of the Potomac was short-lived. It merged with the Army of the Shenandoah during the First Battle of Bull Run, and eventually became the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The army began as state troops mobilized along an "Alexandria line," a long front stretching across northern Virginia from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake bay. These troops were organized and Brigadier General Milledge Bonham was placed in command. He was soon replaced with General P. G. T. Beauregard, who was tasked with organizing and training the raw troops from throughout the South and planning a response to the Northern invasion around Alexandria.

In July 1861, Beauregard had some 20,000 troops massed around Manassas Junction behind a sluggish stream called Bull Run. They were organized into eight brigades with artillery and cavalry support. The brigades were commanded by Bonham, Richard Ewell, David Jones, James Longstreet, Philip St. George Cocke, Jubal Early, and Nathan Evans. Theophilus Holmes commanded the reserve brigade.

Union General Irvin McDowell was advancing with some 35,000 troops, the Army of Northeastern Virginia. Beauregard needed General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah, some 12,000 men, to even up the odds with McDowell.

Johnston slipped away from the Shenandoah Valley and joined up with Beauregard. The two armies linked up on the Bull Run battlefield, with some of Johnston's army arriving as the battle was raging. Johnston outranked Beauregard, but mostly deferred to Beauregard's arrangements and plans for the upcoming battle. After the Confederate victory, the merger of the two armies was made permanent.

On October 22, 1861, the Department of Northern Virginia was created with Johnston commanding. It combined the District of the Potomac (Beauregard), the Valley District (Jackson), and the Aquia District (Holmes), and officially ended the Army of the Potomac. Beauregard's original army would comprise the First Corps of this new army, which would eventually become known as the Army of Northern Virginia. Johnson commanded until he was seriously wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862, and was replaced by General Robert E. Lee.

150 Years Ago: Developments in the Bull Run Campaign

2011-07-17T13:41:00.000-04:00

On July 17, 1861, the advance guard of Union General Irvin McDowell's Army of Northeastern Virginia occupied Fairfax Court House, Virginia, on its way toward its encounter with P. G. T. Beauregard's Army of the Potomac at Manassas. Meanwhile, over in the Shenandoah Valley, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston began to move away from the Union army in his front, that of General Robert Patterson, to make his way to Manassas to link up with Beauregard.

At Fairfax Court House, advance elements of McDowell's army occupied the town without incident. The Confederates, the advance units of Beauregard's army, evacuated the town just prior to the Federals arrival, leaving behind a quantity of supplies, and settled in just south of the town. Federal cavalry ran them off, but the infantry was too tired to take up the chase.

Beauregard had asked for help. He needed Johnston's army in the Shenandoah Valley to join up with him to even up the odds against McDowell for the impending battle at Manassas. Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Johnston to move over to Manassas, and Johnston began on this day.

Johnston had to break away from Patterson's Union army in his front, but that was no problem. J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry was keeping Patterson busy, and Patterson, in violation of his vague orders to contain Johnston, had moved over to Charles Town instead of advancing directly on the Confederate position. Johnston moved his troops to the nearest railhead and began moving them to Manassas Junction.

Armies: The Army of Northeastern Virginia (USA)

2011-07-16T22:05:00.002-04:00

Image of Irvin McDowell and George McClellan via Wikipedia

The Department of Northeastern Virginia was created on May 27, 1861, and Brigadier General Irvin McDowell was placed in command of its army.

McDowell was responsible for the area of Virginia in front of Washington. He was expected to take the raw volunteers that were streaming in, the first units to respond to Lincoln's call for militia after Fort Sumter, and somehow organize them into an army. Before he could do this, the government and popular opinion prodded him into an advance on General P. G. T. Beauregard's Confederate Army of the Potomac.

The Army of Northeastern Virginia was routed at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. After the defeat, on July 25, the Department of Northeastern Virginia was abolished and merged into the Military Department of the Potomac, then formed the nucleus of Major General George McClellan's Army of the Potomac.

Prior to the First Battle of Bull Run, the Army of Northeastern Virginia was the largest ever assembled in American history, some 30,000-35,000 men. Many of these early recruits were signed to three-month enlistments, limiting McDowell's options. Some units' enlistments ran out on the eve of the battle, and they returned home to muster out rather than fight.

The Army of Northeastern Virginia consisted of five divisions led by Brigadier General Daniel Tyler, Colonel David Hunter, Colonel Samuel Heintzelman, Brigadier General Theodore Runyon, and Colonel D. S. Miles. Runyon's Fourth Division was held in reserve.

There was also a unit from the United States Army Corps of Engineers and another from the United States Topographical Engineers, a balloon detachment.

150 Years Ago: The Bull Run Campaign

2011-07-16T01:40:00.000-04:00

Image of Irvin McDowell via Wikipedia

On July 16, 1861, the Bull Run campaign began when Union General Irvin McDowell moved his Army of Northeastern Virginia out of Washington area, southeast into Virginia toward General P. G. T. Beauregard's Confederate Army of the Potomac. The advance would lead to the first major battle of the Civil War, the First Battle of Bull Run, on July 21.

McDowell's army was the largest ever assembled in American history to that point, some 35,000 men. Facing him, Beauregard had 20,000 encamped at Manassas Junction behind a small stream called Bull Run.

Two other armies complicated the campaign. Union General Robert Patterson's Army of the Shenandoah had crossed the Potomac and moved south to confront General Joseph E. Johnston's army, also known as the Army of the Shenandoah. Patterson's vague orders called for him to keep Johnston busy in the Shenandoah Valley and prevent him from moving east and reinforcing Beauregard. If Joe Johnston could reach Beauregard with his 12,000 men, the odds would be a lot more even.

McDowell was being pushed into a battle that he didn't think his army was ready for. He wanted more time to organize and train them, but he was under intense time constraints. Almost everyone, North and South, thought this would be a short war. The Northern public especially was clamoring for an advance on Richmond and a decisive battle that would win the war.

Another time constraint: McDowell's army (and Patterson's too) would soon be unraveling. A product of the belief in a short war, the first wave of Union volunteers after the firing on Fort Sumter were signed to three-month enlistments. Now the three months was almost up. If McDowell was going to use this army, he would have to do it soon.

McDowell wanted more time, expressing the need for more training for this still green army. Lincoln had tried to reassure him, saying, "You are green, it is true, but they are green also; you are all green alike." This was true enough, but the Confederates weren't having to make a grueling march to get to the battle. Lincoln had directed McDowell to move out by July 9. Arrangements had taken longer than expected, but McDowell was finally on the road a week late.

And as McDowell was beginning to move, Johnston was parrying with Patterson in the valley, sending J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry against Patterson's advance units and forcing the old general to sit this one out. Johnson would soon slip away, but would not reach Beauregard until July 20-21.

McDowell should have had enough time to reach Beauregard and give battle before Johnston showed up, but his misgivings about his army would be realized as soon as they were on the move.

The advance was a mess. The men had never marched in formation for hours in July heat with full gear, and officers had never led men in a long march. It was a vastly different experience than marching for an hour or so around a parade ground. Bottlenecks and long halts quickly developed. By the evening of the 16th, McDowell's advance was in Fairfax Court House, where they drove off enemy skirmishers and made camp. The next day, the troops were exhausted and could only cover six miles. It took until July 18 for the advance to reach Centreville, close to the Confederate position, and would take another two days for McDowell to get the rest of his army up. He would finally be ready for an attack on July 21.

150 Years Ago: Sullivan Ballou's Letter

2011-07-14T04:39:00.000-04:00

On July 14, 1861, one week before the Battle of Bull Run, Major Sullivan Ballou of the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment penned a letter to his wife Sarah. An edited version was featured in the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War. There are several versions with minor differences, but the original letter is gone, perhaps buried with Sarah.

July the 14th, 1861

Washington DC

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure - and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine 0 God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows - when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children - is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country?

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death -- and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.

I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one. A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and "the name of honor that I love more than I fear death" have called upon me, and I have obeyed.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar -- that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night -- amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours - always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers his and hers I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

Sullivan

Ballou and 93 men of his regiment were killed or mortally wounded at the Battle of Bull Run. Ballou was on a horse in front of the regiment when a six-pounder solid shot struck him in the leg and killed the horse. He was carried off the field and the shattered leg was amputated. He died a week later and was buried at Sudley Church.

In March 1862, Rhode Island Governor William Sprague, a personal friend of Ballou's, traveled to the battlefield to retrieve the bodies of several Rhode Island officers. The body of Sullivan Ballou was missing. Witnesses claimed that the body had been exhumed, decapitated and desecrated by soldiers of the 21st Georgia Regiment the previous winter. Sprague found ashes, bones, a blanket with tufts of hair, and two shirts that he claimed belonged to Ballou. The remains were transported back to Rhode Island and reburied in Providence at Swan Point Cemetery.

The letter was never mailed. It was found in Ballou's trunk after the battle. Sprague later reclaimed it and delivered it to Sarah. She never remarried. She died in 1917 and is buried next to her husband.

150 Years Ago: Corrick's Ford

2011-07-13T05:15:00.002-04:00

Image of Robert Garnett via Wikipedia

On July 13, 1861, military operations in the aftermath of the battle of Rich Mountain came to an end. The Confederate forces under Colonel John Pegram surrendered to George McClellan, and Union General Thomas Morris's Indiana brigade caught up to Robert Garnett's retreating Confederates near Corrick's Ford on the Cheat River.

The two forces fought a running skirmish and Garnett deployed skirmishers to cover his retreat. As he was attempting to recall the skirmishers and move to another nearby ford, he was shot and killed by a Union volley. Garnett was the first general officer on either side to be killed during the war. The Confederates retreated in disarray, leaving behind a cannon, forty wagons and their commander's body.

In recognition of his service and two brevets for gallantry in the Mexican War, a Union honor guard conveyed his body to his relatives, who buried him in Baltimore, Maryland. Four years later, the family exhumed Garnett's remains and secretly re-interred him in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, next to his wife and son, who had died before the war. His grave was unmarked for fears of anti-Southern sentiments. In May 2011, a small headstone was placed on his grave next to the family's larger marker.

The Confederates were gone and the region was securely in Federal hands. Although he had planned the excursion into western Virginia and the Rich Mountain campaign, George McClellan received accolades far out of proportion to his actual participation in the battles. He became the North's first war hero.

Also on this date, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon, "Double-Quick Step to Richmond." Almost everyone, North and South, thought that this would be a quick war, and "Forward to Richmond" was the cry in the North, especially from Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. The pressure was on for General Irvin McDowell to march his army south to capture the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia, and end the war. After McDowell's ignominious defeat at the Battle of Bull Run, McClellan was called to Washington to take command of the Army of the Potomac, leaving William Rosecrans in command in western Virginia.

Also, John Clark (D-Mo.) became the first representative ever to be expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives. By a vote of 94 to 45 Clark was expelled for taking up arms against the Union. He was a brigadier general in the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guard. He was a senator in the First Confederate Congress and a representative in the Second Confederate Congress.

150 Years Ago: Mopping Up

2011-07-12T04:53:00.002-04:00

Image of George McClellan via Wikipedia

On July 12, 1861, the forces under Union General George McClellan were busy following up their victory the previous day at Rich Mountain in western Virginia (now West Virginia).

With Union forces in their rear, the Confederate positions at Rich Mountain and Laurel Mountain were in jeopardy. During the night of July 11-12, General Robert Garnett and Colonel John Pegram evacuated the positions at Laurel Mountain and Rich Mountain, respectively. Both headed toward Beverly.

Garnett made it to the turnpike that led south to Beverly, but he was erroneously informed that the enemy had already occupied that town. He headed northeast on much more primitive roads.

Pegram's men passed through Beverly and headed north on the turnpike toward Leadsville. The men were demoralized, exhausted, and hungry, and Pegram stopped and made camp by the Tygart River. After conferring with his officers, he finally decided to surrender to McClellan.

near Tygart's valley River, six miles from Beverly, July 12, 1861.
To Commanding Officer of Northern Forces, Beverly, Va.:
sir: I write to state to you that I have, in consequence of the retreat of General Garnett, and the jaded and reduced condition of my command, most of them having been without food for two days, concluded, with the concurrence of a majority of my captains and field officers, to surrender my command to you tomorrow, as prisoners of war. I have only to add, I trust they will only receive at your hands such treatment as has been invariably shown to the northern prisoners by the South.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

John Pegram, Lieutenant-Colonel P. A. C. S., Com'dg.

In the early morning hours of July 12, the Federals advanced to find the Confederates gone. McClellan occupied the camp at the Rich Mountain gap, then proceeded on to Beverly, occupying the town around noon. From there, he replied to Pegram the following day:

Headquarters, Department of the Ohio, Beverly, Va., July 13, 1861.
John Pegram, Esq., styling himself Lieutenant-Colonel, P. A. C. S.:
sir: Your communication dated yesterday, proposing the surrender as prisoners of war of the force assembled under your command, has been delivered to me. As commander of this department, I will receive you and them with the kindness due to prisoners of war, but it is not in my power to relieve you or them from any liabilities incurred by taking arms against the United States.

I am, very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

Geo. B. McClellan, Maj.-Gen. U. S. A., Commanding Department.

Meanwhile, General Thomas Morris's men took up the pursuit of Garnett. They were easy to trail over the muddy roads by following the footprints and the discarded equipment. Morris caught up to them and fought a running battle the following day.

Also on this date, Albert Pike concluded another treaty between the Confederate government and the tribes in the Indian Territory; this one was with the Choctaws and Chickasaws.

Unrelated to the Civil War, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok fought his first gunfight on this date at Rock Creek Station in Nebraska. It wasn't much of a fight since the other participants were unarmed.

Details are sketchy, but Dave McCanles showed up with two friend and his 12-year-old son. He wanted some money that was due him and got into a heated argument with the stationmaster. One version has Hickok intervening and McCanles threatening to drag him outside and beat him. "There will be one less son-of-a-bitch when you try that," Hickok supposedly replied. When McCanles moved toward him, Hickok shot him in the chest with a rifle. Another version has Hickok shooting McCanles while hiding behind a curtain.

The other two men attempted to flee, but were wounded by Hickok and killed by the other station employees.

At the trial, the McCanles son was not allowed to testify, or even to enter the courtroom. The jury heard only testimony from the station employees and ruled that they had acted in self defense.

In 1867, Harper's New Monthly Magazine published a greatly embellished account of the incident, claiming that Hickok had faced down the deadly McCanles Gang and killed nine men single-handedly. Supposedly, Hickok was gravely wounded in the shootout and later had eleven bullets removed. The legend of Wild Bill was born.

150 Years Ago: Rich Mountain

2011-07-11T05:59:00.004-04:00

Image of General William Rosecrans via Wikipedia

On Thursday, July 11, 1861, the battle of Rich Mountain took place in Randolph County, Virginia (now West Virginia).

Union Major General George McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio, had come to western Virginia in late May, occupying Grafton, a key junction on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. He then sent a detachment to rout a small Confederate force at Philippi on June 3. He then spent several weeks consolidating his forces and securing the portion of the railroad that ran through this mountainous country.

He was opposed by Brigadier General Robert Garnett who commanded some 5000 men at Beverly, a vital turnpike crossroads. Garnett had been unable to get reinforcements or recruits from the pro-Union population, and was reduced to staging raids on Union supply lines.

When McClellan was finally ready, he moved forward to take on this force and capture Beverly. He commanded an imposing force of 20,000, but some 5000 were were scattered throughout the countryside guarding the railroad, bridges and roads.

He found the Confederates entrenched on Rich Mountain and Laurel Mountain, protecting Beverly on the west and north respectively. He split his force into two columns that marched on the positions in a coordinated advance. From Philippi, Brigadier General Thomas Morris marched to confront the force at Laurel Mountain. McClellan, with his principal lieutenant, Brigadier General William Rosecrans, moved from Buckhannon toward Rich Mountain.

Morris was in position on July 7 and engaged the Confederates in a series of small skirmishes over the next few days that convinced Garnett that he would be attacked from the north. He concentrated most of his men on Laurel Mountain, leaving just 1300 under Colonel John Pegram on Rich Mountain.

Even with an overwhelming advantage, McClellan was hesitant to launch a frontal assault on Rich Mountain. The Confederates had a strong position and a prisoner had convinced the general that he faced many more men than were actually there.

A young civilian, David Hart, appeared in the Union lines and told Rosecrans of a path that led around the left flank of the Confederate position. Rosecrans took the young man to McClellan and, after deciding that Hart could be trusted, came up with a new plan. Rosecrans would take his brigade of 1900 men -- the 8th, 10th and 13th Indiana, and the 19th Ohio Regiments -- south of the Confederate position and attack the Confederates from the rear. McClellan would wait with the rest of the men and make a frontal assault when Rosecrans launched his assault.

At 5 a.m. on July 11, Rosecrans's force headed off with David Hart in the lead. It was slow going, taking eight hours to get seven or eight miles through the mountain forest, but Rosecrans finally emerged a mile or two in the rear of the Confederate position. After a sharp fight that lasted almost two hours, Rosecrans personally led a charge that overwhelmed the Confederates. McClellan never made the planned frontal assault.

From McClellan's official report:

Headquarters, Department of the Ohio, Rich Mountain, Va., 9 a.m., July 12, 1861.
Col. E. D. Townsend: We are in possession of all the enemy's works up to a point in the right of Beverly. I have taken all his guns, a very large amount of wagons, tents, &c.--everything he had — a large number of prisoners, many of whom were wounded, and several officers prisoners. They lost many killed. We have lost, in all, perhaps twenty killed and fifty wounded, of whom all but two or three were in the column under Rosecrans, which turned the position. The mass of the enemy escaped through the woods, entirely disorganized. Among the prisoners is Dr. Taylor, formerly of the army. Col. Pegram was in command.

Colonel Rosecrans's column left camp yesterday morning, and marched some eight miles through the mountains, reaching the turnpike some two or three miles in rear of the enemy, defeating an advanced post, and taking a couple of guns. I had a position ready for twelve guns near the main camp, and as guns were moving up, I ascertained that the enemy had retreated. I am now pushing on to Beverly, a part of Colonel Rosecrans's troops being now within three miles of it.

McClellan submitted a second report a little later:

Beverly, July 12th, 1861.
Col. E. D. Townsend, Washington, D. C,:
The success of to-day is all that I could desire. We captured six brass cannons, of which one is rifled, all the enemy's camp equipage and transportation, even to his cups. The number of tents will probably reach two hundred, and more than sixty wagons. Their killed and wounded will amount to fully one hundred and fifty, with one hundred prisoners, and more coming in constantly. I know already of ten officers killed and prisoners. Their retreat is complete.

I occupied Beverly by a rapid march. Garnett abandoned his camp early in the morning, leaving much of his equipage. He came within a few miles of Beverly, but our rapid march turned him back in great confusion, and he is now retreating on the road to St. George. I have ordered Gen. Morris to follow him up closely.

I have telegraphed for the two Pennsylvania regiments at Cumberland to join Gen. Hill at Rowlesburg. The General is concentrating all his troops at Rowlesburg, and he will cut off Garnett's retreat near West Union, or, if possible, at St. George.

I may say that we have driven out some ten thousand troops, strongly intrenched, with the loss of 11 killed and 35 wounded. The provision returns here show Garnett's force to have been ten thousand men. They were Eastern Virginians, Tennesseans, Georgians, and, I think, Carolinians. To-morrow I can give full details, as to prisoners, &c.

150 Years Ago: Expulsion

2011-07-10T16:06:00.002-04:00

On Wednesday, July 10, 1861, Daniel Clark (R-NH) introduced a resolution in the U.S. Senate to expel ten Southern senators -- William Sebastian and Charles Mitchel of Arkansas, Thomas Clingman and Thomas Bragg of North Carolina, James Chesnut of South Carolina, A. O. P. Nicholson of Tennessee, John Hemphill and Louis Wigfall of Texas, and James Mason and Robert Hunter of Virginia.

Whereas a conspiracy has been formed against the peace, union, and liberties of the people and Government of the United States; and in furtherance of such conspiracy a portion of the people of the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas, have attempted to withdraw those States from the Union, and are now in arms against the Government; and whereas [the senators from those states] have failed to appear in their seats in the Senate and to aid the Government in this important crisis; and it is apparent to the Senate that said Senators are engaged in said conspiracy for the destruction of the Union and Government, or, with full knowledge of such conspiracy, have failed to advise the Government of its progress or aid in its suppression: Therefore,

Resolved, That the said Mason, Hunter, Clingman, Bragg, Chesnut, Nicholson, Sebastian, Mitchel, Hemphill, and Wigfall be, and they hereby are, each and all of them, expelled from the Senate of the United States.

After a short, but intense debate the resolution passed the following day by a vote of 32 to 10.

Of the ten expelled senators, William Sebastian was the only one who did not participate in Confederate politics or military service. He practiced law in Helena, Arkansas, until the town was occupied by Union troops. He then moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and died there on May 20, 1865. In 1877, the Senate revoked the expulsion order against him and paid full compensation to his children.

Also on this date, the Federal government reached an understanding with newspaper correspondents not to convey by telegraph any news of troop movements. From the diary of William Howard Russell...

The Government have been coerced, as they say, by the safety of the Republic, to destroy the liberty of the press, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, and this is not the first instance in which the Constitution of the United States will be made nominis umbra. The telegraph, according to General Scott’s order, confirmed by the Minister of War, Simon Cameron, is to convey no despatches respecting military movements not permitted by the General; and today the newspaper correspondents have agreed to yield obedience to the order, reserving to themselves a certain freedom of detail in writing their despatches, and relying on the Government to publish the official accounts of all battles very speedily. They will break this agreement if they can, and the Government will not observe their part of the bargain. The freedom of the press, as I take it, does not include the right to publish news hostile to the cause of the country in which it is published; neither can it involve any obligation, on the part of Government to publish despatches which may be injurious to the party they represent. There is a wide distinction between the publication of news which is known to the enemy as soon as to the friends of the transmitters, and the utmost freedom of expression concerning the acts of the Government or the conduct of past events; but it will be difficult to establish any rule to limit or extend the boundaries to which discussion can go without mischief, and in effect the only solution of the difficulty in a free country seems to be to grant the press free licence, in consideration of the enormous aid it affords in warning the people of their danger, in animating them with the news of their successes, and in sustaining the Government in their efforts to conduct the war.

Also, Albert Pike concluded a treaty between the Confederate government and the Creek Indians. Pike would arrange nine treaties with the various tribes in the Indian Territory.

150 Years Ago: William Tillman

2011-07-07T00:02:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, July 7, 1861, the Confederate privateer Jefferson Davis captured the schooner S. J. Waring about 150 miles off the coast of Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The Confederates put a five-man prize crew on the schooner and headed her toward Charleston.

It would not end well for the privateers. Aboard the S. J. Waring was an African-American serving as the ship's cook, William Tillman (also spelled Tilghman). He was told that he, like the ship and the cargo, was Southern property and would be sold into bondage when the ship reached the South.

On the night of July 16, Tillman went to the captain's cabin with an axe and killed the captain and first mate in their sleep. He then went up on deck and killed the second mate. He tossed the bodies overboard, then forced the remaining members of the prize crew to surrender. Tillman, two other crew members who had remained on board, a passenger, and the two surviving members of the prize crew sailed the ship to New York, arriving there on July 22. Tillman was awarded $6000 in prize money.

Also on this date, the U.S.S. Resolute encountered and successfully swept two moored mines in the Potomac River. Following the battle of Aquia Creek, the Confederates had placed the mines near where the creek joined the river. This was almost certainly the first time the Confederates used mines, but they would sink some 40 ships with them during the war.

John Ellis, the governor of North Carolina, died at Red Sulphur Springs, Virginia (now West Virginia). Ellis had been in ill health for some time and had traveled to Red Sulpher Springs to recuperate. Henry Clark, the speaker of the state senate, had assumed Ellis's duties when he left the state and served out the remainder of his term.

150 Years Ago: the Sumter's Prizes

2011-07-06T19:07:00.002-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Saturday, July 6, 1861, Confederate raider Raphael Semmes, commanding the C.S.S. Sumter, arrived at Cienfuegos, Cuba, with seven prizes of war -- "the brigantines Cuba, Machias, Ben Dunning, Albert Adams, Naiad; and barques West Wind and Louisa Kilham, property of citizens of the United States."

After running the blockade on June 30, Semmes had been a busy man. On July 3, he captured an American merchant vessel, the Golden Rocket, off the coast of Cuba. The ship's Northern ownership was confirmed and she had no cargo (she was searching Cuban ports for a load of sugar), so there was nothing left to adjudicate. Semmes ordered the Golden Rocket burned.

On July 4, he captured two more merchant vessels, the Cuba and the Machias. These were U.S. ships with neutral cargoes, so, following the laws of the sea, Semmes took them to a neutral port for adjudication of the cargoes. Cienfuegos was convenient, but Semmes had another reason for taking them to Cuba. From his official report:

I have sought a port of Cuba with these prizes, with the expectation that Spain will extend to cruisers of the Confederate States the same friendly reception that in similar circumstances she would extend to the cruisers of the enemy; in other words, that she will permit me to leave the captured vessels within her jurisdiction until they can be adjudicated by a Court of Admiralty of the Confederate States.

The Sumter arrived at Cienfuegos on the evening of July 5 with her prizes, but it was too late to enter the harbor. While loitering outside the harbor, two ships were spotted. The Sumter gave chase and soon captured them as well. Before she could enter the harbor on the morning of July 6, a steamer was spotted towing three more U.S. ships out of the harbor. Semmes waited until the ships were in international waters, then captured them too.

The Cuban authorities were at a loss. They had no instructions for a situation such as this. While the Cubans waited to see if Spain would, like England and France, declare its neutrality, Semmes appointed a local citizen as a "prize agent" to protect the ships and their cargo.

Semmes hoped "that some of the nations, at least, would give an asylum for my prizes, so that I may have them formally condemned by the Confederate States Prize Court, instead of being obliged to destroy them."

Spain soon issued a proclamation of neutrality, and the Cuban authorities released the vessels to the United States.

150 Years Ago: Carthage

2011-07-05T06:30:00.002-04:00

On Friday, July 5, 1861, the Battle of Carthage took place in Missouri. This was the largest battle to date in the Civil War.

Governor Claiborne Jackson's State Guard had been on the run since they were routed at Boonville on June 17. They headed toward the southwest corner of the state to regroup, and met up in Lamar on July 3 with another group of State Guards led by Sterling Price. Jackson now had around 4000 inexperienced soldiers and another 2000 that had no weapons.

Lyon was pursuing Jackson's militia from Boonville, but could not keep up. Meanwhile, Colonel Franz Sigel led another detachment of 1100 Union troops toward Lexington to cut off Price's retreat. Sigel headed on to Carthage to try to catch the fleeing States Guardsmen, unaware that the two groups had already merged.

Learning that Sigel was at Carthage, Jackson took command and advanced to attack the smaller, but better trained and armed force. The two armies met about ten miles north of Carthage.

The battle opened around 8:30 a.m. It began as an artillery duel that was largely ineffective. Eventually Sigel realized how outnumbered he was. With his line fully extended, the State Guard line extended past both of his flanks. Sigel began an orderly withdrawal that turned into a running battle that lasted most of the day. Sigel was eventually able to escape the trap, withdrawing back through Carthage before escaping to Sarcoxie.

Casualties were light. Union: 13 killed, 31 wounded. State Guard: 12 killed, 64 wounded, 1 missing.

The battle was fairly insignificant, not a great tactical or strategic victory, but the pro-Southerners in Missouri had not had much good news lately and celebrated their first victory. The State Guard had almost taken Sigel by surprise and destroyed his army. Only a skillful withdrawal had saved him. The State Guard was able to link up with Confederate troops, mostly Texans and Arkansans, led by Ben McCulloch on July 6, and continue the fight for Missouri.

150 Years Ago: Lincoln's Address to Congress

2011-07-04T00:04:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Thursday, July 4, 1861, in the midst of the patriotic celebrations that were going on in the North and the South, the 37th Congress of the United States met in special session. Abraham Lincoln wrote an address which was read to a joint session to give an accounting of the war measures he had taken, to outline the causes and purpose of the conflict, and to ask Congress to appropriate the men and money necessary to continue the war.

On April 15, when Lincoln declared war against the South and called out the militia, he also called for a special session of Congress. It had been a "called in haste to convene at leisure" call though; Lincoln had given them 80 days to convene. Until they did, the response of the Federal government's was solely up to Lincoln.

Lincoln had proclaimed war, called out the militia, suspended habeas corpus, blockaded the Southern coast, called for 42,000 three-year volunteers, greatly increased the regular army and navy; all of this committing the government to spend vast sums of money. Now, the 80 days was up and Lincoln was justifying what he had done and asking Congress to give its authorization after the fact.

He was not too worried about the outcome. His own Republican Party controlled both houses of Congress -- with 32 of the 48 senators and 106 of the 176 congressmen. Also, it would be hard for Congress to vote against any wartime measures in the midst of all the preparations for war that were then going on.

Lincoln began with a recap of everything that had happened so far: the suspension of federal functions within the seceded states, the seizure of federal property, the "firing on bread" at Fort Sumter. He declared that the South had "forced upon the country the distinct issue, 'Immediate dissolution or blood.'"

And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy—a government of the people by the same people—can or can not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government and so to resist force employed for its destruction by force for its preservation...

Other calls were made for volunteers to serve three years unless sooner discharged, and also for large additions to the Regular Army and Navy. These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity, trusting then, as now, that Congress would readily ratify them. It is believed that nothing has been done beyond the constitutional competency of Congress.

As for suspending the writ of habeas corpus...

This authority has purposely been exercised but very sparingly. Nevertheless, the legality and propriety of what has been done under it are questioned, and the attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one who is sworn to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" should not himself violate them. Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power and propriety before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it? But it was not believed that this question was presented. It was not believed that any law was violated. The provision of the Constitution that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it" is equivalent to a provision—is a provision—that such privilege may be suspended when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety does require it. It was decided that we have a case of rebellion and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of the privilege of the writ which was authorized to be made. Now it is insisted that Congress, and not the Executive, is vested with this power; but the Constitution itself is silent as to which or who is to exercise the power; and as the provision was plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it can not be believed the framers of the instrument intended that in every case the danger should run its course until Congress could be called together, the very assembling of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case, by the rebellion.

Lincoln went on to ask Congress for "the legal means for making this contest a short and a decisive one," for 400,000 men and $400 million. The contest was now more than a local disturbance of "combinations to powerful to resist" that some 90-day militia could handle.

A right result at this time will be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money. The evidence reaching us from the country leaves no doubt that the material for the work is abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it legal sanction and the hand of the Executive to give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the greatest perplexities of the Government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their Government if the Government itself will do its part only indifferently well.

After expounding on some of same themes he had explored in his First Inaugural Address of the myth of state sovereignty and states rights and the illegality of secession, Lincoln got to the purpose of the war, declaring...

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend...

Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled—the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains—its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

Lincoln started using the third person to describe himself, "the Executive," and concluded by saying...

It was with the deepest regret that the Executive found the duty of employing the war power in defense of the Government forced upon him. He could but perform this duty or surrender the existence of the Government...

As a private citizen the Executive could not have consented that these institutions shall perish; much less could he in betrayal of so vast and so sacred a trust as these free people had confided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, nor even to count the chances of his own life in what might follow. In full view of his great responsibility he has so far done what he has deemed his duty. You will now, according to your own judgment, perform yours. He sincerely hopes that your views and your action may so accord with his as to assure all faithful citizens who have been disturbed in their rights of a certain and speedy restoration to them under the Constitution and the laws.

Congress would end up giving Lincoln 25% more than he asked for, 500,000 men and $500,000,000

150 Years Ago: Fremont Takes Command in the West

2011-07-03T00:51:00.001-04:00

On Wednesday, July 3, 1861, Union Major General John C. Frémont was named commander of the newly created Department of the West.

Frémont, headquartered at St. Louis, Missouri, would oversee military affairs for most of the country west of the Mississippi. He would replace Nathaniel Lyon as the top-ranking general in the area.

Frémont went to New York to buy weapons and supplies for his new command, but was not very successful. He left for St. Louis on July 21 and arrived four days later.

150 Years Ago -- Lincoln Expands Suspension of Habeas Corpus

2011-07-02T18:09:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, July 2, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln expands the suspension of the right of habeas corpus to include the area between Washington and New York City.

Lincoln's letter to General-in-chief Winfield Scott:

The COMMANDING GENERAL, ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES:

You are engaged in suppressing an insurrection against the laws of the United States. If at any point on or in the vicinity of any military line which is now or which shall be used between the city of New York and the city of Washington you find resistance which renders it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the public safety, you personally, or through the officer in command at the point where resistance occurs, are authorized to suspend that writ.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at the city of Washington, this 2d day of July, A. D. 1861, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

150 Years Ago: Patterson Crosses the Potomac

2011-07-02T00:05:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Tuesday, July 2, 1861, Federal troops under Brigadier General Robert Patterson crossed the Potomac and moved into the Shenandoah Valley.

This was a vital part of Irvin McDowell's plan to attack P. G. T. Beauregard's army at Manassas. Patterson's job was to keep Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate army in the valley busy to keep them from reinforcing Beauregard's army.

Patterson, a 69-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, took his army across the Potomac at Williamsburg, Maryland, then advanced toward Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia).

Colonel Thomas Jackson, commanding a brigade in Johnston's army, sent the 5th Virginia Regiment north to confront the Federal army. The two forces met on the Valley Turnpike between Hainesville and Falling Waters. The Battle of Hoke's Run (also known as the Battle of Falling Waters and the Battle of Hainesville) was a delaying action that lasted about 45 minutes until the Union army was able to bring up four cannons and drive the 5th Virginia back. Casualties were light on both sides, but J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry surprised and captured 49 Union soldiers.

150 Years Ago: the Sumter Runs the Blockade

2011-06-30T12:24:00.002-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Sunday, June 30, 1861, Raphael Semme's career as a commerce raider for the Confederacy began. His warship, the C.S.S. Sumter, ran the blockade at the mouth of the Mississippi River and escaped to the high seas.

Commerce raiding is a form of naval warfare in which one side, almost always the weaker power, attacks the merchant shipping of the other side. In the case of the Confederacy, whose navy was almost nonexistent at this time, the principle goal was to force the Union to deploy ships to protect the merchant ships, weakening the blockade of Southern ports.

Semmes was a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Navy. Born in Maryland and living in Alabama when the war began, he resigned his commission and joined the Confederate Navy. He was soon sent to New Orleans where he began to convert a steamer, the Havana, into a cruiser. The conversion was complete on June 3, but Semmes found all avenues of escape blocked by Union warships.

On June 21, the U.S.S. Powhatan left her station. Semmes took the Sumter to Pass a l'Outre, but was unable to find a river pilot who would guide him past the mud bars at the mouth of the Mississippi before the Powhatan returned.

Finally, on June 30, the U.S.S. Brooklyn left her station to pursue another ship. Semmes took advantage and sped toward the Gulf. One river pilot lost his nerve, claiming he hadn't been through this pass in three months, but another soon arrived to take the Sumter out.

The Brooklyn spotted the Sumter and broke off its pursuit of the other vessel to give chase -- a chase that would last over four hours before the Brooklyn finally gave it up and returned to her post.

Over the next six months, Semmes and the Sumter would disrupt shipping in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, capturing 17 merchant ships. It all came to an end in January 1862 at Gibraltar. The Sumter was in for repairs when Union ships blockaded the port. Semmes decommissioned the Sumter and sold her, then escaped to England.

150 Years Ago: McDowell's Plan

2011-06-29T03:10:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On June 29, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called his cabinet and military advisers to the White House to evaluate the plan General Irvin McDowell had recently submitted to the War Department for attacking the Confederate army at Manassas Junction.

McDowell commanded the Department of Northeastern Virginia, with headquarters at Arlington in what had until recently been the home of Robert E. Lee. Although he was a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Army, McDowell had never led troops in combat.

McDowell worried that his army of green troops was not ready for battle, but he was beginning to feel enormous political pressure. "Forward to Richmond" would soon be a ceaseless refrain; the people of the North were ready for action. There was also a time constraint. When Lincoln had called for 75,000 militia after Fort Sumter, most Americans -- North and South -- had envisioned a very short war. The initial wave of recruits had been signed to three-month enlistments and they would soon begin expiring.

McDowell came up with a very solid plan. With 30,000 men and another 10,000 in reserve, he would move south to confront General P. G. T. Beauregard's 24,000-man army at Manassas. The key was to keep Beauregard from being reinforced by General Joseph E. Johnston's 11,000-man army in the Shenandoah Valley. The Federal army along the upper Potomac, led by General Robert Patterson, would move south and engage with Johnston, keeping them busy while McDowell took care of Beauregard.

General-in-Chief Winfield Scott was the main dissenting voice. He told Lincoln he "did not believe in a little war by piece-meal." His plan for dealing with the rebellion, derisively labeled "the Anaconda Plan," involved blockading the Confederate coast and mounting a campaign down the Mississippi to cut the Confederacy in half.

But Scott's plan would take too long. Much time would be needed to build up the naval forces and train the troops. The president, the cabinet, and the public wanted action now. Scott eventually withdrew his opposition and McDowell's plan was approved. He was told to begin his advance on July 9.

150 Years Ago: the St. Nicholas

2011-06-28T04:31:00.000-04:00

On Friday, June 28, 1861, a band of Confederates captured the side-wheel steamer St. Nicholas as it made its regular run between Baltimore and Washington.

The plan was hatched by two Marylanders, George Hollins and Richard Thomas. Hollins, who had joined the U.S. Navy in 1814 at age 15, had recently resigned his commission. He was commissioned a captain in the Confederate Navy on June 20, 1861. Richard Thomas was a shady character who had dropped out of West Point in 1850. In the years before the Civil War, he was said to have fought as a mercenary in China. He was also said to have fought with Garabaldi in Italy. When the war started, he was calling himself Richard Thomas Zarvona.

Their plan was to capture the St. Nicholas, a passenger ship that provided supplies to various Union vessels in Chesapeake Bay, and use it to capture the U.S.S. Pawnee, one of the U.S. Navy's most powerful warships. Virginia Governor John Letcher was excited about the plan and gave them $1000 to carry it out. Thomas traveled to Baltimore where he bought weapons and recruited members of the raiding party.

When the steamer left Baltimore on June 28, there were around 60 passengers on board, including 16 men who had been recruited by Thomas posing as paying passengers. But Thomas was nowhere to be found. George Watt, one of the recruits, later said, "What worried me a lot was I couldn’t find the Colonel or anyone who looked like him. I could see the future of the whole expedition as also I could see myself behind bars in Ft. McHenry, and the picture didn’t look a bit good to me."

Thomas was on board, disguised as a flirtatious Frenchwoman named Madame LaForce. Watt later described "her" as "a mighty pretty young woman, stylishly dressed, flirting outrageously with some of the young officers. She talked with a strong French accent and carried a fan which she used like a Spanish dancer. That young woman behaved so scandalously that all the other women on the boat were in a terrible state over it." Other passengers said she was petite, wore a hoop skirt and covered her face with a veil that exposed only her bright red lips. Mme. LaForce soon retired to her cabin to sort through three trunks of fine French hats.

George Hollins boarded the steamer at its first stop at Point Lookout. Soon, the band of pirates met up in the Frenchwoman's room. There, in the three trunks under the fine French hats, were the weapons. They quickly armed themselves, then took over the ship. With Hollins now in command, they locked the Union soldiers and the ship's crew in the hold, then landed on the Virginia bank of the Chesapeake to pick up a crew of Confederate soldiers.

They eventually learned that the Pawnee, the object of the mission, had been recalled to Washington, so they headed toward the Rappahannock. En route they encountered and captured three more merchant vessels, the Monticello, loaded with 3500 bags of Brazilian coffee, the Mary Pierce and her 200 tons of ice, and the Margaret, with 270 tons of coal.

The band became instant celebrities in the Confederacy. Hollins soon received a promotion to commodore and was sent to New Orleans to command the naval forces there at the end of July. Thomas met with Virginia Governor John Letcher, who commissioned him as a colonel in the active volunteer forces of the State. On July 8, he would try another daring mission, to capture the Columbia, a sister ship of the St. Nicholas. But the captain of the St. Nicholas was on board, on his way home after being released by the Confederate authorities. He recognized the men and they were arrested. Thomas was finally exchanged in 1863 and spent the remainder of the war in Europe.

150 Years Ago: the Blockade Strategy Board

2011-06-27T04:58:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, June 27, 1861, the Blockade Strategy Board met for the first time in Washington. This was a forerunner of the present-day joint staff system, with members of various branches of the armed forces meeting to discuss ways to work together to implement war aims.

In this case, the board was put together by the Department of the Navy to develop a preliminary strategy for enforcing the blockade of the Southern States. It consisted of two Navy men, Captain Samuel Du Pont, who acted as chairman, and Commander Charles Henry Davis, the recording secretary, Major John Barnard of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Alexander Bache of the U.S. Coast Survey.

The board's first report on July 5 recommended seizing Fernandina, Florida, and using it as the southern anchor of the Atlantic blockading line. That action was postponed until after the capture of Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal.

The board developed strategies for enforcing the blockade and identified points on the Confederate coast that could be captured and used as coaling stations and bases. The Navy Department followed the board's recommendations closely throughout the war. After solving the most pressing problems the Navy had in 1861, the board disbanded and never met again.

150 Years Ago: the World's First Machine Gun Salesman

2011-06-24T00:05:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On June 24, 1863, J. D. Mills became the world's first machine gun salesman, demonstrating Wilson Agur's Union Repeating Gun for Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln dubbed it the "coffee mill gun."

The demonstration was held in the hayloft of Hall's carriage shop on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Lincoln, a lover of gadgets, fired the gun.

The next day Mills was at the Washington Arsenal, demonstrating the gun for three cabinet members, five generals, and other dignitaries. Major General Joseph Mansfield, commanding the Washington defenses, requested a number of the guns, but the request got lost in the bureaucracy.

Mills would be back in October to finally complete the world's first machine gun sale.

150 Years Ago: Ballooning

2011-06-23T05:06:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On June 23, 1861, hot air balloons were used for military purposes for the first time in U.S. history by Thaddeus Lowe.

Lowe, one of the most famous balloonists in the country, left a lucrative career to see what use he could be to his country. He found himself vying with others to become Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps. On this date 150 years ago, he was at Falls Church, Virginia, headquarters of the army's Topographical Corps, trying to prove the balloon's military usefulness to skeptical generals.

Lowe's balloon, the Enterprise, was anchored at Falls Church for two days and made numerous assents. General Daniel Tyler, commander of the First Division of McDowell's Army of Northeastern Virginia, sent an officer aloft with Lowe . He did the first American aerial reconnaissance, observing the movements of the Confederate forces around Fairfax Courthouse. The officer also sketched a map of the countryside.

After his two day trial, Lowe returned to Washington. He was asked to give an estimate of the cost of making balloons. He was soon informed that he had been underbid by a competitor, John Wise. Lowe quickly moved on, beginning a series of experiments on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution.

150 Years Ago: Boonville and Greeneville

2011-06-17T04:48:00.000-04:00

Months of tension reached a climax in Missouri on Monday, June 17, 1861, near the little town of Boonville.

A meeting had been set up days earlier in St. Louis to try to bring some peace to the divided state, but it had ended with Union General Nathaniel Lyon declaring war on the pro-Southern leaders, Governor Claiborne Jackson and General Sterling Price.

After the meeting, Jackson and Price fled to the state capital of Jefferson City. They quickly decided that the capital could not be held and retreated with the State Guard northwest to Boonville. They needed time to consolidate the militia forces at Boonville and Lexington, and to train and arm them. But time was the one thing Lyon did not intend to give them.

Price had planned to retreat from Boonville if Lyon's army showed up, but he became ill with dysentary and traveled on to Lexington where more militia forces were gathering, leaving the governor in charge. Jackson, fearing the political price of another retreat, decided to have the showdown at Boonville.

Lyon's army of 1700, two volunteer brigades, a company of regulars and an artillery battery, advanced down the Rocheport Road toward Boonville. They ran into Colonel John Marmaduke's regiment of militia, some 500 men, positioned around a house, its outbuildings and a wheat field. Union artillery fire drove the militiamen back, but they quickly regrouped on a nearby ridge. More artillery fire drove the militiamen back through their camp to the fairgrounds east of town. Supported by fire from an eight-inch howitzer aboard the
Augustus McDowell on the nearby Missouri River, the Union forces flanked the line of militia and the retreat quickly turned into a rout. The militia disintegrated; the men scattering in all directions.

The bulk of the fighting lasted less than thirty minutes and casualties were light on both sides, but the consequences were huge. The Union army now had control of the Missouri River and much of the state, including the state capital. Although the fighting in Missouri would continue throughout much of the war, Governor Claiborne Jackson's dream of putting the state in the Confederacy were over. Much of the militia would retreat with Jackson to the extreme southwestern corner of the state and attempt to regroup.

Also on this date, in Greenville, Tennessee, delegates met in a convention to discuss ways to keep east Tennessee in the Union.

The pro-Unionists of East Tennessee followed a script that was very similar to the one the pro-Unionists of western Virginia followed. The main difference was that the Tennesseans did not have a Union army nearby to help them out.

The east Tennesseans met in Knoxville on May 30-31 to protest Governor Isham Harris's efforts to align the state with the Confederacy. One of their biggest grievances was that Harris had called for a statewide referendum on June 8 to approve an "Ordinance of Secession," skipping a convention to debate the issue. After many speeches condemning the governor and the state legislature for their disregard of the U.S. Constitution, the delegates agreed to meet again if Tennessee voters approved secession.

The Greeneville convention got underway on June 17. The first two days were spent mainly on organizing the convention, debating voting rules, and speechmaking. On the third day, the delegates heard two similar sets of resolutions. The first called for the formation of military companies, and pledged retaliation if any convention members were harmed or if the region were occupied by Confederate forces. The second set of resolutions was less violent in nature, mainly resolving to send a memorial to the state legislature seeking its consent for the region to form a separate state.

The second set of resolutions was adopted after much debate. The memorial was sent to the legislature, which rejected the convention's bid for statehood. The legislature promised not to pass any conscription laws, but the governor sent Confederate troops into the region to protect secessionists there. Many delegates fled to the north or went into hiding.

In other news, in Washington, Thaddeus S. C. Lowe ascended in a tethered balloon some 500 feet above the White House to demonstrate the effectiveness of aerial reconnaissance. Using a telegraph set he communicated with Lincoln, "I have the pleasure of sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station..." In July 1861, Lowe would be named Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps. He made several successful observations, but disputes over his operations and his pay forced his resignation in 1863.

150 Years Ago: Johnston Withdraws from Harper's Ferry

2011-06-15T00:13:00.004-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

General Joseph E. Johnston had been in command of the Confederate Army of the Shenandoah for about three weeks, since May 24, 1861, and he did not like the position he was in at Harper's Ferry. The town was important for both sides, but it was impossible to defend; it would change hands eight times during the war. On Saturday, June 15, 1861, Johnston withdrew his army, some 10,000 men organized into four brigades, toward Winchester.

Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) had a very strategic location on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. It was where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers and the states of Maryland and Virginia met. It was also the site of the United States Armory and Arsenal, one of only two such facilities in the country (the other at Springfield, Illinois) where small arms were produced for the U.S. Army. Until April 1861, that is.

When Virginia seceded, the U.S. Army garrison at the arsenal evacuated. They tried to burn the buildings and destroy the equipment before they left, but local citizens saved the machinery. Major General Kenton Harper of the Virginia Militia quickly organized two thousand militiamen at Harper's Ferry and put Brigadier General Thomas Jackson in charge. The equipment was sent to Richmond for safe keeping, and this group of militia formed the nucleus of Johnston's army.

Johnston had taken command in May when Virginia Governor John Letcher turned the state troops over to Confederate control. Jackson became one of Johnston's most important lieutenants.

Robert E. Lee, who had overall command of the state troops until they were turned over to the Confederacy, had advised Johnston to hold onto Harper's Ferry. To give it up, he said, "would be depressing to the cause of the South." But Johnston was in an impossible position. The town sat on a low flood plain with the heights of the Blue Ridge Mountains all around it. It was at the bottom of a bowl. On top of that, two Federal armies had his attention -- Robert Patterson's army (also named the Army of the Shenandoah) was just across the Potomac in Maryland and George McClellan's was somewhere to his west in the Virginia mountains. Johnston had to find a more favorable position. He eventually settled at Bunker Hill.

During his time at Harper's Ferry, Jackson had commandeered the B & O trains that came through, 42 locomotives and 386 freight cars. Most of these were wrecked and thrown into the river, but Jackson used horses to haul fourteen locomotives and some boxcars by road to Strasburg, where they were put on the Manassas Gap Railroad for Confederate use.

An aside: Rather quickly after the start of the war, the pro-Unionist counties of western Virginia would break away from the rest of the state, seceding from the secessionists to form the new state of West Virginia. Harper's Ferry, then in Virginia would be located in the new state. In 1890, the United States Board on Geographic Names, which is responsible for formally naming municipalities and natural landmarks, removed most apostrophes so as to not imply ownership of a place. What was once Harper's Ferry, Virginia, is now Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Another aside: Harper's Ferry was the site of John Brown's raid in October 1859.

150 Years Ago: Lyon Captures Jefferson City

2011-06-14T04:59:00.008-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Friday, June 14, 1861, Union General Nathaniel Lyon captured the Missouri capital, Jefferson City, without a fight. Governor Claiborne Jackson and General Sterling Price fled south to Boonville, where the state militia were gathered. Jackson's administration was now a government-in-exile; Lyon had seized the machinery of the state government.

In a meeting earlier in the week that had been set up to attempt to bring some peace to Missouri, Lyon had declared war on the pro-Southern forces in the state led by Jackson and Price. The seizure of the capital was just the first step. He would, with barely a pause, move on to Boonville to battle the state militia forces there.

150 Years Ago: Romney

2011-06-13T00:05:00.007-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On the morning of June 13, 1861, Union troops under Colonel Lew Wallace crossed into Romney, Virginia (now West Virginia), ran off the Confederates there, and went back the way they came.

Now barely two months past Fort Sumter, the war was still just a series of small skirmishes where the armies got a little too close together. Wallace received orders to travel from Cumberland, Maryland, to Romney to dislodge some Confederates in the town, a strategic point on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

It was vital that the Union control the B & O. It connected Washington to the western states.

Wallace commanded the 11th Indiana Infantry Regiment, a Zouaves unit. They crossed the Potomac by train, then marched south to Romney, some 25 to 30 miles away. Most of the action took place at a covered bridge that crossed the South Branch of the Potomac at the entrance to the town. There the Confederates had a battery of two guns and sharpshooters in a nearby house, Sycamore Dale.

Wallace's advance guard crossed the bridge at a run, leapt down an embankment and engaged the troops in the house. As Wallace got more troops across the bridge, they combined and drove the Confederates out of the house. Wallace ordered it to be burned. When he returned later, he found that the owner, David Gibson, had talked his troops out of it. Wallace listened to Gibson's plea and withdrew the order, and used the house as his headquarters during his brief stay in the town.

The Confederates and most of the residents of Romney scattered out of the town. Wallace searched the town for weapons and supplies, then withdrew back to Cumberland. It's not clear why Wallace withdrew.

Oral history and a town marker claim that Romney changed hands 56 times during the war. It was probably fewer than ten. After Wallace's departure, Colonel A. P. Hill brought a larger force of Confederate troops in to occupy the town the next day.

Lew Wallace would go on to become a major general, but his postwar career would be much more successful. He would serve as governor of New Mexico Territory and as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire, but he would become world famous as the author of Ben-Hur.

150 Years Ago: A Meeting in St. Louis

2011-06-11T09:45:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, June 11, 1861, moderates in Missouri arranged a meeting between Union General Nathaniel Lyon, Frank Blair, Governor Claiborne Jackson and Sterling Price in St. Louis to try to keep the conflict from spreading in the state. They met around 11 a.m. at the Planter's House hotel. The meeting lasted for four or five hours and was very stormy; the two sides had opposing goals and neither trusted the other.

At first, Lyon deferred to Blair, his political counterpart, but as the meeting progressed and grew more contentious Lyon became more outspoken. For a short time it seemed like an uneasy ceasefire between the two sides might be established. Governor Jackson offered to disband Price's pro-Southern state guards and remain neutral if the Federals would disband the pro-Unionist St. Louis home guards and promise not to move troops into any part of the state not already occupied by Federal soldiers.

Lyon refused, demanding that the militia be disbanded but refusing to disband the home guards. Then declared,

"Rather than concede to the State of Missouri the right to demand that my government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops into the State whenever it pleases, or move troops at its own will into, out of, or through the State; rather than concede to the State of Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my government in any matter, however unimportant, I would see you, and you, and you, and you, [pointing to each man in the room] and every man, woman, and child in the State dead and buried. This means war. In an hour one of my officers will call for you and conduct you out of my lines."

Rather than wait for the escort out, Jackson and Price left immediately for the capital, Jefferson City. On the way, Jackson ordered the destruction of key bridges and telegraph lines. He also issued a proclamation calling for 50,000 militia:

"Rise, then, and drive out ignominiously the invaders who have dared to desecrate the soil which your labors have made fruitful, and which is consecrated by your homes."

Lyon quickly had his troops on the move toward the capital.

Also on this date: The Wheeling Convention

150 Years Ago: The Wheeling Convention

2011-06-11T00:10:00.002-04:00

Delegates from 27 counties in pro-Unionist western Virginia met in mid-May to determine a course of action if Virginia voters should ratify the state's Ordinance of Secession on May 23. Soon were for immediate action; a resolution was introduced to break away from the rest of the state and create a state called "New Virginia."

This proposal was ultimately declared to be too revolutionary. One delegate declared that it was "triple treason" against the state of Virginia, the United States and the Confederacy. The delegates soon agreed to wait for the outcome of the vote and to meet again on June 11 if voters ratified the Ordinance of Secession.

On Tuesday, June 11, 1861, the Second Wheeling Convention convened at Washington Hall in Wheeling, Virginia. They quickly moved the proceedings to the larger Custom House. Almost all of the delegates agreed that the differences between western and eastern Virginia were irreconcilable and supported separation from the secessionists. The only real argument was over what course of action to take. John Carlile, representing the Committee on Business, opened the debate by introducing "A Declaration of the People of Virginia."

This declaration proclaimed that the state convention that had adopted the Ordinance of Secession was "a usurpation" which would "inevitably subject (the people of Virginia) to a military despotism."

The Convention, by its pretended ordinances, has required the people of Virginia to separate from and wage war against the government of the United States, and against the citizens of neighboring State, with whom they have heretofore maintained friendly, social and business relations:

It has attempted to subvert the Union founded by Washington and his co-patriots in the purer days of the republic, which has conferred unexampled prosperity upon every class of citizens, and upon every section of the country:

It has attempted to transfer the allegiance of the people to an illegal confederacy of rebellious States, and required their submission to its pretended edicts and decrees:

It has attempted to place the whole military force and military operations of the Commonwealth under the control and direction of such confederacy, for offensive as well as defensive purposes.

It has, in conjunction with the State executive, instituted wherever their usurped power extends, a reign of terror intended to suppress the free expression of the will of the people, making elections a mockery and a fraud:

The same combination, even before the passage of the pretended ordinance of secession, instituted war by the seizure and appropriation of the property of the Federal Government, and by organizing and mobilizing armies, with the avowed purpose of capturing or destroying the Capitol of the Union:

They have attempted to bring the allegiance of the people of the United States into direct conflict with their subordinate allegiance to the State, thereby making obedience to their pretended Ordinance, treason against the former.

Some of the delegates were for immediate separation from the eastern part of the state and the establishment of a new state. In fact, Carlile had taken that position at the first Wheeling Convention. He now decided that that went against the Virginia state constitution. "I find that even I, who first started the little stone down the mountain, have now to apply the rubbers to other gentlemen who have outrun me in the race, to check their impetuosity."

Carlile's new position was that secession had vacated the offices of the existing state government. The convention should reorganize the state government. The legislature of the new "Restored government of Virginia" could then approve the separation of the western counties. This plan was unanimously accepted on June 19. The following day, the convention selected new state officers. Francis Pierpont of Marion County was elected governor.

Also on this date: A Meeting in St. Louis

150 Years Ago: Big Bethel

2011-06-09T02:44:00.143-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On June 10, 1861, the battle of Big Bethel took place near the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. If it had occurred later in the war it would hardly be worth mentioning, but at this early stage -- almost two months to the day after Fort Sumter was fired upon -- it was the first significant battle of the Civil War with 5500 men engaged on both sides.

When Virginia seceded, almost all of the Federal property in the state was quickly seized by the state authorities, but the small regular U.S. Army garrison at Fort Monroe on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula was quickly reinforced. The fort would remain in Union hands throughout the war.

Major General Benjamin Butler was put in command of the garrison in May 1861. He quickly expanded his position, occupying the towns of Newport News and Hampton, Virginia.

Before he became temporarily unemployed, Robert E. Lee responded to this threat by sending Colonel John Magruder to the area. Magruder set up a forward base about eight miles from Hampton at Little Bethel Church and a well-fortified position a little further north at Big Bethel Church behind Brick Kiln Creek. Magruder's small Virginia force was soon increased to 1500, and they quickly got to work harassing Butler's pickets and patrols.

Butler was especially worried that these Confederates could disrupt his lines of communication with his forces at Newport News and Hampton. He worked up a plan for a night march and a surprise attack at dawn with an aide, Major Theodore Winthrop. The plan proved to be too much for the green troops and officers to pull off.

Brigadier General Ebenezer Peirce commanded the assault. Two columns were to converge near the enemy's position, drive them back and burn the churches. To avoid confusion in the dark, units were given white patches or rags to wear on their left arms. They were also to yell "Boston" as a watchword.

Colonel Adam Duryée's 5th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment led the assault. As they approached the enemy position, the 7th New York and the 3rd New York met where two roads merged into one. A friendly fire situation quickly developed; the 7th New York thought they had met up with the enemy and began firing at the other regiment of New Yorkers. Twenty-one men in the 3rd were wounded, two mortally.

The element of surprise was gone. The Confederates at Little Bethel quickly withdrew to the fortifications at Big Bethel. Meanwhile, Duryée's men, thinking the Confederates were behind them attempting to cut them off from their comrades, withdrew. A Union officer who arrived at the scene at dawn found disorganized men wandering around, "looking more like men enjoying a huge picnic than soldiers awaiting battle."

The attack was finally launched, but Peirce, who had never led men in battle before, had trouble coordinating the frontal assault on the Confederate works. The piecemeal attacks were beaten back.

Winthrop led a detachment through a swamp to assault the Confederate left flank. Winthrop waved his sword, shouted, "Come on boys, one more charge and the day is ours!," and was immediately shot through the heart. This assault was beaten back by the Confederates. The 5th New York crossed a little further downstream and tried another assault on the Confederate left. They found themselves unsupported and cut off and quickly withdrew. Colonel D. H. Hill, commanding the Confederate forces on the left, later reported that his men "were all in wild glee, and seemed to enjoy it as much as boys do rabbit-shooting."

The Union forces finally called it off; they withdrew back to Newport News and Hampton. Total Federal casualties were 18 killed, 60 wounded, and one missing. The other notable Union death (besides Winthrop, an accomplished writer and poet) was Lieutenant John Greble. He was the first West Point graduate and the first U.S. Regular Army officer killed in the war.

Within hours of the battle, Magruder withdrew the Confederate forces to a stronger position at Yorktown. Only one Confederate soldier was killed; Private Henry Wyatt of the 1st North Carolina Regiment was the first Confederate enlisted man to be killed in the war. Seven were wounded.

A sketch of the battlefield can be found here.

150 Years Ago: Saturday, June 8, 1861

2011-06-08T00:55:00.002-04:00

On June 8, 1861, voters in Tennessee chose secession 104,913 to 47,238. The vote was a foregone conclusion; Tennessee Governor Isham Harris and the state legislature virtually already had the state in the Confederacy.

Much of the pro-Union vote came in the eastern part of the state. Wherever the Appalachian Mountains ran through the South, through western Virginia and North Carolina, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and even into northern Georgia and Alabama, Union patriotism was high, slave population was low, and there was a resentment against the flatlanders who were in power.

Also on this date, the United States Sanitary Commission was authorized by President Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron. The USSC was set up to coordinate the volunteer war efforts of women. They raised money, worked as nurses, ran kitchens in army camps, made uniforms, and performed other duties.

Robert E. Lee was unemployed. He had been in overall command of the Virginia state troops. On this day, Virginia Governor John Letcher turned the troops over to the Confederate government.

In the western part of the state, Brigadier General Robert Garnett took command of the rattled Confederate troops that participated in the Philippi races.

150 Years Ago: Political Generals

2011-06-06T00:52:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

On Thursday, June 6, 1861, Confederate Brigadier General Henry Wise was assigned to command in western Virginia.

Wise, formerly the governor of Virginia, was a textbook example of a political general. It was a common practice during the Civil War for politicians and other leading citizens to be promoted to high rank. It was almost always done for some political gain, but it was also thought that these men had leadership skills that would offset their lack of military training.

It seems odd today, but in the huge volunteer armies that were taking shape in 1861 it was common practice for the enlisted men to choose the officers who would lead them. Often it was the local authority figure, who most likely had recruited and formed the unit.

This intermingling of military and politics was common North and South. Results were mixed. Some of the civilian leaders turned out to be natural-born military geniuses who put the West Pointers to shame. Some of the civilians, like Wise, were not up to the task at hand and were shunted aside, quietly retired or sent off to some backwater post. Wise spent most of his time in western Virginia feuding with another political general, former U.S. Secretary of War John Floyd..

150 Years Ago: Beauregard's Proclamation.

2011-06-05T22:49:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, June 5, 1861, General P. G. T. Beauregard, who was then concentrating his Army of Northern Virginia around Manassas, issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of the region:

HEAD-QUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF ALEXANDRIA,

CAMP PICKENS, June 5, 1861.

To the good people of the Counties of Lowtown, Fairfax and Prince William:

A reckless and unprincipled tyrant has invaded your soil ABRAHAM LINCOLN, regardless of all moral, legal and constitutional restraints, has thrown his Abolitionists among you, who are murdering and imprisoning your citizens, confiscating and destroying your property, and committing other acts of violence and out age too shocking and revolting to humanity to be enumerated. All rules of civilized warfare are abandoned, and they proclaim by their acts, if not on their banners, that their war-cry is "beauty and booty." All that is dear to man -- your honor, and that of your wives and daughters, your fortunes and your lives, are involved in this momentous contest.

In the name, therefore of the constituted authorities of the Confederate States -- in the sacred cause of constitutional liberty and self-government, for which we are contending -- in behalf of civilization and humanity itself. I, G.T. BEAUREGARD, Brigadier-General of the Confederate States, commanding at Camp Pickens, Manassas Junction, do make this my proclamation, and invite and enjoin you, by every consideration dear to the hearts of freemen and patriots, by the name and memory of your revolutionary fathers, and by the purity and sanctity of your domestic firesides, to rally to the standard of your State and country, and by every means in your power, compatible with honorable warfare, to drive back and excel the invaders from your land. I conjure you to be true and loyal to your country, and her legal and constitutional authorities, and especially to be vigilant of the movements and acts of the enemy, so as to enable you to give the earliest authentic information to those head-quarters, or to the officers under my command.

I desire to assure you that the utmost protection in my power will be extended to you all.

G.T. BEAUREGARD,

Brig.-Gen. Commanding.

150 Years Ago: The Death of Stephen Douglas

2011-06-03T06:41:00.001-04:00

On June 3, 1861, Stephen Douglas, 48, died in Chicago.

Although he was Lincoln's chief rival for the presidency in the November election, Douglas spoke forcefully and often in support of the Union cause and Lincoln's prosecution of the war. After Fort Sumter he traveled to the West (what we now consider the Midwest), rallying thousands of men to arms. Already in ill health, the effort wore him down.

He fell ill around the first of May. It started off as a cold, then a fever set in. He was confined to bed. His condition worsened; a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism set in. He had suffered through painful bouts of rheumatism before, but now it sapped his strength. He rallied on May 19 and was allowed to go outside briefly for some fresh air. The next day he was sicker than ever. The rheumatism assumed "a typhoid character." Other ailments piled on -- an ulcerous sore throat, "torpor of the liver" and constipation.

In the end, he drifted in and out. He would seem to be slipping away, then rally for a bit. He received the last rites of the Catholic Church. He rallied long enough to dictate a letter. It was addressed to Virgil Hicox, leader of the Illinois Democrats, but meant to be publicized to all his supporters. It urged all to stand strong for the Union against those who would "obliterate the United States from the map of the world."

As his wife Adele held his hand and sobbed, he drifted away for the final time just after dawn. Someone in the room must have asked if Douglas was in any pain. His final words were: "He...is...very...comfortable."

The news was immediately telegraphed to Lincoln. The White House and many government buildings were draped in mourning. As the news spread, more and more tributes were paid to him throughout the nation. Busts and portraits appeared everywhere and people draped their homes and businesses in mourning.

Douglas's body lay in state at Bryan Hall, a public auditorium on Clark Street in Chicago. A steady stream of people passed through for two days to pay tribute to the great man. His funeral was held on June 7, and he was buried on the shore of Lake Michigan. The state of Illinois bought the gravesite and commissioned Leonard Volk to construct a large monument over his grave. The Stephen A. Douglas Tomb and Memorial was completed in 1881.

Also on this date, in western Virginia, a small but significant skirmish took place that became mockingly known as "the Philippi races."

150 Years Ago: The Philippi Races

2011-06-03T04:54:00.002-04:00

On June 3, 1861, Union troops attacked and routed a much smaller Confederate force at Philippi, Virginia. It was a small skirmish that had a big impact on the opening days of the Civil War.

Union Major General George McClellan was conducting the first real campaign of the war. McClellan commanded the Department of the Ohio. From his headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, he quickly realized the importance of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad that linked his command to Washington.

McClellan sent troops into western Virginia to secure the railroad there. There was a small Confederate force of about 800 men under Colonel George Porterfield at Grafton, Virginia, a small village at the site of the junction of two lines of the B & O Railroad. As the Union troops neared Grafton, the Confederates withdrew south to Philippi.

After a brief pause to regroup, two columns under Colonel Benjamin Kelley marched all night in a driving rain fifteen miles south to Philippi to launch a predawn surprise attack on the Confederate force. This was a tremendous accomplishment for raw recruits on almost nonexistent roads over mountainous terrain in terrible weather, but the two columns, some 3000 men, converged on Philippi before dawn.

A pistol shot was to be the signal to attack. The poorly armed, badly outnumbered Confederates were huddled in their tents to escape the terrible weather. They had not set up picket lines to guard the perimeter of their camp.

Most of the population of this section of Virginia was pro-Unionist, but one of the Confederate sympathizers, Mrs. Thomas Humphreys, saw the Union troops advancing and sent her son on horseback to warn the encampment. She watched as Union pickets captured the boy and fired her pistol at them. Her shots launched the attack prematurely.

It didn't matter; the attack was still effective. The Union troops opened up with their artillery, which awakened the sleeping Confederates. They fled south, leaving their equipment and, in most cases, their clothes behind. The Federal infantry followed in hot pursuit and the whole affair became known as "the Philippi races;" a shameful disgrace in the South and a big morale boost in the North.

Kelley was badly wounded while pursuing the Confederates. Porterfield was soon relieved of command, replaced by Brigadier General Robert Garnett.

Though he was not there and didn't play any part in the skirmish, McClellan was given all the credit for the victory. He was quickly becoming the first hero of the war in the North and would soon be called to Washington to replace Winfield Scott as General-in-Chief of the U.S. Army.

The rout emboldened the pro-Unionists of the region. Soon they would break away, seceding from the secessionists, creating a brand-new state in the Federal Union, West Virginia.

This encounter would see the first (but certainly not the last) battlefield amputations of the war. One of these, James Hanger, lost a leg. He recovered and was sent home where he made an artificial leg for himself out of barrel staves and a hinge. It worked well enough that the Virginia legislature commissioned him to make them for other veterans. After the war, he patented the "Hanger Limb" and founded what is now Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics.

Also on this date, Stephen Douglas died in Chicago.

150 Years Ago: Fairfax Court House

2011-06-01T04:29:00.000-04:00

After Fort Sumter, the Civil War began slowly like a freight train gathering speed. Both sides had to raise armies to fight. Men across the country, North and South, raced to join up, but arming and supplying the new recruits would be a daunting task -- many were turned away for lack of weapons. But once the armies began forming up, they began moving and running into each other.

In the early morning hours, around 3 a.m., on Saturday, June 1, 1861, a Regular U.S. Army cavalry force of about 50 to 75 troopers under Lieutenant Charles Tompkins rode into the village of Fairfax Court House, Virginia. They were on a reconnaissance mission to gauge Confederate strength in the area. They found a sizable force of about 200 men in the village -- two cavalry companies and a company of infantry.

The Confederate force was just green recruits, many without arms. Most of the cavalry fled straightaway, leaving the infantry company, the Warrenton Rifles, to do the bulk of the fighting.

What followed was a brief skirmish that would be the first land battle of the Civil War.

The U.S. Cavalry rode in, made a lot of noise, and captured a few prisoners, including some Confederate cavalrymen who were trying to form a line in the main road while most of their comrades rode off. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Ewell had just arrived in town to take over the Confederate force. He came out of his hotel into the middle of the melee and was shot in the shoulder. Ewell would be the first Confederate field grade officer to be wounded in the war.

Captain John Q. Marr, commander of the Warrenton Rifles, heard the commotion and quickly got his men up and formed into battle lines in a nearby clover field. A few of the retreating Confederate cavalrymen ran upon them in the dark and were fired on. One was wounded; the first case of friendly fire in the war.

Marr got out the sight of his men and disappeared, leaving the unit leaderless. A 64-year-old civilian took command. He was William "Extra Billy" Smith, a former Virginia governor and a resident of Warrenton. He had helped recruit the company and knew many of the men, but had no military training or experience. After the battle was over, Marr was found dead in the clover field, the first Confederate fatality of the war. Smith found that he enjoyed the experience of commanding men in battle and asked for a commission. He would become one of the oldest Confederate generals in the Civil War.

Ewell, wounded shoulder and all, took charge of the scene and moved the Warrenton Rifles into a better defensive position. Some civilians in the town grabbed what weapons they had and joined them. Three times the U.S. Cavalry unit tried to ride out of town past the Warrenton Rifles; three times they were driven back. They finally left the village via a different route.

Confederate casualties: 1 dead (Captain Marr), two wounded, five missing (all captured)
Union casualties: 1 dead (a Private Saintclair), and four wounded, including Lieutenant Tompkins. They reported one man missing, but the Confederates took three prisoners. The Union also lost nine horses killed; four were wounded.

150 Years Ago: Friday, May 31, 1861

2011-05-31T00:05:00.000-04:00

On May 31, 1861, The Confederacy gave General P. G. T. Beauregard command of the "Alexandria Line," which includes all of northern Virginia. He would be charged with defending the territory against invasion. He would soon be fending off General Irwin McDowell's army at Manassas.

Out west, in Missouri, General Nathaniel Lyon was given command of all the Union troops in the state, replacing General William Harney.

Even further west, the Union evacuated some of the forts in the Indian Territory. Most of those troops arrived in Leavenworth, Kansas, on this date. The path they took would later be known as the Chisholm Trail, named after one of their guides, Jesse Chisholm. After the war western ranchers would use the trail to get their cattle to the eastern markets.

150 Years Ago: Grafton, Virginia

2011-05-30T00:08:00.006-04:00

On May 30, 1861, Union troops under Major General George McClellan occupied the town of Grafton, Virginia. The move was made to secure the section of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad that ran through the western Virginia mountains. The mostly pro-Unionist residents of the region cheered the Union invasion. Grafton was the site of an important railroad junction where the B & O split into lines that went west and northwest to different points on the Ohio River.

Also on this date, Secretary of War Simon Cameron approved General Benjamin Butler's plan to retain any fugitive slaves that entered his lines at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Butler was to put them to work and keep records of their service.

At Norfolk, Virginia, the Confederates raised the U.S.S. Merrimack. It had been burned and sunk when the Gosport Naval Yard was abandoned by the Union troops on April 20.

Frank Blair used the authority given him by Lincoln and the War Department to relieve General William Harney of command. Nathaniel Lyon would take his place as the top commander in the St. Louis area the following day.