Civil War History - General DiscussionFor Discussions on Civil War Era Personalities, Politics, Issues, Campaigns, Battles, and more. Serious Civil War Discussions Only Please! All other posts will be deleted.
The Battle of Ft. Donelson continued today. Yesterday the combat had been primarily on land, as Gen. Grant’s forces attacked the Confederate stronghold. Reinforcements had arrived, and the fort held. Today the attack came from the waters of the Cumberland River. The Union gunboats USS Carondelet, St. Louis, Louisville and others blasted away at the artillery protecting the river. Those guns were on a bluff some height above the water, however, and survived with little damage. The gunboats on the other hand were not so lucky. The St. Louis and Louisville both suffered damage to their steering mechanisms and had to float away downstream. Iron plating had not yet come to the vessels on the rivers.
Saturday Feb. 14 1863
RED RIVER RUMBLES REMARKABLE
Things were not going smoothly on the Red River in Louisiana today. The Union warship Queen of the West started the day off right, capturing the Confederate vessel New Era No. 5. Alas, a few hours later she encountered some Rebel shore batteries, and was severely damaged and ran aground. The crew managed to escape by the possibly unique technique of floating to another Union ship on cotton bales. The Queen’s captain, Charles Ellet, ordered the rescue ship, DeSoto, to return to the New Era. He transferred his command to the captured ship and burned DeSoto. Ellet claimed in his report that the pilot of Queen of the West was disloyal, and had run the ship aground intentionally.
Union General William T. Sherman enters *******n, Mississippi, during a winter campaign that served as a precursor to Sherman's "March to the Sea." This often-overlooked campaign was the first attempt by the Union at total warfare, a strike aimed not just at military objectives but also at the will of the southern people.
Sherman launched the campaign from Vicksburg, Mississippi, with the goal of destroying the rail center at *******n and clearing central Mississippi of Confederate resistance. Sherman believed this would free additional Federal troops that he hoped to use on his planned campaign against Atlanta, Georgia, in the following months.
Sherman led 25,000 troops east from Vicksburg and ordered another 7,000 under General William Sooy Smith to march southeast from Memphis, Tennessee. They planned to meet at *******n in eastern Mississippi. The Confederates had few troops with which to stop Sherman. General Leonidas Polk had less than 10,000 men to defend the state. Polk retreated from the capital at Jackson as Sherman approached, and some scattered cavalry units could not impede the Yankees' progress. Polk tried to block the roads to *******n so the Confederates could move as many supplies as possible from the city's warehouses, but Sherman pushed into the city on February 14 in the middle of a torrential rain.
After capturing *******n, Sherman began to destroy the railroad and storage facilities while he waited for the arrival of Smith. Sherman later wrote: "For five days, 10,000 men worked hard and with a will in that work of destruction...*******n, with its depots, storehouses, arsenals, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists." Sherman waited until February 20 for Smith to arrive, but Smith never reached *******n. On February 21, Confederate troops under General Nathan Bedford Forrest waylaid Smith at West Point, Mississippi, and dealt the Federals a resounding defeat. Smith returned to Memphis, and Sherman turned back towards Vicksburg.
Ultimately, Sherman failed to clear Mississippi of Rebels, and the Confederates repaired the rail lines within a month. Sherman did learn how to live off the land, however, and took notes on how to strike a blow against the civilian population of the South. He used that knowledge with devastating results in Georgia later that year.
Gen. William T. Sherman was no longer interested in toying with the Southern high command on the subject of the target of his troops next assault. The Union forces were made up of four Army corps, which marched separately along parallel courses. This had enabled Sherman to direct their routes to suggest any number of destinations. As the mass of men crossed the Congaree River today, Sherman started steering a straight course for Columbia, South Carolina, the capital of the state. He wished to proceed, he said, “without wasting time or labor on Branchville or Charleston.” Charleston, which had spent every day since the attack on Ft. Sumter expecting to be assaulted, was simply disregarded as unimportant.
And to think I've been digging for the 1864-65 stuff a piece at a time! Seriously, if you gentlemen can help me piece together details after January 1865 on the AOT and Sherman leading up to Bentonville, I'll forever give you credit for the effort. Thanks again.
__________________ Ancestors in US Army: 13th TN Cav; 10th TN Cav; 3rd NC Inf
Ancestors in CSA Army: 48th VA; 63rd VA, 5th NC Cav; 37th NC
Wife and Grandson's CSA: 15th AL, 51st GA, 41st TN; 36th TN; GA Mil 1197 Dist
And to think I've been digging for the 1864-65 stuff a piece at a time! Seriously, if you gentlemen can help me piece together details after January 1865 on the AOT and Sherman leading up to Bentonville, I'll forever give you credit for the effort. Thanks again.
One of the most stunning examples of Confederate defeat snatched from the jaws of victory occurred today at Ft. Donelson on the Cumberland River in Tennessee. The gunboats of Flag Officer Foote prevented the Rebel forces from taking to the river in large numbers to escape, so they did the only thing they could: they put up a fight fierce enough to break a hole in the Union line of attack. McClernand’s right flank was blown completely away...so what did Gen. Pillow do? He pulled the victorious troops back into the fort and debated who should have the honor of surrendering the garrison. Gen. Floyd, the official commander, decided to decline, as did Gen. Pillow, so they took a handy rowboat and saved themselves to fight another day. The honor of surrender they left to Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner who, they reasoned, having been a prewar friend of Gen. U.S. Grant, would get the men better terms anyway. They were wrong.
The last refugees from the USS Queen of the West were floating to rescue today after a most peculiar Valentine’s Day. The occasion on the Red River had started out well, with the capture of the Confederate vessel New Era No. 5. After that success they had gone on to attack Confederate shore batteries, in the process of which they had lamentably run aground, causing the steam pipes to break and requiring the ship to be abandoned. The crew escaped by floating away atop cotton bales. The captain claimed that the grounding was caused by a “disloyal pilot.” The crew reassembled aboard their fellow Union ship DeSoto, but the captain, Charles Ellet, decided that the captured Confederate ship was a better platform and made them all transfer again. Today, in a moment of relative calm, they met up with the Indianola and got everybody established on the right ship.
Monday, Feb. 15 1864
MAD MILITARY MARCHERS MANHANDLE *******N
Gen. William T. Sherman’s men had had a long march down from Vicksburg, nearly 140 miles all told, and in the winter with bad conditions, including snipers, to boot. Yesterday they had arrived in *******n,Mississippi, and discovered that Gen. Polk’s Confederates weren’t even going to make them fight for the place, but were withdrawing further south. They had been given a good night’s rest and as of this morning were feeling quite fine. Today they were given their orders: walk unimpeded into the town ahead and tear it into little nasty bits. They were to take shovels, rakes, and implements of destruction and tear up the railroads, the stations, the public buildings, the hotels, arsenals, depots, and anything whatsoever that looked like it might provide aid and comfort to the Confederacy or soldiers thereof. The men obeyed their orders. Orders to leave private homes unmolested were largely but not entirely obeyed.
Wednesday, Feb. 15 1865
COLUMBIA CAMPAIGN CONGAREE CROSSING CONFUSING
It had been known for days that Gen. W. T. “Cump” Sherman’s troops were heading for Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Today the only remaining barrier between the city and the conqueror was the Congaree River...but the river was not a loyal ally. The February winds and chill produced a thick fog off the river, and the result was that the Union forces were able to cross it almost unimpeded, because the artillery defenses couldn’t see what to shoot at. The weather had been very wet recently and the wagons and artillery bogged down repeatedly. Confederate ground forces fought fiercely where they could, but it amounted to mere skirmishing without air support.
The end came for the few remaining defenders of Confederate Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River in Tennessee today. There were few left because everybody in high position who could, had booked out the day before or overnight. The original commander, Floyd, had no stomach for presiding over a defeat so he turned command over to Gen. Pillow who had come in reinforcement. Pillow likewise saw no career advancement possibilities here, so he promptly resigned the honor to Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, and Floyd and Pillow climbed into a rowboat and skedaddled. Overnight, seeing a distasteful situation developing, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalrymen quietly gathered their horses and simply burst through the Union lines to fight another day. Today Buckner asked his old friend U.S. Grant his terms for surrender. Grant gained an immortal nickname with his response: “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.”
The United States Senate today passed the final version of the first formal draft in the U.S in the Civil War. The action had already passed the House of Representatives, and since President Lincoln had been pressing urgently for its passage his signature was immediately forthcoming. This action had been long anticipated. In the first days of the war men had rushed to take the colors in a flush of patriotism, hopes of adventure, desire to impress female associates, or just because every other unatached male in the neighborhood seemed to be doing it. As the early enlistments were for very short terms, sometimes as little as six or even three months, so men had to be discharged before they were even very well trained, much less seasoned, experienced forces. Some of these men of course reenlisted, but as the war dragged on there was no longer any illusion of romance involved. The South had been using a draft for more than a year now.
The party had started yesterday as the men of Gen. William T. Sherman’s army, having marched 140 miles to get to *******n, Mississippi, and then taking the town without a fight, were turned loose to rip the place to shreds. They were pretty much unimpeded by even civilian opposition, since the population had fled in anticipation of a battle taking place. The troops were specifically told to destroy any public places such as train depots, stations and tracks, communications equipment such as telegraphs and wires, warehouses and arsenals, much of which could be considered legitimate military targets. However, they were also given license to rip up hotels, shops of all sorts and other mercantile establishments where the justification was not military, but simply to infuriate people and (hopefully) get them to pressure the government to surrender and end the war. Sherman’s men were told not to molest private residences, but enforcement was not strict.
Thursday Feb. 16 1865
COLUMBIA CANNONADE CAUSES CONTROVERSY
Gen. William T. Sherman’s men had come today to Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, after taking a rather roundabout route which had kept the potential defenders confused as to which Carolina community was to be their destination. This had kept large numbers of troops from being gathered in any one place, which of course was exactly what Sherman wanted. The commander of the defenses of Columbia was Gen. Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard, and he had the crack cavalry of Wade Hampton’s Legion to assist with the cause. Despite this, Beauregard telegraphed to Jefferson Davis that it was impossible to defend the city, much less save it, and he then left town after ordering the stored cotton to be burned to save it from capture. Several cannon shots were fired at the town, directed at Hampton’s cavalrymen whenever they became visible, and there were cries of outrage about inflicting war on helpless civilians. This prompted an investigation, which proved that the shelling hadn’t actually hurt anyone.
Today was the day that Gens. Floyd and Pillow, the two Confederate commanders of Ft. Donelson, Tenn., who had abandoned their 12,000 men there to capture by Gen. U.S. Grant, arrived in Nashville to face the music. Gen. Grant, when word of his triumph reached Washington, got a new nickname to go with his initials--”Unconditional Surrender Grant” the papers were calling him--as well as a new rank as he was promoted to Major General of Volunteers with amazing speed. The fall of Donelson had sealed the complete loss of Kentucky to the Union, and left Tennessee on the "severely endangered" list. Civilians in Nashville were packing frantically and leaving town in droves, to whatever rear areas they thought might be safer. Amazingly enough neither Floyd nor Pillow were ever court-martialled for their dereliction of duty. The other general who abandoned the fort to its fate, Nathan Bedford Forrest, at least brought his entire cavalry force through Union lines to safety.They would arrive in Nashville tomorrow.
Tuesday Feb. 17 1863
<i>HERCULES</i> HAS HASTE HASSLE
The captain of a ship is the last of the absolute monarchs, by law and custom, even when the ship in question is a lowly tugboat providing hauling services to the U.S. Navy. Thus it was today that the captain of the Federal boat <i>Hercules</i> was towing a chain of seven coal barges down the Mississippi River. Her captain had been warned that while his destination, Memphis, Tenn., was firmly in Union hands, the same could not be said about the Arkansas shoreline on the opposite side of the river. The captain, alas, ignored this wise advice and came down the channel on the Arkansas side. Sure enough, while his navigation was sound enough, his judgement of the political tides was not. His vessel was set upon by fierce Confederate and guerilla fire and was shortly captured. <i>Hercules</i> was soon seen to be burning, and the Confederates were making an effort to detach and save the coal barges. The Union gunboats, although not willing to venture into danger themselves, launched a barrage of long-range fire and drove the guerillas off.
Wednesday Feb. 17 1864
SUBMARINE SUCCEEDS IN SHIP SINKING
The history of the Confederate submarine force had by and large not been a happy one up to this point, as the various efforts promoted by different inventors had proven far more lethal to their own crews, often including the inventors, than they were dangerous to Union ships. All that changed today as the CSS “Hunley” did what she was built to do: attacked and sank a U.S. sloop of the blockade, the USS “Housatonic.” The “Hunley” was not, at this point, a true submarine but what was known as a “semi-submersible”, designed to ride so low in the water as to be very hard to see. As true torpedoes had not yet been invented, her offensive weaponry was a bomb attached to a long spar on the front of the craft. Detected, as planned, at the very last moment, ship, spar and bomb slammed into the “Housatonic” just forward of the mizzenmast as the sloop tried frantically to slip anchor and back up. The explosion of the bomb detonated the sloop’s magazine and she sank almost at once.
Friday Feb. 17 1865
CAROLINA CATASTROPHES CAUSE CONFEDERATE CONSTERNATION
Twin milestones were reached in the War of Southern Rebellion today, and both occurred in the state that had been the leader of the secession movement that had led to the war--South Carolina. On the coast, the guns of Charleston fell silent tonight after 567 continuous days of defensive combat operations, and the city was abandoned. Forts Moultrie, Sumter, Johnson, Beauregard and Castle Pinkney were closed, and the troops who had manned them so sucessfully and so long were sent North to join the final defenses of Richmond. Every gunboat in port was burned, blown up or scuttled; only the CSS “Columbia” was found in condition fit to be refloated and used by the Federal navy. Further inland another blow just as heavy was struck as the South Carolina capital of Columbia was taken after the defending troops, including a rearguard of Wade Hampton’s cavalry legion, departed. Civil leaders rode out to General Sherman’s lines and surrendered the town. In the midst of the Union celebrations catastrophe occurred: fire broke out, was fanned by strong winds, and destroyed much of the city. Sherman blamed Hampton’s men for setting fire to cotton bales to keep them from Union confiscation. Confederates blamed drunken Union troops, liberated slaves, just-released Union prisoners, or Sherman personally.
The soldiers from Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's army ransack Columbia, South Carolina, and leave a charred city in their wake.
Sherman is most famous for his "March to the Sea" in the closing months of 1864. After capturing Atlanta in September, Sherman cut away from his supply lines and cut a swath of destruction across Georgia on his way to Savannah. His army lived off the land and destroyed railroads, burned warehouses, and ruined plantations along the way. This was a calculated effort--Sherman thought that the war would end quicker if civilians of the South felt some destruction personally, a view supported by General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all Union forces, and President Lincoln.
After spending a month in Savannah, Sherman headed north to tear the Confederacy into smaller pieces. The Yankee soldiers took particular delight in carrying the war to South Carolina, the symbol of the rebellion. It was the first state to secede and the site of Fort Sumter, where South Carolinians fired on the Federal garrison to start the war. When General Wade Hampton's cavalry evacuated Columbia, the capital was open to Sherman's men.
Many of the Yankees got drunk before starting the rampage. General Henry Slocum observed: "A drunken soldier with a musket in one hand and a match in the other is not a pleasant visitor to have about the house on a dark, windy night." Sherman claimed that the raging fires were started by evacuating Confederates and fanned by high winds. He later wrote: "Though I never ordered it and never wished it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the War." Belatedly, some Yankees helped fight the fires, but more than two-thirds of the city was destroyed. Already choked with refugees from the path of Sherman's army, Columbia's situation became even more desperate when Sherman's army destroyed the remaining public buildings before marching out of Columbia three days later.
Tuesday Feb. 18 1862
CONFEDERATE CONGRESS CORDIALLY CONVENED
The Confederate States of America had had a legislative body since the earliest days, but it had always met under the name of “Provisional Congress” as it was essentially an ad-hoc, self-appointed group. Last fall, however, elections had been held and today it was the official First Congress of the Confederate States of America which convened for the first time in Richmond, Virginia. It consisted of an upper and lower house and in fact looked quite remarkably like the Congress of the United States. Unfortunately, what should have been a happy celebration of the progress of the young nation was marred by the receipt of the news of the fall of Fort Donelson in Tennessee. The loss of the fort led to the complete failure of Confederate efforts in Kentucky, and left Tennessee threatened.
Confederate General Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard was in charge of the defenses of southern South Carolina and northern Georgia area. Although the harbors were heavily defended, the inland areas were not. There seemed to be no reason to waste scarce manpower on internal areas of the Confederacy after all, and every available man who was fit for military service was needed for either the defense of Richmond or the campaigns against the tightening stranglehold in the Western and Trans-Mississippi theaters. A defense Beauregard had to prepare nonetheless, and at least he could make speeches and inspire the populace. Today he warned of the dangers which could arise from attacks on either Charleston or Savannah, Ga. “To arms, fellow citizens!” he said.
The virtual playtime for the United States forces of Gen. William T. Sherman in *******n, Mississippi, continued today. Sherman had told them to wreck every bit of public property or any items which could be of benefit to the Confederate cause. As *******n was not a particularly large metropolitan area, there was really not much left to destroy there by today, so the Federal efforts were redirected at points outside the city limits. In particular, railroads or anything involved with railroad traffic was considered a prime target. Resistance, however, was not entirely lacking in the area. There was a Union supply line running in support of Sherman between *******n and Memphis, Tennessee. This line was attacked by skirmishers at points in the Aberdeen-Okolona area in northern Mississippi.
The shattering blow of the loss of the South Carolina capital of Columbia yesterday was followed by a defeat even more humiliating, the long-invincible Charleston. Under attack by sea for four long years, defended by an intricate harbor and interlinked island forts, the town that could have fallen in the Battle of Secessionville was finally taken today by land. As the last Confederate soldiers quietly evacuated one side of town, the other side was entered by the troops of Gen. Alexander Shimmelfennig around nine o’clock in the morning. The usual delegation of civilian leaders, headed by the mayor of the town, met Shimmelfennig to offer the city’s surrender. Although some bales of cotton and other supplies were set afire to keep them out of Yankee hands, the flames did not spread to devour the town as they had in Columbia the day before. This may have been due to the random chance that the wind was not as strong.
In the wake of the capture of Ft. Donelson, Tenn., a few days ago, events were moving with great speed on the Western front. In fact, matters were moving faster than the bureaucracy could keep up with, and this led to some squabbling among the commanders. Gen. C. F. Smith led his men into Clarksville, Tenn., today to occupy the town and preserve order. Unfortunately Gen. Smith was under the command of Gen. U.S. “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, and Clarksville was in territory which was the responsibility of Gen. Don Carlos Buell. This was, to use technical military terminology, a no-no. Clerks scrambled to get matters straightened out, hopefully before either general got to Nashville, the next target.
Admiral Samuel DuPont was in charge of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, based out of Port Royal, S.C. He was not a happy man today though, as evidenced by a letter he wrote to his superiors. After pointing out that nobody could get through the blockade by day anymore, he got a bit heated that he was being criticized because a few ships were still sneaking through at night. “A cordon of ships--some twenty-one miles moored together stem to stern--would do it easy,” he said somewhat tactlessly. He also had a low opinion of ship’s machinery coming out of American factories: “...the wear and tear and ceaseless breaking of American machinery compared with English or even French now, keep a portion of [the forty-some ships he had] always in here repairing. If I had not induced the Department to establish a floating machine shop, which I had seen the French have in China, the blockade would have been a total failure,” he said modestly.
President Abraham Lincoln, for all his determination to secure the abolition of slavery, was in no way a believer in equal rights for blacks--in fact by modern standards he would be considered a thoroughgoing racist. In common with most whites of his time, he took for granted that the differences between blacks and whites were so great that it was inconceivable that they could ever live together in equality and peace. Today he wrote to the Governor of Massachusetts asking “if it is really true that Massachusetts wishes to afford a permanent home within her borders, for all, or even a large number of colored persons who will come to her.” Lincoln had proposed plan after plan for recolonization of blacks, to Africa, Cuba or Central America. Where he had gotten the notion that Massachusetts wished to turn itself into a black homeland is unknown.
As Gen. William T. Sherman’s men completed the demolition of Columbia's public buildings, mills, railroads, factories, and anything else that might be of use to the Confederate war effort, they prepared to depart for the next city to the north, Fayetteville. On the occasion a Federal major, George Nichols, wrote in his diary words which did not bode well for the spirit of reconciliation in America: “Columbia will have bitter cause to remember the visit of Sherman’s army...it is not alone in the property that has been destroyed... It is in the crushing downfall of their inordinate vanity, their arrogant pride, that the rebels will feel the effects of the visit of our army. Their fancied, unapproachable, invincible security has been ruthlessly overthrown. ...they have lost their best blood here.”
William Wallace Lincoln, known as “Willie” and 12 years of age, died today at the White House, of typhoid fever, which had first attacked him on Feb. 7. The health of the President’s son, interestingly enough, had parallels with that of many men in the armed services of North and South. In March of 1861 the boy had come down with measles; the same disease wreaked havoc on armies in the first year of the war. Even Robert E. Lee noted that the ailment was “mild in childhood but devastating in manhood,” and many died. Willie seemed to recover well from that attack, but typhoid was a disease of polluted water, and in Washington D.C. there was hardly any other kind to be had. The Lincolns were devastated, but they were not the only ones in mourning for a son; the casualty lists from the Battle of Fort Donelson were printed in the newspapers today.
Friday Feb. 20 1863
MERCHANTS MINTING MINOR MONEY
Difficult though it may be for us to believe today, when pennies are such a plague upon the land that nearly every store has a little dish into which the despised denomination can be thrown, small coins were greatly in demand in the days of the War. They were also in horribly short supply these days, as both the machinery to mint them and the ores from which they would normally be made were diverted to the war effort. Pennies in particular were in very short supply in the North. Merchants responded by printing and issuing what amounted to personal notes in denominations of one, two and three cents each.
In the largest battle fought in Florida during the Civil War, a Confederate force under General Joseph Finegan decisively defeats an army commanded by General Truman Seymour. The victory kept the Confederates in control of Florida's interior for the rest of the war.
Olustee was the climax to a Union invasion of Florida a few weeks before. General Quincy Gilmore, commander of the Union's Department of the South, dispatched Seymour to Jacksonville on February 7. Seymour's troops secured the town and began to send cavalry raiders inland to Lake City and Gainesville. Just behind the troops came John Hay, private secretary to President Lincoln. Hay began issuing loyalty oaths to residents in an effort to form a new, Republican state government in time to send delegates to the 1864 party convention. Under the president's plan of reconstruction, a new state government could be formed when 10 percent of the state's prewar voting population had taken a loyalty oath.
Seymour began moving towards Lake City, west of Jacksonville, to destroy a railroad bridge and secure northern Florida. Finegan possessed only 500 men at Lake City, but reinforcements were arriving. By the time the two sides began to skirmish near the railroad station of Olustee, each side had about 5,000 troops. Throughout the day on February 20, a pitched battle raged. The Confederates were close to breaking the Yankee lines when they ran low on ammunition. When more cartridges arrived, the attack continued. By late afternoon, Seymour realized the fight was lost and he began to retreat.
The Yankees suffered 1,800 killed, wounded, or captured, while the Confederates lost about 900 men. It was one of the highest casualty rates of the war for the Union. The battle did disrupt the flow of supplies from Florida to other Confederate armies, but it failed to bring about a new state government. Most of Florida remained in Confederate hands until the end of the war.
There was fighting in the lands of, and waters around, Florida for as long as the War of Southern Independence lasted, but there was only one “official” battle, and it occurred on this day. Federal Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour had been ashore with some 5500 men on a campaign of destruction for about two weeks now. They had landed in Jacksonville and moved inland, tearing up railroads, wrecking dams and levees, and creating as much havoc as they could manage. They had done so with relative impunity--up till today. They were just approaching Olustee, Fla., when they were met by 5000 Confederates under command of Brig.Gen. Joseph Finnegan. Despite the slight Union edge in numbers, in the confusion of battle two units broke under fire--the 7th New Hampshire and the 8th U.S. Colored Troops--and the Federals were forced to withdraw back towards Jacksonville.
Federal troops had made a successful landing at the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, in preparation for a march on Wilmington. The problem was that although they held the west bank of the river without opposition, their hold on the east side was not nearly so secure. The rebel forces were engaged in a furious project to manufacture and launch “torpedoes” into the waterway, sending some 200 of them during the night. Not really torpedoes in the modern sense of the word, these were more like waterproofed barrels loaded with gunpowder and equipped with triggering mechanisms designed to explode on contact. A few went astray and sent tree roots to prematurely meet their Maker, but most floated successfully into the Union naval forces. Several steamships were damaged severely and some smaller boats completely destroyed, but casualties from the effort were slight.
Confederate troops under General Henry Hopkins Sibley attack Union troops commanded by Colonel Edward R. S. Canby near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory. The first major engagement of the war in the far West, the battle produces heavy casualties but no decisive result.
This action was part of the broader movement by the Confederates to capture New Mexico and other parts of the West. This would secure territory that the Rebels thought was rightfully theirs but had been denied them by political compromises made before the Civil War. Furthermore, the cash-strapped Confederacy could use western mines to fill their treasury. From San Antonio, the Rebels moved into southern New Mexico (which included Arizona) and captured the towns of Mesilla, DoÝa Ana, and Tucson. Sibley, with 3,000 troops, now moved north against the Federal stronghold at Fort Craig on the Rio Grande.
At Fort Craig, Canby was determined to make the Confederates lay siege to the post. The Rebels, Canby reasoned, could not wait long before running low on supplies. Canby knew that Sibley did not possess sufficiently heavy artillery to attack the fort. When Sibley arrived near Fort Craig on February 15, he ordered his men to swing east of the fort, cross the Rio Grande, and then capture the Val Verde fords of the Rio Grande. He hoped to cut off Canby's communication and force the Yankees out into the open.
At the fords, five miles north of Fort Craig, a Union detachment attacked part of the Confederate force. They pinned the Texans in a ravine and were on the verge of routing the Rebels when more of Sibley's men arrived and turned the tide. Sibley's second in command, Colonel Tom Green, filling in for an ill Sibley, made a bold counterattack against the Union left flank. The Yankees fell back in retreat, and headed back to Fort Craig.
The Union suffered 68 killed, 160 wounded, and 35 missing out of 3,100 engaged. The Confederates suffered 31 killed, 154 wounded, and 1 missing out of 2,600 troops. It was a bloody but indecisive battle. Sibley's men continued up the Rio Grande. Within a few weeks, they captured Albuquerque and Santa Fe before they were stopped at the Battle of Glorieta Pass on March 28.
Usually called an "engagement," the action at Valverde, New Mexico Territory, was enough of a battle for at least a hundred men today who died in the encounter. The plan was to have Federal forces under Col. E. R. S. Canby block a ford by which Confederate troops intended to cross the Rio Grande on their way to Santa Fe. As the intent of the Southern forces was to add the immense area to the Confederacy, the matter was indeed ugent. After an altercation severe enough to see over 300 wounded in addition to the dead, the Federals beat a retreat back to Ft. Craig from which they had emerged. Someone else would have to stop the takeover of New Mexico Territory.
On the face of it, virtually nothing was going on today. A Union gunboat took potshots at some Confederate artillery batteries on the Rappahannock River, ho hum. A Federal "expedition" wandered around Tennessee south of Nashville looking for trouble, yawn. But in Washington some very major moves were underway that would not hit the presses for a couple of days yet. Work was coming to a head on the Conscription Act, which would not prove entirely popular with the populace, and a new National Bank and standardization of the national currency were about to be established.
Sunday Feb. 21 1864
SMITH STUMBLES SEEKING SHERMAN
There were two halves to what was being called the "*******n Campaign" in Mississippi. One, led by Gen. William T. Sherman, was the southerly half of the project and had accomplished its goal of reaching *******n and doing what they could to reduce its usefulness to the Confederate cause. This they did by tearing up railroad tracks, ripping down telegraph lines, burning public buildings like courthouses and post offices, as was their usual practice. The other half of the prong was not doing nearly so well. Gen. William Sooy Smith had had the misfortune of having the pestilential Confederate cavalryman Nathan B. Forrest on his tail, and was succumbing to the pressure. Although Sherman was expecting him to come riding up to *******n at any time, in fact Smith was retreating for Memphis as fast as he could manage.
Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg gets a bad rap from most historians, and in most cases this condemnation and loathing is entirely deserved. Today, though, one is hard pressed to see what else he could have done but retreat, yet again, this time from Wilmington, North Carolina. In front of him were the Union troops under overall command of Gen. William T. Sherman, who had been marching pretty much unimpeded through the heart of the southern Confederacy for weeks now. Bragg was the one supposed to be doing the impeding, but his few remaining troops stood no chance whatsoever in pitched battle. To save them, Bragg retreated again today, ordering the destruction of those supplies that could not be carried.
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