Lite version - What was the most significant event on July 30 during the U.S. Civil War?

LTC Stephen F. — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 00:08:10 -0400

In 1864 the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, VA costs many Federal lives and seemed similar to warfare in the trenches of Europe in 1916. Also in 1864, Gen Jubal Early raids Chambersburg, PA and extorts money from the town to pay for damage to the south.
In 1861 the “Richmond Enquirer published an account of a reporter who had visited wounded Union prisoners being held and cared for at the Richmond Almshouse. In general, the Enquirer's reporter is condescending towards the Union prisoners, but he singled out Elmer Ellworth's Fire Zouaves for special abuse.”
RICHMOND ENQUIRER, July 30, 1861: “Yesterday morning our reporter paid a visit to the City Alms House, where a number of the wounded, captured at Manassas, are now quartered. The Alms House is a large four story building, recently erected and completed with the exception of the plastering. It is situated on a commanding elevation in the northeastern portion of the city and affords from its windows and spacious porches a magnificent view of the surrounding country. It is most admirably adapted for a hospital, the use to which it is now put, as well on account of its interior arrangements as its salubrious situation. The wounded prisoners occupy the south end of the second story. Those seriously wounded are lying on mattresses, and, others who are slightly injured, sit on benches or walk up and down he porches as suits their pleasure. An air of neatness pervades the whole establishment, and the order is only broken by the occasional curses of a "Pet Lamb." With the exception of the New York Zouaves, the prisoners express regret at taking up arms against our people. Some say their newspapers and politicians had led them to believe that Southerners were semi-barbarous, and were preparing to overrun the North; others had been persuaded that the masses of the people here were held in subjection by a few unprincipled men, and desired the aid of the North to regain their independence; and many enlisted with the understanding that they would only be employed in the defence of Washington city. They are very grateful for the kind treatment they are receiving at our hands. But the Fire Zouaves are incorrigible. They seem perfectly oblivious to every sentiment of honor, gratitude or decency. They have nothing but the human form and faculty of speech to distinguish them from Gorillas.
No wonder the Astors and Coopers, of New York, contributed so liberally to their equipment, and urged them so earnestly to invade the South. They knew their brown stone fronts, marble palaces and plethoric warehouses rested on a foundation as insecure as the passions of this “glorious fighting material,” as Ellsworth termed them, which waited but the spark of some favorable event to fan into flames, fiercer than those that lit up the streets of Paris, and cast a lurid light over the thousand horrors of a French revolution. The New York “Herald” stated, a few weeks ago, that there were three hundred thousand just such men in the North as those composing the fire Zouave regiments, and insisted they should be organized into a “grand army,” to invade the South; and should, in the language of the Botany Bay Poet, “Leave their country for their country’s good.”
The sentiment of humanity, which finds no more capacious dwelling than a Southern heart, demands these Zouaves – debased, degraded and ungrateful as they are – should be taken care of in their present condition; but we would respectfully suggest that no such sentiment requires that our men should be compelled to occupy the same apartment with them, or what is tantamount to it, adjoining rooms, through the open doors of which they can hear abuse heaped upon our cause by the representatives from Blackwell’s Island, the Five Points, and other renowned school from whence Northern policy draws its deepest inspirations.
The Richmond Almshouse had been completed in 1860 and was intended to care for Richmond's poor and destitute in their final years. Before it could be put to that use, the war came and the building was repurposed as a hospital for wounded Union prisoners.
In 1862, the “Cincinnati Gazette is the first to use the term “copperhead” to describe “peace at any price” Democrats and those who don’t admit they are Southern sympathizers. As the year progresses, it will include the conservative wing of the northern Democrat party and others who oppose emancipation, the militia draft of 1862 and the financial legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and who do not want to see the war turned into a war to destroy the Old South rather than to restore the Union as it was. Of interest in this context is a letter President Lincoln wrote to a prominent New York financier on July 31st: “Broken eggs cannot be mended . . . This government cannot much longer play a game in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing. Those enemies must understand that they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the government, and if they fail still come back into the Union unhurt.” The financier was seemingly less impressed by this response than is McPherson.”

Pictures: 1864-07-30 Battle of the Crater – Mahone’s Counterattack; 1864-07-30 Recapture of the Crater; 1864-07-30 Battle of the Crater Map; 1862-07-30 copperheads

A. 1862: Chattanooga Campaign: To protect his newly opened rail supply lines, US General Buell orders Colonel J. F. Miller in Nashville to build stockades “at every bridge or other important point occupied by troops on the road north of Nashville.” The stockades are to be held by a company of 20-40 men, with two companies at the crucial twin tunnels on the Louisville & Nashville line at Gallatin.
B. 1864: Chambersburg, Pennsylvania - Nearly 2,600 Confederate cavalrymen halted on the outskirts of Chambersburg about 3:00 A.M. on July 30th. Their commander, Brig. Gen. John McCausland, carried written orders from Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early demanding from the citizens of this southern Pennsylvania town $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in greenbacks as compensation for 3 Virginia houses burned by Maj. Gen. David hunter's Union troops. According to the orders, if the payment was not made, the town would be "laid in ashes in retaliation".
Three cannon shots signaled the Confederates presence and by 6:00 A.M., some 500 Confederates occupied the town, 100 Union troops had already fled. McCausland had the proclamation read and gave the citizens 6 hours to pay the ransom. While the commander waited, his men plundered the stores, including some liquor businesses. Soon, drunken Confederates began looting private homes, taking jewelry, silverware, and money. The citizens refused to pay the ransom and McCausland ordered the town fired.
The Confederates torched a warehouse first, then the courthouse and town hall, and within 10 minutes the flames engulfed the main part of the town. The terrified residents, seizing a few possessions, fled to a cemetery and fields around the village. Some citizens who had paid money to have their homes spared saw them burned anyway. A cavalry officer isolated from his men was shot and killed by a mob of townspeople. Those Confederates who disapproved of the burning did save several houses.
The Confederates departed by 1:00 P.M. Behind them 400 buildings, 274 of them homes, smoldered in ruins. Damages amounted to nearly $1,500,000. To Maj. Gen. Jubal Early, it was just retaliation.
C. 1864: Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, VA. After weeks of preparation the Federals exploded a mine in Burnside’s IX Corps sector beneath Pegram’s Salient, blowing a gap in the Confederate defenses of Petersburg. From this propitious beginning, everything deteriorated rapidly for the Union attackers. Unit after unit charged into and around the crater, where soldiers milled in confusion. The Confederates quickly recovered and launched several counterattacks led by Maj. Gen. William Mahone. The break was sealed off, and the Federals were repulsed with severe casualties. Ferrarro’s division of black soldiers was badly mauled. This may have been Grant’s best chance to end the Siege of Petersburg. Instead, the soldiers settled in for another eight months of trench warfare. Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside was relieved of command for his role in the debacle.

Response by LTC Stephen F. made Aug 16 at 2016 12:10 AM

LTC Stephen F. — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 00:10:21 -0400

Thursday, July 30, 1863: President Abraham Lincoln threatens retaliation to “head off the Confederate government's threat to execute captured Black troops and their White officers. Lincoln threatened to carry out an eye-for-an-eye retaliation for anything the Confederacy did to Union prisoners of war.
Executive Mansion, Washington D.C.: It is the duty of every government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever class, color, or condition, and especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of nations and the usages and customs of war as carried on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment of prisoners of war as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person, on account of his color, and for no offence against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism and a crime against the civilization of the age.
The government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy shall sell or enslave anyone because of his color, the offense shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession.
It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war. ABRAHAM LINCOLN”

Below are a number of journal entries from 1862 and xx which shed light on what life was like for soldiers and civilians – the good, the bad and the ugly
Wednesday, July 30, 1862: Sergeant Alexander Downing of the 11th Iowa Infantry writes in his journal of his regiment’s movements in northern Mississippi: “Wednesday, 30th—We camped on a large "secesh" plantation last night. The owner of it being a general in the rebel army, we made ourselves at home, killing all the cattle that we wanted and taking all the honey that we could carry away with us. We started at 8 o’clock this morning and marched fourteen miles, when we bivouacked for the night.”
Wednesday, July 30, 1862: In New York City, George Templeton Strong—a Wall Street lawyer, a key figure in the NYC Republican Party, and a leading force for the Sanitary Commission—muses on the possibility of using black soldiers: “I greatly fear that we are on the eve of some vast calamity. Why in the name of anarchy and ruin doesn’t the President order the draft of one million fighting men at once and the liberation and arming of every able-bodied Sambo in Southronia? We shall perish unless the government begin singing in that very key. . . .”
Wednesday, July 30, 1862: A soldier of the 3rd New York Artillery Regiment writes home to the hometown newspaper in Seneca County of the dangerous situation with Rebel guerillas and bushwhackers near the Union-occupied town of Newbern, North Carolina: “A few nights since, the guard stationed in that position of the city most inhabited by fisherman and the poorer classes, was fired upon and severely wounded. The house was immediately surrounded, and its inmates, (seven men,) arrested and lodged in jail. The following day a strict search was instituted, which resulted in finding in it, and the adjoining houses, a quantity of fire arms, and a keg of powder. The buildings were soon demolished by the soldier mob. Since then all suspicious houses, have been searched, and over one hundred different styles of fire arms, found. One of the men arrested, acknowledges he fired the shot and has been recognized as a paroled soldier taken at Roanoke. Rumor says he is to be hung.
For a long time a roving band of guerrillas have been prowling about the country in the vicinity of our camp. (Bachelor’s Creek, seven miles west of Newbern, on the lines of the A.A.N.C.R.R.) and committing lawless depredations on the property of men known Union proclivities. The commanding officer of the post, after making several applications to Gen. FOSTER, received an order to "clean them out." . . . We were now in the vicinity of the "Rebs," and much caution was necessary. We had not proceeded far, when turning a short bend in the road, we came suddenly upon the post of the outer piquet. He was a brave fellow, and very cooly aimed his carbine at the Cavalry Sergeant, but the cap snapped without igniting the powder. . . . The house near by – the reported headquarters of the band – was surrounded and searched, but the bird had flown. An old man, however, was taken, who informed us that at the house of one French, a notorious rebel, two miles further up the road, were quartered a detachment of the 2d N.C. Cavalry. . . . Again we took up our lines of march at a rapid rout step, until within one hundred rods of the house, when Lieut. RANDOLPH, commanding the artillerymen, (then acting as infantry,) proceeded to the rear, while the cavalry and remaining infantry took the front.The attack was admirably planned, and reflects credit upon the officer in command. I venture to say men were never more surprised then were they when our cavalry and infantry came down upon them with one of those "awful yells," at a double quick. . . . many of them were run down by our cavalry, while the most obstinate ones were either killed, or wounded, but few escaping unharmed. The rout was complete as appearances at the house would indicate. . . .
The prisoners taken are withal, well informed men, and expressed no little surprise at the kind treatment they received at our hands. They are now in jail, and have, I understand, declined taking the oath of allegiance.
Pictures: 1864-07-30 Painting depicting the battle of the Crater

Response by SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth made Aug 16 at 2016 6:32 AM

SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 06:32:36 -0400

Another great history share, thank you.

Response by SGT John " Mac " McConnell made Aug 16 at 2016 9:13 AM

SGT John " Mac " McConnell — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 09:13:32 -0400

Great history, Thanks LTC Stephen F.

Response by PO1 Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 16 at 2016 9:51 AM

PO1 Private RallyPoint Member — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 09:51:17 -0400

This was an especially bloody affair. There is a pretty good dramatization of this battle in the movie "Cold Mountain"

Response by 1stSgt Eugene Harless made Aug 16 at 2016 4:04 PM

1stSgt Eugene Harless — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 16:04:02 -0400

These particular Fire Zouaves (11th New York) ended up not seeing much of the war as a unit. They were stationed in Hampton Roads, seeing no action during the Peninsula Campain and were sent home to New York and discharged in June 1962.
Some efforts were main to recruit and reenlist the regiment but it never came to fruition. Some of its Veterans and new enlisteeswere transfored to the 17th New York Veteran Volunteer Infantry in October 1863 withe rhe remnants of the 9th NY (Hawkin's Zouaves) 17th NY and 38th NY.
the 17NYVVI also adapted the Zoauve style uniform and fought with Sherman in Ga and he Wesrtern Theater.