What was the most significant event on May 22 during the U.S. Civil War?

Thursday, May 22, 1862: Henry Adams, in London with his father the U.S. Ambassador, writes to his brother Charles, who is an officer in a Union cavalry regiment: “I dread the continuance of this war and its demoralizing effects more than anything else, and happy would be the day when we could see the first sign of returning peace. It’s likely to be hard enough work to keep our people educated and honest anyway, and the accounts that reach us of the wholesale demoralization in the army of the west from camp-life, and of their dirt, and whiskey and general repulsiveness, are not encouraging to one who wants to see them taught to give up that blackguard habit of drinking liquor in bar-rooms, to brush their teeth and hands and wear clean clothes, and to believe that they have a duty in life besides that of getting ahead, and a responsibility for other people’s acts as well as their own. The little weaknesses I speak of are faults of youth; but what will they become if America in its youth takes a permanent course towards every kind of idleness, vice and ignorance?
. . . We must have peace for many years if we are to heal our wounds and put the country on the right track. We must bring back or create a respect for law and order and the Constitution and the civil and judicial authorities. The nation has been dragged by this infernal cotton that had better have been burning in Hell, far away from its true course, and its worst passions and tastes have been developed by a forced and bloated growth. It will depend on the generation to which you and I belong, whether the country is to be brought back to its true course and the New England element is to carry the victory, or whether we are to be carried on from war to war and debt to debt and one military leader to another, till we lose all our landmarks and go ahead like France with a mere blind necessity to get on, without a reason or a principle. No more wars. Let’s have peace, for the love of God.”
Friday, May 22, 1863: Maj Gen U.S. Grant himself gave four reasons for ordering another assault on Vicksburg, Mississippi.
(1) First, he hoped the advanced positions gained on the nineteenth would make success more certain.
(2) Also, he knew that Rebel General Joseph Johnston, to his rear, was increasing the size of his own army, which, if joined together with Pemberton’s, would outnumber Grant’s force of 45,000.
(3) Third, a successful assault would free Grant’s men for action against Johnston and avoid the miasmal toll of a siege during a steamy Mississippi summer.
(4) Grant’s last and most important reason was his innate perception of his troops’ temperament. Even if another assault failed, he believed the men would not work as willingly on the trenches and other necessities of a siege unless they had first tried to take Vicksburg by the front door.
Pictures: 1864 The Road to Atlanta Campaign Map; 1864 Pollock Fort Walker Confederate fortifications; 1863 The Attack of May 22 at Vicksburg - Harpers; xx
Since RallyPoint truncates survey selection text I am posting events that were not included and then the full text of each survey choice below:
A. Thursday, May 22, 1862: Maj Gen George McClellan relying on faulty intelligence from detective Allan Pinkerton believed that he was outnumbered two to one by Gen Joe Johnston’s forces. He was very cautious and continued to request reinforcements from Washington when Richmond was within his grasp. The Army of the Potomac had 105,000 men in position northeast of the city, outnumbering Johnston's 60,000. Maj Gen McClellan had reorganized the Army of the Potomac in the field on 18 May and promoted two major generals to corps command: Fitz John Porter to the new V Corps and William B. Franklin to the VI Corps.
B. Friday, May 22, 1863: Massive Union assaults on Fortress Vicksburg, Mississippi fails at the cost of 3,000 Union soldiers to 500 Confederate dead.
Maj Gen U.S. Grant planned a coordinated 10 a.m. assault. The night before, he issued full rations to his men, many of whom had spent the previous two days strengthening their positions or building roads. Perhaps he knew what lay ahead; certainly the troops did, as night stretched into morning. ‘The boys…were busy divesting themselves of watches, rings, pictures and other keepsakes’ one observer noted. ‘The instructions left with the keepsakes were varied: ‘This watch I want you to send to my father if I never return.’ ‘If I do not get back, just send these trifles home, will you?”
The attacking infantrymen were to move against the Confederate entrenchments as a solid unit–Sherman’s to the north, McPherson’s in the center on both sides of the road linking Vicksburg and Jackson, and McClernand’s to the south, centered on the Southern Mississippi Railroad track leading east out of Vicksburg.
They prepared to assault perhaps the best-defended Southern city outside Richmond. The rifle pits and trenches surrounding Vicksburg on three sides linked nine steep-walled forts, protected by ditches. Since these forts commanded high ground, they were of great advantage to the deadly marksmen wearing gray. Rebel artillerymen, in turn, had doubleloaded their cannons with grape and canister. A final obstacle faced the attackers: felled timber further choking the already rugged terrain.
Admiral David Porter’s Union gunboats opened on the city and its defenses.
During the night of May 22, Admiral David Porter’s Union gunboats opened on the city and its defenses. As dawn broke, a thundering artillery barrage from Grant’s batteries joined the bombardment, trying to soften the defenses and demoralize the defenders.
Then, shortly before 10 a.m., the firing stopped. Confederate Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Lee remembered, ‘Suddenly, there seemed to spring almost from the bowels of the earth dense masses of Federal troops, in numerous columns of attack, and with loud cheers and huzzahs, they rushed forward at a run with bayonets fixed, not firing a shot, heading for every salient along the Confederate lines:’
Maj Gen Sherman’s Assault
Major General Frank Blair’s division led the assault for Sherman’s corps on the Union right. Sherman planned to avoid the abatis-strewn gullies and hollows that had slowed his advance on the nineteenth. Blair’s troops would advance along roads in column by regiment, rather than present a broad target by marching across the difficult ground in battle line. The column would be led by a 150-man volunteer’storming party,’ carrying the boards and poles needed to bridge the ditch of the earthen fort, Stockade Redan.
Brigadier General Hugh Ewing’s brigade, the 30th, 37th and 47th Ohio and the 4th West Virginia, followed the volunteers along a dirt path, appropriately named Graveyard Road. As the storming party emerged from a cut in the road, Mississippians and Missourians in the fort opened up. Some of the advance unit made it to the earthwork itself, but aside from planting Ewing’s headquarters flag they could do little more than burrow in and wait.
Nineteen members of the storming party Sherman later called his ‘forlorn hope’ died in the assault, and 34 were wounded. The Medal of Honor later was awarded to 78 of the 150.
The 30th Ohio, close behind, got the same greeting as the volunteers. The grisly scene of death and misery that greeted the 37th Ohio a few moments later caused many in that regiment to refuse to go any further; the ensuing traffic jam meant the last two regiments had to move overland. They never made it to the fort, ending up about 150 yards east of the redan, which they fired upon with little effect. The assault by the Union right was effectively turned back. The 30th and 37th Ohio, along with the volunteer storming party, were the only units of Sherman’s to see heavy action that morning. The rest of his XV Corps, eight brigades in all, waited.
McPherson’s XVII Corps was assigned to assault the main fortifications in the center of the Rebel line, the so-called Great Redoubt and a smaller earthwork fort known as the 3rd Louisiana Redan. As with Sherman’s troops on Graveyard Road, McPherson’s men on the Jackson road eventually came under intense fire and an attack on the 3rd Louisiana Redan was beaten back.
One brigade, under Brig. Gen. John D. Stevenson, traveled overland to mount an assault on the Great Redoubt. The 81st Illinois and 7th Union Missouri regiments of his brigade, the latter largely Irish in background, took terrible losses from the Louisianans’ volleys and cannon fire, but managed to place some men in the ditch before the redoubt. The men of the 7th planted their emerald green flag on its exterior slope. However, their scaling ladders were too short and they could go no farther. They were pulled back almost immediately.
In a mere half-hour, Stevenson lost 272 officers and men. Except for one more abortive attack elsewhere on the line, this was the extent of XVII Corps action on the morning of the twenty-second.
Perhaps the hardest fighting of the morning was done along the Union left by the men of politician-soldier John McClernand’s XIII Corps. A Democratic congressman before the war who had supported Lincoln’s war effort, McClernand was not one of Grant’s favorites. He was vain and self-promoting and, though not the worst of the political generals, was at best merely competent. He also had an odd sense of timing. At one point during the fighting in Mississippi that month, he had jumped up on a stump and given his troops a political harangue, while bullets were flying.
The primary target for McClernand’s men was an earthen fort alongside the Southern Mississippi track, known to them as the Railroad Redoubt and to their foes as Fort Beauregard. It covered about a half-acre of ground, with walls 15 feet high and a ditch 10 feet wide. As with all the forts, a line of rifle pits connected it with nearby fortifications, allowing the defenders to enfilade all approaches. The 14th Division of Brig. Gen. Eugene Carr would spearhead the attack.
Maj Gen McClernand’s Attack
Precisely at 10 a.m., the men moved out. ‘Down into the abatis of felled timber and brush we went, our comrades falling thickly on all sides of us,’ wrote Lt. Col. Lysander Webb of the 77th Illinois. ‘Still up the hill we pressed, through the brambles and brush, over the dead and dying…oh! that was a half hour which may God grant we shall never be called upon to experience again.’
Joining Webb in the Railroad Redoubt action was a brigade of Iowa and Wisconsin men commanded by one of Grant’s favorite warriors, Brig. Gen. Michael Lawler. Lawler had impetuously ordered a charge at Big Black River Bridge five days earlier that, in less than five minutes, had broken the back of Rebel resistance. Now he faced an entrenched foe, the 30th and 46th Alabama regiments supported by the Texas Legion, fighting with new spirit and determination.
Starting in a ravine 150 yards from the redoubt, Lawler ordered the men to charge with bayonets fixed. Colonel William Stone led his 22nd Iowa Volunteers, mostly farmers and merchants from around Iowa City, toward the fort, with the 21st Iowa close behind in support. Regiments from Illinois and Wisconsin rushed forward near them, heading for rifle pits south of the redoubt. The Iowans reached the ditch fronting the earthwork and began crawling up its exterior slope.
Union artillery fire had opened a hole in the top of the redoubt, setting the stage for one of the most tragically heroic actions of the campaign. Sergeant Joseph Griffith of the 22nd Iowa led a group of fellow Iowans up the side of the fort and into that opening, where they fought hand-to-hand and forced most of the grayclads to abandon the works. Griffith’s men placed the colors of the 22nd on the parapet. The Confederate defenses had at last been breached, but the Union hold was tenuous. The few who had entered and remained unhurt were still subjected to rifle fire from the Confederates to the rear of the line.
The decision was made to rejoin the troops in the ditch, but few were left to obey the order. According to the official regimental history, between 15 and 20 men followed Griffith into the redoubt; only one returned with him alive. Without reinforcements, the desperate gamble gained little of substance. However, the flag of the 22nd still flew from the parapet, and its men waited below to try again.
They did not wait long, as the 77th Illinois arrived soon after to occupy the ditch to the right of the Iowans. Again men clawed their way up the steep exterior slope of Railroad Redoubt. Soon the 77th’s flag sat planted next to the 22nd’s, though no one from the 77th actually entered the fort. In early afternoon, a sortie from the 30th Alabama tried to retake control of the ditch, but was beaten back. Griffith then re-entered to accept the surrender of 13 Alabamians. Bitter fighting continued to swirl around the redoubt, with no one gaining a clear upper hand.
Meanwhile, just north of the Railroad Redoubt, the other main target of McClernand’s men would prove an equally tough nut to crack. Colonel Ashbel Smith and his 2nd Texas Regiment awaited the onslaught on their works, a type of earthwork known as a ‘lunette’ The 2nd Texas Lunette faced Brig. Gen. William Benton’s brigade of regiments from Illinois and Indiana. As 10 a.m. came, the cannon fire died out and the 99th Illinois moved forward in the lead, the men coatless in the late-morning heat. As they came near, some Yanks were heard to shout, ‘Vicksburg or hell!’
The fire from the Texans’ rifles was murderous, and a 12-pounder gun in the lunette belched canister at the Federal soldiers with deadly accuracy. The 99th and two of the three other regiments in the brigade veered to the left toward rifle pits manned also by the 2nd Texas. Corporal Thomas J. Higgins was captured, but not before carrying the flag of the 99th to the very edge of the Rebel rifle pits, braving the fire that cut down many beside him. (He was later awarded the Medal of Honor, based in part on the testimony of admiring Confederate foes.) The fourth regiment, the 18th Indiana, placed its flag on the edge of the lunette, but could do little more than watch it and wait for help.
That help came from Brig. Gen. Stephen Burbridge’s brigade. Within minutes his men rushed forward, shouting wildly, and gained the ditch before the lunette. Many of Burbridge’s men began to move up its side along with the men of the 18th Indiana. They reached one of two embrasures and poured rifle fire through it. The 12-pounder pointing out of the other embrasure was useless; Rebel artillerists were being shot down almost as soon as they could man it. Cotton bales between the two embrasures burned, set ablaze by muzzle blasts, which further increased the confusion and ferocity of the fight.
As the fort appeared ready to fall into Union hands, four Texans answered the call of Ashbel Smith to clear the embrasure. They jumped forward and, from five paces, fired their rifle-muskets into the opening. The leaders of the thrust fell dead, and the attack was blunted. The encouraged butternuts were soon rolling lit artillery shells into the ditch below to clear it.
The struggle for the 2nd Texas Lunette was not yet over, though. Burbridge’s Chicago Mercantile Battery hauled one of its brass 6-pounders up a gully near the lunette. The Chicago gunners then fired canister into the fort from 30 feet away. The point-blank artillery fire did not break the will of the Texans, and as morning wore into afternoon the fighting stalemated.
The morning fight had been undeniably bloody. Both Sherman and McPherson had committed only one brigade each to heavy action, but each had been badly hit. McClernand’s men did most of the fighting and dying. The 22nd Iowa was to lose 164 men killed, wounded or captured, most in the morning struggle. The brigade to which the 22nd belonged, Lawler’s, suffered 368 casualties over the course of the day, the most of any brigade in Grant’s army. All that had been gained was a shaky hold on one fort that could be loosened at any time.
In fact, by 11 a.m., Grant was ready to call off his troops. He had seen them struggle toward the forts against the galling Rebel fire. Before the smoke of battle obscured his view he saw them huddling in the ditches, with the flags of the 22nd Iowa and a few other regiments waving from several parapets. He rode to see Sherman, his most trusted lieutenant.
As he galloped north, he was overtaken by a note from McClernand, saying a timely blow from McPherson’s troops might swing the battle McClernand’s way. A second note arrived minutes later claiming possession of two forts and asking for a push all along the line. Grant was skeptical; he had had a better viewpoint of the battlefield than McClernand. He told Sherman, ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’
Yet on the strength of these notes and one later communication, Grant sent troops to support McClernand. After seeing the dispatches, Sherman decided to push again, but he did it with isolated units in three assaults. The first was at 2:15, when two brigades already in good position moved against the Stockade Redan complex. As had happened that morning, the Missourians and Mississippians within the fort shattered the approaching bluecoat contingent.
At 3 p.m., the Eagle Brigade, along with the 8th Wisconsin’s bald eagle mascot, ‘Old Abe’ advanced down Graveyard Road, used that morning by Sherman’s ‘forlorn hope’ and the two Ohio regiments. Though some troops made it to the fort’s ditch, their position was extremely tenuous and Sherman ordered them withdrawn. Finally, an attack at 4 o’clock involved Sherman’s remaining division unbloodied in that day’s action. This attempt too was blunted.
Meanwhile, McPherson’s reinforcements to McClernand were split up, some going to the 2nd Texas Lunette and some to the Railroad Redoubt. A Confederate counterstroke cleared the lunette of Federal troops not long after their arrival there. The remaining troops, sent to the redoubt, were told to attack and hold the trenches between the two forts.
Heartened by the sight of the 77th Illinois and 22nd Iowa flags still flying over the redoubt, Colonel George Boomer’s men advanced toward the trenches until they stopped in the bottom of an abatis-choked hollow. Before the lines could be re-formed, Boomer was shot dead and his men withdrawn. Late in the day, McPherson launched a half-hearted attack on the 3rd Louisiana Redan, in the Confederate center, which was quickly beaten back.
The Union attack was coming to a dismal end all along the line, yet one more drama remained to be played out. As long as the Railroad Redoubt was in Union hands, the Confederate line was breached and invited further attack. Stephen Lee, who had watched the Union troops swarming toward him that morning, repeatedly called for volunteers to close the breach. The troops of the 30th Alabama, exhausted and dismayed, did not step forward.
In desperation, Lee turned to men of the 2nd Texas, some of whom had been massed in support of the Alabamians since that morning. ‘Can your Texans take the redoubt?’ Lee asked. ‘Yes!’ Colonel James Waul replied. At 5:30, with a shrill Rebel yell, about 40 Texans (with several late Alabama volunteers) moved out along a narrow ridge swept by Yankee snipers. The fire and their exposed position did not halt them, and they pushed into the fort, driving the Federal occupants into the ditch below and sealing the last breach in the Vicksburg line.
The men in the ditch below now faced the rifle fire of the Texans and lit shells being rolled down the side. Lieutenant Colonel Harvey Graham, commanding the 22nd Iowa and the other 58 men there, surrendered after having spent almost eight hours under continuous fire.
The supposedly ‘whipped’ Rebels had taken on the triumphant Yankee army and inflicted on it a stinging defeat. The Army of the Tennessee had suffered over 3,000 casualties, more than in all other engagements since landing in Mississippi. Confederate casualties probably did not exceed 500.
Postscript
The story of the lost battle lay in Union generalship. The performance of McPherson and Sherman, normally Grant’s two most reliable corps commanders, had been subpar. Sherman advanced little more than a token force in the morning, then attacked piecemeal in the afternoon, allowing the defenders time to regroup between attacks. McPherson also seemed halfhearted in his commitment to battle, throwing only one brigade at a time into the fight (though one division of his had been sent to McClernand in the afternoon).
McClernand did not face similar criticisms; all but one brigade under his command saw action. However, Grant (among others) attacked him for the misleading nature of the messages Grant received urging a renewed push. Grant believed the renewed assaults increased Union casualties by 50 percent, with little increased chance for a breakthrough. McClernand defended his actions, then and later, but the mood of the Army was against him. Grant now had a reason to sack him–McClernand was soon gone from command.
Grant knew the time for recriminations would come later. As night fell on the outskirts of Vicksburg that May 22, he wasted little energy on the past. A direct assault had been tried and failed, and his mind, characteristically, had already turned to the matter at hand. A bystander heard him say, perhaps to himself, ‘We’ll have to dig our way in.’
C. Sunday, May 22, 1864: Sherman flanking, Johnston retreating in the Atlanta campaign. After the Cassville fiasco, the General Joseph Johnston’s Confederates continued their retreat to the Etowah River; crossing the river, burning the railroad bridge behind them, and taking up defensive positions south of the river in the rugged Allatoona hills. Aware of the character of these hills from a personal visit many years before, Maj Gen William T. Sherman chose to suspend his direct advance along the railroad. Disposing his army along the north side of the river westward some ten miles to Kingston, Sherman set about devising a new ten-day strategy which would carry his army directly southward through the tangled wilderness countryside. He would temporarily abandon his rail line in favor of a mule-drawn wagon alternative. Surely a risky strategy, he reasoned, but it would force Confederates to abandon their impregnable Allatoona forts in order to protect their flanks and railroad. With a head start he might even beat his opponent to those country crossroads near Dallas and New Hope Church – roads that led directly to Atlanta, bypassing the formidable fortress now being constructed at Kennesaw Mountain in Cobb County. The complete dependence on wagons and mules to supply his immense army in this landscape of bad roads and worse maps was a bit unnerving. Still, the risk seemed reasonable and the goals worth it. The move could certainly offer an opportunity to choose his fields of battle, and perhaps even gain a rapid and politically timely capture of Atlanta!
The Union soldiers in this battle would come to call the crossroads at New Hope Church the “Hell Hole.”
D. Monday, May 22, 1865: Former CSA President Jefferson Davis imprisoned at Fort Monroe
1. Monday, May 22, 1854: Invoking seldom-used Clause 119 of the House Rules, Alexander Stephens outwits the opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in the House and passes the bill after an unfavorable return from committee
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/1854
2. Tuesday, May 22, 1855: Kansas hold a supplementary election for districts where voting on March 30, 1855 was disputed. In the 6 districts, 10 Freesoilers and 3 pro-slavery men were elected
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/1855
3. Thursday, May 22, 1856: Preston Brooks attacks Charles Sumner in the well of the Senate
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/1856
4. Thursday, May 22, 1862: Lavinia Morrison Dabney, at home in Farmville, Virginia, writes to her husband Robert Lewis Dabney, who is in the Rebel army with Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. Among other information about the weather, crops, and livestock, she tells of the sense of impending doom over the region:
“. . . Although I have a houseful of company now all of the time. I do not enjoy the house. it is desolate to me. & I miss you every where but feel better out of doors. Bessy & Mary Hoge are here with Aunt Lizzie. I think you had just as well let me take boarders at once: Bacon is 40cts now in Farmville & mine is going too fast. We have Refugees from Fredericksburg at Mr. Andersons. Farmville is literally full & many boarding in the country.
No one writes to me from Louisa. I suppose it is useless to ask them to write.
The children are as well as you ever saw them. so I am but I am getting very much sun burnt. . . . Good bye my dearest I am ever praying for you. Write often, Your own Lavinia”
3 o clock
“Mrs Hage children & servants have just arrived Richmond in great danger. Mrs Hage says our troops are nearly starving on the Peninsula I received a kind letter from Mr. Vaughan saying he would come down himself if Richmond fell into the Enimy’s hands & help to move me Mrs Hage says she is only going to stay two or 3 days.
I feel perfectly calm but do so miss you my dear husband. Mrs Hage says that Jackson Army was in Woodstock Tuesday. Where are you going? Some say to take Washington. . .
I forgot to tell you that Dr. Willson has been very sick & is now. we have not much hope of his recovery some disease of the stomach constant neausia.. The darkies are running from Richmond in great numbers Mrs Hage says.
I have just hurd that Mr. Guthrie’s son is not going till Monday. So I will send this miserable letter by mail. I have been so much interrupted I could not half write.
May God bless you my dear. I hope you destroy my letters. Ever your own. Livy”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1862
5. Thursday, May 22, 1862—There is heavy skirmishing near the Rebel earthworks around Corinth, Mississippi, with a number of casualties on both sides. There is fighting nearly every day now as both armies probe the others’ works.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1862
6. Thursday, May 22, 1862—Henry Adams, in London with his father the U.S. Ambassador, writes to his brother Charles, who is an officer in a Union cavalry regiment: I dread the continuance of this war and its demoralizing effects more than anything else, and happy would be the day when we could see the first sign of returning peace. It’s likely to be hard enough work to keep our people educated and honest anyway, and the accounts that reach us of the wholesale demoralization in the army of the west from camp-life, and of their dirt, and whiskey and general repulsiveness, are not encouraging to one who wants to see them taught to give up that blackguard habit of drinking liquor in bar-rooms, to brush their teeth and hands and wear clean clothes, and to believe that they have a duty in life besides that of getting ahead, and a responsibility for other people’s acts as well as their own. The little weaknesses I speak of are faults of youth; but what will they become if America in its youth takes a permanent course towards every kind of idleness, vice and ignorance?
. . . We must have peace for many years if we are to heal our wounds and put the country on the right track. We must bring back or create a respect for law and order and the Constitution and the civil and judicial authorities. The nation has been dragged by this infernal cotton that had better have been burning in Hell, far away from its true course, and its worst passions and tastes have been developed by a forced and bloated growth. It will depend on the generation to which you and I belong, whether the country is to be brought back to its true course and the New England element is to carry the victory, or whether we are to be carried on from war to war and debt to debt and one military leader to another, till we lose all our landmarks and go ahead like France with a mere blind necessity to get on, without a reason or a principle. No more wars. Let’s have peace, for the love of God.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1862
7. Thursday, May 22, 1862: Gen. McClellan, with 110,000 men, has pinned Gen. Johnston and the Confederates up against Richmond with 72,000 men [60,000 in other sources]. But McClellan is convinced that the Rebels have 160,000, and remonstrates for reinforcements with Washington.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1862
8. Friday, May 22 1863 --- Battle of Vicksburg, Day 2 – Grant, having given his soldiers two days of rest, comes up with a better plan of attack, having all three corps attack in concert. Artillery bombards the fortifications during the night, from 220 cannon, and the large guns from Admiral Porter’s river flotilla. The ground attack is scheduled to begin at 10 AM. Led by 150 volunteers with scaling ladders, Sherman’s men drive down the Graveyard Road once again, as on May 19, but his corps is unable to breach the Rebel line. McPherson launches his attack along the Jackson Road, into the Confederate center, and some of his troops even get within 100 yards of the Confederate line. McClernand’s attack on the left is less effective; at one point he requests more troops, claiming he has captured two forts, which is a lie. The attacks bog down, and it is clear to Grant that he must lay siege.
Losses: U.S. 3,199 C.S. 500 (or less)
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1863
9. Friday, May 22 1863 --- John Beauchamp Jones, a clerk in the Confederate War Department, writes about the public rumors of Vicksburg’s investment: We have sad rumors from Vicksburg. Pemberton, it is said, was flanked by Grant, and lost 30 guns, which he abandoned in his retreat. Where Johnston is, is not stated. But, it is said, Vicksburg is closely invested, and that the invaders are closing in on all sides. There is much gloom and despondency in the city among those who credit these unofficial reports. It would be a terrible blow, but not necessarily a fatal one, for the war could be prolonged indefinitely.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1863
10. Friday, May 22 1863 --- Col. Judson Kilpatrick of the Federal cavalry makes a name for himself by leading a raid throughout several counties in Virginia, assisted by a gunboat. Kilpatrick’s raid captures large number of livestock, and puts to the torch large stores of grain and flour.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1863
11. Friday, May 22 1863 --- Gen. Sherman’s troops land at Haines Bluff, north of Vicksburg, thus enabling the U.S. Navy to establish a base for supplying Grant’s army.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1863
12. Friday, May 22 1863 --- Gen. Ulysses S. Grant telegraphs news of his investment around Vicksburg to General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck in Washington: NEAR Vicksburg, May 22, 1863, VIA MEMPHIS, May 25.
General H. W. HALLECK, Washington, D. C.: Vicksburg is now completely invested. I have possession of Haynes' Bluff and the Yazoo; consequently have supplies. To-day an attempt was made to carry the city by assault, but was not entirely successful. We hold possession, however, of two of the enemy's forts, and have skirmishers close under all of them. Our loss was not severe. The nature of the ground about Vicksburg is such that it can only be taken by a siege. It is entirely safe to us in time, I would say one week, if the enemy do not send a large army upon my rear. With the railroad destroyed to beyond Pearl River, I do not see the hope that the enemy can entertain of such relief.
I learn that Jeff. Davis has promised that if the garrison can hold out for fifteen days he will send 100,000 men, if he has to evacuate Tennessee to do it. What shall I do with the prisoners I have?
U. S. GRANT, Major-General.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1863
13. Friday, May 22 1863: Abraham Lincoln offers command of the Army of the Potomac to Darius Couch. Couch refuses, but recommends George Meade.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186305
14.

A
A Thursday, May 22, 1862: Maj Gen McClellan had reorganized the Army of the Potomac in the field on 18 May and promoted two major generals to corps command: Fitz John Porter to the new V Corps and William B. Franklin to the VI Corps. The army had 105,000 men in position northeast of the city, outnumbering Johnston's 60,000, but faulty intelligence from the detective Allan Pinkerton on McClellan's staff caused the general to believe that he was outnumbered two to one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peninsula_Campaign
A Thursday, May 22, 1862: By the third week of that month, the Army of the Potomac was approaching the Confederate capital. Though he was leading more than 100,000 Federals against 60,000 rebel defenders, McClellan continued to call for reinforcements.
http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/peninsula-campaign
Thursday, May 22, 1862—Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn, attempting to get into position for the attack Beauregard has planned, finds obstacles: HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE WEST, May 22, 1862-8 a.m.
General BRAGG, Commanding, Front: GENERAL: I am now on the cross-roads leading to Dickey's Mill and about the intersection of the Burnsville road. I have been delayed by bad management and stupidity of officers, unexpected defiles, &c., and I am sick with disappointment and chagrin, but will push the enemy when I do reach our position. I feel like a wolf and will fight Pope like one. Have patience with me; you will hear my guns soon. Yours, &c., EARL VAN DORN.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1862
B Friday, May 22 1863: Massive Union assaults on Fortress Vicksburg, Mississippi fail.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186305
B+ Friday, May 22 1863: Historians have debated for years the wisdom of Grant’s ordering another assault. In his official report on the campaign, Grant himself gave four reasons for trying again. First, he hoped the advanced positions gained on the nineteenth would make success more certain. Also, he knew that Rebel General Joseph Johnston, to his rear, was increasing the size of his own army, which, if joined together with Pemberton’s, would outnumber Grant’s force of 45,000.
Third, a successful assault would free Grant’s men for action against Johnston and avoid the miasmal toll of a siege during a steamy Mississippi summer. Grant’s last and most important reason was his innate perception of his troops’ temperament. Even if another assault failed, he believed the men would not work as willingly on the trenches and other necessities of a siege unless they had first tried to take Vicksburg by the front door.
Here Grant was counting on the army’s confidence and swagger, built up by three weeks of brilliant success. For the most part, only Sherman’s troops had been bloodied on the nineteenth; the army still considered the Rebs demoralized and ripe for one more defeat, strong defenses or no. One observer noted, ‘They felt as if they could march straight through Vicksburg, and up to their waists in the Mississippi, without resistance.’ Observant Sergeant Oldroyd of Ohio had a clear view of the besieged city: ‘We can see the court house…with a Confederate flag floating over it. What fun it will be to take that down and hoist in its stead the old stars and stripes’
Maj Gen U.S. Grant planned a coordinated 10 a.m. assault. The night before, he issued full rations to his men, many of whom had spent the previous two days strengthening their positions or building roads. Perhaps he knew what lay ahead; certainly the troops did, as night stretched into morning. ‘The boys…were busy divesting themselves of watches, rings, pictures and other keepsakes’ one observer noted. ‘The instructions left with the keepsakes were varied: ‘This watch I want you to send to my father if I never return.’ ‘If I do not get back, just send these trifles home, will you?”
The attacking infantrymen were to move against the Confederate entrenchments as a solid unit–Sherman’s to the north, McPherson’s in the center on both sides of the road linking Vicksburg and Jackson, and McClernand’s to the south, centered on the Southern Mississippi Railroad track leading east out of Vicksburg.
They prepared to assault perhaps the best-defended Southern city outside Richmond. The rifle pits and trenches surrounding Vicksburg on three sides linked nine steep-walled forts, protected by ditches. Since these forts commanded high ground, they were of great advantage to the deadly marksmen wearing gray. Rebel artillerymen, in turn, had doubleloaded their cannons with grape and canister. A final obstacle faced the attackers: felled timber further choking the already rugged terrain.
Admiral David Porter’s Union gunboats opened on the city and its defenses.
During the night of May 22, Admiral David Porter’s Union gunboats opened on the city and its defenses. As dawn broke, a thundering artillery barrage from Grant’s batteries joined the bombardment, trying to soften the defenses and demoralize the defenders.
Then, shortly before 10 a.m., the firing stopped. Confederate Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Lee remembered, ‘Suddenly, there seemed to spring almost from the bowels of the earth dense masses of Federal troops, in numerous columns of attack, and with loud cheers and huzzahs, they rushed forward at a run with bayonets fixed, not firing a shot, heading for every salient along the Confederate lines:’
Maj Gen Sherman’s Assault
Major General Frank Blair’s division led the assault for Sherman’s corps on the Union right. Sherman planned to avoid the abatis-strewn gullies and hollows that had slowed his advance on the nineteenth. Blair’s troops would advance along roads in column by regiment, rather than present a broad target by marching across the difficult ground in battle line. The column would be led by a 150-man volunteer’storming party,’ carrying the boards and poles needed to bridge the ditch of the earthen fort, Stockade Redan.
Brigadier General Hugh Ewing’s brigade, the 30th, 37th and 47th Ohio and the 4th West Virginia, followed the volunteers along a dirt path, appropriately named Graveyard Road. As the storming party emerged from a cut in the road, Mississippians and Missourians in the fort opened up. Some of the advance unit made it to the earthwork itself, but aside from planting Ewing’s headquarters flag they could do little more than burrow in and wait.
Nineteen members of the storming party Sherman later called his ‘forlorn hope’ died in the assault, and 34 were wounded. The Medal of Honor later was awarded to 78 of the 150.
The 30th Ohio, close behind, got the same greeting as the volunteers. The grisly scene of death and misery that greeted the 37th Ohio a few moments later caused many in that regiment to refuse to go any further; the ensuing traffic jam meant the last two regiments had to move overland. They never made it to the fort, ending up about 150 yards east of the redan, which they fired upon with little effect. The assault by the Union right was effectively turned back. The 30th and 37th Ohio, along with the volunteer storming party, were the only units of Sherman’s to see heavy action that morning. The rest of his XV Corps, eight brigades in all, waited.
McPherson’s XVII Corps was assigned to assault the main fortifications in the center of the Rebel line, the so-called Great Redoubt and a smaller earthwork fort known as the 3rd Louisiana Redan. As with Sherman’s troops on Graveyard Road, McPherson’s men on the Jackson road eventually came under intense fire and an attack on the 3rd Louisiana Redan was beaten back.
One brigade, under Brig. Gen. John D. Stevenson, traveled overland to mount an assault on the Great Redoubt. The 81st Illinois and 7th Union Missouri regiments of his brigade, the latter largely Irish in background, took terrible losses from the Louisianans’ volleys and cannon fire, but managed to place some men in the ditch before the redoubt. The men of the 7th planted their emerald green flag on its exterior slope. However, their scaling ladders were too short and they could go no farther. They were pulled back almost immediately.
In a mere half-hour, Stevenson lost 272 officers and men. Except for one more abortive attack elsewhere on the line, this was the extent of XVII Corps action on the morning of the twenty-second.
Perhaps the hardest fighting of the morning was done along the Union left by the men of politician-soldier John McClernand’s XIII Corps. A Democratic congressman before the war who had supported Lincoln’s war effort, McClernand was not one of Grant’s favorites. He was vain and self-promoting and, though not the worst of the political generals, was at best merely competent. He also had an odd sense of timing. At one point during the fighting in Mississippi that month, he had jumped up on a stump and given his troops a political harangue, while bullets were flying.
The primary target for McClernand’s men was an earthen fort alongside the Southern Mississippi track, known to them as the Railroad Redoubt and to their foes as Fort Beauregard. It covered about a half-acre of ground, with walls 15 feet high and a ditch 10 feet wide. As with all the forts, a line of rifle pits connected it with nearby fortifications, allowing the defenders to enfilade all approaches. The 14th Division of Brig. Gen. Eugene Carr would spearhead the attack.
Maj Gen McClernand’s Attack
Precisely at 10 a.m., the men moved out. ‘Down into the abatis of felled timber and brush we went, our comrades falling thickly on all sides of us,’ wrote Lt. Col. Lysander Webb of the 77th Illinois. ‘Still up the hill we pressed, through the brambles and brush, over the dead and dying…oh! that was a half hour which may God grant we shall never be called upon to experience again.’
Joining Webb in the Railroad Redoubt action was a brigade of Iowa and Wisconsin men commanded by one of Grant’s favorite warriors, Brig. Gen. Michael Lawler. Lawler had impetuously ordered a charge at Big Black River Bridge five days earlier that, in less than five minutes, had broken the back of Rebel resistance. Now he faced an entrenched foe, the 30th and 46th Alabama regiments supported by the Texas Legion, fighting with new spirit and determination.
Starting in a ravine 150 yards from the redoubt, Lawler ordered the men to charge with bayonets fixed. Colonel William Stone led his 22nd Iowa Volunteers, mostly farmers and merchants from around Iowa City, toward the fort, with the 21st Iowa close behind in support. Regiments from Illinois and Wisconsin rushed forward near them, heading for rifle pits south of the redoubt. The Iowans reached the ditch fronting the earthwork and began crawling up its exterior slope.
Union artillery fire had opened a hole in the top of the redoubt, setting the stage for one of the most tragically heroic actions of the campaign. Sergeant Joseph Griffith of the 22nd Iowa led a group of fellow Iowans up the side of the fort and into that opening, where they fought hand-to-hand and forced most of the grayclads to abandon the works. Griffith’s men placed the colors of the 22nd on the parapet. The Confederate defenses had at last been breached, but the Union hold was tenuous. The few who had entered and remained unhurt were still subjected to rifle fire from the Confederates to the rear of the line.
The decision was made to rejoin the troops in the ditch, but few were left to obey the order. According to the official regimental history, between 15 and 20 men followed Griffith into the redoubt; only one returned with him alive. Without reinforcements, the desperate gamble gained little of substance. However, the flag of the 22nd still flew from the parapet, and its men waited below to try again.
They did not wait long, as the 77th Illinois arrived soon after to occupy the ditch to the right of the Iowans. Again men clawed their way up the steep exterior slope of Railroad Redoubt. Soon the 77th’s flag sat planted next to the 22nd’s, though no one from the 77th actually entered the fort. In early afternoon, a sortie from the 30th Alabama tried to retake control of the ditch, but was beaten back. Griffith then re-entered to accept the surrender of 13 Alabamians. Bitter fighting continued to swirl around the redoubt, with no one gaining a clear upper hand.
Meanwhile, just north of the Railroad Redoubt, the other main target of McClernand’s men would prove an equally tough nut to crack. Colonel Ashbel Smith and his 2nd Texas Regiment awaited the onslaught on their works, a type of earthwork known as a ‘lunette’ The 2nd Texas Lunette faced Brig. Gen. William Benton’s brigade of regiments from Illinois and Indiana. As 10 a.m. came, the cannon fire died out and the 99th Illinois moved forward in the lead, the men coatless in the late-morning heat. As they came near, some Yanks were heard to shout, ‘Vicksburg or hell!’
The fire from the Texans’ rifles was murderous, and a 12-pounder gun in the lunette belched canister at the Federal soldiers with deadly accuracy. The 99th and two of the three other regiments in the brigade veered to the left toward rifle pits manned also by the 2nd Texas. Corporal Thomas J. Higgins was captured, but not before carrying the flag of the 99th to the very edge of the Rebel rifle pits, braving the fire that cut down many beside him. (He was later awarded the Medal of Honor, based in part on the testimony of admiring Confederate foes.) The fourth regiment, the 18th Indiana, placed its flag on the edge of the lunette, but could do little more than watch it and wait for help.
That help came from Brig. Gen. Stephen Burbridge’s brigade. Within minutes his men rushed forward, shouting wildly, and gained the ditch before the lunette. Many of Burbridge’s men began to move up its side along with the men of the 18th Indiana. They reached one of two embrasures and poured rifle fire through it. The 12-pounder pointing out of the other embrasure was useless; Rebel artillerists were being shot down almost as soon as they could man it. Cotton bales between the two embrasures burned, set ablaze by muzzle blasts, which further increased the confusion and ferocity of the fight.
As the fort appeared ready to fall into Union hands, four Texans answered the call of Ashbel Smith to clear the embrasure. They jumped forward and, from five paces, fired their rifle-muskets into the opening. The leaders of the thrust fell dead, and the attack was blunted. The encouraged butternuts were soon rolling lit artillery shells into the ditch below to clear it.
The struggle for the 2nd Texas Lunette was not yet over, though. Burbridge’s Chicago Mercantile Battery hauled one of its brass 6-pounders up a gully near the lunette. The Chicago gunners then fired canister into the fort from 30 feet away. The point-blank artillery fire did not break the will of the Texans, and as morning wore into afternoon the fighting stalemated.
The morning fight had been undeniably bloody. Both Sherman and McPherson had committed only one brigade each to heavy action, but each had been badly hit. McClernand’s men did most of the fighting and dying. The 22nd Iowa was to lose 164 men killed, wounded or captured, most in the morning struggle. The brigade to which the 22nd belonged, Lawler’s, suffered 368 casualties over the course of the day, the most of any brigade in Grant’s army. All that had been gained was a shaky hold on one fort that could be loosened at any time.
In fact, by 11 a.m., Grant was ready to call off his troops. He had seen them struggle toward the forts against the galling Rebel fire. Before the smoke of battle obscured his view he saw them huddling in the ditches, with the flags of the 22nd Iowa and a few other regiments waving from several parapets. He rode to see Sherman, his most trusted lieutenant.
As he galloped north, he was overtaken by a note from McClernand, saying a timely blow from McPherson’s troops might swing the battle McClernand’s way. A second note arrived minutes later claiming possession of two forts and asking for a push all along the line. Grant was skeptical; he had had a better viewpoint of the battlefield than McClernand. He told Sherman, ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’
Yet on the strength of these notes and one later communication, Grant sent troops to support McClernand. After seeing the dispatches, Sherman decided to push again, but he did it with isolated units in three assaults. The first was at 2:15, when two brigades already in good position moved against the Stockade Redan complex. As had happened that morning, the Missourians and Mississippians within the fort shattered the approaching bluecoat contingent.
At 3 p.m., the Eagle Brigade, along with the 8th Wisconsin’s bald eagle mascot, ‘Old Abe’ advanced down Graveyard Road, used that morning by Sherman’s ‘forlorn hope’ and the two Ohio regiments. Though some troops made it to the fort’s ditch, their position was extremely tenuous and Sherman ordered them withdrawn. Finally, an attack at 4 o’clock involved Sherman’s remaining division unbloodied in that day’s action. This attempt too was blunted.
Meanwhile, McPherson’s reinforcements to McClernand were split up, some going to the 2nd Texas Lunette and some to the Railroad Redoubt. A Confederate counterstroke cleared the lunette of Federal troops not long after their arrival there. The remaining troops, sent to the redoubt, were told to attack and hold the trenches between the two forts.
Heartened by the sight of the 77th Illinois and 22nd Iowa flags still flying over the redoubt, Colonel George Boomer’s men advanced toward the trenches until they stopped in the bottom of an abatis-choked hollow. Before the lines could be re-formed, Boomer was shot dead and his men withdrawn. Late in the day, McPherson launched a half-hearted attack on the 3rd Louisiana Redan, in the Confederate center, which was quickly beaten back.
The Union attack was coming to a dismal end all along the line, yet one more drama remained to be played out. As long as the Railroad Redoubt was in Union hands, the Confederate line was breached and invited further attack. Stephen Lee, who had watched the Union troops swarming toward him that morning, repeatedly called for volunteers to close the breach. The troops of the 30th Alabama, exhausted and dismayed, did not step forward.
In desperation, Lee turned to men of the 2nd Texas, some of whom had been massed in support of the Alabamians since that morning. ‘Can your Texans take the redoubt?’ Lee asked. ‘Yes!’ Colonel James Waul replied. At 5:30, with a shrill Rebel yell, about 40 Texans (with several late Alabama volunteers) moved out along a narrow ridge swept by Yankee snipers. The fire and their exposed position did not halt them, and they pushed into the fort, driving the Federal occupants into the ditch below and sealing the last breach in the Vicksburg line.
The men in the ditch below now faced the rifle fire of the Texans and lit shells being rolled down the side. Lieutenant Colonel Harvey Graham, commanding the 22nd Iowa and the other 58 men there, surrendered after having spent almost eight hours under continuous fire.
The supposedly ‘whipped’ Rebels had taken on the triumphant Yankee army and inflicted on it a stinging defeat. The Army of the Tennessee had suffered over 3,000 casualties, more than in all other engagements since landing in Mississippi. Confederate casualties probably did not exceed 500.
Postscript
The story of the lost battle lay in Union generalship. The performance of McPherson and Sherman, normally Grant’s two most reliable corps commanders, had been subpar. Sherman advanced little more than a token force in the morning, then attacked piecemeal in the afternoon, allowing the defenders time to regroup between attacks. McPherson also seemed halfhearted in his commitment to battle, throwing only one brigade at a time into the fight (though one division of his had been sent to McClernand in the afternoon).
McClernand did not face similar criticisms; all but one brigade under his command saw action. However, Grant (among others) attacked him for the misleading nature of the messages Grant received urging a renewed push. Grant believed the renewed assaults increased Union casualties by 50 percent, with little increased chance for a breakthrough. McClernand defended his actions, then and later, but the mood of the Army was against him. Grant now had a reason to sack him–McClernand was soon gone from command.
Grant knew the time for recriminations would come later. As night fell on the outskirts of Vicksburg that May 22, he wasted little energy on the past. A direct assault had been tried and failed, and his mind, characteristically, had already turned to the matter at hand. A bystander heard him say, perhaps to himself, ‘We’ll have to dig our way in.’
http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-vicksburg
C Sunday, May 22, 1864: Sherman Flanking, Johnston Retreating: Sherman began marching his troops on May 5, and his opening maneuvers set the stage for the rest of the campaign. With Johnston's army formidably dug in along Rocky Face Ridge north of Dalton (and Johnston prepared to be attacked there), Sherman refused to launch a head-on assault against the Confederates. Instead he used Thomas's and Schofield's armies to demonstrate against Johnston's main position, while McPherson's column stealthily marched southward through undefended Snake Creek Gap, gained the enemy flank, and threatened, on May 9, the Western and Atlantic Railroad, the line running from Atlanta to Chattanooga that supplied the Confederate army. During the night of May 12-13, Johnston retreated to Resaca, a dozen miles south of Dalton, and dug into a new position. Sherman brought his forces up and repeated his previous maneuver, testing the Confederate lines with short, sharp attacks on May 14-15, while part of McPherson's army flanked to the south and crossed the Oostanaula River. Johnston ordered another retreat to take place the next night.
The Southerners, clinging to the railroad, withdrew toward Cassville, just north of Cartersville. The Northerners followed in several widely separated columns. Johnston, seeing an opportunity to attack one of the Union columns, issued battle orders on the morning of May 19. He called it off, however, when enemy cavalry threatened his attacking column before the battle ever started. Johnston ordered another retreat, this time across the Etowah River to Allatoona. To his superiors in Richmond and to the Georgians increasingly alarmed at the Union advance, Johnston gave no assurances of any plan other than choosing successive defensive positions until he was flanked out of them. Moreover, even though the Confederate administration sent almost 20,000 reinforcements to his aid by late May, Johnston kept to his cautious, retrogressing strategy and allowed the enemy a leisurely, uncontested crossing of the Etowah on May 23.
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/atlanta-campaign
C+ Sunday, May 22, 1864: After the Cassville fiasco, the Confederates continued their retreat to the Etowah River; crossing the river, burning the railroad bridge behind them, and taking up defensive positions south of the river in the rugged Allatoona hills. Aware of the character of these hills from a personal visit many years before, Sherman chose to suspend his direct advance along the railroad. Disposing his army along the north side of the river westward some ten miles to Kingston, Sherman set about devising a new ten-day strategy which would carry his army directly southward through the tangled wilderness countryside. He would temporarily abandon his rail line in favor of a mule-drawn wagon alternative. Surely a risky strategy, he reasoned, but it would force Confederates to abandon their impregnable Allatoona forts in order to protect their flanks and railroad. With a head start he might even beat his opponent to those country crossroads near Dallas and New Hope Church – roads that led directly to Atlanta, bypassing the formidable fortress now being constructed at Kennesaw Mountain in Cobb County. The complete dependence on wagons and mules to supply his immense army in this landscape of bad roads and worse maps was a bit unnerving. Still, the risk seemed reasonable and the goals worth it. The move could certainly offer an opportunity to choose his fields of battle, and perhaps even gain a rapid and politically timely capture of Atlanta!
The Union soldiers in this battle would come to call the crossroads at New Hope Church the “Hell Hole.”
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/kennesawmountain/kennesaw-mountain-history-articles/cobbcountysecrist.html
Sunday, May 22, 1864: Sheridan's Raid on Richmond, Virginia ongoing [May 9 -24]
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186405
Sunday, May 22, 1864 --- Atlanta Campaign: Sherman flanks Johnston again, going around his flank at Allatoona and marching toward Dallas, Georgia.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1864
Sunday, May 22, 1864 --- In Virginia, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac are once again in a race for the next vantage point: the crossings of the North Anna River. Hancock’s corps continues their march, and eventually Wright (VI Corps) and Burnside (IX Corps) head south on the Telegraph Road. But the Confederates have anticipated Grant’s move: Breckinridge and his small division, fresh from victory at New Market, are at the North Anna crossings, and so are two brigades of cavalry under Gen. Fitz Lee. Grant’s several columns get tangled in the nighttime woods, and Lee (having discovered that Grant is no longer in his fortifications at Spotsylvania) begins to move swiftly southward.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1864
Sunday, May 22, 1864 --- Maj. Stephen Minot Weld, of the Army of the Potomac, writes in his journal of the march for the North Anna: We marched until 4 or 5 this morning. We passed through Guinea Station, and halted in a ploughed field beyond it. We passed through the most beautiful and fertile part of Virginia that I have yet seen. The trees were all in leaf, and the corn and wheat well started. The country is rolling, with numerous streams intersecting it. I hear that we are the rear guard, with the trains. . . .
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=May+22%2C+1864
FYI SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D MAJ Roland McDonald SSG Franklin BriantCPO William Glen (W.G.) Powell1stSgt Eugene Harless PO3 (Join to see)MSG Greg Kelly CPT (Join to see) LTC John Griscom LTC Thomas Tennant SPC Michael TerrellSPC Robert Treat GySgt Wayne A. Ekblad GySgt Jack Wallace PO1 Sam Deel LTC David Brown LTC (Join to see) SFC Eric Harmon SSG Bill McCoy

I could only imagine what it would be like to be young and have to fight the conditions of warfare during that time.. The Horror of it all ! Thanks for sharing LTC Stephen F.

Great history read LTC Stephen F.

Sherman's flanking March was another part ofd the Overall strategy that Grant had put in place when he was appointed as Commander of all the Armies. He insisted that he Confederate Armies be pressured and engaged. Sherman's practice of engaging, fighting anf then extending past the Confederate flank was exactly the same tactic being used by the AOP in Virginia.
As the most signifigant event I chose Little Mac's failure to aggressively engage the Confederate Army outsight Richmond in 1862. If he had pushed harder the War would have ended sooner, perhaps within 6 months,

That's a lot of Medals of Honor, LTC Stephen F.! Wow. It was a different war and certainly the Medal was awarded differently too! Thanks.

The events that led up to the Battle of Wilson's Creek and that battle. Because of that those actions Missouri remained a divided state with two separate governments. The elected one in exile in Texas and the Federally appointed one in Missouri. This also resulted in some the bloodiest fighting of the war and eventual rise of Jesse James. But that is only the cliff-notes of why I say that.

Any actions working toward the capture of Vicksburg will have my vote.

Faulty information or no information of the situation at the time were key elements concerning victory or defeat. I know this to be true of landings leading up to Battle of Vicksburg!!!