What was the most significant event on October 2 during the U.S. Civil War?

2017-01-26T22:49:47-05:00

In 1862, CSA Gen Braxton Bragg tried to set up a Confederate Kentucky Government on the eve of battle. “In Kentucky, things weren’t going so well for him. He, “along with Kirby Smith, had invaded the Union-held state, threatened both Cincinnati and Louisville, but had been unable to win any kind of decisive victory that would wrest the state from Federal hands. Bragg and Smith’s Rebel forces had entered the state separately, but the time had been right to combine the two armies into one. Smith, attempted to track down a Union division under George Morgan. This wayward division had been at Cumberland Gap and Smith was hoping to find and destroy it. Morgan, however, gave him the slip, and by October 1, Smith, head held high with his tail between his legs, wandered back to Braxton Bragg in Frankfort.” By October 2, Bragg was realizing that Kentucky would most likely be lost to the confederacy.
Camp followers and prostitutes took on the name of Hookers after a Maj Gen in the Federal Army. Syphilis and gonorrhea were almost as dangerous to Civil War soldiers as combat. At least 8.2 percent of Union troops would be infected with one or the other before war’s end—nearly half the battle-injury rate of 17.5 percent, even without accounting for those who contracted a disease and didn’t know it or didn’t mention it—and the treatments (most involved mercury), when they worked, could sideline a man for weeks.
According to the 1860 U.S. Census, Nashville was home to 198 white prostitutes and nine referred to as “mulatto.” The city’s red-light district was a two-block area known as “Smoky Row,” where women engaged in the sex trade entertained farmers and merchants in town on business.
By 1862, though, the number of “public women” in Nashville had increased to nearly 1,500, and they were always busy. Union troops a long way from home handed their meager paychecks over to brothel keepers and street walkers with abandon, and by the spring of 1863, Maj Gen William Rosecrans and his staff were in a frenzy over the potential impact of all that cavorting. But Rosecrans, a Catholic, wasn’t worried about mortal sin. He was worried about disease.
In Tennessee, the Federal authorities tried several solutions to rid Nashville and later Memphis of prostitutes.
1. In the first days of July 1863, Rosecrans issued an order to George Spalding, provost marshal of Nashville, to “without loss of time seize and transport to Louisville all prostitutes found in the city or known to be here.” Finding Nashville prostitutes was easy, but how was Spalding to expel them? He hit upon the answer by the second week in July, when he met John Newcomb, owner of a brand-new steamboat recently christened the Idahoe. To Newcomb’s horror, Spalding (backed by Rosecrans and other officials) ordered Newcomb to take the Idahoe on a maiden voyage northward (ideally to Louisville, but Spalding wasn’t particular) with 111 of Nashville’s most infamous sex workers as passengers. Newcomb and his crew of three were given rations enough to last the passengers to Louisville, but otherwise they were on their own. The local press delighted in the story, encouraging readers to “bid goodbye to those frail sisters once and for all.” Unfortunately when the white prostitutes were shipped out they were replaced by black prostitutes.
2. Spalding and the Union Army created in Nashville’s the country’s first system of legalized prostitution.
Spalding’s proposal was simple: Each prostitute would register herself, obtaining for $5 a license entitling her to work as she pleased. A doctor approved by the Army would be charged with examining prostitutes each week, a service for which each woman would pay a 50-cent fee. Women found to have venereal diseases would be sent to a hospital established (in the home of the former Catholic bishop) for the treatment of such ailments, paid for in part by the weekly fees. Engaging in prostitution without a license, or failing to appear for scheduled examinations, would result in arrest and a jail term of 30 days.
In 1861, CSA Governor A.B. Moore of Alabama issued a proclamation against tradesmen and government suppliers overcharging for services and materials.
In 1862, Maj Gen. Don Carlos Buell orders the arrest of Brig Gen. J.C. Davis for the murder of Brig Gen. Nelson; but, explained in a letter to Maj Gen. Halleck that he cannot hold a court-martial until later, since he cannot spare any skilled battlefield commanders like Davis, now that the Army of the Ohio is on the move.

Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: D.H. Hill echoes North Carolina’s complaints. “After Governor Henry T. Clark of North Carolina made some fairly valid complaints to Richmond, he was, more or less, told that his state wasn’t as important as the other fronts in the War. Nevertheless, General D.H. Hill was sent to command the coastline from Roanoke Island south to the Bogue Islands, covering all of Pamlico Sound.
Upon his arrival, Hill found his command in much confusion, but figured that he could get it in order “if the enemy allow a delay of ten days.”
Hill also found Clark’s assessments to be true. The lack of black powder for artillery was a dire issue that both Clark and Hill, in their letters to Richmond pointed out. Hill, knowing that Richmond had none, requested it from Norfolk, hoping they were in better shape. He expanded the request to various implements of artillery, including fuses, primers, various shell sizes, etc.
Expanding on another of Clark’s issues, Hill brought up the need for reinforcements. Cavalry, it seems, was the most important, since infantry was too slow to report on the many places where the Union could land their invasion ships. However, “a few more regiments of infantry are also needed very much.” Hill offered to raise the regiments from the local population himself, but had warned in a previous letter that there was “much apathy among the people. They do not want to have their towns destroyed, neither are they disposed to do much for their protection.”
Governor Clark brought up the lack of a Navy in his letter to Richmond. Hill, however, reported that there were “quite a number of sailors of the merchant service here who are anxious to get guns on their small craft to operate in the sound.” He also asked if he had the authority over the Naval vessels along the coast. Hill realized that “the co-operation of the Navy is essential to the defense of the sound.” [4]
[4] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 4, p664.
http://civilwardailygazette.com/searching-for-secessionists-in-missouri/
Thursday, October 2, 1862: General Braxton Bragg tries to set up a Kentucky Government on the eve of battle. “In Kentucky, things weren’t going so well for General Braxton Bragg. He, along with Kirby Smith, had invaded the Union-held state, threatened both Cincinnati and Louisville, but had been unable to win any kind of decisive victory that would wrest the state from Federal hands.
Bragg and Smith’s Rebel forces had entered the state separately, but the time had been right to combine the two armies into one. Smith, at first, agreed, but then demurred in an attempt to track down a Union division under George Morgan. This wayward division had been at Cumberland Gap and Smith was hoping to find and destroy it. Morgan, however, gave him the slip, and by October 1, Smith, head held high with his tail between his legs, wandered back to Braxton Bragg in Frankfort.
The main army was in Bardstown, left in the care of Leonidas Polk, but the General was in Lexington for another purpose. Not really knowing what General Don Carlos Buell was up to, Bragg issued very discretionary orders to Polk to move his force out of Bardstown, creating an arc to cover any roads that his adversary might use if he should leave Louisville – a very slim chance, thought Bragg.
Since entering the state, Bragg had proclaimed, announced, bellowed from the rooftops and begged the brave boys of Kentucky to sign up with his Confederate army. Some came, mostly joining up with Kirby Smith. But many, many more did not.
With the Federal forces gathering in unbelievable numbers along the Ohio River, Bragg needed tens of thousands of reinforcements to win a victory. But it was doubtful that these men would join without such a victory to bolster their spirits.
Even without a victory, believed Bragg, thanks to the prodding of several Kentucky politicians, it might still be possible to convince the secessionist Kentuckians to join. What they feared, argued the politicos, was losing everything to Union retaliation should the Confederate armies retreat.
If Bragg would to issue a Conscription Act for Kentucky, then these retaliations might be less as the new recruits would not be volunteers. But to issue a such an act required a Confederate governor. Since Kentucky still believed itself in the Union, that was an uphill climb.
Bragg, however, cared little for climbing and insisted upon installing Richard Hawes as provisional Governor immediately. Just as all this political pomp in Frankfort was about to occur, Buell’s men began to stir from their trenches around Louisville.
Rather than calling upon Kirby Smith to meet the threat, joining with the troops at Bardstown, he instead ordered Smith’s army to protect the inauguration ceremony. Bragg believed that General Polk alone could best Buell – or at least hold him until Hawes was governor and a Conscription Act could be slammed through whatever Confederate Congress he believed Kentucky had. The inauguration itself would take place on the 4th, so it was with great surprise that Bragg learned Buell was moving at a greater clip than expected.
The Union Army of the Ohio, 82,000-strong, began their march to Bardstown with a feign, hoping to throw Bragg off his mark. It worked. Upon learning that Buell was moving, Bragg assumed Polk at Bardstown could handle it. Buell, he thought, was in no position to leave Louisville so early. As the messages rolled in, however, Bragg learned that his troops in Shelbyville had barely gotten away before the town was taken by the Federals.
This was big. Bragg figured that if Buell moved at all, he would move upon Polk at Bardstown. But now it seemed as if Buell was moving upon Smith and the inauguration at Frankfort. Soon, the Rebels that were defending Shelbyville would be pouring into town. To Bragg, it seemed that Buell was ignoring Polk and gunning for the capital.
That was not so. The feign had worked. Buell’s main force was advancing in three separate columns to sever the two Rebel forces. The march, which started on the 1st, went poorly. The diversionary forces kept a slow, almost meandering pace, while the main body was filled with boys still half-drunk from the Louisville nights preceding. On this day, a rain storm soaked the roads, turning them to rivers of mud.
Still, they moved swiftly enough, reaching the Salt River. Bragg, while not slow to act, was preoccupied with setting up a government. Believing that there were not Federals in Polk’s front, he ordered him to fall upon the flank of the advancing enemy. But Polk, of course, had problems of his own. [1]
[1] Sources: Army of the Heartland by Thomas Lawrence Connelly; Perryville by Kenneth W. Noe; Days of Glory by Larry J. Daniel; The Army of Tennessee by Stanley F. Horn; Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat Vol. 1 by Grady McWhiney.
http://civilwardailygazette.com/bragg-tries-to-set-up-a-kentucky-government-on-the-eve-of-battle-lincolns-visit/
Sunday, October 2, 1864: The Curious Case of Nashville’s Frail Sisterhood. Finding prostitutes in the Union-occupied city was no problem, but expelling them was.
By Angela Serratore; SMITHSONIAN.COM; JULY 8, 2013
Major General William Rosecrans, leader of the Union’s Army of the Cumberland, had a problem. “Old Rosy,” as he’d been nicknamed at West Point, was a handsome Ohio-born history buff and hobbyist inventor with a reputation for getting nearer to combat than any other man of his rank. He had led his troops to a series of victories in the Western theater, and by 1863 he was, after Ulysses S. Grant, the most powerful man in the region. Rosecrans’ men were spending a great deal of time in Nashville, a city that had fallen to the Union in February 1862.
The major general thought Nashville was a good place for his troops to gather strength and sharpen their tactical abilities for the next round of fighting, but he underestimated the lure of the city’s nightlife.
According to the 1860 U.S. Census, Nashville was home to 198 white prostitutes and nine referred to as “mulatto.” The city’s red-light district was a two-block area known as “Smoky Row,” where women engaged in the sex trade entertained farmers and merchants in town on business.
By 1862, though, the number of “public women” in Nashville had increased to nearly 1,500, and they were always busy. Union troops a long way from home handed their meager paychecks over to brothel keepers and street walkers with abandon, and by the spring of 1863, Rosecrans and his staff were in a frenzy over the potential impact of all that cavorting. But Rosencrans, a Catholic, wasn’t worried about mortal sin. He was worried about disease.
Syphilis and gonorrhea, infections spread through sexual contact, were almost as dangerous to Civil War soldiers as combat. At least 8.2 percent of Union troops would be infected with one or the other before war’s end—nearly half the battle-injury rate of 17.5 percent, even without accounting for those who contracted a disease and didn’t know it or didn’t mention it—and the treatments (most involved mercury), when they worked, could sideline a man for weeks.
Union officials in Nashville, certain the city’s ladies of the night were responsible for the sexual plague, hit upon what seemed like the simplest solution: If they couldn’t stop soldiers from visiting local prostitutes, local prostitutes could simply be made non-local.
In the first days of July 1863, Rosecrans issued an order to George Spalding, provost marshal of Nashville, to “without loss of time seize and transport to Louisville all prostitutes found in the city or known to be here.”
The dutiful Spalding, a Scottish immigrant who’d spent the prewar years teaching school in a Michigan town on the shore of Lake Erie, began carrying out the order, and on July 9, the Nashville Daily Press reported, the roundup of the “sinful fair” began, though not without some protest and maneuvering on the part of targeted women: “A variety of ruses were adopted to avoid being exiled; among them, the marriage of one of the most notorious of the cyprians to some scamp. The artful daughter of sin was still compelled to take a berth with her suffering companions, and she is on her way to banishment.”
Finding Nashville prostitutes was easy, but how was Spalding to expel them? He hit upon the answer by the second week in July, when he met John Newcomb, owner of a brand-new steamboat recently christened the Idahoe. To Newcomb’s horror, Spalding (backed by Rosecrans and other officials) ordered Newcomb to take the Idahoe on a maiden voyage northward (ideally to Louisville, but Spalding wasn’t particular) with 111 of Nashville’s most infamous sex workers as passengers. Newcomb and his crew of three were given rations enough to last the passengers to Louisville, but otherwise they were on their own. The local press delighted in the story, encouraging readers to “bid goodbye to those frail sisters once and for all.”
For many Civil War-era women, prostitution was an inevitability, especially in the South, where basic necessities became unaffordable on the salaries or pensions of enlisted husbands and fathers. Urban centers had long played host to prostitutes catering to every social class (an estimated 5,000 prostitutes worked in the District of Columbia in 1864, and an estimated three to five percent of New York City women sold sex at one time or another), and an enterprising prostitute working in a major city could earn almost $5 a week, more than three times what she might be able to bring in doing sewing or other household labor. While some prostitutes adopted the sex trade as a lifelong occupation, for many it was interstitial, undertaken when money was tight and observation by friends or family might be evaded.
Little is known about the prostitutes banished from Nashville, though it’s likely they were already known to officials of the law or had been accused of spreading venereal diseases. All 111 women aboard the Idahoe had one thing in common: their race. The women heading for points north were all white. And almost immediately upon their departure, their black counterparts took their places in the city’s brothels and its alleys, much to the chagrin of the Nashville Daily Union: “The sudden expatriation of hundreds of vicious white women will only make room for an equal number of negro strumpets. Unless the aggravated curse of lechery as it exists among the negresses of the town is destroyed by rigid military or civil mandates, or the indiscriminate expulsion of the guilty sex, the ejectment of the white class will turn out to have been productive of the sin it was intended to eradicate…. We dare say no city in the country has been more shamefully abused by the conduct of its unchaste females, white and Negro, than has Nashville for the past fifteen or eighteen months.”
It took a week for the Idahoe to reach Louisville, but word of the unusual manifest list had reached that city’s law enforcement. Newcomb was forbidden from docking there and ordered on to Cincinnati instead. Ohio, too, was uneager to accept Nashville’s prostitutes, and the ship was forced to dock across the river in Kentucky—with all inmates required to stay on board, reported the Cincinnati Gazette: “There does not seem to be much desire on the part of our authorities to welcome such a large addition to the already overflowing numbers engaged in their peculiar profession, and the remonstrances were so urgent against their being permitted to land that that boat has taken over to the Kentucky shore; but the authorities of Newport and Covington have no greater desire for their company, and the consequence is that the poor girls are still kept on board the boat. It is said (on what authority we are unable to discover) that the military order issued in Nashville has been revoked in Washington, and that they will all be returned to Nashville again.
A few, according to the Cleveland Morning Leader, which rapturously chronicled the excitement happening across the state, tried to swim ashore, while others were accused of trying to make contact with Confederate forces who might help them escape. The women, according to reports, were in bad shape: “The majority are a homely, forlorn set of degraded creatures. Having been hurried on the boats by a military guard, many are without a change of wardrobe. They managed to smuggle a little liquor on board, which gave out on the second day. Several became intoxicated and indulged in a free fight, which resulted without material damage to any of the party, although knives were freely used.
Desperate to get the remaining 98 women and six children off his ship, Newcomb returned the Idahoe to Louisville, where it was once again turned away, and by early August the Cincinnati Gazette was proven correct—the ship returned to Nashville, leaving Spalding exactly where he’d started, plus with a hefty bill from Newcomb. Demanding compensation for damages to his ship, Newcomb insisted someone from the Army perform an inspection. On August 8, 1863, a staffer reporting to Rosecrans found that the ship’s stateroom had been “badly damaged, the mattresses badly soiled,” and recommended Newcomb be paid $1,000 in damages, plus $4,300 to cover the food and “medicine peculiar to the diseased of women in this class” the Idahoe’s owner had been forced to pay for during the 28-day excursion.”
George Spalding was unconcerned with Newcomb’s hardships. His plan to rid the city of cyprians had failed. Resigning himself to the fact that prostitutes would ply their trade and soldiers would engage them, he reasoned that the women might as well sell sex safely, and so out of sheer desperation, Spalding and the Union Army created in Nashville’s the country’s first system of legalized prostitution.
Spalding’s proposal was simple: Each prostitute would register herself, obtaining for $5 a license entitling her to work as she pleased. A doctor approved by the Army would be charged with examining prostitutes each week, a service for which each woman would pay a 50-cent fee. Women found to have venereal diseases would be sent to a hospital established (in the home of the former Catholic bishop) for the treatment of such ailments, paid for in part by the weekly fees. Engaging in prostitution without a license, or failing to appear for scheduled examinations, would result in arrest and a jail term of 30 days.
The prospect of participating in the sex trade without fear of arrest or prosecution was instantly attractive to most of Nashville’s prostitutes, and by early 1864 some 352 women were on record as being licensed, and another hundred had been successfully treated for syphilis and other conditions hazardous to their industry. In the summer of 1864, one doctor at the hospital remarked on a “marked improvement” in the licensed prostitutes’ physical and mental health, noting that at the beginning of the initiative the women had been characterized by use of crude language and little care for personal hygiene, but were soon virtual models of “cleanliness and propriety.”
A New York Times reporter visiting Nashville was equally impressed, noting that the expenses of the program from September 1863 to June totaled just over $6,000, with income from the taxes on “lewd women” reached $5,900. Writing several years after war’s end, the Pacific Medical Journal argued that legalized prostitution not only helped rid Rosecrans’ army of venereal disease, it also had a positive impact on other armies (a similar system of prostitution licensing was enacted in Memphis in 1864): “ The result claimed for the experiment was that in Gen. Sherman’s army of 100,000 men or more, but one or two cases were known to exist, while in Rosecrans’ army of 50,000 men, there had been nearly 1500 cases.”
Once fearful of the law (particularly the military law, given the treatment they’d received), Nashville prostitutes took to the system with almost as much enthusiasm as those operating it. One doctor wrote that they felt grateful to no longer have to turn to “quacks and charlatans” for expensive and ineffective treatments, and eagerly showed potential customers their licenses to prove that they were disease-free.
Nashville women in what was likely the hospital for infected prostitutes, c. 1864. From Thomas Lowry’s The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War.
Regulated sex commerce in Nashville was short-lived. After the war ended, in 1865, and the city was no longer under the control of the Union army, licenses and hospitals quickly faded from public consciousness. Today, the handful of U.S. counties that allow prostitution, such as Nevada’s Lyon County, rely on a regulatory system remarkably similar to the one implemented in 1863 Nashville.
Rosecrans, after making a tactical error that cost the Union army thousands of lives at the Battle of Chickamauga, was relieved of his command by Grant; he finished the war as commander of the Department of Missouri. After the war he took up politics, eventually representing a California district in Congress in the 1880s. (In the ’90s, Spalding would follow the congressional path, representing a Michigan district.)
One man who had a bit more difficulty moving on from the summer of 1863 was John Newcomb. Nearly two years after the Idahoe made its infamous voyage, he still hadn’t been reimbursed by the government. Out of frustration, he submited his claim directly to Edward Stanton, Secretary of War, after which he was furnished with the money he was owed and certification that the removal of the Nashville prostitutes had been “necessary and for the good of the service.”
Even after collecting nearly $6,000, Newcomb knew the Idahoe would never again cruise the rivers of the Southeastern United States. “I told them it would forever ruin her reputation as a passenger boat”, he told officials during one of his attempts to be compensated. “It was done, so she is now & since known as the floating whore house.”
Sources
Books: Butler, Anne, Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery, University of Illinois Press, 1987; Lowry, Thomas, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War, Stackpole Press, 1994; Clinton, Catherine, “Public Women and Sexual Politics During the American Civil War, in Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War, Oxford University Press, 2006; Denney, Robert, Civil War Medicine, Sterling, 1995; Massey, Mary, Women in the Civil War, University of Nebraska Press, 1966.
Articles: “A Strange Cargo,” Cleveland Morning Leader, July 21, 1863; “George Spalding,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; “William Rosecrans,” Civil War Trust; “The Cyprians Again,” Nashville Daily Press, July 7, 1863; “Round Up of Prostitutes,” Nashville Daily Press, July 9, 1863; “News from Cincinnati,” Nashville Daily Union, July 19, 1863; “Black Prostitutes Replace White Prostitutes in Occupied Nashville,” Nashville Daily Press, July 10, 1863; “Some Thoughts about the Army,” New York Times, September 13, 1863; Goldin, Claudia D. and Frank D. Lewis, “The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications,” Journal of Economic History, 1975.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-curious-case-of-nashvilles-frail-sisterhood-7766757/

Pictures: 1864-10-02 Confederate Gen. John B. Hood moves northward to threaten the Western & Atlantic Railroad, Union Gen. William T. Sherman's supply; 1862-10-02 Union Navy base at Mayport Mills. Confederate earthworks at St. Johns Bluff; Civil War-era cartoon. “History of Contraception”; 1863 Public Woman Prostitution license signed by Nashville provost marshal George Spalding

A. 1861: Union forces destroyed a Confederate camp in Charleston, Missouri. CSA Brig Gen Jeff Thompson of the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guards had been ordered to threaten St. Louis now that Union General Fremont’s Army of the West was concentrating in western Missouri.
General Ulysses S. Grant, commanding the Union forces at Cairo, Illinois, got wind of Thompson’s move and ordered a force of 1,100 infantry and 100 cavalry under the command of Col. James M. Tuttle inland to Charleston in hopes of cutting them off.
They arrived in Charleston at 8am and learned of Thompson’s orders for his men to burn bridges near Charleston. Jeff Thompson’s detachment was aware of Tuttle’s move to Charleston. While Thompson was halted at New Madrid waiting for his baggage wagons, Col. J.J. Smith of the 2nd Regiment Dragoons reported from Siketon, that there were 4,000 Yankees waiting and fortifying in Charleston. Thompson, however, wasn’t convinced and believed that Grant had no idea of their plans.
B. 1862: Union combined army and navy forces gain access to much of Florida’s Atlantic coast by outmaneuvering the confederates. St. John’s River, Florida: By midday, the gunboats approached the bluff, while Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan began landing the bulk of his 1,500 infantry soldiers at Mayport Mills. Another infantry force landed at Mount Pleasant Creek, about 5 miles in the rear of the Confederate battery, and began marching overland on the 2nd. Outmaneuvered, CSA Lt. Col. Charles F. Hopkins abandoned the position after dark. When the Union gunboats approached the bluff the next day, its guns were silent.
Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan had embarked on 9/30 with about 1,500 infantry soldiers aboard the transports Boston, Ben DeFord, Cosmopolitan, and Neptune arrived at the mouth of the St. John' s River on October 1, where Cdr. Charles Steedman' s gunboats— USS Paul Jones, USS Cimarron, USS Uncas, USS Patroon, USS E. B. Hale, and USS Water Witch —joined them. Their mission is to capture a battery of guns installed by the orders of CSA Brig. Gen. John Finegan for blocking U.S.N. access to the St. Johns River, which gave access to much of Florida’s Atlantic coast. By noon, Gen. Brannan has landed troops below and above the battery.
C. 1863: CSA Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler led a 1,300-man Confederate raiding party into the Sequatchie Valley. At Anderson's Cross Roads, they met a Union wagon train that was between 800-1,000 wagons and 10 miles in length. The raiders swept down on the train. They captured 800 mules and destroyed hundreds of the wagons. For 8 hours, the Confederates wreaked havoc on the wagon train.
Col. Edward McCook, in command of the 1st Missouri and 2nd Indiana Cavalry regiments finally caught up with the Confederates and attacked them. McCook managed to recapture most of the mules and some of the wagons.
D. 1864: Fighting continues in Georgia at Big Shanty and the Kennesaw Water Tank as Lieut. CSA General John B. Hood’s tears up the tracks of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which is one of Major General William T. Sherman’s communication and supply lines. Confederates at Saltville, Virginia stop the Union attacks that threaten much needed salt supplies.
FYI SGT Mark Anderson PO3 Edward Riddle Maj William W. 'Bill' Price COL Private RallyPoint Member SSgt David M.] SPC Maurice Evans SPC Jon O. SGT Jim Arnold Amn Dale Preisach CW4 Private RallyPoint Member Sgt Jerry Genesio SSG Private RallyPoint Member LTC John Griscom LTC Thomas Tennant LTC David Brown LTC Private RallyPoint Member CWO3 Private RallyPoint Member SGT John " Mac " McConnell SFC Private RallyPoint Member CPL Ronald Keyes Jr

Searching for Secessionists in Missouri

Wednesday, October 2, 1861 General Jeff Thompson of the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guards had been ordered to threaten St. Louis now that Union General Fremont’s Army of the West was con…

Response by LTC Stephen F. made Jan 26 at 2017 10:52 PM

2017-01-26T22:52:52-05:00

In a headline, which could be current, identifying and apprehending enemy aliens in Richmond became an urgent matter. In 1861 Virginia Confederates prepared a list of enemy aliens for publication in local Richmond newspapers.
Skirmishes occurred on a near-daily basis in the Civil War. In 1861, Union forces defeated the Confederates at Chapmanville, VA.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln and Maj Gen. Sumner of the II Corps reviewed the troops. Lincoln then traveled to Sharpsburg, Maryland to visit Maj Gen George B. McClellan, and spent the night in a tent near the General’s tent. During the evening the President was serenaded by the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Reg. band.
In 1862, CSA Pres. Jefferson Davis assigned Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton, a native Northerner, to proceed to Mississippi and to take command of all Confederate troops in the department, replacing Van Dorn.

Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Drying, marching and the Owls of Western Virginia. “In the hills of Western Virginia, the worst storm the region had seen in years had passed. The river levels were falling, the roads were drying out and the troops were preparing for battle. While, on Big Sewell Mountain, Generals Lee and Rosecrans scowled at each other across a ravine a mile wide, 100 miles north, Generals Reynolds and Jackson were separated by a dozen miles of treacherous mountain passes.
Following the ill-fated battle of Cheat Mountain, the Confederates returned to their camps. General Loring and his troops had gone south to reinforce Lee at Big Sewell, which left General Henry Jackson with a scant command of six regiments (barely 1,800 men) at Camp Bartow, along the Greenbrier River, near Travellers Repose.
Union General Reynolds ordered an “armed reconnaissance” against the Confederate camp. Not knowing the results of this foray, he ordered his men to have four days of cooked rations in their haversacks.
Around midnight, nine regiments and three batteries of artillery (over 5,000 men) marched east from Cheat Mountain, down the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike towards Travellers Repose. As they marched through the thick pine forests, the Union troops heard the haunting calls of the owl, “hoo-hoo… hoo-hoo.” The calls seemed to be relayed from one tree to the next, to the next all the way back to the Rebel camp. Thinking the owls were not what they seemed, many Union men spent the night in fear that the birds were actually Confederate scouts, hooting the coming of Reynold’s Army. [5]
[5] Rebels at the Gate by Lesser.”
http://civilwardailygazette.com/searching-for-secessionists-in-missouri/

Below are several journal entries from 1861, 1862, 1863 and 1864 which shed light on what life was like for soldiers and civilians – the good, the bad and the ugly. … I am including journal entries from Sergeant Alexander G. Downing, Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry, Third Brigade, "Crocker's Brigade," Sixth Division of the Seventeenth Corps, Army of the Tennessee for each year. I have been spending some time researching Civil War journals and diaries and editing them to fit into this series of Civil War discussions.
In 1863, Braxton Bragg and Nathan Bedford Forrest got into head-butting.
Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Journal of Sergeant Alexander G. Downing, Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry, Third Brigade, “Crocker's Brigade,” “It rained all day. The band from Tipton left for home this morning. Our company held an election this afternoon for choosing non-commissioned officers, sergeants and corporals. It was quite a political battle, the way the boys strove for the different offices.”
Thursday, October 2, 1862: Sarah Morgan, now housed at her sister-in-law’s plantation Linwood near Port Hudson, writes in her journal of an excursion on horseback with a company of friends and several Confederate army officers along the banks of the Mississippi River: “With what extraordinary care we prepared for our ride yesterday! One would have thought that some great event was about to take place. But in spite of our long toilet, we stood ready equipped almost an hour before Colonel Breaux arrived. . . .
There was quite a cavalcade of us: Mr. Carter and his wife, Mrs. Badger and Mrs. Worley, in two buggies; the three boys, who, of course, followed on horseback, and the two gentlemen, Miriam, Anna, and I, riding also. . . . We returned highly delighted with what we had seen and our pleasant ride. It was late when we got back, as altogether our ride had been some fifteen miles in length. As soon as we could exchange our habits for our evening dresses, we rejoined our guests at the supper-table. . . . After supper, Colonel Breaux and I got into a discussion, rather, he talked, while I listened with eyes and ears, with all my soul. . . . What would I not give for such knowledge! He knows everything, and can express it all in the clearest, purest language, though he says he could not speak a word of English at fourteen! . . .
Presently he asserted that I possessed reasoning faculties, which I fear me I very rudely denied. You see, every moment the painful conviction of my ignorance grew more painful still, until it was most humiliating; and I repelled it rather as a mockery. He described for my benefit the process of reasoning, the art of thinking. I listened more attentively still, resolving to profit by his words. . . . Then he turned the conversation on quite another theme. Health was the subject. He delicately alluded to my fragile appearance, and spoke of the necessity of a strong constitution to sustain a vigorous mind. . . . I felt the guilt I had incurred by not making greater efforts to gain a more robust frame; and putting on my sunbonnet as I arose from the breakfast-table this morning, I took my seat here on the wide balcony where I have remained seated on the floor ever since, with a chair for a desk, trying to drink an extra amount of fresh air. . . . And when I lay down, and looked in my own heart and saw my shocking ignorance and pitiful inferiority so painfully evident even to my own eyes, I actually cried. Why was I denied the education that would enable me to be the equal of such a man as Colonel Breaux and the others? He says the woman’s mind is the same as the man’s, originally; it is only education that creates the difference. Why was I denied that education? Who is to blame?”
Thursday, October 2, 1862: Journal of Sergeant Alexander G. Downing, Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry, Third Brigade, “Crocker's Brigade,” “We started this morning at 7 o'clock, and reaching Corinth at 10, we marched out two miles west of town where we pitched our tents in the timber for camp. Water is very scarce. I took six canteens and started to find water, but to get it I must have traveled in all four miles. The balance of the day I served on camp guard.”
Friday, October 2, 1863: George Templeton Strong considers the dominant racial bias against blacks, and offers some mocking satire against its unreasonableness: “Modern physiology, my dear sir, has, as you must be aware, demonstrated the essential inferiority of the black race and proved it to be anthropoid rather than human.” Certainly. Why not? The Negro can be taught reading and writing and the first four rules of arithmetic, to be sure, and he is capable of keeping a hotel. He can fight like a hero and live and die like a Christian. But look at his facial angle, sir, and at the peculiarities of his skeleton, and you will at once perceive that his place is with the chimpanzees and the gorilla, not with man. Physical science is absolutely infallible, you know. No matter what the Church, or the Bible, or human instincts, or common sense may seem to say on the subject, physical science is always entitled to overrule them. It’s very true that the science of 1863 has reversed or modified about 250,000 of the decisions it gave twenty years ago, but that makes no difference.”
Friday, October 2, 1863: Journal of Sergeant Alexander G. Downing, Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry, Third Brigade “Crocker's Brigade,” “The weather is quite cool for this time of year in the "Sunny South." There is no news of any importance. Things are very quiet.”
Friday, October 2, 1863: Gen. Braxton Bragg orders Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest to turn over the command of his cavalry corps to Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler. Forrest is enraged, tells him what he thinks of Bragg, and travels to Bragg’s HQ to deliver the message. Written down after 4 decades, this is Forrest’s best version of what he told Bragg: “I am not here to pass civilities or compliments with you, but on other business. You commenced your cowardly and contemptible persecution of me soon after the battle of Shiloh, and you have kept it up ever since. You did it because I reported to Richmond facts, while you reported damn lies. You robbed me of my command in Kentucky and gave it to one of your favorites — men that I armed and equipped from the enemies of our country.
In a spirit of revenge and spite, because I would not fawn upon you as others did, you drove me into West Tennessee in the winter of 1862, with a second brigade I had organized, with improper arms and without sufficient ammunition, although I had made repeated applications for the same. You did it to ruin me and my career.
When, in spite of all this, I returned with my command, well equipped by captures, you began again your work of spite and persecution, and have kept it up; and now this second brigade, organized and equipped without thanks to you or the government, a brigade which has won a reputation for successful fighting second to none in the army, taking advantage of your position as the commanding general in order to further humiliate me, you have taken these brave men from me.
I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damn scoundrel, and are a coward; and if you were any part of a man, I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them, and I will hold you personally responsible for any further indignities you endeavor to inflict upon me. You have threatened to arrest me for not obeying your orders promptly. I dare you to do it, and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”
Sunday, October 2, 1864: Journal of Sergeant Alexander G. Downing, Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry, Third Brigade, “Crocker's Brigade,” “We started again early this morning, and after marching about six miles, came upon the rebels' rear guard. We did some skirmishing with them and chased them about two miles, when we let them go and started back to Atlanta. The rebels tore up a portion of the railroad track between Marietta and Acworth, and delayed our trains. Our expedition was sent out for the purpose of cutting off their retreat from Marietta, but we were too late. After marching six miles on our return, we went into bivouac for the night.”

A. Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Charleston, Missouri. Union forces destroyed a Confederate camp in Charleston, Missouri. There had been a number of clashes in the Charleston area for the past few days between pro-Union forces and secession groups.
Union troops disrupted a Confederate camp in Charleston, Missouri. General Jeff Thompson of the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guards had been ordered to threaten St. Louis now that Union General Fremont’s Army of the West was concentrating in western Missouri. He immediately broke camp at Belmont and moved to New Madrid, on his way to Farmington and the Ironton Railroad. Thompson ordered a detachment of 120 men to burn railroad bridges near Charleston and Bird’s Point along the Mississippi River.
General Ulysses S. Grant, commanding the Union forces at Cairo, Illinois, got wind of Thompson’s move. Suspecting that the secessionists were heading north, Grant ordered a force from Bird’s Point, on the Mississippi, inland to Charleston in hopes of cutting them off.
A force of 1,100 infantry and 100 cavalry, all under the command of Col. James M. Tuttle, left before dawn. They arrived in Charleston at 8am to find no Rebels about. Tuttle wasted no time in tracking down the enemy, sending detachments in all directions. Shortly, he learned of Thompson’s orders for his men to burn bridges near Charleston. In the hopes of cutting them off, Tuttle sent a cavalry company towards Belmont, but found nothing.
Convinced that there was no enemy in or around Charleston and that they seemed to have no real plans to enter the town, Col. Tuttle moved his men back to their camp at Bird’s Point.
It seems, however, that Jeff Thompson’s detachment was aware of Tuttle’s move to Charleston. While Thompson was halted at New Madrid waiting for his baggage wagons, Col. J.J. Smith of the 2nd Regiment Dragoons reported from Siketon, that there were 4,000 Yankees waiting and fortifying in Charleston. Thompson, however, wasn’t convinced and believed that Grant had no idea of their plans.
B. Thursday, October 2, 1862: St. John’s River, Florida: At the mouth of the river on this date appears a flotilla of gunboats of the U.S. Navy under Commander Steedman---USS Paul Jones, USS Cimarron, USS Uncas, USS Patroon, USS E. B. Hale, and USS Water Witch. Also arriving are transports carrying a brigade of Union troops under Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan. Their mission is to capture a battery of guns installed by the orders of Brig. Gen. Finnegan for blocking U.S.N. access to the St. Johns River, which gives access to much of Florida’s Atlantic coast. By noon, Gen. Brannan has landed troops below and above the battery.
CSA Brig. Gen. John Finegan established a battery on St. John' s Bluff near Jacksonville to stop the movement of Union ships up the St. Johns River. Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan embarked with about 1,500 infantry aboard the transports Boston, Ben DeFord, Cosmopolitan, and Neptune at Hilton Head, South Carolina, on September 30. The flotilla arrived at the mouth of the St. John' s River on October 1, where Cdr. Charles Steedman' s gunboats—Paul Jones, Cimarron, Uncas, Patroon, Hale, and Water Witch—joined them.
By midday, the gunboats approached the bluff, while Brannan began landing troops at Mayport Mills. Another infantry force landed at Mount Pleasant Creek, about 5 miles in the rear of the Confederate battery, and began marching overland on the 2nd. Outmaneuvered, Lt. Col. Charles F. Hopkins abandoned the position after dark. When the Union gunboats approached the bluff the next day, its guns were silent.
C. Friday, October 2, 1863: Anderson's Cross Roads, Tennessee - CSA Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler led a 1,300-man Confederate raiding party into the Sequatchie Valley. At Anderson's Cross Roads, they met a Union wagon train that was between 800-1,000 wagons and 10 miles in length. The raiders swept down on the train. They captured 800 mules and destroyed hundreds of the wagons. For 8 hours, the Confederates wreaked havoc on the wagon train.
Col. Edward McCook, in command of the 1st Missouri and 2nd Indiana Cavalry regiments finally caught up with the Confederates and attacked them. McCook managed to recapture most of the mules and some of the wagons.
Details: Joe Wheeler’s (CSA) cavalry troops were rampaging in the rear, cutting off most of what few supplies were getting through over the rough trail through Walden’s Ridge and the Sequatchie. Encounters with Wheeler’s men led to skirmishes in Anderson’s Cross Roads, Valley Road around Jasper, and near Dunlap, Tenn. What Bragg (US) did not know, however, was that down the road from Bridgeport was about 20,000 men and 3,000 horses had started his way led by Gen. Joseph Hooker(US). Hooker’s Army of the Potomac had made the almost 1,200-mile journey in just over a week. President Jefferson Davis (CSA) insists that “snatching Tennessee from the Abolitionists” is urgent.
D. Sunday, October 2, 1864: Fighting continues in Georgia at Big Shanty and the Kennesaw Water Tank as Lieut. CSA General John B. Hood’s tears up the tracks of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which is one of Major General William T. Sherman’s communication and supply lines. Confederates at Saltville, Virginia stop the Union attacks that threaten much needed salt supplies.

Pictures: 1863-10-02 wheeler raid map Along the way, Wheeler intended to damage to the railroad lines between Murfreesboro and the Duck River; USS Water Witch; 1863-10-02 Wheeler's attack upon the wagon train; 1864 Ruins of Confederate Gen. Hood's ammunition train

1. Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Union forces defeated the Confederates at Chapmanville, VA.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-a/part-twenty-five
2. Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Governor A.B. Moore of Alabama issued a proclamation against tradesmen and government suppliers overcharging for services and materials.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-a/part-twenty-five
3. Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: In Richmond, Virginia Confederates prepared a list of enemy aliens for publication in local newspapers.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-a/part-twenty-five
4. Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Union troops disrupted a Confederate camp in Charleston, Missouri, where clashes between pro-Union and secession groups have occurred for several days.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-a/part-twenty-five
5. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Abraham Lincoln arrives at George McClellan's headquarters in Sharpsburg.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186210
6. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Sarah Morgan, now housed at her sister-in-law’s plantation Linwood near Port Hudson, writes in her journal of an excursion on horseback with a company of friends and several Confederate army officers along the banks of the Mississippi River: “With what extraordinary care we prepared for our ride yesterday! One would have thought that some great event was about to take place. But in spite of our long toilet, we stood ready equipped almost an hour before Colonel Breaux arrived. . .
There was quite a cavalcade of us: Mr. Carter and his wife, Mrs. Badger and Mrs. Worley, in two buggies; the three boys, who, of course, followed on horseback, and the two gentlemen, Miriam, Anna, and I, riding also. . . . We returned highly delighted with what we had seen and our pleasant ride. It was late when we got back, as altogether our ride had been some fifteen miles in length. As soon as we could exchange our habits for our evening dresses, we rejoined our guests at the supper-table. . . . After supper, Colonel Breaux and I got into a discussion, rather, he talked, while I listened with eyes and ears, with all my soul. . . . What would I not give for such knowledge! He knows everything, and can express it all in the clearest, purest language, though he says he could not speak a word of English at fourteen! . . .
Presently he asserted that I possessed reasoning faculties, which I fear me I very rudely denied. You see, every moment the painful conviction of my ignorance grew more painful still, until it was most humiliating; and I repelled it rather as a mockery. He described for my benefit the process of reasoning, the art of thinking. I listened more attentively still, resolving to profit by his words. . . . Then he turned the conversation on quite another theme. Health was the subject. He delicately alluded to my fragile appearance, and spoke of the necessity of a strong constitution to sustain a vigorous mind. . . . I felt the guilt I had incurred by not making greater efforts to gain a more robust frame; and putting on my sunbonnet as I arose from the breakfast-table this morning, I took my seat here on the wide balcony where I have remained seated on the floor ever since, with a chair for a desk, trying to drink an extra amount of fresh air. . . . And when I lay down, and looked in my own heart and saw my shocking ignorance and pitiful inferiority so painfully evident even to my own eyes, I actually cried. Why was I denied the education that would enable me to be the equal of such a man as Colonel Breaux and the others? He says the woman’s mind is the same as the man’s, originally; it is only education that creates the difference. Why was I denied that education? Who is to blame?”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1862
7. Friday, October 2, 1863: Gen. Braxton Bragg orders Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest to turn over the command of his cavalry corps to Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler. Forrest is enraged, tells him what he thinks of Bragg, and travels to Bragg’s HQ to deliver the message. Written down after 4 decades, this is Forrest’s best version of what he told Bragg: “I am not here to pass civilities or compliments with you, but on other business. You commenced your cowardly and contemptible persecution of me soon after the battle of Shiloh, and you have kept it up ever since. You did it because I reported to Richmond facts, while you reported damn lies. You robbed me of my command in Kentucky and gave it to one of your favorites — men that I armed and equipped from the enemies of our country.
In a spirit of revenge and spite, because I would not fawn upon you as others did, you drove me into West Tennessee in the winter of 1862, with a second brigade I had organized, with improper arms and without sufficient ammunition, although I had made repeated applications for the same. You did it to ruin me and my career.
When, in spite of all this, I returned with my command, well equipped by captures, you began again your work of spite and persecution, and have kept it up; and now this second brigade, organized and equipped without thanks to you or the government, a brigade which has won a reputation for successful fighting second to none in the army, taking advantage of your position as the commanding general in order to further humiliate me, you have taken these brave men from me.
I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damn scoundrel, and are a coward; and if you were any part of a man, I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them, and I will hold you personally responsible for any further indignities you endeavor to inflict upon me. You have threatened to arrest me for not obeying your orders promptly. I dare you to do it, and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1863
8. Thursday, October 2, 1862: This morning, Pres. Lincoln and Gen. Sumner of the II Corps review the troops. Lincoln then travels to Sharpsburg to visit McClellan, and spends the night in a tent near the General’s tent. He is serenaded by the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Reg. band.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1862
9. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Abraham Lincoln arrives at George McClellan's headquarters in Sharpsburg, Maryland.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-b/part-seventy-seven
10. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Columbia, Missouri - On October 2, a small Union force was near Columbia when they encountered a group of Confederate guerrillas. The Confederates were quickly routed.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
11. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Beaumont, Texas - On October 2, a Union force arrived at the railroad depot near Beaumont. They engaged the Eastern Texas Brigade, quickly defeating the Confederates and then destroying the depot.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
12. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Pres. Jefferson Davis assigns Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton, a native Northerner, to proceed to Mississippi and to take command of all Confederate troops in the department, replacing Van Dorn.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1862
13. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Gen. Don Carlos Buell orders the arrest of Gen. J.C. Davis for the murder of Gen. Nelson, but explains in a letter to Gen. Halleck that he cannot hold a court-martial until later, since he cannot spare any skilled battlefield commanders like Davis, now that the Army of the Ohio is on the move.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1862
14. Thursday, October 2, 1862: In Kentucky, the Confederate invasion seems to have lost its steam. Bragg’s main army is a Bardstown, and Kirby-Snith is at Frankfort. Both Bragg and his generals have harangued Kentuckians to join the Cause—but Kentucky is wary, lest the Confederate army be driven out of the state. Everyone knows and is aware of massive build-ups of Union troops along the Ohio River, ready to re-take Kentucky. So, Gen. Bragg begins making plans to install Richard Hawes as a Confederate Provisional Governor of the state, with the Inauguration to take place on Oct. 4. But—rather suddenly—Gen. Buell begins to move, and his troops leave Louisville and begin marching east and south towards Bardstown. But Bragg believes that the Yankees were shifting east towards Frankfort.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1862
15. Thursday, October 2, 1862: Lincoln drops by for a visit. “President Lincoln, accompanied by a small entourage of politicians, officers and Ward Hill Lamon, arrived at Harpers Ferry the previous afternoon. Following the Confederate withdrawal after the Battle of Antietam, General George McClellan ordered Ambrose Burnside to move his IX Corps and occupy the town. Shortly after, McClellan moved his entire army to the ground between the battlefield and the Potomac River opposite Harpers Ferry.
And it was here that Lincoln found them. McClellan appears to have little to no prior knowledge that Lincoln was dropping by for a visit, but on the first, he rode into Harpers Ferry to say hello. Together, they reviewed the troops on Bolivar Heights.
The President, attired in his typical black frock coat and tall, stovepipe hat, rode with General McClellan, jumped up in parade dress. For most of the soldiers, this was a rare and excited experience. They had never seen the President before. Though arrayed at full attention, each turned their heads and squinted, trying to get a better look at the gaunt looking man.
Before nightfall, McClellan went back to his tent, closer to the battlefield and Lincoln had a look around the town. As reporters followed, he took a peek into the US Arsenal used by John Brown in a failed attempt to start a great slave rebellion. Here, to many, was where the war started.
In the morning of this date, Lincoln, accompanied by General Edwin Sumner, reviewed the troops at Louden and Maryland Heights south across the Shenandoah River and east across the Potomac. And then it was time to formally visit General McClellan.
McClellan held no real desire to see Lincoln. Officially, the President’s reason for the tarriance was to see the troops and visit the battlefield, but McClellan believed he knew the true reason. “I incline to think,” he wrote his wife, “the real purpose of his visit is to push me into a premature advance into Virginia.” He allowed that he could be mistaken, but he thought not.
His vast army, numbering over 80,000 in the field, was, “not fit to advance – the old regiments are reduced to mere skeletons and are completely tired out – they need rest and filling up.” Additionally, the troops from General John Pope’s old army were in even worse shape. The new regiments simply weren’t ready. The Cavalry and artillery were both broken down.
It was not Lincoln’s fault that he was unaware of this. “These people don’t know what an army requires,” reasoned McClellan, “and therefore act stupidly.”
That night, Lincoln set up his own headquarters next to McClellan’s. They arrived too late to do much sightseeing. For the next several days, Lincoln would review the troops, see the battlefield, and try his best to convince General McClellan to cross the Potomac and fight the Rebels. [2]
[2] Sources: Lincoln and McClellan by John C. Waugh; Six Years of Hell by Chester G. Hearn; Recollections of Abraham Lincoln by Ward Hill Lamon; The Civil War Papers of George McClellan edited by Stephen W. Sears.
http://civilwardailygazette.com/bragg-tries-to-set-up-a-kentucky-government-on-the-eve-of-battle-lincolns-visit/
16. Friday, October 2, 1863: George Templeton Strong considers the dominant racial bias against blacks, and offers some mocking satire against its unreasonableness: “Modern physiology, my dear sir, has, as you must be aware, demonstrated the essential inferiority of the black race and proved it to be anthropoid rather than human.” Certainly. Why not? The Negro can be taught reading and writing and the first four rules of arithmetic, to be sure, and he is capable of keeping a hotel. He can fight like a hero and live and die like a Christian. But look at his facial angle, sir, and at the peculiarities of his skeleton, and you will at once perceive that his place is with the chimpanzees and the gorilla, not with man. Physical science is absolutely infallible, you know. No matter what the Church, or the Bible, or human instincts, or common sense may seem to say on the subject, physical science is always entitled to overrule them. It’s very true that the science of 1863 has reversed or modified about 250,000 of the decisions it gave twenty years ago, but that makes no difference.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1863
17. Friday, October 2, 1863: You played the part of a damn scoundrel’ – Nathan Bedford Forrest unloads on Braxton Bragg; Wheeler catches some wagons. “Braxton Bragg was certain about a few things. He knew that William Rosecrans’ Union Army of the Cumberland was in a fine defensive position at Chattanooga. He was sure that Federal reinforcements were quickly coming. And he understood that all he could probably do was disrupt the North’s supply line, hoping to cut off Rosecrans from not only reinforcements, but to starve him into submission.
For the lines to be cut, he would need cavalry. The most likely choice would have been Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had already made a name for himself in such work. In fact, he had already ordered Forrest’s Cavalry Corps to make haste for East Tennessee to keep an eye upon Ambrose Burnside, reporting his movements back to Bragg. Soon after, Bragg changed the orders, but Forrest still discovered that Burnside wasn’t moving at all, that he was still more or less in the Knoxville area (much to the chagrin of every Yankee from Rosecrans to Lincoln).
Forrest skirmished with the Federals here and there, but on September 28th, two days after being ordered by Bragg back to East Tennessee, he received a very strange message. “The general commanding desires that you will without delay turn over the troops of your command, previously ordered, to Major-General Wheeler.” Forrest was enraged. He had sworn to all that he would never serve under Joseph Wheeler, and took the command from Bragg as a personal affront.
As he should have. Bragg had no real love for Forrest whatsoever. He accused the now legendary cavalryman of being “ignorant” and “nothing more than a good raider.” Forrest, still enraged, dictated an abusive letter in reply, accusing Bragg of being a duplicitous liar. The language was rough, and Forrest promised that he would arrive at Bragg’s headquarters in a few days to say it all to his face.
This Forrest did, though nobody bothered to record the date upon which it happened (anytime from this date until the 20th – though it seems more believable that it was either on the 2nd or 3rd, and probably before the 5th). Whenever it happened, Forrest arrived at Bragg’s headquarters on Missionary Ridge in an absolute fury. From here, we shall let General Forrest have the floor (though the transcription was written down four decades after the war): “I am not here to pass civilities or compliments with you, but on other business. You commenced your cowardly and contemptible persecution of me soon after the battle of Shiloh, and you have kept it up ever since. You did it because I reported to Richmond facts, while you reported damn lies. You robbed me of my command in Kentucky and gave it to one of your favorites — men that I armed and equipped from the enemies of our country.
In a spirit of revenge and spite, because I would not fawn upon you as others did, you drove me into West Tennessee in the winter of 1862, with a second brigade I had organized, with improper arms and without sufficient ammunition, although I had made repeated applications for the same. You did it to ruin me and my career.
When, in spite of all this, I returned with my command, well equipped by captures, you began again your work of spite and persecution, and have kept it up; and now this second brigade, organized and equipped without thanks to you or the government, a brigade which has won a reputation for successful fighting second to none in the army, taking advantage of your position as the commanding general in order to further humiliate me, you have taken these brave men from me.
I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damn scoundrel, and are a coward; and if you were any part of a man, I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them, and I will hold you personally responsible for any further indignities you endeavor to inflict upon me. You have threatened to arrest me for not obeying your orders promptly. I dare you to do it, and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”
Whether this account was true or not, Forrest most certainly felt this way and Bragg undoubtedly knew it. But by this date, it was all pointless. On the 29th, Bragg ordered Wheeler to cross the Tennessee with his two divisions and three brigades from Forrest’s command (roughly 5,000 men). One of the protests lobbed by Forrest was that his men were not ready for such a task. In this, General Wheeler concurred, writing in his report that Forrest’s troopers were “mere skeletons.” They were “badly armed, had but a small supply of ammunition, and their horses were in horrible condition, having been marched continuously for three days and nights without removing saddles. The men were worn out, and without rations.”
Nevertheless, Wheeler crossed upriver from Chattanooga on the 30th, beating back Federal cavalry under General George Crook, who had been stationed at Washington, Tennessee with his 2,000 or so troopers. General Rosecrans was almost immediately informed, and quickly wired Ambrose Burnside to close in on his left. But as before, Burnside was silent. Rosecrans had no idea where he was or what he was doing.
In the meantime, Wheeler’s Rebels beat back Crook’s men, who regrouped and began to pursue them on parallel roads up over Walden’s Ridge and into the Sequatchie Valley. With Crook well behind him, Wheeler decided to divide his force, sending half toward McMinnville, while the other, which he would accompany, descended the Valley on the morning of this date.
Though General Wheeler quickly found the enemy, his morning did not begin with battle – at least not a hot one. His force, which numbered roughly 1,500, advanced about ten miles down the east bank of the Sequatchie before overtaking a small Federal wagon train. They hastily burned the contents, hardly even noting what they were, requestioned the mules, and moved on.
Across the Sequatchie, near Anderson’s, a small crossroads village five or six miles farther, Wheeler met the enemy, an Illinois infantry regiment that was being relieved by cavalry helmed by Col. Samuel Price of the 21st Kentucky. Price had been ordered by General Rosecrans to move his command to the Sequatchie Valley in order to protect a large supply train composed of 400 or more wagons carrying ordnance, ammunition, and supplies.
Col. Price had heard the rumors that a large force of Rebel Cavalry was in the area, and had even heard it was a division under Wheeler, who had specific designs upon his wagon train. When Wheeler attacked, Price was toward the rear of the miles-long train, hurrying along his stragglers, his second, Lt. Col. J.C. Evans advanced the regiment without his knowledge, but then, what else could he do?
Wheeler’s men easily threw back the Illinois troops, scattering them into the ranks of Evans’ advancing regiment. Those who could, regrouped and joined the line, and cheering, they pitched into the Rebels, who gave way. Behind the growing battle was the strains of a brass band, which was traveling with the wagon train. As they played, shifting from march to ayr and back again, General Wheeler began to move on the Federal left flank.
This caught Evans’ attention, and he rushed a company to bolster the flagging left, his right resting upon the west bank of the river. This helped, but he could easily see now that his regiment, numbering only 200, was out-gunned. By this point, Wheeler’s troopers had successfully captured the road, and it was clear enough that they would capture the wagons. What Evans did not want was for his regiment to be captured as well.
Since the road was held by the enemy, Evans ordered the regiment west, where they had to scale the sharp sides of the valley, clinging to rocks and clamoring through the thick underbrush. It was a scramble, to be sure, and Wheeler’s men wanted none of it. Their only concern was the wagons, wholly given up by the Yankees.
With the Federals sent running, Wheeler surveyed his bounty, selecting a few mules and wagons to keep, before shooting or stabbing to death the remaining mules and setting to the torch the vast majority of the train. This took eight hours, during which his band was bothered not at all. As the sun was westering and dusk was falling, the Federals had finally gathered enough forces to attack. But by then, the damage was done and Wheeler was moving north through the valley, before turning west to join his other column under General Henry Davidson ready to pounce upon McMinnville the next morning. [1]
[1] Sources: Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 30, Part 2, p664, 684-687, 703-706, 723-724, 726; Part 4, p710; Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat, Vol. 2 by Judith Lee Hallock; The Confederacy’s Greatest Cavalryman by Brian Steel Wills; Autumn of Glory by Thomas Lawrence Connelly; The Shipwreck of their Hopes by Peter Cozzens.
http://civilwardailygazette.com/you-played-the-part-of-a-damn-scoundrel-forrest-unloads-on-bragg/
18. Friday, October 2, 1863: Wheeler’s force divides, and Wheeler takes a division south along with Sequatchie Valley, surprising a miles-long wagon train of nearly 800 wagons. After a stiff battle, wherein Wheeler’s troopers put to flight two Federal regiments, many of whom escape by climbing up the steep walls of the narrow valley to escape the Rebels. Wheeler and his men spend over 8 hours trying to destroy all of the wagons.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1863
19. Sunday, October 2, 1864: Following Nashville’s example, Memphis, Tennessee requires all prostitutes to register and receive a medical examination in order to receive health care at the City Hospital on Exchange and Front Streets. By February 1865, 134 prostitutes will be registered (at $10 plus $2.50 for the test), earning the city $6,428.65 in fees.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/1864/week-182
20. Sunday, October 2, 1864: In Augusta, Jefferson Davis meets with P. G. T. Beauregard to give him command of the Department of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186410
21. Sunday, October 2, 1864: Entering Bolivar, Tennessee after building bridges over the Wolf and Hatchie Rivers, Brig. General Edward Hatch reports: “I hear of a force some 400 - 600 at Jackson, but I shall not disturb them. I have captured a few prisoners.” General Washburn now orders General Hatch in Bolivar to cross the Tennessee River at Decatur County.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/1864/week-182

A Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Charleston, Missouri - On October 2, Union forces were able to destroy a Confederate camp. There had been a number of clashes in the Charleston area for the past few days between pro-Union forces and secession groups.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1861s.html
A+ Wednesday, October, 2, 1861: Union troops disrupted a Confederate camp in Charleston, Missouri. General Jeff Thompson of the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guards had been ordered to threaten St. Louis now that Union General Fremont’s Army of the West was concentrating in western Missouri. He immediately broke camp at Belmont and moved to New Madrid, on his way to Farmington and the Ironton Railroad. Thompson ordered a detachment of 120 men to burn railroad bridges near Charleston and Bird’s Point along the Mississippi River.
General Ulysses S. Grant, commanding the Union forces at Cairo, Illinois, got wind of Thompson’s move. Suspecting that the secessionists were heading north, Grant ordered a force from Bird’s Point, on the Mississippi, inland to Charleston in hopes of cutting them off. [1]
A force of 1,100 infantry and 100 cavalry, all under the command of Col. James M. Tuttle, left before dawn. They arrived in Charleston at 8am to find no Rebels about. Tuttle wasted no time in tracking down the enemy, sending detachments in all directions. Shortly, he learned of Thompson’s orders for his men to burn bridges near Charleston. In the hopes of cutting them off, Tuttle sent a cavalry company towards Belmont, but found nothing.
Convinced that there was no enemy in or around Charleston and that they seemed to have no real plans to enter the town, Col. Tuttle moved his men back to their camp at Bird’s Point. [2]
It seems, however, that Jeff Thompson’s detachment was aware of Tuttle’s move to Charleston. While Thompson was halted at New Madrid waiting for his baggage wagons, Col. J.J. Smith of the 2nd Regiment Dragoons reported from Siketon, that there were 4,000 Yankees waiting and fortifying in Charleston. Thompson, however, wasn’t convinced and believed that Grant had no idea of their plans. [3]
[1] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 3, p519-520.
[2] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 3, p198-199.
[3] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 3, p712-713. This information came from a dispatch to General Johnston on the 3rd. It was written, however, at 6am and so can be assumed that Thompson knew and believed this stuff on the 2nd”
http://civilwardailygazette.com/searching-for-secessionists-in-missouri/
B Thursday, October 2, 1862: St. John’s River, Florida: At the mouth of the river on this date appears a flotilla of gunboats of the U.S. Navy undcer Commander Steedman---USS Paul Jones, USS Cimarron, USS Uncas, USS Patroon, USS E. B. Hale, and USS Water Witch. Also arriving are transports carrying a brigade of Union troops under Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan. Their mission is to capture a battery of guns installed by the orders of Brig. Gen. Finnegan for blocking U.S.N. access to the St. Johns River, which gives access to much of Florida’s Atlantic coast. By noon, Gen. Brannan has landed troops below and above the battery.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1862
B+ Thursday, October 2, 1862: October 1-3, 1862 in Jacksonville, Florida - Brig. Gen. John Finegan established a battery on St. John' s Bluff near Jacksonville to stop the movement of Union ships up the St. Johns River. Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan embarked with about 1,500 infantry aboard the transports Boston, Ben DeFord, Cosmopolitan, and Neptune at Hilton Head, South Carolina, on September 30. The flotilla arrived at the mouth of the St. John' s River on October 1, where Cdr. Charles Steedman' s gunboats—Paul Jones, Cimarron, Uncas, Patroon, Hale, and Water Witch—joined them.
By midday, the gunboats approached the bluff, while Brannan began landing troops at Mayport Mills. Another infantry force landed at Mount Pleasant Creek, about 5 miles in the rear of the Confederate battery, and began marching overland on the 2nd. Outmaneuvered, Lt. Col. Charles F. Hopkins abandoned the position after dark. When the Union gunboats approached the bluff the next day, its guns were silent.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
C Friday, October 2, 1863: Anderson's Cross Roads, Tennessee - On October 2, Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler led a 1,300-man Confederate raiding party into the Sequatchie Valley. At Anderson's Cross Roads, they met a Union wagon train that was between 800-1,000 wagons and 10 miles in length. The raiders swept down on the train. They captured 800 mules and destroyed hundreds of the wagons. For 8 hours, the Confederates wreaked havoc on the wagon train.
Col. Ed McCook and the 1st Cavalry Division finally caught up with the Confederates and attacked them. McCook managed to recapture most of the mules and some of the wagons.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1863s.html
C+ Friday, October 2, 1863: Col. Edward McCook, in command of the 1st Missouri and 2nd Indiana Cavalry regiments, attacks Wheeler’s force and drives them for a time.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=October+2%2C+1863
C++ Friday, October 2, 1863: It was bad enough for General William S. Rosecrans (US) and his army penned up in Chattanooga. General Bragg’s Confederate forces controlled all the roads to the south, the road to Bridgeport to the north, and the Tennessee River. Joe Wheeler’s (CSA) cavalry troops were rampaging in the rear, cutting off most of what few supplies were getting through over the rough trail through Walden’s Ridge and the Sequatchie. Encounters with Wheeler’s men led to skirmishes in Anderson’s Cross Roads, Valley Road around Jasper, and near Dunlap, Tenn. What Bragg (US) did not know, however, was that down the road from Bridgeport was about 20,000 men and 3,000 horses had started his way led by Gen. Joseph Hooker(US). Hooker’s Army of the Potomac had made the almost 1,200-mile journey in just over a week. President Jefferson Davis (CSA) insists that “snatching Tennessee from the Abolitionists” is urgent.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-c/week-129
D Sunday, October 2, 1864: Fighting continues in Georgia at Big Shanty and the Kennesaw Water Tank as Lieut. General John B. Hood’s (CSA) tears up the tracks of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which is one of Major General William T. Sherman’s (US) communication and supply lines. Confederates at Saltville, Virginia stop the Union attacks that threaten much needed salt supplies. Major General Sterling Price (CSA) rebel’s occupy Washington, Missouri just 50 miles from St. Louis. Some skirmishing with General Forrest’s troops, as he crosses the Duck River near Columbia, Tennessee.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/1864/week-182
FYI GySgt Jack Wallace CWO4 Terrence Clark SMSgt Lawrence McCarter LTC Trent Klug SFC Bernard WalkoSSG Franklin Briant SSG Byron Howard Sr CPL Ronald Keyes Jr SFC William Farrell CMDCM John F. "Doc" Bradshaw SPC Lyle Montgomery PO2 Marco Monsalve SPC Woody Bullard SSG Michael Noll SSG Bill McCoy SFC David Reid, M.S, PHR, SHRM-CP, DTM Sgt Christopher Collins SPC Private RallyPoint Member SPC Gary C. PO3 Lynn Spalding

Searching for Secessionists in Missouri

Wednesday, October 2, 1861 General Jeff Thompson of the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guards had been ordered to threaten St. Louis now that Union General Fremont’s Army of the West was con…

Response by SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL made Jan 26 at 2017 10:53 PM

2017-01-26T22:53:39-05:00

LTC Stephen F. I chose: 1861: Union forces destroyed a Confederate camp in Charleston, Missouri. CSA Brig Gen Jeff Thompson of the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guards had been ordered to threaten St. Louis now that Union General Fremont’s Army of the West was concentrating in : Epic battle!

Response by TSgt Joe C. made Jan 26 at 2017 10:59 PM

2017-01-26T22:59:12-05:00

I found `862 to be an important event on Oct 2nd during the Civil War LTC Stephen F.. B. 1862: Union combined army and navy forces gain access to much of Florida’s Atlantic coast by outmaneuvering the confederates. St. John’s River, Florida: By midday, the gunboats approached the bluff, while Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan began landing the bulk of his 1,500 infantry soldiers at Mayport Mills. Another infantry force landed at Mount Pleasant Creek, about 5 miles in the rear of the Confederate battery, and began marching overland on the 2nd. Outmaneuvered, CSA Lt. Col. Charles F. Hopkins abandoned the position after dark. When the Union gunboats approached the bluff the next day, its guns were silent.
Brig. Gen. John M. Brannan had embarked on 9/30 with about 1,500 infantry soldiers aboard the transports Boston, Ben DeFord, Cosmopolitan, and Neptune arrived at the mouth of the St. John' s River on October 1, where Cdr. Charles Steedman' s gunboats— USS Paul Jones, USS Cimarron, USS Uncas, USS Patroon, USS E. B. Hale, and USS Water Witch —joined them. Their mission is to capture a battery of guns installed by the orders of CSA Brig. Gen. John Finegan for blocking U.S.N. access to the St. Johns River, which gave access to much of Florida’s Atlantic coast. By noon, Gen. Brannan has landed troops below and above the battery.

Response by SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth made Jan 27 at 2017 5:46 AM

2017-01-27T05:46:01-05:00

Thank you for the great history you share sir LTC Stephen F.

Response by LTC Trent Klug made Oct 5 at 2022 2:44 PM

2022-10-05T14:44:52-04:00

LTC Stephen Ford. Ah, the days of camp followers and prosties! Now it's tik toks and Only Fans.