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re: 150 years ago this day...
Posted on 6/24/15 at 8:07 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Posted on 6/24/15 at 8:07 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Sunday, 25 June 1865
Union Brevet Brigadier General Chester Harding, Jr, of the 43rd Missouri Infantry, relinquishes his command of the District of Central Missouri.
The U.S. Navy named the following officers to their new commands: Commander J. V. Cooper to command the U.S.S. Winona; Commander Falius Stanley to command the U.S.S. Tuscarora; Commander R.W. Shuzell to command the U.S.S. Hartford; and Lieutenant Commander W.B. Cushing is relieved from the New York Navy Yard and assigned to the U.S.S. Hartford.
A number of letters have come into Washington, DC, supporting the candidacy of William Marvin, former admiralty judge at Key West, for appointment as provisional governor of Florida. Judge Philip Fraser of Florida and New Jersey and Charles A. Peabody of New York have written letters and there is also a Marvin petition that was signed by several former Confederates from Florida. These endorsements are being assembled by United States Attorney General James Speed who in turn will transmit them to President Andrew Johnson.
Union Brevet Brigadier General Chester Harding, Jr, of the 43rd Missouri Infantry, relinquishes his command of the District of Central Missouri.
The U.S. Navy named the following officers to their new commands: Commander J. V. Cooper to command the U.S.S. Winona; Commander Falius Stanley to command the U.S.S. Tuscarora; Commander R.W. Shuzell to command the U.S.S. Hartford; and Lieutenant Commander W.B. Cushing is relieved from the New York Navy Yard and assigned to the U.S.S. Hartford.
A number of letters have come into Washington, DC, supporting the candidacy of William Marvin, former admiralty judge at Key West, for appointment as provisional governor of Florida. Judge Philip Fraser of Florida and New Jersey and Charles A. Peabody of New York have written letters and there is also a Marvin petition that was signed by several former Confederates from Florida. These endorsements are being assembled by United States Attorney General James Speed who in turn will transmit them to President Andrew Johnson.
1
Posted on 6/25/15 at 8:17 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Monday, 26 June 1865
For the first time in four years, direct overland communication between New York, New York, and Richmond, Virginia, along an old railroad route, is opened today.
President Andrew Johnson is taken ill this morning and does not take any visitors.
Frederick W. Seward, son of Secretary of State William H. Seward and the late Frances Adeline Seward, is able to walk to an adjoining apartment this afternoon. This was the first time he is able to do so since the April 14 assassination attempt on his father at the same time that President Abraham Lincoln was killed.
Acting under the orders of the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, the local land officers in St. Peter, Minnesota, are not permitted to sell land from the Winnebago Indian reservation at a price less than their appraised value until otherwise ordered. This affects approximately 8,000 acres which remained unsold. When first appointed to the position, he had announced that he intended to "...clean house..." in the agency. Among those in the group given their walking papers was the poet Walt Whitman, then working as a clerk in the department, who would eventually receive his dismissal notice on June 30, 1865. Harlan had found a copy of 'Leaves of Grass' on Whitman's desk as the poet was making revisions and found it to be morally offensive.
George Peabody Estey, USA, is appointed Brigadier General.
A Federal expedition moves against Apache Indians, from Fort Bowie to the Gila River, in the Arizona Territory, with skirmishes at Cottonwood Creek and at Cavalry Canon. Soon the Yankees would be destroying Apache rancheros, crops, retaking cattle, and salting wells.
Brigadier General John Newton, USA, is assigned to the command the Federal District of Florida.
The 2nd Division, 15th US Army Corps, is ordered to move from Louisville, Kentucky, to Little Rock, Arkansas.
The 4th US Army Corps arrives at New Orleans, Louisiana, en route to Texas.
Brevet Brigadier General John Lourie Beveridge, of the 17th Illinois Cavalry, assumes the command of the Federal District of Central Missouri.
Shortly after midnight, the C.S.S. Shenandoah, commanded by Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell, commences a highly successful day of operations. At one thirty a.m. she sails alongside three becalmed whalers. In short order, Waddell put Nimrod, William C. Nye, and Catherine to the torch, ordered their crews into small boats to be towed astern of the raider, and set out in pursuit of three other sails sighted to the northward. He captured the barks General Pike, Isabella, and Gipsey before noon, and, after making a cartel ship out of General Pike and bonding her, the other two whalers were burned. "Within forty-eight hours," Waddell wrote, "the Shenandoah has destroyed and ransomed property to the value of $253,500."
Waddell described the usual whaler of that period: "The whaling vessels vary from 90 to 100 feet in length with great beam, consequently they can be turned around more easily than vessels of greater length; powerful in construction, dull sailers, and sheathed for forty feet from the stern, which is generally shod with iron, they are calculated to resist contact with ice which floats in detached floes or pilot ice some sixteen feet in thickness and in an abundance in Bering Sea and northwards. They are equipped with boats much elevated at either end and strongly built. On the stempost are fitted collars for lines to pass over when attached to a whale. These lines are made of white hemp from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches in circumference, varying from 100 to 250 fathoms (600 to 1,500 feet) in length, and coiled in large tubs, (made to fit the boats expressly for this purpose) a precautionary measure to secure their easy flight and keep them from being entangled, which might cause the boat to capsize, so rapidly does the whale move when struck by a harpoon, the lance, and a two-inch muzzle blunderbuss, of short barrel, constructed of iron, and weighing about 40 pounds."
"The projectile used is an elongated explosive shell of 12 inches in length. The blunderbuss is handled by a powerful and expert whalesman and discharged into the animal when near enough. The fuse is short, burns quickly, and explodes the shell causing instant death."
"The whale floats to the surface of the water when the men attach a line to the head by sharp hooks, and tow the fish alongside the vessel when they proceed to cut it up."
"A part of the midship section of the vessel is converted into a blubber room and into which the fish, after being cut up, is thrown. The boiling process for oil is proceeded with as quickly as possible. The arrangements for boiling the blubber are found on deck between the fore and mainmast, built of masonry and barred against accident in heavy weather. In the center of the masonry are one or more large cauldrons into which the blubber is placed, and after the oil is extracted, the refuse is used for making fire and produces an intense heat. The whalers carry hogs and this refuse is used for fattening them and they eat ravenously. The hogsheads used for receiving the oil vary in size from two to three hundred gallons. The greater part of these are shaken up when delivered to the vessels in port and put together upon the ship when wanted, consequently their stowage is closer."
"Those hogsheads which have contained flour in bags, hams, cordage, clothing, shipbiscuits, when emptied, are filled with oil. The odor from a whaling ship is horribly offensive, but it is not worse than that of the green hide vessels from South America, which can be smelt [sic] fifty miles in a favorable wind."
"The bones of the whale are taken on board and placed in the bone room; from these the offensive exhalation is too horrible to relate."
For the first time in four years, direct overland communication between New York, New York, and Richmond, Virginia, along an old railroad route, is opened today.
President Andrew Johnson is taken ill this morning and does not take any visitors.
Frederick W. Seward, son of Secretary of State William H. Seward and the late Frances Adeline Seward, is able to walk to an adjoining apartment this afternoon. This was the first time he is able to do so since the April 14 assassination attempt on his father at the same time that President Abraham Lincoln was killed.
Acting under the orders of the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, the local land officers in St. Peter, Minnesota, are not permitted to sell land from the Winnebago Indian reservation at a price less than their appraised value until otherwise ordered. This affects approximately 8,000 acres which remained unsold. When first appointed to the position, he had announced that he intended to "...clean house..." in the agency. Among those in the group given their walking papers was the poet Walt Whitman, then working as a clerk in the department, who would eventually receive his dismissal notice on June 30, 1865. Harlan had found a copy of 'Leaves of Grass' on Whitman's desk as the poet was making revisions and found it to be morally offensive.
George Peabody Estey, USA, is appointed Brigadier General.
A Federal expedition moves against Apache Indians, from Fort Bowie to the Gila River, in the Arizona Territory, with skirmishes at Cottonwood Creek and at Cavalry Canon. Soon the Yankees would be destroying Apache rancheros, crops, retaking cattle, and salting wells.
Brigadier General John Newton, USA, is assigned to the command the Federal District of Florida.
The 2nd Division, 15th US Army Corps, is ordered to move from Louisville, Kentucky, to Little Rock, Arkansas.
The 4th US Army Corps arrives at New Orleans, Louisiana, en route to Texas.
Brevet Brigadier General John Lourie Beveridge, of the 17th Illinois Cavalry, assumes the command of the Federal District of Central Missouri.
Shortly after midnight, the C.S.S. Shenandoah, commanded by Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell, commences a highly successful day of operations. At one thirty a.m. she sails alongside three becalmed whalers. In short order, Waddell put Nimrod, William C. Nye, and Catherine to the torch, ordered their crews into small boats to be towed astern of the raider, and set out in pursuit of three other sails sighted to the northward. He captured the barks General Pike, Isabella, and Gipsey before noon, and, after making a cartel ship out of General Pike and bonding her, the other two whalers were burned. "Within forty-eight hours," Waddell wrote, "the Shenandoah has destroyed and ransomed property to the value of $253,500."
Waddell described the usual whaler of that period: "The whaling vessels vary from 90 to 100 feet in length with great beam, consequently they can be turned around more easily than vessels of greater length; powerful in construction, dull sailers, and sheathed for forty feet from the stern, which is generally shod with iron, they are calculated to resist contact with ice which floats in detached floes or pilot ice some sixteen feet in thickness and in an abundance in Bering Sea and northwards. They are equipped with boats much elevated at either end and strongly built. On the stempost are fitted collars for lines to pass over when attached to a whale. These lines are made of white hemp from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches in circumference, varying from 100 to 250 fathoms (600 to 1,500 feet) in length, and coiled in large tubs, (made to fit the boats expressly for this purpose) a precautionary measure to secure their easy flight and keep them from being entangled, which might cause the boat to capsize, so rapidly does the whale move when struck by a harpoon, the lance, and a two-inch muzzle blunderbuss, of short barrel, constructed of iron, and weighing about 40 pounds."
"The projectile used is an elongated explosive shell of 12 inches in length. The blunderbuss is handled by a powerful and expert whalesman and discharged into the animal when near enough. The fuse is short, burns quickly, and explodes the shell causing instant death."
"The whale floats to the surface of the water when the men attach a line to the head by sharp hooks, and tow the fish alongside the vessel when they proceed to cut it up."
"A part of the midship section of the vessel is converted into a blubber room and into which the fish, after being cut up, is thrown. The boiling process for oil is proceeded with as quickly as possible. The arrangements for boiling the blubber are found on deck between the fore and mainmast, built of masonry and barred against accident in heavy weather. In the center of the masonry are one or more large cauldrons into which the blubber is placed, and after the oil is extracted, the refuse is used for making fire and produces an intense heat. The whalers carry hogs and this refuse is used for fattening them and they eat ravenously. The hogsheads used for receiving the oil vary in size from two to three hundred gallons. The greater part of these are shaken up when delivered to the vessels in port and put together upon the ship when wanted, consequently their stowage is closer."
"Those hogsheads which have contained flour in bags, hams, cordage, clothing, shipbiscuits, when emptied, are filled with oil. The odor from a whaling ship is horribly offensive, but it is not worse than that of the green hide vessels from South America, which can be smelt [sic] fifty miles in a favorable wind."
"The bones of the whale are taken on board and placed in the bone room; from these the offensive exhalation is too horrible to relate."
This post was edited on 6/25/15 at 8:58 pm
Posted on 6/26/15 at 8:33 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Tuesday, 27 June 1865
The trial of the Lincoln Assassination conspirators continues for yet another day with even more witnesses being called to the stand.
The Old Capitol Prison and its grounds in Washington, DC, are offered for sale at public auction following the instructions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Even though there are five bidders present, the auction is postponed.
Major General George G. Meade, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General Charles R. Woods, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Alabama, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General John G. Foster, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Florida, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General Samuel P. Carter, USA, is assigned command of the Federal 23rd Army Corps, Florida, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General James B. Steedman, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Georgia, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General John M. Schofield, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of North Carolina, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General Philip H. Sheridan, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of the Gulf.
Major General Edward R. S. Canby, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Louisiana & Texas, within the new Military Division of the Gulf.
Colonel Frederick W. Moore, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Post of Galveston, Texas, within the new Military Division of the Gulf.
Major General William T. Sherman, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Henry W. Slocum, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Mississippi, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General John Pope, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the Missouri, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Joseph J. Reynolds, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Arkansas, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General John M. Palmer, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Kentucky, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Middle Department, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Joseph Hooker, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the East, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Alfred H. Terry, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Virginia, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Colonel David Moore, USA, is assigned command of the Federal 1st Sub-District of St. Louis, Missouri, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Edward O. C. Ord, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the Ohio, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
The Military Division of the Pacific is created, consisting of the Department of California and the Columbia.
Major General Henry W. Halleck, USA, is assigned command of the new Federal Military Division of the Pacific.
The Department of California is created, consisting of the States of California, Nevada, and the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona.
Major General Irvin McDowell, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of California, within the new Military Division of the Pacific.
The Department of the Columbia is created, consisting of the State of Oregon and the Territories of Idaho and Washington.
Brigadier General George Wright, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the Columbia, within the new Military Division of the Pacific.
Major General Christopher C. Augur, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Washington, within the new Military Division of the Pacific.
Major General George H. Thomas, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of Tennessee.
Major General George Stoneman, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Tennessee, within the new Military Division of Tennessee
Emperor Maximilian I, aka Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph who was a younger brother of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I, was absent from Mexico City when Matthew Fontaine Maury appeared in the Capital earlier in the month. In the last week, the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire arrived and promptly saw the noted American. After other short meetings, he granted Maury a long audience to present his emigration plan in full. Then he had Maury leave a written draft for study.
Commander Alexander Macomb, commanding the Union naval forces in Albemarle Sound, reported to the commander of the Atlantic Squadron that he had captured all the Confederate naval vessels in the Roanoke River. He took possession of the sternwheel steamer Cotton Plant, the screw steamer Egypt Mills, the unfinished gunboat Halifax, and one lighter. He also seized 99 bales of cotton. The two steamers had been privately owned at one time but had been taken over by the Confederate Navy during the latter stages of the War.
William Henry Penrose, USA, is appointed Brigadier General.
The Honorable Edward Hubbard of Virginia is in Washington, DC, this morning to petition President Andrew Johnson for a presidential pardon.
Following the War Between the States, there were thirteen "Confederate Profiles" that disqualified an individual from receiving a "General Amnesty." If a "Rebel" fell under one of these exclusions, amnesty was denied and an application for a "Special Personal Pardon" from President Johnson was required. Excluded from receiving a "General Amnesty" were individuals who:
1. were civil or diplomatic agents or officials of the Confederacy
2. left judicial posts under the United States to aid the rebellion
3. were Confederate Military Officers above the rank of Army Colonel or Navy Lieutenant
4. were members of the U.S. Congress who left to aid in the rebellion
5. resigned commissions in the U.S. Army or Navy and afterwards aided in the rebellion
6. treated unlawfully black prisoners of war and their white officers
7. had absented themselves from the United States in order to aid in the rebellion
8. were graduates of West Point or Annapolis who served as Confederate officers
9. ex-Confederate Governors
10. left homes in territory under United States jurisdiction for purposes of aiding the rebellion
11. engaged in destruction of commerce on the high seas or in raids from Canada
12. voluntarily participated in the rebellion who had property valued at more than $20,000.00
13. had broken the oath taken under the provisions of the proclamation of 8 December 1863
The trial of the Lincoln Assassination conspirators continues for yet another day with even more witnesses being called to the stand.
The Old Capitol Prison and its grounds in Washington, DC, are offered for sale at public auction following the instructions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Even though there are five bidders present, the auction is postponed.
Major General George G. Meade, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General Charles R. Woods, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Alabama, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General John G. Foster, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Florida, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General Samuel P. Carter, USA, is assigned command of the Federal 23rd Army Corps, Florida, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General James B. Steedman, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Georgia, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General John M. Schofield, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of North Carolina, within the new Military Division of the Atlantic.
Major General Philip H. Sheridan, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of the Gulf.
Major General Edward R. S. Canby, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Louisiana & Texas, within the new Military Division of the Gulf.
Colonel Frederick W. Moore, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Post of Galveston, Texas, within the new Military Division of the Gulf.
Major General William T. Sherman, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Henry W. Slocum, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Mississippi, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General John Pope, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the Missouri, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Joseph J. Reynolds, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Arkansas, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General John M. Palmer, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Kentucky, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Middle Department, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Joseph Hooker, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the East, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Alfred H. Terry, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Virginia, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Colonel David Moore, USA, is assigned command of the Federal 1st Sub-District of St. Louis, Missouri, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
Major General Edward O. C. Ord, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the Ohio, within the new Military Division of the Mississippi.
The Military Division of the Pacific is created, consisting of the Department of California and the Columbia.
Major General Henry W. Halleck, USA, is assigned command of the new Federal Military Division of the Pacific.
The Department of California is created, consisting of the States of California, Nevada, and the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona.
Major General Irvin McDowell, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of California, within the new Military Division of the Pacific.
The Department of the Columbia is created, consisting of the State of Oregon and the Territories of Idaho and Washington.
Brigadier General George Wright, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of the Columbia, within the new Military Division of the Pacific.
Major General Christopher C. Augur, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Washington, within the new Military Division of the Pacific.
Major General George H. Thomas, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Military Division of Tennessee.
Major General George Stoneman, USA, is assigned command of the Federal Department of Tennessee, within the new Military Division of Tennessee
Emperor Maximilian I, aka Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph who was a younger brother of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I, was absent from Mexico City when Matthew Fontaine Maury appeared in the Capital earlier in the month. In the last week, the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire arrived and promptly saw the noted American. After other short meetings, he granted Maury a long audience to present his emigration plan in full. Then he had Maury leave a written draft for study.
Commander Alexander Macomb, commanding the Union naval forces in Albemarle Sound, reported to the commander of the Atlantic Squadron that he had captured all the Confederate naval vessels in the Roanoke River. He took possession of the sternwheel steamer Cotton Plant, the screw steamer Egypt Mills, the unfinished gunboat Halifax, and one lighter. He also seized 99 bales of cotton. The two steamers had been privately owned at one time but had been taken over by the Confederate Navy during the latter stages of the War.
William Henry Penrose, USA, is appointed Brigadier General.
The Honorable Edward Hubbard of Virginia is in Washington, DC, this morning to petition President Andrew Johnson for a presidential pardon.
Following the War Between the States, there were thirteen "Confederate Profiles" that disqualified an individual from receiving a "General Amnesty." If a "Rebel" fell under one of these exclusions, amnesty was denied and an application for a "Special Personal Pardon" from President Johnson was required. Excluded from receiving a "General Amnesty" were individuals who:
1. were civil or diplomatic agents or officials of the Confederacy
2. left judicial posts under the United States to aid the rebellion
3. were Confederate Military Officers above the rank of Army Colonel or Navy Lieutenant
4. were members of the U.S. Congress who left to aid in the rebellion
5. resigned commissions in the U.S. Army or Navy and afterwards aided in the rebellion
6. treated unlawfully black prisoners of war and their white officers
7. had absented themselves from the United States in order to aid in the rebellion
8. were graduates of West Point or Annapolis who served as Confederate officers
9. ex-Confederate Governors
10. left homes in territory under United States jurisdiction for purposes of aiding the rebellion
11. engaged in destruction of commerce on the high seas or in raids from Canada
12. voluntarily participated in the rebellion who had property valued at more than $20,000.00
13. had broken the oath taken under the provisions of the proclamation of 8 December 1863
Posted on 6/26/15 at 9:18 pm to BadLeroyDawg
I wonder what people will say about today in 150 years.
Posted on 6/26/15 at 9:23 pm to Porter Osborne Jr
quote:
I wonder what people will say about today in 150 years.
Skeet Skeet Skeet.
Posted on 6/26/15 at 9:38 pm to Porter Osborne Jr
$20,000 in 1865 amounts to between $250,000 and $300,000 in today's dollars.
A prosperous farm, not even a plantation, would be worth that much. But I suspect this was more of a judgement call, reserved for plantations and significant large landholders.
A prosperous farm, not even a plantation, would be worth that much. But I suspect this was more of a judgement call, reserved for plantations and significant large landholders.
Posted on 6/27/15 at 8:44 am to Porter Osborne Jr
Great question, Porter. If the Constitution can survive, and with the powers the Federal Government has taken from the States in the past 150, as the SCOTUS yearly becomes more complicit, that premise is highly doubtful...we might still have a nation. It will most likely be a has-been, however, as the wolves are now starting to outvote the sheep. That's the definition of a "True Democracy" you know.
Posted on 6/27/15 at 9:24 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Wednesday, 28 June 1865
The Federal District of Kansas is created, consisting of the former Districts of North and South Kansas and Brigadier General Robert B. Mitchell, USA, is assigned to its command.
During its final days of operation against Federal shipping the Confederate commerce raider, the CSS Shenandoah captures 11 Union whalers in the Bering Sea. As a devastated Southland baked in the summer heat, the CSS Shenandoah was cornering 11 Union whalers in a bay of the Bering Straits on the last day of her operations. The Brunswick of New Bedford had been damaged by an ice floe and was surrounded by the other 10 vessels who were offering assistance or bidding on supplies in case the master decided to abandon ship. Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell put the Shenandoah in position to prevent escape and launched five armed boats. As the Shenandoah raised the Confederate Flag, a warning shot was fired and 10 of the whalers struck their colors. That was the final shot of the War Between the States. The drunken master of the Favorite refused to surrender and brandished a harpoon gun. The boarding party, however, took his ship without bloodshed. Waddell bonded the ship James Murray and bark Nile. All prisoners were placed on board these two vessels for passage to San Francisco. The Nile was selected because the master had died leaving his wife and two small children aboard. The widow had the body of her husband preserved in a barrel of whiskey. Waddell recruited nine men from the whaler crews, as no one knew that the War was over. The Confederates burned the ships Hillman, Nassau, Brunswick, Isaac Howland, and the barks Waverly, Martha, Favorite, Covington, and Congress. These nine vessels became the final contribution to the Confederate States of America Navy’s artificial reef program.
Second report: This date marked the most successful single day the CSS Shenandoah enjoyed as a commerce raider during her long cruise that spanned 13 months and covered 58,000 miles, and during which Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell often successfully followed his conviction that "...nothing is to be gained if risk is not taken." Near the narrows of the Bering Strait, Lieutenant Waddell fell in with a rendezvous of eleven American whalers. The ship Brunswick of New Bedford had been stove in by an ice floe and the others had gathered either to render assistance or to bid on supplies and oil in the event the master decided to abandon ship and offer bargains. To insure that none escaped, Waddell entered the bay under the American flag and while five boats were being quickly armed and manned, he maneuvered the ship to a position in which the raider's guns commanded the whalers. As soon as the armed boats were away, the Confederate commander lowered the American flag and ran up the Stars and Bars. Ten of the whalers immediately struck their colors. The single exception was Favorite of New Haven whose flag remained at the gaff defended by her drunken master flourishing a harpoon gun. The resistance was short lived as the whaler was carried by boarding without bloodshed. Waddell then bonded the ship James Murray and the bark Nile and placed his 336 prisoners on board for passage to San Francisco. The latter whaler was selected for this mission because her master had died, leaving a widow and two small children on board; "...the poor widow had the remains of her husband on board preserved in whiskey". Waddell stripped the vessels of supplies, and recruited 9 men. He noted that their enlistment was "...evidence that if they had heard any report of the military failure of the South, they considered it unreliable". Waddell put the torch to the ships Hillman, Nassau, Brunswick, Isaac Howland and barks Waverly, Martha, Favorite, Covington and Congress. Waddell records in his memoirs that "...the horizon was illuminated with a fiery glare presenting a picture of indescribable grandeur, while the water was covered with black smoke mingled with flakes of fire". This field day against American commerce climaxed a highly successful cruise in which Shenandoah captured a total of 38 American vessels valued at $1,361,983.
Confederate Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury dined with the Mexican Monarchs, Emperor Maximilian I and Empress Carlota (Charlotte of Belgium), at the Chapultepec Palace in Mexico City. Because of the Virginian's reputation as "Pathfinder of the Seas" and "Father of Modern Oceanography and Naval Meteorology", the Emperor extended the unusual courtesy to Maury of requesting that from then on, unlike others, he "...remain seated when the Emperor was in the room". Empress Charlotte, the daughter of Leopold I of Belgium and first cousin of Queen Victoria, asked for his photograph for her album.
The Federal District of Kansas is created, consisting of the former Districts of North and South Kansas and Brigadier General Robert B. Mitchell, USA, is assigned to its command.
During its final days of operation against Federal shipping the Confederate commerce raider, the CSS Shenandoah captures 11 Union whalers in the Bering Sea. As a devastated Southland baked in the summer heat, the CSS Shenandoah was cornering 11 Union whalers in a bay of the Bering Straits on the last day of her operations. The Brunswick of New Bedford had been damaged by an ice floe and was surrounded by the other 10 vessels who were offering assistance or bidding on supplies in case the master decided to abandon ship. Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell put the Shenandoah in position to prevent escape and launched five armed boats. As the Shenandoah raised the Confederate Flag, a warning shot was fired and 10 of the whalers struck their colors. That was the final shot of the War Between the States. The drunken master of the Favorite refused to surrender and brandished a harpoon gun. The boarding party, however, took his ship without bloodshed. Waddell bonded the ship James Murray and bark Nile. All prisoners were placed on board these two vessels for passage to San Francisco. The Nile was selected because the master had died leaving his wife and two small children aboard. The widow had the body of her husband preserved in a barrel of whiskey. Waddell recruited nine men from the whaler crews, as no one knew that the War was over. The Confederates burned the ships Hillman, Nassau, Brunswick, Isaac Howland, and the barks Waverly, Martha, Favorite, Covington, and Congress. These nine vessels became the final contribution to the Confederate States of America Navy’s artificial reef program.
Second report: This date marked the most successful single day the CSS Shenandoah enjoyed as a commerce raider during her long cruise that spanned 13 months and covered 58,000 miles, and during which Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell often successfully followed his conviction that "...nothing is to be gained if risk is not taken." Near the narrows of the Bering Strait, Lieutenant Waddell fell in with a rendezvous of eleven American whalers. The ship Brunswick of New Bedford had been stove in by an ice floe and the others had gathered either to render assistance or to bid on supplies and oil in the event the master decided to abandon ship and offer bargains. To insure that none escaped, Waddell entered the bay under the American flag and while five boats were being quickly armed and manned, he maneuvered the ship to a position in which the raider's guns commanded the whalers. As soon as the armed boats were away, the Confederate commander lowered the American flag and ran up the Stars and Bars. Ten of the whalers immediately struck their colors. The single exception was Favorite of New Haven whose flag remained at the gaff defended by her drunken master flourishing a harpoon gun. The resistance was short lived as the whaler was carried by boarding without bloodshed. Waddell then bonded the ship James Murray and the bark Nile and placed his 336 prisoners on board for passage to San Francisco. The latter whaler was selected for this mission because her master had died, leaving a widow and two small children on board; "...the poor widow had the remains of her husband on board preserved in whiskey". Waddell stripped the vessels of supplies, and recruited 9 men. He noted that their enlistment was "...evidence that if they had heard any report of the military failure of the South, they considered it unreliable". Waddell put the torch to the ships Hillman, Nassau, Brunswick, Isaac Howland and barks Waverly, Martha, Favorite, Covington and Congress. Waddell records in his memoirs that "...the horizon was illuminated with a fiery glare presenting a picture of indescribable grandeur, while the water was covered with black smoke mingled with flakes of fire". This field day against American commerce climaxed a highly successful cruise in which Shenandoah captured a total of 38 American vessels valued at $1,361,983.
Confederate Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury dined with the Mexican Monarchs, Emperor Maximilian I and Empress Carlota (Charlotte of Belgium), at the Chapultepec Palace in Mexico City. Because of the Virginian's reputation as "Pathfinder of the Seas" and "Father of Modern Oceanography and Naval Meteorology", the Emperor extended the unusual courtesy to Maury of requesting that from then on, unlike others, he "...remain seated when the Emperor was in the room". Empress Charlotte, the daughter of Leopold I of Belgium and first cousin of Queen Victoria, asked for his photograph for her album.
This post was edited on 6/28/15 at 4:03 am
Posted on 6/28/15 at 8:04 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Thursday, 29 June 1865
Skirmishing breaks out with Indians near Fort Dodge, Kansas, as a party of about 40 natives charge upon one of the cattle herds belonging to a Mexican train, killing two Mexican herdsmen. The Indians fail to capture any livestock as the Yankees are fast on their trail in chasing them away.
Rear Admiral Henry Knox Thatcher this morning sends his Navy Department the Confederate flag, flown from the C.S.S. LeCompt and captured by the U.S.S. Cornubia off the coast of Galveston, Texas, on 24 May. Thatcher penned a note to accompany the Southern naval ensign: "It is believed to be the last Rebel flag on the coast afloat captured from the Rebels during this War."
In Washington, DC, the military commission trying the eight alleged conspirators in President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination--Dr. Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlin, Lewis Paine, Edman "Ned" Spangler, Samuel Arnold, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Suratt--went into closed quarters to deliberate and decide upon their judgment.
Skirmishing breaks out with Indians near Fort Dodge, Kansas, as a party of about 40 natives charge upon one of the cattle herds belonging to a Mexican train, killing two Mexican herdsmen. The Indians fail to capture any livestock as the Yankees are fast on their trail in chasing them away.
Rear Admiral Henry Knox Thatcher this morning sends his Navy Department the Confederate flag, flown from the C.S.S. LeCompt and captured by the U.S.S. Cornubia off the coast of Galveston, Texas, on 24 May. Thatcher penned a note to accompany the Southern naval ensign: "It is believed to be the last Rebel flag on the coast afloat captured from the Rebels during this War."
In Washington, DC, the military commission trying the eight alleged conspirators in President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination--Dr. Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlin, Lewis Paine, Edman "Ned" Spangler, Samuel Arnold, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Suratt--went into closed quarters to deliberate and decide upon their judgment.
Posted on 6/29/15 at 9:26 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Friday, 30 June 1865
President Andrew Johnson names Benjamin Franklin Perry provisional governor of South Carolina.
Skirmishing continues with Indians at Rock Creek, in the Dakota Territory, where the natives are reported to have run off 60 head of cattle from Rock Creek and killed one soldier. Also, at Willow Springs Station, they have stolen all the stock belonging to the stage coach company.
Major General Henry W. Halleck, USA, relinquishes his command of the Military Division of the James, Virginia.
After a lengthy trial, the military commission sitting in Washington, DC, finds all eight alleged President Abraham Lincoln assassination collaborators guilty of "...treasonable conspiracy." The tribunal for the suspects in the plot returns its verdict: four of the eight defendants, along with boardinghouse proprietor Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, will be hanged in the prison yard of the penitentiary on July 7, 1865--Lewis Paine who made the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Union Secretary of State William Henry Seward; George A. Atzerodt who had been designated by the actor John Wilkes Booth to murder then Union Vice President Andrew Johnson; and David E. Herold who had accompanied Booth in his escape from the city.
Michael O'Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, boyhood friends of Booth and conspirators in the actor's earlier plans to abduct Lincoln and in his later plans to assassinate the government's top officials, were given life sentences in prison at Dry Tortugas. Another accomplice--Edward (Edman) Spangler, stagehand at the Ford Theater--was found guilty of a lesser charge of aiding and abetting Booth during his escape from theatre. He was sentenced to six years of hard labor in prison at Dry Tortugas, Florida. Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who treated the injured Booth while he was fleeing Federal troops, was also sentenced to life in prison at Dry Tortugas. The remaining two accused--Ernest Hartman Richter, a cousin of Atzerodt, and Joao Celestino, a Portuguese sea captain--were released without ever being brought to trial.
An outcry will go up over the decision to execute Mrs. Surratt whose guilt was the second-to-last considered, because her case presented problems of evidence and witness reliability; several efforts are made to have the sentence changed, but to no avail. Five of the nine judges will sign a letter asking President Andrew Johnson to give Surratt clemency and commute her sentence to life in prison, given her age and sex. Johnson would ultimately approve the sentences on July 5, and the four sentenced to death were hanged two days later. Mrs. Suratt became the first woman to be executed by the United States Federal Government.
President Andrew Johnson names Benjamin Franklin Perry provisional governor of South Carolina.
Skirmishing continues with Indians at Rock Creek, in the Dakota Territory, where the natives are reported to have run off 60 head of cattle from Rock Creek and killed one soldier. Also, at Willow Springs Station, they have stolen all the stock belonging to the stage coach company.
Major General Henry W. Halleck, USA, relinquishes his command of the Military Division of the James, Virginia.
After a lengthy trial, the military commission sitting in Washington, DC, finds all eight alleged President Abraham Lincoln assassination collaborators guilty of "...treasonable conspiracy." The tribunal for the suspects in the plot returns its verdict: four of the eight defendants, along with boardinghouse proprietor Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, will be hanged in the prison yard of the penitentiary on July 7, 1865--Lewis Paine who made the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Union Secretary of State William Henry Seward; George A. Atzerodt who had been designated by the actor John Wilkes Booth to murder then Union Vice President Andrew Johnson; and David E. Herold who had accompanied Booth in his escape from the city.
Michael O'Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, boyhood friends of Booth and conspirators in the actor's earlier plans to abduct Lincoln and in his later plans to assassinate the government's top officials, were given life sentences in prison at Dry Tortugas. Another accomplice--Edward (Edman) Spangler, stagehand at the Ford Theater--was found guilty of a lesser charge of aiding and abetting Booth during his escape from theatre. He was sentenced to six years of hard labor in prison at Dry Tortugas, Florida. Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who treated the injured Booth while he was fleeing Federal troops, was also sentenced to life in prison at Dry Tortugas. The remaining two accused--Ernest Hartman Richter, a cousin of Atzerodt, and Joao Celestino, a Portuguese sea captain--were released without ever being brought to trial.
An outcry will go up over the decision to execute Mrs. Surratt whose guilt was the second-to-last considered, because her case presented problems of evidence and witness reliability; several efforts are made to have the sentence changed, but to no avail. Five of the nine judges will sign a letter asking President Andrew Johnson to give Surratt clemency and commute her sentence to life in prison, given her age and sex. Johnson would ultimately approve the sentences on July 5, and the four sentenced to death were hanged two days later. Mrs. Suratt became the first woman to be executed by the United States Federal Government.
Posted on 6/30/15 at 8:38 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Saturday, 1 July 1865
New Hampshire becomes the 23rd state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which will attempt to finally abolish slavery.
The steamer Olive Branch hits a snag late in the evening and sinks 100 miles south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River. It is carrying a detachment of the Sixth Illinois Cavalry. The captain and four privates drown and 95 horses are lost.
The First Minnesota Light Artillery Battery formally musters out of service at St. Paul, Minnesota.
After destroying the large fleet of Arctic whalers, Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell stood south "...amid snow and icebergs..." looking for more victims. There he writes, in "...the immensity of the ice and floes...", and threatened with the "...danger of being shut up in the Arctic Ocean for several months, I was obliged to turn her prow southward and reached East Cape just in time to slip by the Diomedes when a vast field of floe ice was closing the strait...The sun was in his highest northern declination, and it was perpetual daylight, when he sank below the northern horizon, a golden fringe marked his course until his pale and cheerless face came again, frosted from icebergs and snows."
"When the Shenandoah reached the Island of St. Lawrence there was a fine northwest wind. Sail was made, and the propeller triced up. While to the westward of that island, the ship making six knots per hour, a dense fog came on..."
Trying to beat out of the ice, the ship runs into a large floe and damages her rudder when, with sails aback to avoid sudden collision with thick ice, "...she gathered sternboard." The crew places heavy rope mats around the prow. "Steam was gently applied and with a large block of ice resting against her cutwater she pushed it along to open a passage, and in this way we worked the Shenandoah for hours until she gained open water."
To avoid being trapped by Federal cruisers, if not the ice, Waddell decides to run for "...more open seas". On 3 July "...a black fog closed upon us and shut out from our view the heavens and all things terrestrial." It clings about them thick and ominous for the next two days as the raider steames south depending solely on dead reckoning.
New Hampshire becomes the 23rd state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which will attempt to finally abolish slavery.
The steamer Olive Branch hits a snag late in the evening and sinks 100 miles south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River. It is carrying a detachment of the Sixth Illinois Cavalry. The captain and four privates drown and 95 horses are lost.
The First Minnesota Light Artillery Battery formally musters out of service at St. Paul, Minnesota.
After destroying the large fleet of Arctic whalers, Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell stood south "...amid snow and icebergs..." looking for more victims. There he writes, in "...the immensity of the ice and floes...", and threatened with the "...danger of being shut up in the Arctic Ocean for several months, I was obliged to turn her prow southward and reached East Cape just in time to slip by the Diomedes when a vast field of floe ice was closing the strait...The sun was in his highest northern declination, and it was perpetual daylight, when he sank below the northern horizon, a golden fringe marked his course until his pale and cheerless face came again, frosted from icebergs and snows."
"When the Shenandoah reached the Island of St. Lawrence there was a fine northwest wind. Sail was made, and the propeller triced up. While to the westward of that island, the ship making six knots per hour, a dense fog came on..."
Trying to beat out of the ice, the ship runs into a large floe and damages her rudder when, with sails aback to avoid sudden collision with thick ice, "...she gathered sternboard." The crew places heavy rope mats around the prow. "Steam was gently applied and with a large block of ice resting against her cutwater she pushed it along to open a passage, and in this way we worked the Shenandoah for hours until she gained open water."
To avoid being trapped by Federal cruisers, if not the ice, Waddell decides to run for "...more open seas". On 3 July "...a black fog closed upon us and shut out from our view the heavens and all things terrestrial." It clings about them thick and ominous for the next two days as the raider steames south depending solely on dead reckoning.
Posted on 7/1/15 at 9:00 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Sunday, 2 July 1865
All the members of the Sixth Kansas Volunteer Infantry, who have been in prison at Tyler, Texas, this morning returned to Little Rock, Arkansas, and are soon to be on their way home. They were captured at Fort Smith, Arkansas, during the late unpleasantness.
Hundreds of paroled Confederate soldiers are released from prison and are in the streets of Alta, California, while awaiting transportation home.
A Federal expedition moves from Camp Lyon, against Indians in the Idaho Territory, to the headwaters of the Malheur River--a tributary of the Snake River in eastern Oregon--with skirmishing breaking out with Snake Indians and possibly some Boise Indians.
A Federal operation commences against partisans reported at Nickajack Creek, in Georgia, near the Sweetwater Creek petroglyph.
Now that the War is over, what comes next is anyone's guess. The massive task of reuniting with the Union Government will soon begin. Radical Republicans in Washington, DC, are calling for harsh punishment of the South. The moderates are looking for a more civil and conciliatory approach to eliminating the enmity that remains after more than four long years of bloody fighting, resulting in as many as 750,000 deaths and at least that many others wounded, missing or captured who survived. This was in a population of just over 31 million people according to the 1860 census. The War in the South was not just waged on the nation's battlefields, but at home as well. The women had taken over much of the men’s work running the homesteads and maintaining the hearths. Both food and labor were scarce and difficult to find, but the ladies prevailed and somehow managed to preserve the farm and family. It is easy to understand the bitterness that existed. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through Georgia and the Carolinas where he allowed his "Bummer" troops to pillage and steal everything they could find. What they could not take with them, they burned. Wells were salted. Rapes, murders and abductions officially went unreported. Houses, churches, unharvested fields, grain storage, literally everything was burned or destroyed by Sherman’s Army.
The grim animosity toward Sherman and his soldiers for the wanton damage and malicious destruction they caused remains to this day in most areas of the South. The War was barely over when the opportunists from the North arrived. They were called carpetbaggers, as they appeared with nothing but their meager belongings, because they knew they could take almost anything they wanted, with the protection of the occupying Yankee forces. And take they did. They, and the scalawags, occupied public offices, became judges, tax officials or anything else that would enrich their pockets. This was not the way to create a sense of allegiance to the victors. The South would soon learn all too well that the conqueror is entitled to the spoils of war and is likewise empowered to write history to portray himself in the best possible light. It will prove extremely difficult, however, even in government schools to paint the ravaging of the South in a positive manner. Here we are today, 150 years later, trying the remove the wrinkles from President Abraham Lincoln’s face for scorning the Constitution's constraints when he "...broke an assortment of laws and ignored one constitutional provision after another..." according to an analysis by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, as well as portraying him as the "Savior" of the Negro race in America.
All the members of the Sixth Kansas Volunteer Infantry, who have been in prison at Tyler, Texas, this morning returned to Little Rock, Arkansas, and are soon to be on their way home. They were captured at Fort Smith, Arkansas, during the late unpleasantness.
Hundreds of paroled Confederate soldiers are released from prison and are in the streets of Alta, California, while awaiting transportation home.
A Federal expedition moves from Camp Lyon, against Indians in the Idaho Territory, to the headwaters of the Malheur River--a tributary of the Snake River in eastern Oregon--with skirmishing breaking out with Snake Indians and possibly some Boise Indians.
A Federal operation commences against partisans reported at Nickajack Creek, in Georgia, near the Sweetwater Creek petroglyph.
Now that the War is over, what comes next is anyone's guess. The massive task of reuniting with the Union Government will soon begin. Radical Republicans in Washington, DC, are calling for harsh punishment of the South. The moderates are looking for a more civil and conciliatory approach to eliminating the enmity that remains after more than four long years of bloody fighting, resulting in as many as 750,000 deaths and at least that many others wounded, missing or captured who survived. This was in a population of just over 31 million people according to the 1860 census. The War in the South was not just waged on the nation's battlefields, but at home as well. The women had taken over much of the men’s work running the homesteads and maintaining the hearths. Both food and labor were scarce and difficult to find, but the ladies prevailed and somehow managed to preserve the farm and family. It is easy to understand the bitterness that existed. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through Georgia and the Carolinas where he allowed his "Bummer" troops to pillage and steal everything they could find. What they could not take with them, they burned. Wells were salted. Rapes, murders and abductions officially went unreported. Houses, churches, unharvested fields, grain storage, literally everything was burned or destroyed by Sherman’s Army.
The grim animosity toward Sherman and his soldiers for the wanton damage and malicious destruction they caused remains to this day in most areas of the South. The War was barely over when the opportunists from the North arrived. They were called carpetbaggers, as they appeared with nothing but their meager belongings, because they knew they could take almost anything they wanted, with the protection of the occupying Yankee forces. And take they did. They, and the scalawags, occupied public offices, became judges, tax officials or anything else that would enrich their pockets. This was not the way to create a sense of allegiance to the victors. The South would soon learn all too well that the conqueror is entitled to the spoils of war and is likewise empowered to write history to portray himself in the best possible light. It will prove extremely difficult, however, even in government schools to paint the ravaging of the South in a positive manner. Here we are today, 150 years later, trying the remove the wrinkles from President Abraham Lincoln’s face for scorning the Constitution's constraints when he "...broke an assortment of laws and ignored one constitutional provision after another..." according to an analysis by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, as well as portraying him as the "Savior" of the Negro race in America.
Posted on 7/2/15 at 9:33 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Monday, 3 July 1865
The remaining official records of the Confederate government are captured in Georgia.
The 3rd, 5th and 7th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry regiments arrive in Concord, New Hampshire for mustering out of Federal service.
By early May 1865, a month after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, most of the remaining Confederate soldiers had laid down their arms. While some Southerners were angry, and others were relieved, nearly all were apprehensive about the future. Many moved west and north; some decided to leave the United States completely.
Many Southerners were pessimistic about the region’s economic future. Partly because of the monetary value of slaves, in 1860 seven of the 10 states with the highest per capita wealth would join the Confederacy. Much of that wealth was wiped out, and today Virginia is the only former rebel state to rank among the top 10 in per capita income, while five of the bottom 10 are former Confederate states. The classic example is Mississippi, which ranked No. 1 in 1860, and 50th in the 2010 census.
It took 85 years for the South’s per capita income to return to where it was in 1860 — an already low 72 percent of the national average. (The delay partly reflected protective tariffs, which were injurious to the South’s export economy and lasted until after World War II.) Not surprisingly, such concerns put Southerners on the move, either outside the region or to less war-torn parts of it, like Texas. In 1860 Texas ranked ninth among the Southern states in population; 20 years later it was first.
Above all, many leaders feared being tried for treason. Although the Appomattox agreement stipulated that surrendered soldiers could return home, where they were “not to be disturbed by US authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside,” many Northern politicians wanted to ignore those provisions. Confederate civilian politicians were even more vulnerable, because they could not lay claim to a defense under the army’s surrender terms.
And Lincoln’s assassination within a week of Appomattox inflamed Northern political blood lust. Indeed, Lee was indicted on a charge of treason on June 7, 1865, prompting General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant to tell President Andrew Johnson that he considered the indictment a violation of the surrender terms as he wrote them, and would resign if the prosecution proceeded.
Two of the most prominent Southerners who fled out of fear of a treason indictment were John C. Breckinridge and Judah P. Benjamin. Breckinridge, from Kentucky, was vice president under James Buchanan and an 1860 presidential candidate; he received more electoral votes than any other save Abraham Lincoln. Although Breckinridge lost the 1860 presidential race, he was elected a Kentucky senator. In October 1861 he was the last senator to leave Congress to join the Confederacy. Two months later the Senate declared him a traitor. He served as a general in the Confederate army; when Lee surrendered, Breckinridge was the Confederate secretary of war.
Benjamin, a former senator from Louisiana, was equally senior in the Confederacy, serving variously as attorney general, secretary of war and secretary of state, the position he held when the Confederacy collapsed.
Two weeks after Lee’s surrender, President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were near Charlotte, N.C., attempting to flee the Eastern Theater and reform the government elsewhere. Within days cabinet members started to conclude that the situation was hopeless and began to resign. In perhaps his greatest service to posterity, on April 26 Breckenridge instructed a subordinate to store the Confederate government archives in Charlotte and surrender them to the federals when the enemy occupied the city. By May 4, while camped in north Georgia, Breckinridge and Benjamin had resigned and left the presidential party to try to escape individually.
Before leaving, Benjamin met privately with Davis, ostensibly to arrange a Texas rendezvous. To help finance Benjamin’s escape, Davis instructed a subordinate to give him some gold from the remaining Confederate Treasury. Benjamin’s final words to the postmaster general, John Regan, were: “I am going to the farthest place from the United States, if it takes me to the middle of China.”
Benjamin bought a farmer’s buggy and disguised himself as a Frenchman named Monsieur Bonfals who could speak but little English. Accompanied by a rebel officer who acted as his “interpreter,” the two set off for Florida. Shortly after crossing the state line, Benjamin’s companion left for his New Orleans home. Simultaneously, Benjamin changed his disguise to that of a South Carolina planter named Howard. He persuaded a nearby farmer’s housewife to make him some ill-fitting homespun clothes. His immediate destination was Tampa, where he hoped to hire a boat to take him out of the country.
He covered about 30 miles a day southward down the Florida peninsula, traveling alone at night. One day a high-pitched voice woke him up, saying, “Hi for Jeff.” It was a parrot in a tree branch. Reasoning that the bird had escaped a nearby owner, who might be sympathetic, Benjamin threw rocks at it until it flew home. He followed it to a farmhouse, where the owner was indeed a Confederate partisan, who helped him on his way.
For $1,500 in gold, Benjamin hired two fishermen near Sarasota to take him to the Bahamas, a British possession. Whenever they saw federal gunboats they hid their yawl amid mangroves and clouds of mosquitoes.
After entering the Gulf Stream beyond the Florida Keys, Benjamin fulfilled a boyhood ambition to see a waterspout, as two of them nearly swamped the boat. In late July he arrived in Nassau, Bahamas, where he caught a steamer for Havana. From there Benjamin took passage for London, where he became prosperous as a lawyer. He lived out the last two decades of his life in London and Paris.
The remaining official records of the Confederate government are captured in Georgia.
The 3rd, 5th and 7th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry regiments arrive in Concord, New Hampshire for mustering out of Federal service.
By early May 1865, a month after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, most of the remaining Confederate soldiers had laid down their arms. While some Southerners were angry, and others were relieved, nearly all were apprehensive about the future. Many moved west and north; some decided to leave the United States completely.
Many Southerners were pessimistic about the region’s economic future. Partly because of the monetary value of slaves, in 1860 seven of the 10 states with the highest per capita wealth would join the Confederacy. Much of that wealth was wiped out, and today Virginia is the only former rebel state to rank among the top 10 in per capita income, while five of the bottom 10 are former Confederate states. The classic example is Mississippi, which ranked No. 1 in 1860, and 50th in the 2010 census.
It took 85 years for the South’s per capita income to return to where it was in 1860 — an already low 72 percent of the national average. (The delay partly reflected protective tariffs, which were injurious to the South’s export economy and lasted until after World War II.) Not surprisingly, such concerns put Southerners on the move, either outside the region or to less war-torn parts of it, like Texas. In 1860 Texas ranked ninth among the Southern states in population; 20 years later it was first.
Above all, many leaders feared being tried for treason. Although the Appomattox agreement stipulated that surrendered soldiers could return home, where they were “not to be disturbed by US authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside,” many Northern politicians wanted to ignore those provisions. Confederate civilian politicians were even more vulnerable, because they could not lay claim to a defense under the army’s surrender terms.
And Lincoln’s assassination within a week of Appomattox inflamed Northern political blood lust. Indeed, Lee was indicted on a charge of treason on June 7, 1865, prompting General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant to tell President Andrew Johnson that he considered the indictment a violation of the surrender terms as he wrote them, and would resign if the prosecution proceeded.
Two of the most prominent Southerners who fled out of fear of a treason indictment were John C. Breckinridge and Judah P. Benjamin. Breckinridge, from Kentucky, was vice president under James Buchanan and an 1860 presidential candidate; he received more electoral votes than any other save Abraham Lincoln. Although Breckinridge lost the 1860 presidential race, he was elected a Kentucky senator. In October 1861 he was the last senator to leave Congress to join the Confederacy. Two months later the Senate declared him a traitor. He served as a general in the Confederate army; when Lee surrendered, Breckinridge was the Confederate secretary of war.
Benjamin, a former senator from Louisiana, was equally senior in the Confederacy, serving variously as attorney general, secretary of war and secretary of state, the position he held when the Confederacy collapsed.
Two weeks after Lee’s surrender, President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were near Charlotte, N.C., attempting to flee the Eastern Theater and reform the government elsewhere. Within days cabinet members started to conclude that the situation was hopeless and began to resign. In perhaps his greatest service to posterity, on April 26 Breckenridge instructed a subordinate to store the Confederate government archives in Charlotte and surrender them to the federals when the enemy occupied the city. By May 4, while camped in north Georgia, Breckinridge and Benjamin had resigned and left the presidential party to try to escape individually.
Before leaving, Benjamin met privately with Davis, ostensibly to arrange a Texas rendezvous. To help finance Benjamin’s escape, Davis instructed a subordinate to give him some gold from the remaining Confederate Treasury. Benjamin’s final words to the postmaster general, John Regan, were: “I am going to the farthest place from the United States, if it takes me to the middle of China.”
Benjamin bought a farmer’s buggy and disguised himself as a Frenchman named Monsieur Bonfals who could speak but little English. Accompanied by a rebel officer who acted as his “interpreter,” the two set off for Florida. Shortly after crossing the state line, Benjamin’s companion left for his New Orleans home. Simultaneously, Benjamin changed his disguise to that of a South Carolina planter named Howard. He persuaded a nearby farmer’s housewife to make him some ill-fitting homespun clothes. His immediate destination was Tampa, where he hoped to hire a boat to take him out of the country.
He covered about 30 miles a day southward down the Florida peninsula, traveling alone at night. One day a high-pitched voice woke him up, saying, “Hi for Jeff.” It was a parrot in a tree branch. Reasoning that the bird had escaped a nearby owner, who might be sympathetic, Benjamin threw rocks at it until it flew home. He followed it to a farmhouse, where the owner was indeed a Confederate partisan, who helped him on his way.
For $1,500 in gold, Benjamin hired two fishermen near Sarasota to take him to the Bahamas, a British possession. Whenever they saw federal gunboats they hid their yawl amid mangroves and clouds of mosquitoes.
After entering the Gulf Stream beyond the Florida Keys, Benjamin fulfilled a boyhood ambition to see a waterspout, as two of them nearly swamped the boat. In late July he arrived in Nassau, Bahamas, where he caught a steamer for Havana. From there Benjamin took passage for London, where he became prosperous as a lawyer. He lived out the last two decades of his life in London and Paris.
Posted on 7/2/15 at 9:34 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Monday, 3 July 1865 (continued)
To make his own escape, Breckinridge shaved his prominent mustache and instructed companions to call him “Colonel Cabell.” When he learned, on May 14, that President Davis had been captured, he dismissed his military escort and rode south with three other men. When they arrived in Gainesville, Fla., he met Col. J.J. Dickison, who was renowned for leading raiding parties through the thickets of the north Florida rivers and swamps. Dickison advised Breckinridge to head east to reach the St. Johns River, where the colonel had a converted federal navy lifeboat hidden.
Once aboard, Breckinridge’s party followed the river southward, anchoring in midstream at night to avoid mosquitoes. To reach the Atlantic Ocean they portaged from the St. Johns River to the Indian River lagoon, and then across the barrier island to the beach. Near Palm Beach a federal ship halted the suspicious-looking craft, but concluded the occupants were merely fishermen, as they claimed.
Partly due to unfavorable winds, the boat was unable to make Nassau, and the party instead tried for Cuba. During the voyage they met a better-equipped sloop; Breckinridge paid to switch boats. En route to Havana the Breckinridge group was hit by a gale that nearly sank the sloop and left the men without food or water. Fortunately, the next day they were able to hail an American merchant ship that gave them ample drinking water. On June 10 they arrived in Cardenas, Cuba, and when they arrived in Havana, Breckinridge was given a hero’s welcome.
In August, Breckinridge departed Havana for Britain, but soon left Europe for Canada. He was there on Christmas Day 1868 when President Johnson announced a general amnesty to former Confederates. Breckinridge returned to Lexington, Ky., early the following year, where he remained until his untimely death in 1875 at age 54.
Of course, numerous Southern leaders simply refused to admit defeat. Most prominently Brig. Gen. J.O. Shelby, who led a remnant of his cavalry division, several hundred men, into Mexico. They never surrendered.
Alfred Pleasanton, who once commanded the cavalry corps of the Union Army of the Potomac, where he battled the more famous General J.E.B. Stuart, judged Shelby to be best of all Confederate cavalry commanders. When the war started, the 30-year-old Shelby owned a hemp plantation near Kansas City; earlier he had been a border ruffian during the Bleeding Kansas era. During the Civil War he was in every major battle in Arkansas and Missouri, though by the end he was fighting in Texas.
On June 2, 1865, Shelby organized his division for a final review on open prairie about 50 miles southeast of Dallas. Announcing that he would never abide Yankee rule, he asked for volunteers to march into Mexico. “We will do this: we will hang together, we will keep our organization, our arms, our discipline, our hatred of oppression,” he said, choosing “exile to submission, death to dishonor.”
Upon reaching Mexico City he offered his well-armed battalion to Emperor Maximilian, whom the French had installed as a puppet monarch. But Maximilian turned him down in order to avoid antagonizing the United States; instead, he offered Shelby’s men, and other refugee Confederates, free land in the Cordoba Valley.
By the time Maximilian’s government fell, two years later, most of the refugees, including Shelby, had returned to the United States. Back home in Missouri, Shelby never showed signs of bitterness toward the North, but he refused to take an oath to the Constitution until appointed a federal marshal in 1893. A few years before his death in 1897, he concluded that the passions aroused by the debate over slavery made men “irresponsible,” and added, “I now see I was so myself.”
To make his own escape, Breckinridge shaved his prominent mustache and instructed companions to call him “Colonel Cabell.” When he learned, on May 14, that President Davis had been captured, he dismissed his military escort and rode south with three other men. When they arrived in Gainesville, Fla., he met Col. J.J. Dickison, who was renowned for leading raiding parties through the thickets of the north Florida rivers and swamps. Dickison advised Breckinridge to head east to reach the St. Johns River, where the colonel had a converted federal navy lifeboat hidden.
Once aboard, Breckinridge’s party followed the river southward, anchoring in midstream at night to avoid mosquitoes. To reach the Atlantic Ocean they portaged from the St. Johns River to the Indian River lagoon, and then across the barrier island to the beach. Near Palm Beach a federal ship halted the suspicious-looking craft, but concluded the occupants were merely fishermen, as they claimed.
Partly due to unfavorable winds, the boat was unable to make Nassau, and the party instead tried for Cuba. During the voyage they met a better-equipped sloop; Breckinridge paid to switch boats. En route to Havana the Breckinridge group was hit by a gale that nearly sank the sloop and left the men without food or water. Fortunately, the next day they were able to hail an American merchant ship that gave them ample drinking water. On June 10 they arrived in Cardenas, Cuba, and when they arrived in Havana, Breckinridge was given a hero’s welcome.
In August, Breckinridge departed Havana for Britain, but soon left Europe for Canada. He was there on Christmas Day 1868 when President Johnson announced a general amnesty to former Confederates. Breckinridge returned to Lexington, Ky., early the following year, where he remained until his untimely death in 1875 at age 54.
Of course, numerous Southern leaders simply refused to admit defeat. Most prominently Brig. Gen. J.O. Shelby, who led a remnant of his cavalry division, several hundred men, into Mexico. They never surrendered.
Alfred Pleasanton, who once commanded the cavalry corps of the Union Army of the Potomac, where he battled the more famous General J.E.B. Stuart, judged Shelby to be best of all Confederate cavalry commanders. When the war started, the 30-year-old Shelby owned a hemp plantation near Kansas City; earlier he had been a border ruffian during the Bleeding Kansas era. During the Civil War he was in every major battle in Arkansas and Missouri, though by the end he was fighting in Texas.
On June 2, 1865, Shelby organized his division for a final review on open prairie about 50 miles southeast of Dallas. Announcing that he would never abide Yankee rule, he asked for volunteers to march into Mexico. “We will do this: we will hang together, we will keep our organization, our arms, our discipline, our hatred of oppression,” he said, choosing “exile to submission, death to dishonor.”
Upon reaching Mexico City he offered his well-armed battalion to Emperor Maximilian, whom the French had installed as a puppet monarch. But Maximilian turned him down in order to avoid antagonizing the United States; instead, he offered Shelby’s men, and other refugee Confederates, free land in the Cordoba Valley.
By the time Maximilian’s government fell, two years later, most of the refugees, including Shelby, had returned to the United States. Back home in Missouri, Shelby never showed signs of bitterness toward the North, but he refused to take an oath to the Constitution until appointed a federal marshal in 1893. A few years before his death in 1897, he concluded that the passions aroused by the debate over slavery made men “irresponsible,” and added, “I now see I was so myself.”
Posted on 7/3/15 at 8:57 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Tuesday, 4 July 1865
The Independence Day celebrations in Washington, DC, were somewhat subdued after four plus years of bloody warfare. In cities throughout the South, soon to be freed slaves read the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence. It was a day of celebration throughout cities in the North and freed slaves in the old Confederacy, but it began a tradition of ambivalence among Southern whites that would last for decades. Slaves in Northern and border states, however, were still legally bound to their masters.
The Independence Day celebrations in Washington, DC, were somewhat subdued after four plus years of bloody warfare. In cities throughout the South, soon to be freed slaves read the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence. It was a day of celebration throughout cities in the North and freed slaves in the old Confederacy, but it began a tradition of ambivalence among Southern whites that would last for decades. Slaves in Northern and border states, however, were still legally bound to their masters.
Posted on 7/4/15 at 8:20 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Wednesday, 5 July 1865
The United States Secret Service is officially established in Washington, DC, to suppress counterfeit currency. Chief William P. Wood is sworn in by Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch. Within two years, the Secret Service responsibilities were broadened to include "...detecting persons perpetrating frauds against the government." This appropriation would result in investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, non-conforming distillers, smugglers, mail robbers, land frauds, and a number of other infractions against the Federal laws.
President Andrew Johnson signs an executive order upholding the conviction and allowing for the execution of four people associated with the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln and other high ranking officials.
Major General John A. Logan issues an order calling for the immediate mustering out of the Army of the Tennessee as the draw-down of forces continues.
The CSS Shenandoah, commanded by Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell, steams out of the hostile Bering Sea via the Amukta Passage in the Aleutian chain and sets a southeasterly passage across the commerce lanes of the Eastern Pacific. This course would bring fine weather and warmer temperatures for the Confederate raider. A captain at sea day and night never rests from the all encompassing responsibility for safety of his ship and men. Escaping from the clutches of the ice, Waddell expresses deep relief: "Again in the North Pacific with fine weather and the Aleutian Islands astern, I looked back in thankfulness towards those seas in which we had seen hard and dangerous service, and I felt a sensation of freedom on that vast outstretched water before us, no longer dreading the cry from the masthead of 'ice ahead'. We had run from gloomy fogs into a bright, cheerful, sparkling ocean, and as soon as a hot sun thawed the frosty timbers and rigging of ship and man, we should feel ourselves more than a match for anything we might meet under canvas."
During Waddell's last week in the Bering Sea, an idea had occurred to him and as the raider proceeded across the North Pacific he developed it into an audacious plan of action. The idea germinated from reading a San Francisco newspaper that he had obtained on 23 June from the Susan Abigail. From the newspaper article he learned that the USS Saginaw, under Commander Charles J. McDougal, was the only Union warship in San Francisco harbor and constituted the city's sole means of defense. Waddell had been second officer in her prior to the war and was thoroughly familiar with her capabilities and limitations. Moreover, the vessel's captain was "...an old and familiar shipmate..." whom Waddell remembered as being "...fond of his ease." The bold Confederate commander planned to bring the Shenandoah into San Francisco harbor under cover of darkness, ram the Saginaw, and carry her by boarding. Beginning at daylight, the raider would subject the city to a prolonged bombardment, after which Waddell would send a negotiating party ashore to parlay for a sizable ransom. The raid was not to be accomplished, but the thought of the mighty Shenandoah sailing through the Golden Gate on a clear night set to the royals would fire the imagination of any sailor.
Rear Admiral Cornelius Kinchiloe Stribling turns over command of the East Gulf Squadron to Rear Admiral Henry Knox Thatcher of the West Gulf Squadron. In accordance with Navy Department orders dated 9 June 1865, the two squadrons were joined to form the newly designated Gulf Squadron. Stribling proceeded to Boston on the USS Powhatan and eventually hauled down his flag on the 12th.
The United States Secret Service is officially established in Washington, DC, to suppress counterfeit currency. Chief William P. Wood is sworn in by Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch. Within two years, the Secret Service responsibilities were broadened to include "...detecting persons perpetrating frauds against the government." This appropriation would result in investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, non-conforming distillers, smugglers, mail robbers, land frauds, and a number of other infractions against the Federal laws.
President Andrew Johnson signs an executive order upholding the conviction and allowing for the execution of four people associated with the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln and other high ranking officials.
Major General John A. Logan issues an order calling for the immediate mustering out of the Army of the Tennessee as the draw-down of forces continues.
The CSS Shenandoah, commanded by Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell, steams out of the hostile Bering Sea via the Amukta Passage in the Aleutian chain and sets a southeasterly passage across the commerce lanes of the Eastern Pacific. This course would bring fine weather and warmer temperatures for the Confederate raider. A captain at sea day and night never rests from the all encompassing responsibility for safety of his ship and men. Escaping from the clutches of the ice, Waddell expresses deep relief: "Again in the North Pacific with fine weather and the Aleutian Islands astern, I looked back in thankfulness towards those seas in which we had seen hard and dangerous service, and I felt a sensation of freedom on that vast outstretched water before us, no longer dreading the cry from the masthead of 'ice ahead'. We had run from gloomy fogs into a bright, cheerful, sparkling ocean, and as soon as a hot sun thawed the frosty timbers and rigging of ship and man, we should feel ourselves more than a match for anything we might meet under canvas."
During Waddell's last week in the Bering Sea, an idea had occurred to him and as the raider proceeded across the North Pacific he developed it into an audacious plan of action. The idea germinated from reading a San Francisco newspaper that he had obtained on 23 June from the Susan Abigail. From the newspaper article he learned that the USS Saginaw, under Commander Charles J. McDougal, was the only Union warship in San Francisco harbor and constituted the city's sole means of defense. Waddell had been second officer in her prior to the war and was thoroughly familiar with her capabilities and limitations. Moreover, the vessel's captain was "...an old and familiar shipmate..." whom Waddell remembered as being "...fond of his ease." The bold Confederate commander planned to bring the Shenandoah into San Francisco harbor under cover of darkness, ram the Saginaw, and carry her by boarding. Beginning at daylight, the raider would subject the city to a prolonged bombardment, after which Waddell would send a negotiating party ashore to parlay for a sizable ransom. The raid was not to be accomplished, but the thought of the mighty Shenandoah sailing through the Golden Gate on a clear night set to the royals would fire the imagination of any sailor.
Rear Admiral Cornelius Kinchiloe Stribling turns over command of the East Gulf Squadron to Rear Admiral Henry Knox Thatcher of the West Gulf Squadron. In accordance with Navy Department orders dated 9 June 1865, the two squadrons were joined to form the newly designated Gulf Squadron. Stribling proceeded to Boston on the USS Powhatan and eventually hauled down his flag on the 12th.
Posted on 7/5/15 at 7:10 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Thursday, 6 July 1865
Major General Edward O.C. Ord assumes command of the Northern Military Department with his headquarters located in Detroit, Michigan.
Reports surface from Florida that planters are behaving in an inhumane manner towards former slaves, and that slavery was "...still very much at work."
The U.S.S. Sacramento, commanded by Captain Henry A. Walke, intercepted the steamer Beatrice, formerly C.S.S. Rappahannock, off the coast of Wales. She was enroute to Liverpool, England, from Calais, France, and was disarmed and under English colors. When intercepted, the former Confederate cruiser was steaming well within the three mile limit which Walke respected by refraining from either attacking or attempting to seize the vessel. Sacramento trailed the steamer through territorial waters until her arrival off Liverpool where Walke broke off the chase. Rappahannock had been purchased for the Confederacy by Commander Matthew F. Maury in the fall of 1863. However, she never went to sea as the French government detained the vessel in Calais where she had been taken to avoid seizure in England.
Major General Edward O.C. Ord assumes command of the Northern Military Department with his headquarters located in Detroit, Michigan.
Reports surface from Florida that planters are behaving in an inhumane manner towards former slaves, and that slavery was "...still very much at work."
The U.S.S. Sacramento, commanded by Captain Henry A. Walke, intercepted the steamer Beatrice, formerly C.S.S. Rappahannock, off the coast of Wales. She was enroute to Liverpool, England, from Calais, France, and was disarmed and under English colors. When intercepted, the former Confederate cruiser was steaming well within the three mile limit which Walke respected by refraining from either attacking or attempting to seize the vessel. Sacramento trailed the steamer through territorial waters until her arrival off Liverpool where Walke broke off the chase. Rappahannock had been purchased for the Confederacy by Commander Matthew F. Maury in the fall of 1863. However, she never went to sea as the French government detained the vessel in Calais where she had been taken to avoid seizure in England.
Posted on 7/6/15 at 9:01 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Friday, 7 July 1865
On a hot, oppressive midsummer’s day in Washington, DC, a large crowd gathers in the Arsenal grounds at the Old Penitentiary Building. Four graves are dug, four prisoners are brought in, and four are hanged. Lewis Payne who made the unsuccessful assassination attempt on U. S. Secretary of State William H. Seward; George A. Atzerodt who had been designated by John Wilkes Booth to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson; David E. Herold who had accompanied Booth in his escape from the city; and Mrs. Mary E. Surratt whose only proven "crime" was to own the boarding house where the conspirators met, were executed for their roles in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Until the very last, it was hoped by some that there would be presidential intervention in the case of Mrs. Surratt, but it was not to be. The four other convicted conspirators were taken to Fort Jefferson on Dry Tortugas off Key West, Florida. There, in 1867, Michael O’Laughlin would die of yellow fever. Because of his role as a doctor in the epidemic, Samuel Mudd will be pardoned in 1868, and in 1869 Edward Spangler and Samuel Arnold will also be pardoned.
What began with the indentured servants, or slaves--known as the "20 and odd"--the first Africans would set foot on North American shores in 1619 to the 1776 Declaration of Independence to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the hanging of abolitionist John Brown in 1859, has (almost) ended with the hanging of four conspirators in the assassination of both a much beloved and much despised president. The War Between the States would claim the lives of as many as 700,000 Americans, both Union and Confederate, and usher the United States into an era of Federalism, with questions between the rights of States and the United States government, that would linger for the next century and one half--even to the present day.
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles orders Rear Admiral William Radford of the Atlantic Squadron to further reduce his command to a total of 10 vessels. Welles also orders the further reduction of the Gulf Squadron to a total of 12 vessels.
Rear Admiral Henry Knox Thatcher reports to Secretary Welles that the U.S.S. Sciota had been raised, repaired and sent to Pensacola for re-arming. This vessel had been sunk by a torpedo in Mobile Bay while conducting sweeping operations, 14 April, earlier in the year.
On a hot, oppressive midsummer’s day in Washington, DC, a large crowd gathers in the Arsenal grounds at the Old Penitentiary Building. Four graves are dug, four prisoners are brought in, and four are hanged. Lewis Payne who made the unsuccessful assassination attempt on U. S. Secretary of State William H. Seward; George A. Atzerodt who had been designated by John Wilkes Booth to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson; David E. Herold who had accompanied Booth in his escape from the city; and Mrs. Mary E. Surratt whose only proven "crime" was to own the boarding house where the conspirators met, were executed for their roles in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Until the very last, it was hoped by some that there would be presidential intervention in the case of Mrs. Surratt, but it was not to be. The four other convicted conspirators were taken to Fort Jefferson on Dry Tortugas off Key West, Florida. There, in 1867, Michael O’Laughlin would die of yellow fever. Because of his role as a doctor in the epidemic, Samuel Mudd will be pardoned in 1868, and in 1869 Edward Spangler and Samuel Arnold will also be pardoned.
What began with the indentured servants, or slaves--known as the "20 and odd"--the first Africans would set foot on North American shores in 1619 to the 1776 Declaration of Independence to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the hanging of abolitionist John Brown in 1859, has (almost) ended with the hanging of four conspirators in the assassination of both a much beloved and much despised president. The War Between the States would claim the lives of as many as 700,000 Americans, both Union and Confederate, and usher the United States into an era of Federalism, with questions between the rights of States and the United States government, that would linger for the next century and one half--even to the present day.
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles orders Rear Admiral William Radford of the Atlantic Squadron to further reduce his command to a total of 10 vessels. Welles also orders the further reduction of the Gulf Squadron to a total of 12 vessels.
Rear Admiral Henry Knox Thatcher reports to Secretary Welles that the U.S.S. Sciota had been raised, repaired and sent to Pensacola for re-arming. This vessel had been sunk by a torpedo in Mobile Bay while conducting sweeping operations, 14 April, earlier in the year.
This post was edited on 7/7/15 at 4:40 am
Posted on 7/7/15 at 8:24 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Saturday, 8 July 1865
No events reported on this date.
The War Between the States was the first truly Modern Day War, because of the use of hot air balloons for reconnaissance, the first concentration, or internment, camps for women and children as with the Roswell Mill workers, massed use of rifled infantry and repeating rifles, targeting civilian populations for artillery bombardment, submarine warfare, the telegraphing of orders, movement of huge numbers of troops by rail, long term POW camps, photojournalism, steam and ironclad war ships and rapid-fire weapons like the Gatling gun, as well as a war that depended on heavy industry for both sides and where the industry itself would be targeted for destruction.
Edmund Ruffin was a wealthy Virginia planter and slaveholder who in the 1850's was a political activist known as one of the Fire-Eaters. He advocated states' rights and justified slavery, arguing for secession years before the War. Ruffin was credited as "firing the first shot of the war" at the Battle of Fort Sumter; he served as a Confederate soldier despite his advanced age. When the war ended in Southern defeat in 1865, he committed suicide rather than submit to "...Yankee rule..."
Before putting a rifle muzzle in his mouth and using a forked stick to manipulate the trigger following the end of Southern Independence, Ruffin wrote this final diary entry:
And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will [be] near to my latest breath, I here repeat, & would willingly proclaim, my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.
No events reported on this date.
The War Between the States was the first truly Modern Day War, because of the use of hot air balloons for reconnaissance, the first concentration, or internment, camps for women and children as with the Roswell Mill workers, massed use of rifled infantry and repeating rifles, targeting civilian populations for artillery bombardment, submarine warfare, the telegraphing of orders, movement of huge numbers of troops by rail, long term POW camps, photojournalism, steam and ironclad war ships and rapid-fire weapons like the Gatling gun, as well as a war that depended on heavy industry for both sides and where the industry itself would be targeted for destruction.
Edmund Ruffin was a wealthy Virginia planter and slaveholder who in the 1850's was a political activist known as one of the Fire-Eaters. He advocated states' rights and justified slavery, arguing for secession years before the War. Ruffin was credited as "firing the first shot of the war" at the Battle of Fort Sumter; he served as a Confederate soldier despite his advanced age. When the war ended in Southern defeat in 1865, he committed suicide rather than submit to "...Yankee rule..."
Before putting a rifle muzzle in his mouth and using a forked stick to manipulate the trigger following the end of Southern Independence, Ruffin wrote this final diary entry:
And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will [be] near to my latest breath, I here repeat, & would willingly proclaim, my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.
This post was edited on 7/8/15 at 5:19 am
Posted on 7/10/15 at 8:56 pm to BadLeroyDawg
Tuesday, 11 July 1865
United States Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles advises Rear Admiral Samuel P. Lee, commanding the Mississippi Squadron, that officers against whom no charges were pending could leave the service at once, with an honorable discharge and receive a month's leave for each year of service.
United States Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles advises Rear Admiral Samuel P. Lee, commanding the Mississippi Squadron, that officers against whom no charges were pending could leave the service at once, with an honorable discharge and receive a month's leave for each year of service.
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