re: 150 years ago this day...

Friday, 1 January 1864

A cold air mass out of Canada had swept across the land and brought temperatures well below freezing into the south as well as the north. It was in fact below zero as far south as Memphis, Tennessee, and just about everybody was too busy trying to assemble coal, firewood or other means of producing warmth to worry about conducting hostilities. The civilian population, particularly in areas where fighting had been going back and forth for years, were equally affected and had little or nothing left over to share with the military.

As the thermometer stood at ten degrees below zero in Memphis, and at sixteen degrees below near Cairo, Illinois, a number of Confederate prisoners were frozen to death at Island Number 10.

As the New Year opened, the Union once more focused its attention on Wilmington, North Carolina. Since 1862 the Navy had pressed for a combined assault on this major east coast port, ideally located for blockade running less than 600 miles from Nassau and only some 675 from Bermuda. Despite the efforts of the fleet, the runners had continued to ply their trade successfully. In the fall of 1863, a British observer reported that thirteen steamers ran into Wilmington between 10 and 29 September and that fourteen ships put to sea between 2 and 19 September. In fact, James Randall, an employee of a Wilmington shipping firm, reported that 397 ships visited Wilmington during the first two and a half to three years of the war. On 2 January, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles again proposed an attack on the fortifications protecting Wilmington, the only port by which any supplies whatever reach the Rebels...He suggested to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, that a joint operation be undertaken to seize Fort Caswell: "The result of such operation is to enable the vessels to lie inside, as is the case at Charleston, thus closing the port effectually." However, Major General Henry W. Halleck advised Stanton that campaigns to which the Army was committed in Louisiana and Texas would not permit the men for the suggested assault to be spared. Thus, although the Navy increasingly felt the need to close Wilmington, the port remained a haven for blockade runners for another year.

The USS Huron, under Lieutenant Commander Francis H. Baker, sank the blockade running British schooner Sylvanus in Doboy Sound, Georgia, with a cargo of salt, liquor, and cordage.

A detachment of seventy-five men, composed of a proportionate number from each of four companies constituting Major Henry A. Cole's Maryland cavalry battalion, on a scout in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, Maryland, were suddenly encountered, at a point near Rectortown, by a force of Confederate cavalry, belonging to the brigade under the command of General Rosser. After fighting gallantly and until fifty-seven out of their number (seventy-five) were either killed or captured, the remaining eighteen made their way in safety to camp. Several of those who escaped found their feet frozen when they reached camp.

Colonel William S. Hawkins, of the “Hawkins scouts,” a leader in the scouting service of the Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg, was captured at the house of a Mr. Mayberry, on Lick Creek, Kentucky, by Sergeant Brewer, of Major Breathitt's battalion of Kentucky cavalry.

The Richmond Whig, in an article setting forth the condition of military and naval affairs at the South, concluded its remarks as follows: “Thus we find we have an army poorly clad, scantily fed, indifferently equipped, badly mounted, with insufficient trains, and with barely enough ammunition. To remedy the evil, we are going to double, and if possible, quadruple the number of men and horses, take away every efficient master from the agricultural districts, and leave the laborers, on whom both men and horses depend for existence, a prey to natural idleness, and with every inducement to revolt. If this be not judicial madness, the history of desperate measures adopted by feeble and affrighted councils does not present an example.”

Andrew J. Hamilton, Military Governor of Texas, issued an able address to the citizens of that State, setting forth their duties to themselves and their government.