re: 150 years ago this day...

Saturday, 16 January 1864

Dandridge, Tennessee, and its environs were the scene of a sizeable cavalry battle on this day and the next. The Federal forces were somewhat undermanned because General William Sooy Smith had led a cavalry expedition from Memphis towards Meridian, Mississippi, where he would eventually run into trouble of his own with General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Back and forth the action went today , extending nearly to Clark’s Ferry, and inflicting large numbers of casualties on both sides. At the end of the engagement the Federals sporadically withdrew to the area of Strawberry Plains, Tennessee.

Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory wrote Captain John K. Mitchell of the Rebel James River Squadron urging that action be taken against the Union armada downriver at the earliest opportunity.

"I think that there is a passage through the obstructions at Trent's Reach. I deem the opportunity a favor able one for striking a blow at the enemy if we are able to do so. In a short time many of his vessels will have returned to the River from Wilmington and he will again perfect his obstructions. If we can block the River at or below City Point, Grant might be compelled to evacuate his position. The clamor for action increased as the months passed. On 15 May Lieutenant Robert D. Minor, First Lieutenant and ordnance officer for the Squadron, wrote his wife: "There is an insane desire among the public to get the iron dads down the river, and I am afraid that some of our higher public authorities are yielding to this pressure of public opinion- but I for one am not and in the squadron we know too much of the interest at stake to act against our judgment even if those high in authority wish to hurry us into an action unprepared and against vastly superior forces. . . ."

The Richmond Enquirer reported that 26 ships on blockading station off Wilmington "...guard all the avenues of approach with the most sleepless vigilance. The consequences are that the chances of running the blockade have been greatly lessened, and it is apprehended by some that the day is not far distant when it will be an impossibility for a vessel to get into that port without incurring a hazard almost equivalent to positive loss. Having secured nearly every seaport on our coast, the Yankees are enabled to keep a large force off Wilmington."

Henry Hotze, commercial agent of the Confederate States, wrote from London to Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin suggesting complete government operation of blockade running: "The experiments thus far made by the Ordnance, Niter, and other Bureaus, as also the Navy Department, demonstrates that the Government can run the blockade with equal if not greater chances than private enterprise. But the public loses the chief advantages of the system, first, by the competition of private exportation; secondly, by the complicated and jarring machinery which only serves to grind out large profits in the shape of commissions, etc.; thirdly, by confounding the distinctive functions of different administrative departments. If blockade running was constituted an arm of the national defense, each would perform only its appropriate work, which therefore would be well done, The Treasury would procure without competition the raw material and regulate the disposition of the proceeds; the Navy, abandoning the hope of breaking the blockade and throwing all its available energies into eluding it, would purchase, build, and man the vessels for this purpose." As the war progressed, more and more blockade runners commanded by naval officers did operate under the Confederate government.

Boat crews from the USS Fernandina, under Acting Master Edward Moses, captured the sloop Annie Thompson in St. Catherine's Sound, Georgia, with a cargo of cotton, tobacco, and turpentine.

The USS Gertrude, Acting Master Henry C. Wade in charge, captured the blockade running schooner Ellen off Mobile with an assorted cargo.

General Sturgis's cavalry, in pursuit of General Longstreet, reached Dandridge, Tennessee, thirty miles east of Knoxville, and drove the Confederate videttes out of the town.

President Lincoln, in a note to the proprietors of the North-American Review, said:
The number for this month and year was duly received, and for which please accept my thanks. Of course, I am not the most impartial judge; yet, with due allowance for this, I venture to hope that the article, entitled ‘The President's Policy,’ will be of value to the country. I fear, I am not quite worthy of all which is therein kindly said of me personally.

The sentence of twelve lines, commencing at the top of page 252, I could wish to be not exactly as it is. In what is there expressed, the writer has not correctly understood me. I have never had a theory that secession could absolve States or people from their obligations. Precisely the contrary is asserted in the inaugural address; and it was because of my belief in the continuance of these obligations, that I was puzzled for a time as to denying the legal rights of those citizens who remained individually innocent of treason or rebellion. But I mean no more now than to merely call attention to this point.

The sentence referred to by Mr. Lincoln is as follows:

Even so long ago as when Mr. Lincoln, not yet convinced of the danger and magnitude of the crisis, was endeavoring to persuade himself of Union majorities at the South, and to carry on a war that was half peace, in the hope of a peace that would have been all war — while he was still enforcing the fugitive slave law, under some theory that secession, however it might absolve States from their obligations, could not escheat them of their claims under the Constitution, and that slaveholders in rebellion had alone, among mortals, the privilege of having their cake and eating it at the same time — the enemies of free government were striving to persuade the people that the war was an abolition crusade. To rebel without reason was proclaimed as one of the rights of man, while it was carefully kept out of sight that to suppress rebellion is the first duty of government.