- 25 Feb 2021 13:25
#15158373
February 26, Thursday
The Cherokee Indian National Council repeals its ordinance of secession, abolishes slavery, and vigorously proclaims for the Union.
There is an affair near Germantown, Virginia.
General Longstreet assumes command of the Confederate Department of Virginia and North Carolina.
President Davis writes General T.H. Holmes in the Trans-Mississippi of his concern for the area and the need for full crops and military success to preserve that section for the Confederacy.
Near Woodburn, Tennessee, Confederate guerillas halt, capture, and burn a Federal freight train with merchandise, government stores, and 240 mules.
The Union river fleet has paid dearly for its Red River depredations, and Admiral Porter is momentarily taken aback. But he is never at a loss for long. What he does next suggests that he is an ingenious and irrepressible man with a sense of humor. He has put his sailors to work on an old coal barge attached to the fleet. They extend its length to 300 feet with a raft of logs, build a deckhouse of canvas atop it, construct two phony smokestacks out of barrels, and furnish the dummy vessel with a number of imposing-looking log cannon. When the task is done, the converted barge, built at a cost of $8.63 ($178.35 in 2020 dollars), resembles a huge gunboat. Porter provides the vessel with smoke by lighting pitch fires in iron pots under the false smokestacks, and sets it adrift above Vicksburg.
Porter hopes that his fraudulent warship will divert the Confederates from their attempt to salvage the beached Indianola. The results must exceed his fondest wishes. As the great apparition floats majestically down the Mississippi, the Vicksburg guns open up on her. But the shot and shell have no apparent effect, and she proceeds disdainfully on her way. Below the town she encounters Queen of the West, en route to Vicksburg to get a pump for the crew working frantically to salvage the Indianola. The Confederates aboard the Queen take one look at the monster bearing down on them and instantly turn tail. As they speed south, they alert the three other vessels that helped attack the Indianola, and all four hasten to safety. Left behind, the salvage crew aboard the Indianola stare as Porter’s dummy sweeps down the river, headed directly for them. Then the barge strikes a sandbar and halts, dark and forbidding. The Confederate salvagers endure the looming, fearsome presence as long as they can, then they set fire to the Indianola and take to their boats.
The Cherokee Indian National Council repeals its ordinance of secession, abolishes slavery, and vigorously proclaims for the Union.
There is an affair near Germantown, Virginia.
General Longstreet assumes command of the Confederate Department of Virginia and North Carolina.
President Davis writes General T.H. Holmes in the Trans-Mississippi of his concern for the area and the need for full crops and military success to preserve that section for the Confederacy.
Near Woodburn, Tennessee, Confederate guerillas halt, capture, and burn a Federal freight train with merchandise, government stores, and 240 mules.
The Union river fleet has paid dearly for its Red River depredations, and Admiral Porter is momentarily taken aback. But he is never at a loss for long. What he does next suggests that he is an ingenious and irrepressible man with a sense of humor. He has put his sailors to work on an old coal barge attached to the fleet. They extend its length to 300 feet with a raft of logs, build a deckhouse of canvas atop it, construct two phony smokestacks out of barrels, and furnish the dummy vessel with a number of imposing-looking log cannon. When the task is done, the converted barge, built at a cost of $8.63 ($178.35 in 2020 dollars), resembles a huge gunboat. Porter provides the vessel with smoke by lighting pitch fires in iron pots under the false smokestacks, and sets it adrift above Vicksburg.
Porter hopes that his fraudulent warship will divert the Confederates from their attempt to salvage the beached Indianola. The results must exceed his fondest wishes. As the great apparition floats majestically down the Mississippi, the Vicksburg guns open up on her. But the shot and shell have no apparent effect, and she proceeds disdainfully on her way. Below the town she encounters Queen of the West, en route to Vicksburg to get a pump for the crew working frantically to salvage the Indianola. The Confederates aboard the Queen take one look at the monster bearing down on them and instantly turn tail. As they speed south, they alert the three other vessels that helped attack the Indianola, and all four hasten to safety. Left behind, the salvage crew aboard the Indianola stare as Porter’s dummy sweeps down the river, headed directly for them. Then the barge strikes a sandbar and halts, dark and forbidding. The Confederate salvagers endure the looming, fearsome presence as long as they can, then they set fire to the Indianola and take to their boats.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke
—Edmund Burke