The American Civil War, day by day - Page 71 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15185390
Doug64 wrote:@Potemkin, and Missouri isn't any better.

Jayhawkers and bushwhackers, bushwhackers and jayhawkers.... :hmm:
#15185401
Potemkin wrote:Jayhawkers and bushwhackers, bushwhackers and jayhawkers.... :hmm:

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.... :(

August 15, Saturday

As the month wears on there is skirmishing at Beverly Ford and Hartwood Church along the Rappahannock line in Virginia, and at Bentonville, Arkansas. A Federal scout from Centreville to Aldie, Virginia, operates against partisan rangers for five days.
#15185527
August 16, Sunday

Finally, both the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Ohio begin to move toward the Confederates. Rosecrans has been camped in Tullahoma for six weeks. As usual, once he gets started, Rosecrans moves with the easy footwork and confidence of a fine boxer. Again his target is the Confederate line of communications. And again he catches Bragg off guard. Rosecrans has studied the topography around Chattanooga with great care. The easiest approach to the city from the west is the valley of the Tennessee River. But it is also easily defended. North of the river rises a great mountain, Walden’s Ridge. To the south, in Georgia, a series of mountain ranges extends like fingers, pointing toward Chattanooga from the southwest. There are the Racoon Mountain to the west, Lookout Mountain in the middle—the most imposing, rising more than 2,000 feet above sea level and extending thirty miles—then Missionary Ridge and Pigeon Mountain on the east. The ranges are extremely difficult to cross. They are broken by passes, but the passes are steep and the roads through them are poor—some of them mere footpaths. The valleys between these hills are narrow and uninviting, with one exception; between Missionary Ridge and Pigeon Mountain lies a wide, fertile bowl known locally as McLemore’s Cove. Of all the options open to Rosecrans, the most attractive—and the course Bragg expects him to take—is an approach from the north, across the towering mass of Walden’s Ridge. That route not only gives direct access to Chattanooga but leads in one easy step to Bragg’s communication line—the vital railroad junction east of the city. Moreover, since Burnside will be somewhere on the north side of Chattanooga, Rosecrans can more easily join forces with him.

Yet after studying his maps, Rosecrans decides to cross the river and approach Chattanooga from the southwest. At first glance the route seems to have little to recommend it. There are only two passages leading eastward through Lookout Mountain, and they are some miles distant from Chattanooga. Worse, to get the Federal army rapidly into position, both of these passes, plus a rail-and-road route up the Tennessee River valley past Lookout Mountain, will have to be used at the same time—and the various units will be dangerously divided. Although the southern route is by far the trickier option, it has two great advantages. The first is that the Federal forces will be closer to their supply line, the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, which joins the Memphis and Charleston road at Stevenson, southwest of Chattanooga. Second, and more important, the mere presence of Federal troops in the mountains below Chattanooga will pose an intolerable threat to Bragg’s communications along the Western & Atlantic Railroad to Atlanta, and Bragg might well be forced to evacuate the town to protect the rail line.

Today the complex Federal movement toward Chattanooga begins. With Crittenden’s corps on the left, Thomas’ in the center and McCook’s on the right, 50,000 infantrymen advance on a 50-mile front, screened by 9,000 cavalrymen and supported by 200 guns—and Bragg is completely unaware of the approaching Federals. To keep Bragg in the dark, Rosecrans assigns three infantry brigades under Brigadier General William B. Hazen, strongly supported by cavalry, to feint toward Chattanooga from the north. In the vanguard, yet again, rides the fast-firing troopers of John T. Wilder’s Lightning Brigade. Wilder’s forces ride out of Tullahoma and head east into the rugged mountains, later to turn toward Chattanooga. “We shall keep in the obscure trails and hope to surprise the place,” James Connolly of Wilder’s brigade writes home. And indeed, the troopers capture a remarkable number of Confederates as they advance. Even though Bragg is expecting an attack from the north, his cavalry is not on guard and his troops are being taken unawares.

Meanwhile, General Bragg, with the Army of Tennessee, calls for more troops. Plans are laid quickly to supply him with whatever units can be spared from elsewhere.

In Charleston Harbor Federal guns on Morris Island continue practice firing. For the past several weeks crews of laborers at Fort Sumter have been filling in damaged masonry with sand, strengthening the faces near Morris Island and removing many of the guns, leaving only thirty-eight with a garrison of five hundred.

Action is limited to skirmishes at Falls Church, Virginia, and near Corinth, Mississippi. Major General G.K. Warren assumes command of the Federal Second Army Corps, superseding Brigadier General William Hays. A five-day Union expedition operates from Memphis, Tennessee, to Hernando, Mississippi.

President Lincoln again writes Governor Seymour of New York regarding problems of the draft, concluding, “My purpose is to be just and fair; and yet to not lose time.”
#15185749
August 17, Monday

In the month since the Union’s failed assault on Fort Wagner, outside, Charleston, South Carolina, three parallels have been drawn and advanced, preparatory to launching a sudden, swamping attack upon the stubborn earthwork straight ahead. At General Gillmore’s command is an impressive array of artillery pieces of the most modern design, including a new weapon, the Requa bettery gun—a so-called volley gun, made up of 25 rifle barrels so arranged on a frame that they can discharge 175 shots per minute. Another novelty is the calcium floodlight, whose brilliant white beam is produced by playing a very hot flame on lime. Gillmore uses this device to illuminate the ramparts of Fort Wagner. The floodlight enables the Federals to continue the bombardment at night, while virtually blinding the enemy so that fire can’t be accurately returned. It also allows the Federals to keep watch against nighttime attacks on their entrenchments, and to take aim on enemy soldiers trying to make repairs on Wagner’s parapet under cover of darkness. The digging of zigzag trenches and the emplacement of the big guns are herculean tasks. The shallow sand covering the island lies on a base of mud, which makes it very difficult to stabilize the heavy artillery. To make matters worse, Confederate sharpshooters using high-powered rifles with telescopic sights prove expert at picking off the sappers. It is worth a man’s life to stick his head above the lip of the trench. In retaliation, Gillmore creates his own detachment of sharpshooters.

As Gillmore brings his eleven guns closer to the strongpoint, he also draws within range of mighty Fort Sumter. Gillmore decides to concentrate his long-range rifles on that target. The bombardment of Fort Sumter, one of the most intense yet known to warfare, begins at dawn, and during the first 24 hours the Federals hurl 948 shells at the fort, 678 of which find their mark. Day after day, the pounding will go on with scarcely a letup. Dahlgren will move his ironclads as close as he dares in order to support Gillmore’s fire. Fort Sumter’s gunners fight back as best they can. On this first day, a Confederate shell hits the pilothouse of the monitor Catskill, its impact knocking loose a piece of iron that goes rocketing through the cabin. The fragment strikes both Captain George W. Rodgers—Dahlgren’s chief of staff—and the ship’s assistant paymaster, killing them both. But that is a random hit.

Far to the west in Arkansas a Federal expedition to Little Rock skirmishes at Grand Prairie. In initial action of the Federal campaign toward Chattanooga, a skirmish breaks out at Calfkiller Creek, near Sparta, Tennessee. To the twenty-sixth Federal expeditions operate from Cape Cirardeau and Pilot Knob, Missouri, to Pocahontas, Arkansas.
#15185973
August 18, Tuesday

Quantrill’s bushwhackers are convinced that General Ewing deliberately caused the accident that killed and injured a number of their captive women four days ago, and now Ewing fuels their outrage by issuing his General Order No. 10, which requires that “the wives and children of known guerrillas move out of this district and out of the State of Missouri forthwith.” By coincidence of timing, the order plays right into Quantrill’s hands. He’s presiding over a gathering of bushwhackers in the Blackwater Creek country of western Missouri. For some time now, Quantrill has been planning his boldest raid to date—against the abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas. Quantrill has ample cause for harboring a grudge against Lawrence: Not only is it the town from which he was driven as an outlaw, but it is the home of the jayhawker Jim Lane. In preparation for the expedition, Quantrill has gone so far as to send spires to Lawrence, where they’ve noted the prominent abolitinists and jotted those names down on a death list. Yet despite Quantrill’s argument that Lawrence is the place where the bushwhackers can “get more revenge and more money than anywhere else,” some of his raiders have been reluctant, insisting that the town is too strongly defended. But such doubts are overwhelmed by the frenzy of rage that follows the announcement of Ewing’s General Order No. 10, coming as it does on top of the Kansas City disaster.

The second day of heavy bombardment at Charleston against Fort Sumter and Battery Wagner shows that the Federal are tenacious in their attempts to reduce the Confederate forts. Although severely damaged, they hold on despite the pounding fire.

Inland skirmishes flare at Bristoe Station, Virginia; near Pasquotank, North Carolina; and near Crab Orchard and Albany, Kentucky. In New Mexico Territory Federal troops skirmish with Amerinds at Pueblo Colorado.

President Lincoln tests the new Spencer rifle in Washington by firing a few shots in Treasury Park.
#15186114
August 19, Wednesday

Northern authorities resume the draft in New York City with no difficulties, although troops protect the draft headquarters against a repetition of the disastrous riots of July.

In Missouri Quantrill, at the head of 300 men, sets out for Lawrence, Kansas. Along the way they pick up another 150 men. Crossing the Kansas border, they are spotted by a Federal officer, who alerts his district headquarters in Kansas City but unaccountably fails to send warnings to the Federal outposts that lie in the bhushwhackers’ line of march.

In Charleston Harbor the guns boom for a third day against Fort Sumter and Battery Wagner.

In West Virginia Averell’s Federal raiders destroy a saltpeter works near Franklin. A Confederate signal station is captured at St. John’s Mill, Florida, and a skirmish occurs at Weems’ Springs, Tennessee.
#15186291
August 20, Thursday

During the journey of Quantrill’s raiders to Lawrence, Kansas, the bushwhackers force at least ten Kansas farmers into service as local guides and then, when their usefulness is done, gun them down where they stand. At one point, the invading riders stop at a farmhouse where the surley stonemason, George Todd, recognizes a man who once caused him trouble with the law in Kansas City. Without any ado, Todd beats the man to death with the butt of a musket.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter and Battery Wagner continues in Charleston Harbor.

Rosecrans’ advancing Army of the Cumberland nears the Tennessee River west of Chattanooga, and more Federal troops arrive at Covington, Kentucky, for the offensive into east Tennessee. In an expedition lasting until the 28th, Federals operate from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Monroe, Louisiana.

In the Far West Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson has been commanding expeditions against the Navajo Amerinds in Arizona Territory lasting July 7-19. This day Carson’s command leaves Pueblo, Colorado, operating until December 16 to the area of Cañon de Chelly, in reprisal against Amerind depredations. The plan is for the government to move them to a reservation at Bosque Redondo on the Pecos near Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory.
#15186431
August 21, Friday

At dawn, Quantrill’s raiders pause on a hill just short of their destination. Even now, some of the men want to turn back; the townsfolk of Lawrence, they insist, must surely have been warned by now of their approach. “You can do as you please,” says Quantrill, “I am going to Lawrence.” Then, drawing one of the four revolvers he carries in his belt, he spurs his horse shouting, “Charge!” Into the town and down its streets they thunder. The first victim to be shot down is a preacher named Snyder, who topples under the cow he has been milking in his yard. Near the center of town, a detachment of 22 Union Army recruits is encamped; the mounted bushwhackers, yelling their vengeful cry “Osceola!” surge over the drowsy soldiers, shooting some and trampling others beneath the pounding hooves of their horses. In all, seventeen Federals are slaughtered; the other five escape. Then, while Quantrill eats a hearty breakfast in a Lawrence hotel, the bushwhackers carry out his orders to “kill every man big enough to carry a gun.” Most are shot in cold blood as they stand in their doorways; some are burned to death when a torch is put to buildings in which they are hiding; the town’s mayor is suffocated by smoke in the bottom of a well where he has sought safety. For four hours the killing continues. Finally, about 9 am, the bushwhackers get word that Union troops are approaching, so they head at a gallop back to Missouri—leaving behind them a ruined town where dozens of fires lick at the buildings and where the bodies of at least 150 men lie strewn about. (Women, by Quantrill’s order, have been spared, although several have been robbed of their wedding rings.) Among the Kansans who survive—to Quantrill’s great chagrin—is Jim Lane, whom the Bushwhackers meant to take alive and carry back to Missouri for execution, either by public hanging or by burning at the stake. Instead, Lane, awakened from his slumbers, had leaped from bed, cagily removed a metal nameplate from his house (which is soon burned), and, in his nightshirt, scurried into hiding in a nearby cornfield. Throughout this terrible morning, the bushwhackers suffer only one casualty. On their departure, a former Baptist preacher named Larkin Skaggs is left behind, too drunk to ride. Skaggs is shot to death by a local Amerind. His body is dragged through the streets behind a horse, then ripped apart by the enraged survivors of the Lawrence massacre.

While the besieging Federals have been digging their zigzag trenches and moving their big guns ever closer to Fort Wagner, they have established in the marshes between Morris and James islands, off to the left and about 8,000 yards from downtown Charleston, an 8-inch Parrott rifle—promptly dubbed the “Swamp Angel” by the engineers that have been sweating and floundering in the salty mud to place the big gun on its platform. Its purpose is to heave its 200-pound shells, specially filled for the occasion with liquid and solidified Greek Fire, into Charleston’s streets and houses. Today the monster weapon is reported ready, and General Gillmore sends a note across the lines demanding the immediate evacuation of Morris Island and Fort Sumter; if not, or if no reply is received within four hours, he warns, he will open fire “from batteries already established within easy and effective range of the heart of the city.” General Beauregard is away inspecting Charleston’s fortifications when the demand arrives at his headquarters, and no answer will be returned within the allotted time.

Today is one of those days President Davis occasionally sets aside for prayer and fasting throughout the Confederacy, and in Chattanooga civilians and soldiers alike flock to the churches. The roads to the city are barely guarded; no one suspects that there are Federals nearby. Suddenly, at 9 am, from the main ferry station on the north bank of the Tennessee River, Wilder’s battery under Eli Lilly opens fire on the town across the river with stunning effect; Henry Campbell, bugler of the 18th Indiana Artillery, will report that the worshippers at one church “poured out like bees from a hive.” Civilians begin to flee the town. A boat at the unguarded ferry slip on the south bank is sunk by the artillery fire, and a number of shells explode inside Confederate fortifications, which are clearly visible from the opposite bank. Although Hazen’s forces aren’t strong enough to storm the town, for almost three weeks they will stay in the vicinity, harassing its defenders. At night, fires are lit along the roads near the town to make it appear that a large body of men is gathering. It is Rosecrans’ favorite ploy; he used it before at Stones River. The Federals also clap boards together, pound barrels, and throw wood scraps into the river to give the impression that boats are being constructed for a crossing.

By now, General Bragg knows from scouting reports that the bulk of the Federal army is moving toward him, but he has no idea where the main force is. His army, plagued by illness and desertions, now totals only 30,000 men. Bragg pleads with Richmond for reinforcements and is promised 20,000 men—some from Johnston in Mississippi, and more from Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Skirmishing occurs at Maysville, Alabama, and Shallmound, Tennessee, as Rosecrans draws nearer the strategic city. In West Virginia there is a skirmish near Glenville.

About 1 am, a Confederate steam torpedo boat moves speedily out of Charleston Harbor to attack New Ironsides. However, the torpedo’s detonating device fails, and the Confederate vessel retreats under heavy fire.
#15186432
Quantrill is an enigma, even to this day. He was a Yankee jayhawker who switched sides to become a Confederate bushwhacker, a former outlaw who had aspirations to be a respected officer in the Confederate army, but who ended up being arrested for murder by the Confederacy itself. It's not even clear whether he survived the Civil War or not - there were reports as late as 1907 that Quantrill was alive and living in Canada. Just another one of the weird and not-so-wonderful characters who briefly rode the bucking bronco of the Civil War before either dying or disappearing back into obscurity....
#15186439
@Potemkin, yes, definitely one of the odder characters of the war. Not many people end up with grave markers in three different towns....
#15186444
Doug64 wrote:@Potemkin, yes, definitely one of the odder characters of the war. Not many people end up with grave markers in three different towns....

...none of which might actually be his grave.... ;)
#15186602
August 22, Saturday

Fort Sumter is feeling the impact of the sustained bombardment, now in its sixth day. Only four guns remain serviceable in the fort. Five Federal monitors make a night attack, and only two guns return fire. Nevertheless, there is no indication of surrender. Having received no reply by midnight to his demand that Morris Island and Fort Sumter be evacuated, General Gillmore orders the Swamp Angel to open fire and at 1:30 am the first shell is on its way. The gun crew know their first shot is on target when the sound of alarm bells and whistles reach them faintly across the nearly five miles of marsh and water; they follow this with fifteen others, equally accurate, before dawn. At this time Gillmore receives a message signed G.T. Beauregard, protesting his barbarity and rejecting his ultimatum. “It would appear, sir, that despairing of reducing these works, you now resort to the novel measure of turning your guns against the old men, the women and children, and the hospitals of a sleeping city,” the Creole hotly accuses his adversary, and he predicts that this “mode of warfare, which I confidently declare to be atrocious and unworthy of any soldier ... will give you ‘a bad eminence’ in history, even in the history of this war.” Gillmore replies that the city has had forty days’ notice, this being the length of time he has been battering at its gates, and despite the added protests of the Spanish and British consuls he orders the bombardment to continue tomorrow. In the streets of the waterfront, people stream out of their homes and race for the upper city to get out of range.

At Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, General Blunt has been strengthened by 1,500 Federal cavalrymen from Kansas under Colonel William F. Cloud. Now, with 4,500 troops, Blunt recrosses the Arkansas River and resumed the offensive. Within ten days he pushes the Confederates back into southwestern Arkansas and captures Fort Smith.

As Quantrill’s men withdraw from smoldering Lawrence, Kansas, there is a skirmish on Big Creek, near Pleasant Hill. Elsewhere, fighting breaks out at San Pedro Crossing, Arizona Territory; Huntersville, West Virginia; and Stafford Court House, Virginia. As part of the Federal advance toward Chattanooga, troops operate around Tracy City, Tennessee, to the Tennessee River. Meanwhile, President Davis seeks reinforcements for Bragg’s threatened army in Tennessee.
#15186771
August 23, Sunday

The first period of the bombardment of Fort Sumter comes to an end, but only after 5,009 rounds have been fired by Federals. General Beauregard in Charleston soon realizes that Fort Sumter is no match for the combined firepower of the monitors and General Gillmore’s land-based, long-range guns and has had removed as many of the fort’s guns as possible by boat. By now, the fort has ceased replying to the Federal guns. “Not a single gun remained in barbette,” Beauregard reports to the Confederate War Department, “and but a single smooth-bore 32-pounder in the west face could be fired.” Gillmore will triumphantly report to Washington: “Fort Sumter is today a shapeless and harmless mass of ruins.” It only remains now to take Fort Wagner.

Twenty more incendiary shells have been fired on Charleston from the “Swamp Angel,” six of which explode prematurely in the tube with spectacular pyrotechnical effects, and though no member of the crew is hurt by these sudden gushes of flame from the vent and muzzle, the gun itself is probably weakened. It doesn’t help that to reach its distant target, the piece has to be charged with twenty pounds of powder, four more than the normal charge. Soon, however, it becomes apparent to the citizens of Charleston that most of Gillmore’s incendiary shells are not very effective, and disdain for the Federal gunners replace panic. Banks and hospitals move out of the impact zone, but most residents refuse to be budged, keeping tubs of water in their homes to fight fires. At any rate, on the twentieth shot of the day the breech of the piece blows out of its jacket, just behind the vent, and the Swamp Angel ends her brief career of 36 rounds, thirty of which landed squarely on target on the birthplace of secession, whatever “bad eminence” she might have gained for General Gillmore in the process. He decides to make no attempt to replace the ruined cannon, believing as he does that he soon will have possession of Cummings Point, where the ground is firmer and the range to Charleston shorter.

There is a skirmish at Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Federals scout on Bennett’s Bayou, Missouri. Confederates capture two small Federal gunboats, Satellite and Reliance, at the mouth of the Rappahannock in Virginia. Lieutenant L. Taylor Wood accomplishes the feat in four small boats with sixty men and thirty army sharpshooters. It is a galling experience for the North.

At Lawrence, Kansas, someone mistakes the smoke from a trash fire for a signal that the bushwhackers are returning. According to one account, “most of the men and all of the women and children fled and spent the entire night in a field in the rain.”
#15186872
August 24, Monday

For the rest of August, John Singleton Mosby and his Confederate raiders are especially active in Virginia north of Meade’s Rappahannock line. Other action includes a Federal scout at Barbee’s Cross Roads and skirmishing at Coyle’s Tavern near Fairfax Court House, near King George Court House, and near Warm Springs, Virginia. In Charleston Harbor the bombardment of Fort Sumter and Battery Wagner is considerably lighter. In Alabama skirmishing occurs at Gunter’s Landing near Port Deposit.
#15186995
August 25, Tuesday

Extensive skirmishing flares in Missouri near Waynesville, near Independence, and at Hopewell. Federals scout from the Sedalia area. Union forces moving toward Little Rock skirmish at Brownsville, Arkansas. On Morris Island, South Carolina, Federal troops fail to capture Confederate rifle pits in front of Battery Wagner. Along the Rappahannock there is a skirmish at Hartwood Church and along the Chickahominy near Lamb’s Ferry. At the mouth of the Rappahannock a Confederate vessel seizes three Union schooners. In West Virginia Federals destroy Confederate saltpeter works on Jackson’s River.

As a direct result of the bloodbath at Lawrence, Kansas, Federal Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, in command at Kansas City, institutes one of the most repressive measures ever inficted on an American civilian population. Under his General Orders No. 11, nearly all persons in Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties, Missouri, plus parts of Vernon County, are given fifteen days in which to vacate their homes and remove all their belongings from the area. Even those citizens who can offer positive proof of their loyalty to the Union are required to move to the shelter of Federal military posts or to the interior of Kansas. An estimated twenty thousand people lose their homes around Kansas City. For two sorrowful weeks the evacuation goes on, made all the worse by jayhawkers who, despite Ewing’s continued attempts to restrain them, swarm across the border and slash at the heels of the departing Missourians, robbing many of their meager possessions and burning their abandoned homes. The land that the little caravans leave behind is studded with chimneys still standing amid the smoldering ruins of what had once been homes; the region will be known for many years as the Burnt District.

The bushwhackers who have caused the evacuation are scarcely bothered. Easily avoiding both Union troops and jayhawkers, they live off the smoked hams, the slabs of bacon, and the maverick cattle left behind by the departing Missourians and overlooked by the Kansas marauders. Quantrill himself holes up near Blue Springs, Missouri, and dallies away the time in the company of 16-year-old Kate King, who has borrowed her lover’s middle name and is now called Kate Clarke. In late September, when Quantrill’s gang does leave Missouri, it will not be because it has been forced from the state, but rather because the bushwhackers are once again ready to take up winter quarters, this time in Texas. Along the way, their depredations will continue.
#15187108
August 26, Wednesday

In a second effort, Federals capture the Confederate rifle pits in front of Battery Wagner on Morris Island. In West Virginia Averell’s Federal expedition fights a heavy engagement at Rock Gap, near White Sulphur Springs. Other fighting takes place near Moorefield and Sutton. In Virginia a four-day Federal expedition operates from Williamsburg to Bottom’s Bridge. In the West skirmishing breaks out at Bayou Meto, Arkansas, and at Perryville, Indian Territory. Former US Secretary of War and Confederate general John B. Floyd dies at Abingdon, Virginia.

President Davis confirms by telegram General Beauregard’s decision to hold Fort Sumter. President Lincoln, in a letter to “Unconditional Union Men,” in Springfield, Illinois, says, “I do not believe any compromise, embracing the maintenance of the Union, is now possible.” He adds, “Peace does not appear so distant as it did.”
#15187280
August 27, Thursday

At least nine skirmishes mark the day: at Bayou Meto or Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas; Mount Pleasant and near Vicksburg, Mississippi; Carter County and Clark’s Neck, Kentucky; Elf River, Glenville, and Ball’s Mill, West Virginia; Edwards’ Ferry, Maryland; Little Washington and Weaverville, Virginia. Firing is all but suspended in Charleston Harbor.

President Davis is deeply concerned, wiring Beauregard regarding his strength and possible reinforcements. Increased pressure at Chattanooga and in east Tennessee also demands Davis’ attention.
#15187430
August 28, Friday

Only three skirmishes and two expeditions are recorded. Fighting is at Hartwood Church, Virginia; the Narrows near Shellmound, Tennessee; and Jacksborough, Tennessee. The expeditions, both by Federals, operate from Stevenson, Alabama, to Trenton, Georgia; and from Lexington into La Fayette, Johnston, Cass, and Henry counties, Missouri.
#15187580
August 29, Saturday

Operations against the Navajo in New Mexico Territory intensifies. Skirmishing occurs at Texas Prairie, Missouri. Activity mounts along the Tennessee River west of Chattanooga with a skirmish at Caperton’s Ferry, Alabama. Rosecrans’ army slowly but methodically moves south below Chattanooga, actually flanking the Confederate-held city. In Charleston Harbor the Southern submarine H. L. Hunley sinks with five men lost.
#15187669
August 30, Sunday

The breeching batteries once more inflict heavy damage on Fort Sumter. Meanwhile, the Confederates continue to dig out guns from the rubble and move them to the city. A small transport steamer with troops on board is fired upon from Fort Moultrie by mistake and sinks. There is further skirmishing in Arkansas as a part of the Little Rock Campaign at Washington and at Shallow Ford on Bayou Meto. The last two days of the month Federals carry out a reconnaissance from Shallmound toward Chattanooga, Tennessee. A Federal expedition operates in the vicinity of Leesburg, Virginia.
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