30 November 1862: Sunday

Union - Military
Mississippi
There is a skirmish at Chulahoma, as well as on the Tallahatchie River.

Missouri
A Union expedition operates from Rolla to the Ozarks until December 6.

______________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

The Papers and WRitings of Abraham Lincoln: Introdcutory Note

The book was published in 1905...so there's three Introductions before getting to the nitty gritty.

Here's the next one:

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

"I have endured," wrote Lincoln not long before his death, "a great deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule." On Easter Day, 1865, the world knew how little this ridicule, how much this kindness, had really signified. Thereafter, Lincoln the man became Lincoln the hero, year by year more heroic, until to-day, with the swift passing of those who knew him, his figure grows ever dimmer, less real. This should not be. For Lincoln the man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more than Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious. Invaluable is the example of the man, intangible that of the hero.

And, though it is not for us, as for those who in awed stillness listened at Gettysburg with inspired perception, to know Abraham Lincoln, yet there is for us another way whereby we may attain such knowledge—through his words—uttered in all sincerity to those who loved or hated him. Cold, unsatisfying they may seem, these printed words, while we can yet speak with those who knew him, and look into eyes that once looked into his. But in truth it is here that we find his simple greatness, his great simplicity, and though no man tried less so to show his power, no man has so shown it more clearly.

Thus these writings of Abraham Lincoln are associated with those of Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and of the other "Founders of the Republic," not that Lincoln should become still more of the past, but, rather, that he with them should become still more of the present. However faint and mythical may grow the story of that Great Struggle, the leader, Lincoln, at least should remain a real, living American. No matter how clearly, how directly, Lincoln has shown himself in his writings, we yet should not forget those men whose minds, from their various view-points, have illumined for us his character. As this nation owes a great debt to Lincoln, so, also, Lincoln's memory owes a great debt to a nation which, as no other nation could have done, has been able to appreciate his full worth. Among the many who have brought about this appreciation, those only whose estimates have been placed in these volumes may be mentioned here. To President Roosevelt, to Mr. Schurz and to Mr. Choate, the editor, for himself, for the publishers, and on behalf of the readers, wishes to offer his sincere acknowledgments.

Thanks are also due, for valuable and sympathetic assistance rendered in the preparation of this work, to Mr. Gilbert A. Tracy, of Putnam, Conn., Major William H. Lambert, of Philadelphia, and Mr. C. F. Gunther, of Chicago, to the Chicago Historical Association and personally to its capable Secretary, Miss McIlvaine, to Major Henry S. Burrage, of Portland, Me., and to General Thomas J. Henderson, of Illinois.

For various courtesies received, the editor is furthermore indebted to the Librarian of the Library of Congress; to Messrs. McClure, Phillips & Co., D. Appleton & Co., Macmillan & Co., Dodd, Mead & Co., and Harper Brothers, of New York; to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Dana, Estes & Co., and L. C. Page & Co., of Boston; to A. C. McClure & Co., of Chicago; to The Robert Clarke Co., of Cincinnati, and to the J. B. Lippincott Co., of Philadelphia.

It is hardly necessary to add that every effort has been made by the editor to bring into these volumes whatever material may there properly belong, material much of which is widely scattered in public libraries and in private collections. He has been fortunate in securing certain interesting correspondence and papers which had not before come into print in book form. Information concerning some of these papers had reached him too late to enable the papers to find place in their proper chronological order in the set. Rather, however, than not to present these papers to the readers they have been included in the seventh volume of the set, which concludes the "Writings."


October, 1905, A. B. L.

29 November 1862: Saturday

Confederacy - Military/Government
Major General John B. Magruder assumes command of the District of Txas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Mississippi
There are skirmishes at Lumpkin's Mill and at Waterford.

Tennessee
There are skirmishes at Stewart's ferry and at Baird's Mills, near Stone River.

________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

28 November 1862: Friday

Union - Military
Arkansas
Union forces win an engagement at Cane Hill or Boston Mountains, when troops under James Blunt attacked Confederates under John S. Marmaduke and drove them back with considerable loss. This gives the Union troops a momentary edge in the Trans-Mississippi fighting.

Mississippi
There is a skirmish at Holly Springs, where Union troops are beginning to build up supplies for their advance on Vicksburg.

There is also a skirmish at the junction of the Coldwater and Tallahatchie Rivers.

Tennessee
There are skirmishes on the Carthage road, near Hartsville and near Rome.

Virginia
There is a skirmish neat Hartwood Church.

Union troops conduct a 3-day reconnaissance from Chantilly to Berryville.



_______________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln: Introductory

I'll post a letter every other day.

We'll start with the introduction to this public domain book, written by Theodore Roosevelt for the publication of the book in 1905.

VOLUME 1.
INTRODUCTORY

Immediately after Lincoln's re-election to the Presidency, in an off-hand speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of his admirers on the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as follows:

"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test, and the Presidential election, occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to the strain.... The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts in the case. What has occurred in this case must ever occur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.... Now that the election is over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a common fort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result."

This speech has not attracted much general attention, yet it is in a peculiar degree both illustrative and typical of the great statesman who made it, alike in its strong common-sense and in its lofty standard of morality. Lincoln's life, Lincoln's deeds and words, are not only of consuming interest to the historian, but should be intimately known to every man engaged in the hard practical work of American political life. It is difficult to overstate how much it means to a nation to have as the two foremost figures in its history men like Washington and Lincoln. It is good for every man in any way concerned in public life to feel that the highest ambition any American can possibly have will be gratified just in proportion as he raises himself toward the standards set by these two men.

It is a very poor thing, whether for nations or individuals, to advance the history of great deeds done in the past as an excuse for doing poorly in the present; but it is an excellent thing to study the history of the great deeds of the past, and of the great men who did them, with an earnest desire to profit thereby so as to render better service in the present. In their essentials, the men of the present day are much like the men of the past, and the live issues of the present can be faced to better advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the leaders of the nation faced the dead issues of the past. Such a study of Lincoln's life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of immorality and inefficiency—the gulfs which always lie one on each side of the careers alike of man and of nation. It helps nothing to have avoided one if shipwreck is encountered in the other. The fanatic, the well-meaning moralist of unbalanced mind, the parlor critic who condemns others but has no power himself to do good and but little power to do ill—all these were as alien to Lincoln as the vicious and unpatriotic themselves. His life teaches our people that they must act with wisdom, because otherwise adherence to right will be mere sound and fury without substance; and that they must also act high-mindedly, or else what seems to be wisdom will in the end turn out to be the most destructive kind of folly.

Throughout his entire life, and especially after he rose to leadership in his party, Lincoln was stirred to his depths by the sense of fealty to a lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life, he also accepted human nature as it is, and worked with keen, practical good sense to achieve results with the instruments at hand. It is impossible to conceive of a man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption, from mere self-seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of more sane and healthy mind—a man less under the influence of that fantastic and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in reality profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work-a-day world refuse to do what is possible because he cannot accomplish the impossible.

In the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England, the historian draws an interesting distinction between the qualities needed for a successful political career in modern society and those which lead to eminence in the spheres of pure intellect or pure moral effort. He says:

"....the moral qualities that are required in the higher spheres of statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty on an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and a loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is in a great measure that of skilful compromise, and in the conditions of modern life, the statesman is likely to succeed best who possesses secondary qualities to an unusual degree, who is in the closest intellectual and moral sympathy with the average of the intelligent men of his time, and who pursues common ideals with more than common ability.... Tact, business talent, knowledge of men, resolution, promptitude and sagacity in dealing with immediate emergencies, a character which lends itself easily to conciliation, diminishes friction and inspires confidence, are especially needed, and they are more likely to be found among shrewd and enlightened men of the world than among men of great original genius or of an heroic type of character."

The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the greatest American statesman since Washington, the statesman who in this absolutely democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who actually combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus puts in antithesis. Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western country lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the world, and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to guide his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type, a leader who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation or any other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY, N. Y., September 22, 1905.

Army Life in a Black Regiment: Nov 27, 1862

From Army Life in a Black Regiment
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1869)
November 27, 1862.

Thanksgiving-Day; it is the first moment I have had for writing during these three days, which have installed me into a new mode of life so thoroughly that they seem three years. Scarcely pausing in New York or in Beaufort, there seems to have been for me but one step from the camp of a Massachusetts regiment to this, and that step over leagues of waves.

It is a holiday wherever General Saxton's proclamation reaches. The chilly sunshine and the pale blue river seems like New England, but those alone. The air is full of noisy drumming, and of gunshots; for the prize-shooting is our great celebration of the day, and the drumming is chronic. My young barbarians are all at play. I look out from the broken windows of this forlorn plantation-house, through avenues of great live-oaks, with their hard, shining leaves, and their branches hung with a universal drapery of soft, long moss, like fringe-trees struck with grayness. Below, the sandy soil, scantly covered with coarse grass, bristles with sharp palmettoes and aloes; all the vegetation is stiff, shining, semi-tropical, with nothing soft or delicate in its texture. Numerous plantation-buildings totter around, all slovenly and unattractive, while the interspaces are filled with all manner of wreck and refuse, pigs, fowls, dogs, and omnipresent Ethiopian infancy. All this is the universal Southern panorama; but five minutes' walk beyond the hovels and the live-oaks will bring one to something so un-Southern that the whole Southern coast at this moment trembles at the suggestion of such a thing, the camp of a regiment of freed slaves.

One adapts one's self so readily to new surroundings that already the full zest of the novelty seems passing away from my perceptions, and I write these lines in an eager effort to retain all I can. Already I am growing used to the experience, at first so novel, of living among five hundred men, and scarce a white face to be seen, of seeing them go through all their daily processes, eating, frolicking, talking, just as if they were white. Each day at dress-parade I stand with the customary folding of the arms before a regimental line of countenances so black that I can hardly tell whether the men stand steadily or not; black is every hand which moves in ready cadence as I vociferate, "Battalion! Shoulder arms!" nor is it till the line of white officers moves forward, as parade is dismissed, that I am reminded that my own face is not the color of coal.

The first few days on duty with a new regiment must be devoted almost wholly to tightening reins; in this process one deals chiefly with the officers, and I have as yet had but little personal intercourse with the men. They concern me chiefly in bulk, as so many consumers of rations, wearers of uniforms, bearers of muskets. But as the machine comes into shape, I am beginning to decipher the individual parts. At first, of course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites. Most of them are wholly raw, but there are many who have already been for months in camp in the abortive "Hunter Regiment," yet in that loose kind of way which, like average militia training, is a doubtful advantage. I notice that some companies, too, look darker than others, though all are purer African than I expected. This is said to be partly a geographical difference between the South Carolina and Florida men. When the Rebels evacuated this region they probably took with them the house-servants, including most of the mixed blood, so that the residuum seems very black. But the men brought from Fernandina the other day average lighter in complexion, and look more intelligent, and they certainly take wonderfully to the drill.

It needs but a few days to show the absurdity of distrusting the military availability of these people. They have quite as much average comprehension as whites of the need of the thing, as much courage (I doubt not), as much previous knowledge of the gun, and, above all, a readiness of ear and of imitation, which, for purposes of drill, counterbalances any defect of mental training. To learn the drill, one does not want a set of college professors; one wants a squad of eager, active, pliant school-boys; and the more childlike these pupils are the better. There is no trouble about the drill; they will surpass whites in that. As to camp-life, they have little to sacrifice; they are better fed, housed, and clothed than ever in their lives before, and they appear to have few inconvenient vices. They are simple, docile, and affectionate almost to the point of absurdity. The same men who stood fire in open field with perfect coolness, on the late expedition, have come to me blubbering in the most irresistibly ludicrous manner on being transferred from one company in the regiment to another.

In noticing the squad-drills I perceive that the men learn less laboriously than whites that "double, double, toil and trouble," which is the elementary vexation of the drill-master, that they more rarely mistake their left for their right, and are more grave and sedate while under instruction. The extremes of jollity and sobriety, being greater with them, are less liable to be intermingled; these companies can be driven with a looser rein than my former one, for they restrain themselves; but the moment they are dismissed from drill every tongue is relaxed and every ivory tooth visible. This morning I wandered about where the different companies were target-shooting, and their glee was contagious. Such exulting shouts of "Ki! ole man," when some steady old turkey-shooter brought his gun down for an instant's aim, and then unerringly hit the mark; and then, when some unwary youth fired his piece into the ground at half-cock such guffawing and delight, such rolling over and over on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made the "Ethiopian minstrelsy" of the stage appear a feeble imitation.

Evening. Better still was a scene on which I stumbled to-night. Strolling in the cool moonlight, I was attracted by a brilliant light beneath the trees, and cautiously approached it. A circle of thirty or forty soldiers sat around a roaring fire, while one old uncle, Cato by name, was narrating an interminable tale, to the insatiable delight of his audience. I came up into the dusky background, perceived only by a few, and he still continued. It was a narrative, dramatized to the last degree, of his adventures in escaping from his master to the Union vessels; and even I, who have heard the stories of Harriet Tubman, and such wonderful slave-comedians, never witnessed such a piece of acting. When I came upon the scene he had just come unexpectedly upon a plantation-house, and, putting a bold face upon it, had walked up to the door.

"Den I go up to de white man, berry humble, and say, would he please gib ole man a mouthful for eat?

"He say he must hab de valeration ob half a dollar.

"Den I look berry sorry, and turn for go away.

"Den he say I might gib him dat hatchet I had.

"Den I say" (this in a tragic vein) "dat I must hab dat hatchet for defend myself from de dogs!"

[Immense applause, and one appreciating auditor says, chuckling, "Dat was your arms, ole man," which brings down the house again.]

"Den he say de Yankee pickets was near by, and I must be very keerful.

"Den I say, 'Good Lord, Mas'r, am dey?'"

Words cannot express the complete dissimulation with which these accents of terror were uttered, this being precisely the piece of information he wished to obtain.

Then he narrated his devices to get into the house at night and obtain some food, how a dog flew at him, how the whole household, black and white, rose in pursuit, how he scrambled under a hedge and over a high fence, etc., all in a style of which Gough alone among orators can give the faintest impression, so thoroughly dramatized was every syllable.

Then he described his reaching the river-side at last, and trying to decide whether certain vessels held friends or foes.

"Den I see guns on board, and sure sartin he Union boat, and I pop my head up. Den I been-a-tink [think] Seceshkey hab guns too, and my head go down again. Den I hide in de bush till morning. Den I open my bundle, and take ole white shut and tie him on ole pole and wave him, and ebry time de wind blow, I been-a-tremble, and drap down in de bushes," because, being between two fires, he doubted whether friend or foe would see his signal first. And so on, with a succession of tricks beyond Moliere, of acts of caution, foresight, patient cunning, which were listened to with infinite gusto and perfect comprehension by every listener.

And all this to a bivouac of negro soldiers, with the brilliant fire lighting up their red trousers and gleaming from their shining black faces, eyes and teeth all white with tumultuous glee. Overhead, the mighty limbs of a great live-oak, with the weird moss swaying in the smoke, and the high moon gleaming faintly through.

Yet to-morrow strangers will remark on the hopeless, impenetrable stupidity in the daylight faces of many of these very men, the solid mask under which Nature has concealed all this wealth of mother-wit. This very comedian is one to whom one might point, as he hoed lazily in a cotton-field, as a being the light of whose brain had utterly gone out; and this scene seems like coming by night upon some conclave of black beetles, and finding them engaged, with green-room and foot-lights, in enacting "Poor Pillicoddy." This is their university; every young Sambo before me, as he turned over the sweet potatoes and peanuts which were roasting in the ashes, listened with reverence to the wiles of the ancient Ulysses, and meditated the same. It is Nature's compensation; oppression simply crushes the upper faculties of the head, and crowds everything into the perceptive organs. Cato, thou reasonest well! When I get into any serious scrape, in an enemy's country, may I be lucky enough to have you at my elbow, to pull me out of it!

The men seem to have enjoyed the novel event of Thanksgiving-Day; they have had company and regimental prize-shootings, a minimum of speeches and a maximum of dinner. Bill of fare: two beef-cattle and a thousand oranges. The oranges cost a cent apiece, and the cattle were Secesh, bestowed by General Saxby, as they all call him.

27 November 1862: Thursday

Union - Government
President Lincoln spends the morning at Aquia Creek, Virginia, conferring with General Burnside. The general favored a direct assault on Lee at Fredericksburg, but Lincoln proposed building up a force south of the Rappahannock and another on the Pamunkey for a three-pronged attack. Burnside turned down the President's plan.

Union - Military
Tennessee
There is a skirmish at Mill Creek.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Carthage

Mississippi
A Union expedition "probes" near Grenada from this day until December 6.

_____________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

26 November 1862: Wednesday

Union - Government
President Lincoln steams down the Potomac to Belle Plain for a conference with General Burnside.

Confederacy - Government
President Davis writes the governors of the Confederate states appealing for aid in enrolling conscripts and forwarding them to rendezvous, in restoring to the Army all absent without leave, and in securing more supplies for army use. He also called for the use of slave labor on defense works.

Military - Union
Tennessee
There is a skirmish near Somerville.

Missouri
There is a skirmish in Jackson County, and in Lafayette County.

___________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

25 November 1862: Tuesday

Confederacy - Military/Government
Major General Samuel Jones is assigned to command the Trans-Allegheny or Western Department of Virginia.

Confederacy - Military
Maryland/Virginia
Confederate cavalry cross the Potomac at Poolesville and briefly seize the telegraph office.

Arkansas
There are skirmishes at Pitman's Ferry and at Cane Hill.

Tennessee
There are skirmishes at Henderson's Station and at Clarksville.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish at Calhoun.

Union - Military
Arkansas
A Union expedition goes to Yellville from this day until the 29th.

_______
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

Army Life in a Black Regiment: Nov 24, 1862

From Army Life in a Black Regiment
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1869)

Chapter 2. Camp Diary
CAMP SAXTON, near Beaufort, S. C., November 24, 1862.

Yesterday afternoon we were steaming over a summer sea, the deck level as a parlor-floor, no land in sight, no sail, until at last appeared one light-house, said to be Cape Romaine, and then a line of trees and two distant vessels and nothing more. The sun set, a great illuminated bubble, submerged in one vast bank of rosy suffusion; it grew dark; after tea all were on deck, the people sang hymns; then the moon set, a moon two days old, a curved pencil of light, reclining backwards on a radiant couch which seemed to rise from the waves to receive it; it sank slowly, and the last tip wavered and went down like the mast of a vessel of the skies. Towards morning the boat stopped, and when I came on deck, before six,

"The watch-lights glittered on the land,
The ship-lights on the sea."

Hilton Head lay on one side, the gunboats on the other; all that was raw and bare in the low buildings of the new settlement was softened into picturesqueness by the early light. Stars were still overhead, gulls wheeled and shrieked, and the broad river rippled duskily towards Beaufort.

The shores were low and wooded, like any New England shore; there were a few gunboats, twenty schooners, and some steamers, among them the famous "Planter," which Robert Small, the slave, presented to the nation. The river-banks were soft and graceful, though low, and as we steamed up to Beaufort on the flood-tide this morning, it seemed almost as fair as the smooth and lovely canals which Stedman traversed to meet his negro soldiers in Surinam. The air was cool as at home, yet the foliage seemed green, glimpses of stiff tropical vegetation appeared along the banks, with great clumps of shrubs, whose pale seed-vessels looked like tardy blossoms. Then we saw on a picturesque point an old plantation, with stately magnolia avenue, decaying house, and tiny church amid the woods, reminding me of Virginia; behind it stood a neat encampment of white tents, "and there," said my companion, "is your future regiment."

Three miles farther brought us to the pretty town of Beaufort, with its stately houses amid Southern foliage. Reporting to General Saxton, I had the luck to encounter a company of my destined command, marched in to be mustered into the United States service. They were unarmed, and all looked as thoroughly black as the most faithful philanthropist could desire; there did not seem to be so much as a mulatto among them. Their coloring suited me, all but the legs, which were clad in a lively scarlet, as intolerable to my eyes as if I had been a turkey. I saw them mustered; General Saxton talked to them a little, in his direct, manly way; they gave close attention, though their faces looked impenetrable. Then I conversed with some of them. The first to whom I spoke had been wounded in a small expedition after lumber, from which a party had just returned, and in which they had been under fire and had done very well. I said, pointing to his lame arm,

"Did you think that was more than you bargained for, my man?"

His answer came promptly and stoutly,

"I been a-tinking, Mas'r, dot's jess what I went for."

I thought this did well enough for my very first interchange of dialogue with my recruits.

24 November 1862: Monday

Union - Government
President Lincoln writes to politician Carl Schurz: "I certainly know that if the war fails, the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not.

Confederacy - Military/Government
General Joseph E. Johnston is assigned to the major command in the West, embracing western North Carolina, Tennessee, northern Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana. His main task will be to supervise Bragg in Tennessee and Pemberton at Vicksburg.

Tennessee
Bragg begins moving his three corps to Murfreesboro, southeast of Nashville.

Virginia
Stonewall Jackson's troops continue marching from Winchester to Fredericksburg.

There is a skirmish at Newton.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Beaver Creek.

Union - Military
Maryland/Western Virginia
Union troops mount an expedition from Sharpsburg, MD to Shepherdstown, western Virginia, and fight several skirmishes over the course of 2 days (returning on the 25th.)

Western Virginia
Union troops mount an expedition from Summerville to Cold Knob Mountain.
__________________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

23 November 1862: Sunday

Union - Military/Navy
North Carolina
Navy Lieutenant William Cushing with the steamer Ellis went up New River and at Jacksonville captured two schooners. However, while returning, he ran onto a shoal and lost his own vessel. He and his men escape in one of the captured vessels, however.
______________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

22 November 1862: Saturday

Union - Government
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton discharges nearly all political prisoners held by the military.

Union - Military
Virginia
General E. V. Sumner agrees not to bombard Fredericksburg, despite the ultimatum of the day before, "so long as no hostile demonstration is made from the town."

Twelve Southern salt works are destroyed, along with a number of vessels, in Matthews County, on Chesapeake Bay.

Western Virginia
The garrison of Halltown is attacked by Confederates, but are driven back.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Petite Anse Island.





________________
BibliographyThe Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

21 November 1862: Friday

Union - Government
President Lincoln tells Union Kentuckians that he "would rather die than take back a word of the "Proclamation of Freedom," and again urged support of his gradual slavery-abolishment program.

Confederates - Government
President Davis appoints James A. Seddon, a prominent Richmond lawyer, former US and Confederate congressman, as Secretary of War. Seddon was to prove the most able of the Confederate War Secretaries - though he too would be subject to abuse and criticism.

Confederates - Military
Tennessee
General Braxton Bragg sends Nathan Forrest to cut the communications of Grant's army in western Tennessee.

Virginia
Stonewall Jackson's men march from Winchester towards Fredericksburg.

Union - Military
Virginia
On the Rappahannock, General Burnside calls up on Fredericksburg to surrender, but is refused. He threatens to bombard the town, and 16 hours are allowed for the removal sick, wounded, women, children, the aged and infirm. The mayor responds with a request for more time.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Bayou Bonfouca.
_________________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

20 November 1862: Thursday

Confederacy - Military/Government
The Confederate Army of Tennessee is officially constituted under Bragg, and consists of corps under E. Kirby Smith, Polk, and Hardee.

Confederacy - Military
Virginia
General Robert E. Lee arrives at Fredericksburg, as the build-up of Union and Confederate troops continues.

Stonewall Jackson's corps is still at Winchester, about to move toward Fredericksburg.

Texas
There is a small skirmish near Matagorda.



____________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

19 November 1862: Wednesday

Union- Military
Virginia
General Burnside arrives near Fredericksburg, and makes his headquarters at Falmouth.

Confederacy - Military
Virginia
Forces from Longstreet's corps take position on the heights above Fredericksburg after marching from the main base at Culpeper.

There is a skirmish at Philomont.

Kentucky
There are akirmishes at Tunnel Hill and Tomkinsville.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Pineville.
____________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

18 November 1862: Tuesday

Military - Union
Virginia
Both the Union and Confederate armies are marching toward Fredericksburg.

There is a minor skirmish at Franklin.

Tennessee
Union and Confederate armies are concentrating at Nashville and Tullahoma.

There are minor skirmishes at Double Bridge and Rural Hill.

North Carolina
There is a minor skirmish at Core Creek.

Georgia
There is a minor skirmish at Doboy River.
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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

17 November 1862: Monday

Confederacy - Government
President Davis names Major General G. W. Smith temporary Secretary of War.

Union - Military
Virginia
General Sumner's Right Grand Division of the Army of the Potomac arrives at Falmouth on the bluffs across the Rapahannock from Fredericksburg, with light skirmishing.

There is a fight near Carrsville.

Missouri
There are skirmishes near Cassville and Keetsville.




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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

16 November 1862: Sunday

Union - Military
Virginia
General Burnside moves his headquarters from Warrenton to Catlett's Station as his army shifts toward Fredericksburg - closely watched and followed by Lee's army.

There is a skirmish at U. S. Ford on the Rappahannock between two small portions of these armies.

There is also a skirmish at Gloucester Point on the Peninsula of Virginia.

Arkansas
A Union expedition begins this day and lasts until Nov 21, from Helena against Arkansas Post, Arkansas.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

15 November 1862: Saturday

Confederacy - Government
President Davis quickly accepts the resignation of his Secretary of War, George W. Randolph, which came without prior notice. The Secretaries of War who would serve under Davis had trouble with many things, but especially over the President's virtual operation of their department.

Union - Government
President Lincoln calls for calls for "orderly observance of the Sabbath" by officers and men of the Army and Navy,

Union - Military
Virginia
The Army of the Potomac begins moving from Warrenton, Virginia toward Fredericksburg, its first action under Burnside.

There is a skirmish near Warrenton at Sulphur Springs.

Western Virginia
There is a skirmish on the Guyandotte River.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Yocum Creek.

Tennessee
Union troops carry out a reconnaissance from Edgefield, Virginia toward Clarksfield, from November 15-20.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

14 November 1862: Friday

Government - Union
President Lincoln approves General Burnside's moves for driving on Richmond, as the new commander of the Army of the Potomac reorganized his forces into grand divisions - the Right Grand Division under Major General Edwin V. Sumner, the Center Grand Division under Major General Joseph Hooker, and the Left Grand Division under Major General William B. Franklin.

Government/Civilian - Union
Louisiana
In New Orleans, a proclamation calls for the election of members of the U.S. Congress from portions of the state held by Union troops.

Virginia
There are skirmishes at Waterloo, Zuni and Jefferson.

Tennessee
General Bragg concentrates his army around Tullahoma, southeast of Nashville.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

13 November, 1862: Thursday

Government - Union
President Lincoln charges Attorney General Edward Bates with enforcement of the Federal Confiscation Act.

Union - Military
Mississippi
Union troops take possession of the valuable rail center of Holly Springs after a brief skirmish.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish near Nashville.

General Bragg begins moving the main body of the Army of Tennessee from Chattanooga north toward Murfreesboro to join Breckinridge.

Virginia
There is a skirmish at Sulphur Springs.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

12 November 1862: Wednesday

Union - Military
Tennessee
There is a skirmish along Stone's River.

Virginia
From Nov 12 to the 14th, there are operations about Suffolk, including skirmishes at Providence Church and Blackwater Bridge.
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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

11 November 1862: Tuesday

Confederacy - Military
North Carolina
There is a demonstration at New Berne.

Virginia
There is a skirmish at Jefferson.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

10 November 1862: Monday

Union - Government
President Lincoln asks for the record on the conviction of 303 Indians condemned to death for the Sioux uprising in Minnesota.

Ubnion - Military/Government
Virginia
Major General McClellan took an emotional, spectacular darewell of the Army of the Potomac, so long considered "his" army. A soldier wrote, "The men were wild with excitement. They threw their hats into the air and cheered their old commander as long as his escort was in sight." The idolization of Little Mac continued despite his defeats and failures in battle; although some officers and men had come to recognize his shortcomings. The feelings of the army presented a problem to its new commander, Burnide. Major GEneral Hooker took over for Fitz John Porter in command of the Fifth Corps.

Union - Military
Western Virginia
There is a skirmish at Charlestown.

Virginia
There are operations along the Orange and Alexndria Railroad.
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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

9 November 1862: Sunday

Union - Military/Government
Major GEneral Burnside assumes full command of the Army of the Potomac at Warrenton, Virginia.

Union - Military
Virginia
Union calvary under Ulric Dahlgren make a sensational dash into Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Miissouri
There are skirmishes at Huntsville and Dry Wood.

Arkansas
There is a skirmish between Fayetteville and Cane Hill at Boston Mountains.

Tennessee
There are skirmishes at Silver Springs and at Lebanon.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT

As I posted on November 3, 1862, "an expedition by Union troops took place along the coasts of Georgia and east Florida lasting until the tenth. Among the regiments used in this operation was the First South Carolina Volunteers (African Descent) under Colonel Thomas Wigginton. This Negro regiment, still incomplete and somewhat unofficial, was not to be mustered in until the first of the year, but it had been slowly growing out of thee early abortive attempts to form Negro regiments on the southeastern coast."

Thomas Wentworth Wigginton wrote a book about these men, and I share it here.

This book is in the public domain and I will be sharing it here, one chapter at a time, posted every third day.

ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

(1823-1911)


Originally published 1869


Chapter 1. Introductory


These pages record some of the adventures of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first slave regiment mustered into the service of the United States during the late civil war. It was, indeed, the first colored regiment of any kind so mustered, except a portion of the troops raised by Major-General Butler at New Orleans. These scarcely belonged to the same class, however, being recruited from the free colored population of that city, a comparatively self-reliant and educated race. "The darkest of them," said General Butler, "were about the complexion of the late Mr. Webster."

The First South Carolina, on the other hand, contained scarcely a freeman, had not one mulatto in ten, and a far smaller proportion who could read or write when enlisted. The only contemporary regiment of a similar character was the "First Kansas Colored," which began recruiting a little earlier, though it was not mustered in the usual basis of military seniority till later. [See Appendix] These were the only colored regiments recruited during the year 1862. The Second South Carolina and the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts followed early in 1863.

This is the way in which I came to the command of this regiment. One day in November, 1862, I was sitting at dinner with my lieutenants, John Goodell and Luther Bigelow, in the barracks of the Fifty-First Massachusetts, Colonel Sprague, when the following letter was put into my hands:

BEAUFORT, S. C., November 5, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR.

I am organizing the First Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, with every prospect of success. Your name has been spoken of, in connection with the command of this regiment, by some friends in whose judgment I have confidence. I take great pleasure in offering you the position of Colonel in it, and hope that you may be induced to accept. I shall not fill the place until I hear from you, or sufficient time shall have passed for me to receive your reply. Should you accept, I enclose a pass for Port Royal, of which I trust you will feel disposed to avail yourself at once. I am, with sincere regard, yours truly,

R. SAXTON, Brig.-Genl, Mil. Gov.

Had an invitation reached me to take command of a regiment of Kalmuck Tartars, it could hardly have been more unexpected. I had always looked for the arming of the blacks, and had always felt a wish to be associated with them; had read the scanty accounts of General Hunter's abortive regiment, and had heard rumors of General Saxton's renewed efforts. But the prevalent tone of public sentiment was still opposed to any such attempts; the government kept very shy of the experiment, and it did not seem possible that the time had come when it could be fairly tried.

For myself, I was at the head of a fine company of my own raising, and in a regiment to which I was already much attached. It did not seem desirable to exchange a certainty for an uncertainty; for who knew but General Saxton might yet be thwarted in his efforts by the pro-slavery influence that had still so much weight at head-quarters? It would be intolerable to go out to South Carolina, and find myself, after all, at the head of a mere plantation-guard or a day-school in uniform.

I therefore obtained from the War Department, through Governor Andrew, permission to go and report to General Saxton, without at once resigning my captaincy. Fortunately it took but a few days in South Carolina to make it clear that all was right, and the return steamer took back a resignation of a Massachusetts commission. Thenceforth my lot was cast altogether with the black troops, except when regiments or detachments of white soldiers were also under my command, during the two years following.

These details would not be worth mentioning except as they show this fact: that I did not seek the command of colored troops, but it sought me. And this fact again is only important to my story for this reason, that under these circumstances I naturally viewed the new recruits rather as subjects for discipline than for philanthropy. I had been expecting a war for six years, ever since the Kansas troubles, and my mind had dwelt on military matters more or less during all that time. The best Massachusetts regiments already exhibited a high standard of drill and discipline, and unless these men could be brought tolerably near that standard, the fact of their extreme blackness would afford me, even as a philanthropist, no satisfaction.

Fortunately, I felt perfect confidence that they could be so trained, having happily known, by experience, the qualities of their race, and knowing also that they had home and household and freedom to fight for, besides that abstraction of "the Union." Trouble might perhaps be expected from white officials, though this turned out far less than might have been feared; but there was no trouble to come from the men, I thought, and none ever came. On the other hand, it was a vast experiment of indirect philanthropy, and one on which the result of the war and the destiny of the negro race might rest; and this was enough to tax all one's powers. I had been an abolitionist too long, and had known and loved John Brown too well, not to feel a thrill of joy at last on finding myself in the position where he only wished to be.

In view of all this, it was clear that good discipline must come first; after that, of course, the men must be helped and elevated in all ways as much as possible.

Of discipline there was great need, that is, of order and regular instruction. Some of the men had already been under fire, but they were very ignorant of drill and camp duty. The officers, being appointed from a dozen different States, and more than as many regiments, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers, had all that diversity of methods which so confused our army in those early days. The first need, therefore, was of an unbroken interval of training. During this period, which fortunately lasted nearly two months, I rarely left the camp, and got occasional leisure moments for a fragmentary journal, to send home, recording the many odd or novel aspects of the new experience. Camp-life was a wonderfully strange sensation to almost all volunteer officers, and mine lay among eight hundred men suddenly transformed from slaves into soldiers, and representing a race affectionate, enthusiastic, grotesque, and dramatic beyond all others. Being such, they naturally gave material for description. There is nothing like a diary for freshness, at least so I think, and I shall keep to the diary through the days of camp-life, and throw the later experience into another form. Indeed, that matter takes care of itself; diaries and letter-writing stop when field-service begins.

I am under pretty heavy bonds to tell the truth, and only the truth; for those who look back to the newspaper correspondence of that period will see that this particular regiment lived for months in a glare of publicity, such as tests any regiment severely, and certainly prevents all subsequent romancing in its historian. As the scene of the only effort on the Atlantic coast to arm the negro, our camp attracted a continuous stream of visitors, military and civil. A battalion of black soldiers, a spectacle since so common, seemed then the most daring of innovations, and the whole demeanor of this particular regiment was watched with microscopic scrutiny by friends and foes. I felt sometimes as if we were a plant trying to take root, but constantly pulled up to see if we were growing. The slightest camp incidents sometimes came back to us, magnified and distorted, in letters of anxious inquiry from remote parts of the Union. It was no pleasant thing to live under such constant surveillance; but it guaranteed the honesty of any success, while fearfully multiplying the penalties had there been a failure. A single mutiny, such as has happened in the infancy of a hundred regiments, a single miniature Bull Run, a stampede of desertions, and it
would have been all over with us; the party of distrust would have got the upper hand, and there might not have been, during the whole contest, another effort to arm the negro.

I may now proceed, without farther preparation to the Diary.

8 November 1862: Saturday

Union - Military/Government
The Union Army of the Potomac, concentrated in the area of Warrenton, was rocked by the news of McClellan's dismissal.

In another command change, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks is named to command the Union Department of the Gulf, replacing Major General Butler, whose rule of New Orleans had brought charges and countercharges of cruelty, speculation and dishonesty. In receiving his orders it was made clear to Banks that "The President regards the opening of the Mississippi River as the first and most important of our military and naval operations." The same day, General Butler closed all the breweries and distilleries within the department.

Union - Military
Arkansas
There are skirmishes at Marianna La Grange and Cove Creek.

Kansas
There is a skirmish at Cato.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish on the Cumberland River near Gallatin.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish at Burkesville.

Confederacy - Military
Western Virginia
Confederate cavalry carries out an expedition from Nov 18-14 from Hardy into Tucker County.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

Fiction: An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (sometimes called "An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge") is a short story by Ambrose Bierce. It was originally published in 1890, and first collected in Bierce's 1891 book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. The story is famous for its irregular time sequence and twist ending.

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE
by
Ambrose Bierce

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle ofa brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a
kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each new stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II

Peyton Farquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in the aid of the South, no adventure to perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."

"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.

"About thirty miles."

"Is there no force on this side of the creek?"

"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."

"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"

The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tinder."

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened--ages later, it seemed to him--by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness--of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--he saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquility in the men--with what accurately measured interval fell those cruel words:

"Company! . . . Attention! . . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready!. . . Aim! . . . Fire!"

Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther downstream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning:

"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"

An appalling splash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, DIMINUENDO, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken an hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect his escape--he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

Several adaptations of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" have been produced.

* The Spy (also released as The Bridge) was a silent movie adaptation of the story, directed in 1929 by Charles Vidor.

* A TV version of the story starring Ronald Howard was telecast in 1959 during the fifth season of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television anthology series.

* La rivière du hibou, a French version directed by Robert Enrico and produced by Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix, was released in 1963. Filmed in black and white, it later went on to win the award for best short subject at the 1962 Cannes film festival and 1963 Academy Awards.[1] In 1964 La rivière du hibou aired on American television as an episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone. See An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (film).

* Several radio series have adapted the story for broadcast using a script written by William N. Robson, including Escape on December 10, 1947 starring Harry Bartell as Peyton Farquhar; Suspense on December 9, 1956 starring Victor Jory as Farquhar and July 9, 1959 starring Vincent Price as Farquhar; and CBS Radio Mystery Theater on June 4, 1974 starring William Prince.

* Winifred Phillips narrated and composed original music for an abridged version of the story for the Tales by American Masters radio series, produced by Winnie Waldron on May 29, 2001.

* Issue #23 of the comics magazine Eerie, published in September 1969 by Warren Publishing, contained an adaptation of the story.

* Owl Creek Bridge, a BAFTA Cymru-winning short film by director John Giwa-Amu, has been showcased internationally. The story was adapted to follow the last days of Khalid, a young boy who is caught by a gang of racist youths.

* In 2006, Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories was released, which contains adaptations of three of Ambrose Bierce's short stories, among them "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" directed by Brian James Egan. The DVD also contains an extended version of the story with more background and detail than the one included in the trilogy.

7 November 1862: Friday

Union - Government/Military
At 11:30 pm an officer from Washington appeared McClellan's Rectortown, Virginia, headquarters with the orders of November 5 removing him from command and turning the Army of the Potomac over to Ambrose E. Burnside.

McClellan, surprised, stunned, hurt, wrote, "I am sure that not the slightest expression of feeling was visible on my face." He added, "Poor Burnside feels dreadfully, almost crazy - I am sorry for him." The military career of the most controversial general of the Civil War was ended. He was replaced by a competent, "rather stodgy" officer who professed no desire for the command and who tried to turn it down.

In other presidential action, Lincoln placed the ram fleet on the Mississippi under navy control despite War Department objections.

Confederates - Military/Government
General Bragg resumes command of the Army of the Mississippi after a brief absence, put one army corps under former bishop Leonidas Polk and the other under William Hardee.

Union - Military
Kentucky/Tennessee
Rosecrans moved the Army of the Cumberland to Nashville from Kentucky.

Tennessee
There are skirmishes at Gallatin, Tyree Springs, and White Range.

Arkansas
There are skirmishes at Boonesborough, Rhea Mill's, and Marianna.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Clark's Mill in Douglas County.

Georgia
There is a skirmish at Spaulding's or Sapello River in Georgia.
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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

6 November 1862: Thursday

Confederacy - Government/Military
James Longstreet is promoted from Major General to Lieutenant General. Stonewall Jackson was also promoted from Major General to Lieutenant General. Longstreet is assigned command of the First Army Corps, Jackson is assigned to command the Second Army Corps.

Confederacy - Military
Western Virginia
There is a skirmish at Martinsburg.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish at Garrettsburg.

Mississippi.
There is a skirmish at Old Lamar.

Union - Military
Kansas
A Union expedition from Fort Scott operates from Nov 6-11.

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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

5 November 1862: Wednersday

Union - Government/Military
"By direction of the President, it is ordered that Major General McClellan be relieved from the command of the Army of the Potomac; and that Major General Burnside take the command of that Army."

It had come, after several months of debate from all sides. President Lincoln had finally reached the end of his patience with McClellan. The failure to complete a partial victory at Antietam, the snail-like advance in the weeks that followed brought to an end the controversial military career of "Little Mac."

Repercussions would occur. Two days later the general was informed. At the same time, Fitz John Porter was relieved from his corps command. Porter, a pro-McClellan corps commander charged with willful disobedience at Second Manassas, was replaced by Joseph Hooker.

Union - Military
Tennessee
There is a Union reconnaissance from La Grange toward Somerset.

There was a skirmish in Nashville.

Kentucky
There is a small skirmish at Piketon

Mississippi
There is a skirmish at Jumpertown.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Lamar.

_________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

4 November 1862: Tuesday

Union - Civilian/Government
Various states
Democrats make sizable gains in Northern state and congressional elections especially in New York, where Democrat Horatio Seymour was chosen governor.

Stroing Democratic gains were also made in New Jersey, Illinois and Wisconsin, adding to those of the October elections.

The Republicans kept control of the House of Representatives, however, with victories in New England, the border slave states, California and Michigan.

Undoubtedly war weariness accounted for many of the Democrat victories.

Union - Military
Tennessee
General Grant's forces occupied La Grange and Grand Junction, important rail and road keys to northern Mississippi, as plans for a drive on Vicksburg progressed.


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BibliographyThe Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

3 November 1862: Monday

Union - Military
Missouri
There is a skirmish near Harrisonville.

Georgia/Florida
Union regiments, including the First South Carolina Volunteers (all troops of African descent), under Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, go on an expedition along the coasts of Georgia and east Florida until Nov 10.

Confederacy - Military
Virginia
Longstreet's corps arrives at Culpepper Court House, thus getting in front of McClellan, who was in the Warrenton area. Jackson's corps of Lee's army remains in the Shenandoah Valley

______
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

Mary Todd Lincoln

From Wikipedia
Mary Ann (née Todd) Lincoln (December 13, 1818 – July 16, 1882) was the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and was First Lady of the United States from 1861 to 1865.

Life before the White House
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, the daughter of Robert Smith Todd, a banker, and Elizabeth Parker Todd, Mary was raised in comfort and refinement. When Mary was six, her mother died; her father married Elizabeth "Betsy" Humphreys Todd in 1826. Mary had a difficult relationship with her stepmother. From 1832, Mary lived in what is now known as the Mary Todd Lincoln House, an elegant 14-room residence in Lexington. From her father's two marriages, Mary had a total of 14 siblings.

Mary Lincoln's paternal great-grandfather, David Levi Todd, was born in County Longford, Ireland, and emigrated through Pennsylvania to Kentucky. Her great-great maternal grandfather Samuel McDowell was born in Scotland then emigrated to and died in Pennsylvania. Other Todd ancestors came from England.

Mary left home at an early age to attend a finishing school owned by a French woman, where the curriculum concentrated on French and dancing. She learned to speak French fluently, studied dance, drama, music and social graces. By the age of 20 she was regarded as witty and gregarious, with a grasp of politics. Mary began living with her sister Elizabeth Edwards in Springfield Illinois in October 1839. Elizabeth (wife of Ninian W. Edwards, son of a former governor) served as Mary's guardian while Mary lived in Springfield.

Mary was popular among the gentry of Springfield, and though she was courted by the rising young lawyer and politician Stephen A. Douglas and others, her courtship with Abraham Lincoln resulted in an engagement. Abraham Lincoln, then 33, married Mary Todd, age 23, on November 4, 1842, at the home of Mrs. Edwards in Springfield.

Lincoln and Douglas would eventually become political rivals in the great Lincoln-Douglas debates for a seat representing Illinois in the United States Senate in 1858. Although Douglas successfully secured the seat by election in the Illinois legislature, Lincoln became famous for his position on slavery which generated national support for him.

While Lincoln pursued his increasingly successful career as a Springfield lawyer, Mary supervised their growing household. Their home from 1844 until 1861 still stands in Springfield, and is now the Lincoln Home National Historic Site.

Their children, all born in Springfield, were:
Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926) – lawyer, diplomat, businessman.
Edward Baker Lincoln known as "Eddie" (1846–1850)
William Wallace Lincoln known as "Willie" (1850–1862), died while Lincoln was President
Thomas Lincoln known as "Tad" (1853–1871)

Of these four sons, only Robert and Tad survived to adulthood, and only Robert outlived his mother.

During Lincoln's years as an Illinois circuit lawyer, Mary Lincoln was often left alone to raise their children and run the household. Mary also supported her husband politically and socially, not least when Lincoln was elected president in 1860.

White House years
During her White House years, Mary Lincoln faced many personal difficulties generated by political divisions within the nation. Her family was from a border state where slavery was permitted. In Kentucky, siblings not infrequently fought each other in the Civil War and Mary's family was no exception. Several of her half-brothers served in the Confederate Army and were killed in action, and one full brother served the Confederacy as a surgeon.

Mary, however, staunchly supported her husband in his quest to save the Union and maintained a strict loyalty to his policies. Nevertheless it was a challenge for Mary, a Westerner, to serve as her husband's First Lady in Washington, D.C., a political center dominated by eastern and southern culture. Lincoln was regarded as the first "western" president, and Mary's manners were often criticized as coarse and pretentious. It was difficult for her to negotiate White House social responsibilities and rivalries, spoils-seeking solicitors, and baiting newspapers in a climate of high national intrigue in Civil War Washington.

Mary suffered from severe headaches throughout her adult life as well as protracted depression. During her White House years, she also suffered a severe head injury in a carriage accident. A history of public outbursts throughout Lincoln's presidency, as well as excessive spending, has led some historians and psychologists to speculate that Mary in fact suffered from bipolar disorder.

During her tenure at the White House, she often visited hospitals around Washington where she gave flowers and fruit to wounded soldiers, and transcribed letters for them to send their loved ones. From time to time, she accompanied Lincoln on military visits to the field. She also hosted many social functions, and has often been blamed for spending too much on the White House, but she reportedly felt that it was important to the maintenance of prestige of the Presidency and the Union.

Assassination survivor and later life
In April 1865, as the Civil War came to an end, Mrs. Lincoln expected to continue as the First Lady of a nation at peace. However, on April 14, 1865, as Mary Lincoln sat with her husband to watch the comic play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, President Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by an assassin. Mrs. Lincoln accompanied her husband across the street to the Petersen House, where Lincoln's Cabinet was summoned. Mary and her son Robert sat with Lincoln throughout the night, until he died the following day, April 15, at 7:22 am.

Mary received messages of condolence from all over the world, many of which she attempted to answer personally. To Queen Victoria she wrote: "I have received the letter which Your Majesty has had the kindness to write. I am deeply grateful for this expression of tender sympathy, coming as they do, from a heart which from its own sorrow, can appreciate the intense grief I now endure." Victoria herself had suffered the loss of Prince Albert four years earlier.

As a widow, Mrs. Lincoln returned to Illinois. In 1868, Mrs. Lincoln's former confidante, Elizabeth Keckly, published Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a slave, and four years in the White House. Although this book provides valuable insight into the character and life of Mary Todd Lincoln, at the time the former First Lady regarded it as a breach of friendship.

In an act approved July 14 1870, the United States Congress granted Mrs. Lincoln a life pension in the amount of $3,000 a year, by an insultingly low margin. Mary had lobbied hard for such a pension, writing numerous letters to Congress and urging patrons such as Simon Cameron to petition on her behalf, insisting that she deserved a pension just as much as the widows of soldiers.

For Mary Lincoln, the death of her son Thomas (Tad), in July 1871, following the death of two of her other sons and her husband, led to an overpowering sense of grief.

Mrs. Lincoln's sole surviving son, Robert Lincoln, a rising young Chicago lawyer, was alarmed at his mother's increasingly erratic behavior. In March 1875, during a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, Mary became unshakably convinced that Robert was deathly ill. She traveled to Chicago to see him, but found he wasn't sick. In Chicago she told her son that someone had tried to poison her on the train and that a "wandering Jew" had taken her pocketbook but would return it later.

During her stay in Chicago with her son, Mary spent large amounts of money on items she never used, such as draperies which she never hung and elaborate dresses which she never wore, as she wore only black after her husband's assassination. She would also walk around the city with $56,000 in government bonds sewn into her petticoats. Despite this large amount of money and the $3,000 a year stipend from Congress, Mrs. Lincoln had an irrational fear of poverty. After Mrs. Lincoln nearly jumped out of a window to escape a non-existent fire, her son determined that she should be institutionalized.

Mrs. Lincoln was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Batavia, Illinois, in 1875. After the court proceedings, Mary was so enraged that she attempted suicide. She went to the hotel pharmacist and ordered enough laudanum to kill herself. However, the pharmacist realized what she was planning to do and gave her a placebo.

On May 20, 1875, she arrived at Bellevue Place, a private sanitarium in the Fox River Valley. Three months after being committed to Bellevue Place, Mary Lincoln engineered her escape. She smuggled letters to her lawyer, James B. Bradwell, and his wife, Myra Bradwell, who was not only her friend but also a feminist lawyer and fellow spiritualist. She also wrote to the editor of the Chicago Times.

Soon, the public embarrassments Robert (who now controlled his mother's finances) had hoped to avoid were looming, and his character and motives were in question. The director of Bellevue, who at Mary's trial had assured the jury she would benefit from treatment at his facility, now in the face of potentially damaging publicity declared her well enough to go to Springfield to live with her sister as she desired.

She was released into the custody of her sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards, in Springfield and in 1876 was once again declared competent to manage her own affairs. The committal proceedings led to a profound estrangement between Robert and his mother, and they never fully reconciled.

Mrs. Lincoln spent the next four years traveling throughout Europe and taking up residence in Pau, France. However, the former First Lady's final years were marked by declining health. She suffered from severe cataracts that affected her eyesight. This condition may have contributed to her increasing susceptibility to falls. In 1879, she suffered spinal-cord injuries in a fall from a step ladder.

Death
During the early 1880s, Mary Lincoln was confined to the Springfield, Illinois residence of her sister Elizabeth Edwards. She died there on July 16, 1882, age 63, and was interred within the Lincoln Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield alongside her husband.

Family
Her sister Elizabeth Todd was the daughter-in-law of Illinois Governor Ninian Edwards. Elizabeth's daughter Julia Edwards married Edward L. Baker, editor of the "Illinois State Journal" and son of Congressman David Jewett Baker. Her half-sister Emilie Todd married CS General Benjamin Hardin Helm, son of Kentucky Governor John L. Helm. Governor Helm's wife was a 1st cousin 3 times removed of Colonel John Hardin who was related to three Kentucky congressmen.

One of Mary Todd's cousins was Kentucky Congressman/US General John Blair Smith Todd. Another cousin, William L. Todd, created the original Bear Flag for the California Republic in 1846.

2 November 1862: Sunday

Union - government
First Lady Lincoln visits New York City.

Union - Military
Virginia
There are small skirmishes at Philomont and Snicker's Gap. Snicker's Gaps is occupied by McClellan's army.


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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

1 November 1862: Saturday

Confederacy - Government
President Davis continues to worry about the relations of the Confederate states to the central government, the raising of troops, and the danger of Union invasion of the coast.

Union - Civiliian/Military Government
Louisiana
General Butler in New Orleans issues orders tightening pass requirements and authorizing discharge from confinement of all "slaves not known to be the slaves of loyal owners."

Union - Military
Virginia
McClellan and his army are back on Virginian soil, but McClellan has them doing few things...as for example pursuing Robert E. Lee's army, still retreating and regrouping after Antietam.

Kentucky
New Union commander William S. Rosecrans makes plans to resume operations against Confederate General Braxton Bragg, whose army had escaped nearly intat from his drive toward the Ohio River.

Mississippi
Grant, although aware of political intrigue behind his back involving John A. McClernand, contines to prepare on overland campaign against Vicksburg.

North Carolina
From this day until Nov 12, there is a Union expedition from New Berne to little Creek and Rawle's Mill, fighting many skirmishes.

Arkansas
There is a skirmish at La GRange.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Berwick Bay.

____________
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971