18 August 1862, Monday

Government - Confederacy
The second session of the Confederate Congress met in Richmond. President Davis sent a message reviewing the progress of the war and of the Confederate nation. He said the prospects "give assurance to the friends of constitutional liberty of our final triumph in the pending struggle against despotic usurpation."

Davis inveighed against the alleged atrocities of the Yankees, naming especially Benjamin Butler. He called for increasing the army and did not minimize the difficulties facing the Confederacy. "We have never-ceasing cause to be grateful for the favor with which God has protected our infant Confederacy," he concluded.

Military - Confederacy
Missouri
There is a skirmish at White Oak Ridge.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Milliken's Bend.

Virginia
There are skirmishes at Rapidan Station and Clark's Mountain.

Western Virginia
There is a skirmish at Huttonsville.

Tennessee
There are skirmishes at Dyersburg and on the Tennessee River near Waggoner's.

Colonel Rodney Mason of the 71st Ohio surrendered the important city of Clarksville, Tennessee to Confederate forces, without a fight. Mason was later dismissed from the service "for repeated acts of cowardice in the face of the enemy."

Union - Military
Minnesota
At Redwood Ferry, 19 soldiers out of 46 survive a Sioux ambush. Around Fort Ridgely houses were in flames, victims were mutilated, and the settlers fled to the fort.

Union - Military
Virginia
General Pope's Army of Virginia, pressed by Lee's advancing Confederates, pulled back to the north bank of the Rappahannock and awaited reinforcements from McClellan's Army of the Potomac.

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