31 October 1862: Friday

Union - Military
Virginia
There is a skirmish at Franklin.

Western Virginia
There is a skirmish near the falls of the Kanawha.

Missouri
A Union scout is undertaken in Monroe County.

Texas
On this day and on Nov 1, Union troops bombard Lavaca.

Tennessee/Mississippi
Union contingents advance from Bolivar, Tennessee and Corinth, Mississippi upon Grand Junction, Tennessee, in preliminariers of Grant's move on Vicksburg.

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

30 October 1862: Thursday

France
Emperor Napoleon III of France proposes to Russia and Great Britain that they should unite in making overtures of mediation in the American Civil War.

Union - Military/Government
Major General Rosencrans assumes command of the Department of the Cumberland, replacing Don Carlos Buell.

Major General Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, astronomer, lecturer, and prominent Union officer, dies of yellow fever at Beaufort, South Carolina.

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

29 October 1862: Wednesday

Union - Government
President Lincoln wires McClellan: "I am much pleased with the movement of the Army. When you get entirely across the river let me know. What do you know of the enemy?"

Confederacy - Government
President Davis, plagued by trying to defend many areas, writes the governor of Alabama: "Our only alternatives are to abandon important points or to use our limited resources as effectively as the circumstances will permit.

Union - Military
Missouri
There is a skirmish at Island Mount

Texas
There is a skirmish at Sabine Pass.

Virginia
There is a skirmish on the Blackwater.

Maryland
There is a skirmish opposite Williamsburg on the Potomac.

Western Virginia
There is a skirmish near Petersburg.
______
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

28 October 1862: Tuesday

Union - Military
Maryland/Virginia
The Army of the Potomac under McClellan continues its movement southward into Virginia from Maryland. The march is east of the Blue Ridge mountains in the general direction of Warrenton.

Union - Confederacy
Virginia
Robert Lee, in the Shenandoah, begins shifting troops to avoid being flanked by McClellan.

Tennessee
Major General John C. Breckenridge assumes command of the Army of Middle Tennessee. Arkansas
There is a skirmish at Oxford Bend on the White River near Fayetteville.

Arkansas
There is a skirmish at McGuire's.
_______
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

27 October 1862: Monday

Union - Military
Naval - East Coast
Along the coasts the blockade continues, with two blockade runners reported captured as the pressure on Confederate commerce increases.

Arkansas
There is a skirmish at Fayetteville.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Georgia Landing.

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

26 October 1862: Sunday

Union - Military/Government
President Lincoln writes McClellan that he "rejoiced" that the army had begun to cross the Potomac.

Lincoln also gives in interview to English Quaker leader Mrs. Eliza P. Gurney.

Samuel Heintzelman succeeds Banks in command of the defenses of Washington.

Union - Military
Virginia
The Army of the Potomac, nearly idle since the Battle of Antietam, in mid-September, begins crossing the Potomac into Virginia.

Operations begin on this day and last until Nov 10 in Loudonville, Fauquier and Rappahannock counties.

Texas
Indianola falls to Union gunboats.

Confederacy - Military
Kentucky/Tennessee
General Bragg completes the evacuation of Kentucky, retiring into Tennessee toward Knoxville and Chattanooga.
_______
Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

25 October 1862: Saturday

Union - Government/Military
President Lincoln, piqued at McClellan's delays after Antietam, wires the commander of the Army of the Potomac: "I have just read your despatch about sore tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?"

McClellan defends his cavalry and operations, pointing out various reconnaissances and raids.

General Grant assumes command of the Thirteenth Army Corps and the Department of Tennessee.

Union - Military
Virginia
There is a skirmish near Zuni.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish near Lawrenceburg.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Donaldsonville.

Arkansas
There is a skirmish at Helena.

Missouri
There are skirmishes near Pike Creek and Eleven Points.
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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

24 October 2011: Friday - Rosecrans replaces Buell

Union - Government/Military
Don Carlos Buell is removed from command in Kentucky and Tennessee, largely because of the escape of Bragg's Confederates. Major General William S. Rosecrans, following his victories in Mississippi, is assigned to command these troops and the new Department of the Cumberland.

Union - Military
Arkansas
There is a skirmish near Fayetteville.

South Carolina
There is a skirmish on St. Helena Island.

Virginia
There are skirmishes at Manassas Junction and near Bristoe Station.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish at White Oak Springs.

Missouri
A Union expedition from Oct 24-26 chases guerrillas from Independence to Greenton, Chapel Hill, and Hopewell.

Louisiana
From Oct 24 to Nov 6 there are military operations in the La Fourche District.



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

23 October 1862: Thursday

Confederacy - Government
President Davis writes of his worries over the pro-Union sentiments of East Tennessee.

Confederacy - Military
Tennessee
Bragg's Confederate army passes into Tennessee through Cumberland Gap on their retreat from Kentucky.

There are skirmishes at Waverly and Richland Creek.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Clarkton.

Kentucky
The Goose Creek Salt Works near Manchester are destroyed by Union soldiers.

CSS Alabama continues to prowl the seas and successfully raid Federal shipping.
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Bibliography
The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac 1861-1865. E.B. Long with Barbara Long, De Capo, 1971

22 October 1862: Wednesday

Union - Civilian/Government
Cotton speculation causes President Lincoln to say that individuals purchasing cotton should not impose terms not included in Federal rules.

Confederacy - Military
Kentucky
After two weeks of skirmishing and less than vigorous pursuit, Bragg's Confederate army makes good its escape from Don Carlos Buell's troops in Kentucky, following the Batle of Perryville.

Arkansas
There are skirmishes at Helena and Huntsville.

Indian Territory
There is a skirmish at Fort Wayne.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Van Buren.

Virginia
There is a skirmish at Snickersville.

Tennessee
A Union expedition from Fort Donelson to Waverly fights several times between this day and October 25.

South Carolina
Union troops attack Pocotaglico (Yemassee) but are repulsed after several skirmishes.

Confederacy - Military
Kentucky
Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler take London.

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

Civil War Geography, Fort Taylor, Key West Florida

The location of Fort Zachary Taylor on Key West. (the red circle.)


Fort Taylor, Key West, today.

A couple of days ago I shared a map of the harbor in South Carolina where the various forts were located - in particular Fort Sumter, where the shots that started the Civil War were fired on 12 April 1861.

I should have started even earlier than that. As soon as President Lncoln was elected, certain states started talk of seceeding, and when they eventually did secede, immediately took over various items of Federal propery, in particular forts.

Expecting this eventuality, on November 15, 1860, US Navy Lieutenant T. A. Craven "informed Washington that due to the 'deplorable condition of affairs in the Southern States' he was proceeding to take moves to guard Fort Taylor at Key West and Fort Jefferson on Dry Tortugas (both Florida) from possible seizure.

(Fort Taylor and the Key West area will later become a vital coaling station for the Union Navy and blockading squadron.)

From Wikipedia:
The Fort Zachary Taylor State Historic Site, better known simply as Fort Taylor, (or Fort Zach to locals), is a Florida State Park and National Historic Landmark centered on a Civil War-era fort located near the southern tip of Key West, Florida.

History of Fort Zachary Taylor
Construction of the fort began in 1845 as part of a mid-19th century plan to defend the southeast coast through a series of forts. The fort was named for United States President Zachary Taylor in 1850, a few months after President Taylor's sudden death in office. Yellow fever epidemics and material shortages slowed construction of the fort, which continued throughout the 1850s. At the outset of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, Union Captain John Milton Brannan seized control of the fort, preventing it from falling into Confederate hands and using it as an outpost to threaten blockade runners. Originally, the fort was surrounded by water on all sides, with a walkway linking it to the mainland. The fort was completed in 1866, although the upper level of one side was destroyed in 1889 to make way for more modern weapons, with the older cannons being buried within the new outer wall to save on materials. The fort was heavily used again during the 1898 Spanish-American War.

1900-present
In 1947, the fort, no longer of use to the Army, was turned over to the U.S. Navy for maintenance. In 1968 volunteers led by Howard S. England excavated Civil War guns and ammunition buried in long-abandoned parts of the fort, which was soon discovered to house the nation's largest collection of Civil War cannons. Fort Taylor was therefore placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973. Due to the filling in of land around the fort, including the creation of an attractive stretch of beach, the park now occupies 87 acres (352,000 m²).

Truman Annex
The Fort's land that is closer to downtown Key West became part of the Truman Annex to Naval Station Key West, which is about three miles to the northwest. The Annex was originally called the "Fort Zachary Taylor Annex" and it included a submarine base.

President Harry S. Truman used it for his Winter White House for 175 days in 11 visits. The Secret Service had a private beach built on the land for the president's security, but he reportedly only visited it once, preferring the public beaches. The beach name is called "Truman Beach." The fort, along with its related support buildings, was later renamed for Truman.

The Annex was decommissioned in 1974 because the U.S. Navy had decommissioned nearly all of their diesel-electric submarines and contemporary nuclear powered submarines were too big for the existing port. Most of the then-former Naval Station became an annex (Truman Annex) to the remaining Naval Air Station Key West and served as the landing point for many during the 1980 Mariel boatlift of Cuban refugees.

Those buildings in the Annex and associated real estate not retained by the Navy as part of NAS Key West were sold to private developers. There's a museum for the Truman White House and the Navy continues to own and maintain the piers and that portion of the Naval Station property to the south of Fort Taylor, primarily in support of Joint Interagency Task Force - East and the Naval Security Group Activity.

Current uses
In addition to the role of the fort and its adjacent beach as tourist attractions, Fort Taylor is also the location of a number of annual events, including week-long Civil War reenactments. On the weekend preceding Halloween, it is transformed into a haunted fort, much like a haunted house but on a grand scale and with a distinctive Civil War theme.

21 October 1862: Tuesday

Confederacy - Government
President Jefferson Davis writes to Major General T. H. Holmes in Missouri of tentative plans to have Southern armies join together to drive Union soldiers frrom Tennessee and Arkansas and recapture Helena, Memphis, and Nashville.

Union - Government
President Lincoln calls upon military and civil authorities in Tennessee to support elections for a state government, legislature and members of Congress.

Union - Military
Virginia
Union troops launch a reconnaissance from Loudon Heights to Lovettsville.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish at Woodville.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish at Pittman's Crossroads.


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

20 October 1862: Monday

Union - Government
President Lincoln orders Major General John A. McClernand, Illinois politician, to proceed to Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, to organize troops for an expedition against Vicksburg undder McClernand's command.

This conflicted with General Grant's new command and was to result in many charges and countercharges and much friction between Grant and McClernand.

Lincoln also writes a couple of memorandum, one of which shows the Army of the Potomac has a total of 231,997 men of which 144,662 were fit for duty. Another establishes a provisional court in Louisiana.

Union - Military
Nashville
Union troops repulse a force under Nathan Bedford Forrest on the Gallatin Pike near Nashville.

There is a skirmish near Hermitage Ford.

Arkansas
There is a skirmish near Helena.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Marshfield.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish at Wild Cat.

Western Virginia
There is a skirmish at Hedgesville.

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

Civil War Geography: Fort Sumter

The first shots of the Civil War were fired on 12 April 1861, from Confederate batteries on Fort Johnson.

This ended a stand-off that had been in place since 26 December 1860 when US Army Major Robert Anderson had, upon learning that South Carolina had seceded from the Union, evacuated his men from nearby, indefensible Fort Moultrie, to Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter National Monument
Fort Sumter National Monument encompasses three sites in Charleston: the original Fort Sumter, the Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center, and the Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island. Access to Fort Sumter itself is by a 30 minute ferry ride from the Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center or Patriot's Point.

The Visitor Education Center's museum features exhibits about the disagreements between the North and South that led to the incidents at Fort Sumter. The museum at Fort Sumter focuses on the activities at the fort, including its construction and role during the Civil War.

April 12, 2011 marked the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War. There was a commemoration of the events by thousands of Civil War re-enactors with encampments in the area. A United States stamp of Fort Sumter, and first day cover, was issued that day.

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Bibliography

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

19 October 1862: Sunday

Confederacy - Military
Kentucky
Bragg's retiring Army of Tennessee arrives in the area of Cumberland Gap. It will take them 5 days (from now until the 24th) to get completely through the gap, taking with them large amounts of grain and supplies appropriated in Kentucky. Union opposition to their passage was fairly light.

There are also skirmishes at Bardstown and Wild Cat.

Virginia
There are skirmishes between Catlett's Station and Warrenton Junction.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Bonnet Carre in St. John the Baptist Parish.




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

18 October 1862: Saturday

Confederacy - Military
Kentucky
John Hunt Morgan and his Confederate raiders defeat Union cavalry near Lexington, enter the city, capture the garrison, and move off toward Versailles.

There are skirmishes at Bloomfield, Big Hill, Little Rockcastle River and Mountain Side.

Missouri
There are skirmishes at Uniontown and California House.

Arkansas
There are skirmishes at Cross Hollow and Helena.

South Carolina
There is a skirmish at Kirk's Bluff.

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

17 October 1862: Friday

Union - Government
President Lincoln asks Attorney General Bates to make out a commission for David Davis of Illinois as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Union - Civilian
Pennsylvania
Resistance to the ineffective Pennsylvania militia draft begins to develop in some states, particularly in several counties of Pennsylvania. At Berkley in Luzerne County, troops had to put down opposition.

Union - Military
Missouri
There is a skirmish at Lexington.

Arkansas
There are skirmishes at Mountain Home and Sugar Creek.

Kentucky
There are skirmishes at Valley Woods and Rockhill.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish at Island #10.

Virginia
There is an expedition on this day, and on the 18th, by Union troops to Thoroughfare Gap.



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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 October 1862: Thursday

Union - Civilian/Military
Pennsylvania
The draft begins in Pennsylvania and other portions of the North.

Union - Military/Government
The Federal Department of Tennessee is constituted under command of Maj Gen Ulysses S. Grant.

Union - Military
Maryland
General McClellan launches two major Union reconnaissances from Sharpsburg, Maryland to Smithfield, Western Virginia and from Harpers Ferry (western Virginia) to Charles Town, Western Virginia, with some resultant skirmishes.

Confederacy - Military
Virginia
Robert E. Lee's army remains in the northern portion of the Shenandoah Valley.

Kentucky
Braxton Bragg and his troops move slowly toward Cumberland Gap without major interference.

There are skirmishes at Mountain gap and Mount Vernon.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Auxvasse Creek in Callaway County and at Portland

Arkansas
There is a skirmish at Shell's Mill and Elkhorn Tavern.



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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 October 1862: Wednesday

Confederacy - Civilian
North Carolina
Governor Zebulon Vance calls upon the people of the state to furnish blankets, carpets and clothing for the Confederate Army.

Union - Military
Indian Territory
There is a skirmish at Fort Gibson.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish at Neely's Bend on the Cumberland River.

Kentucky
There are skirmishes at Crab Orchard and Barren Mound.

From this day until the 20th there are operations against Confederate guerillas in Henry, Owen and Gallatin Counties.

Virginia
There is a skirmish near Carrsville.

Florida
Navy: Admiral Farragut reports from Pensacola Bay that Galveston, Corpus Christi and Sabine City, texas are in Union possession.

A small-boat naval expedition cuts out and captures a Confederate blockade runner up the Apalachicola River, despite opposition from the shore.

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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 October 1862: Tuesday

Union - Civilian
Congressional elections in Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania result in gains by the Democrats, except in Iowa, where the Republicans carried the state.

President Lincoln orders the removal of aemy bakeries from the basement of the Capital Building.

Confederacy - Government/Military
Confederate Lt. General John C. Pemberton assumes command of the Department of Mississippi and Eastern Louisiana.

Confederacy - Military
Missouri
There is a skirmish at Hazel Bottom.

Arkansas
There is a skirmish in Trenton.

Kentucky
There are skirmishes on Manchester, Lancaster and Crab Orchard Road.

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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 October 1862 – Monday

Confederacy – Government
The second session of the First Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns at Richmond after renewal of the law authorizing suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus until 12 February 1863. However, it was required that investigation be made of the person arrested.

Confederacy – Military
Kentucky
Bragg’s Confederates, pulling back from Perryville, take up the march for Cuimberland Gap.

Union – Government
In a lengthy letter to General McClellan, President Lincoln urges renewed activity and asks, “Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you can not do what the enemy is constantly doing?” Lincoln advises a drive against Lee and Richmond.

Union – Government/Military
Major General Jacob D. Cox assumes command of the Federal District of West Virginia.

Union – Military
Virginia
Troops carry out a reconnaissance with some action about Paris, Snickersville, and Middlesburg.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at New Franklin.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish at Lancaster and on Crab Orchard Road.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish on the Lebanon Road, near 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

12 October 1862 – Sunday

Union – Government
President Lincoln, worried by Buell’s follow-up in Kentucky, continues to request reports from the West.

Union – Military
Missouri/Arkansas
A Union expedition that will last for 7 days, until the 19th, starts from Ozark, Missouri toward Yellville, Arkansas.

Confederacy – Military/Government
Major General Earl Van Dorn assumes command of all troops in Mississippi.

Confederacy- Military
Maryland/Virginia
Jeb Stuart’s Confederate Cavalry after brief skirmishing near the mouth of the Monocacy in Maryland, cross the Potomac back into Virginia near Poolsville, completing another ride around McClellan.

Missouri
There is skirmishing near Arrow Rock.

Kentucky
There is skirmishing at Dick’s Ford.

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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 October 1862 – Saturday

Confederacy – Civilian
Richmond newspapers begin to speak of a possible early peace as a result of the Confederate success.

Confederacy – Government
An act of the Confederate Congress, approved by Jefferson Davis, amends the draft exemption law, enlarging the number of those exempted by reason of occupation. Most controversial was the exemption of an owner or overseer of more than 20 slaves.

Confederacy – Military
Virginia/Maryland
Jeb Stuart at Chambersburg reports that all officials had fled at the approach of the Confederates. His men cut telegraph wires, seize horses, and destroy what military equipment they could not bring away. Railroad machine shops, depots and several trains were also wrecked. In the afternoon, Stuart moved eastward and then south through Emmitsburg, Maryland, en route to the Potamac.

Arkansas
There is a sharp skirmish near Helena.

Missouri
There are small skirmishes in Lewis, Clarke, Scotland and Schuyler counties of Missouri.

Kentucky
There are skirmishes at Lawrenceburg and Danville.

Confederacy – Military/Naval
The Confederate cruiser Alabama captures and sinks the grain ship Manchester.

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

10 October 1862: Friday

Confederacy – Government/Military
President Davis asks Virginia for a draft of 4500 Negroes to work on completion of fortifications of Richmond.

Major General John B. Magruder, Confederate hero of the siege of Yorktown, is assigned to command the District of Texas.

Confederacy – Military
Virginia
J.E.B. Stuart and his men cross the Potomac on their raid, and by evening enter Chambersburg, PA. As they ride, they gather horses and destroy public stores.

Kentucky
There is fighting at Harrodsburg and Danville Cross Roads.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish at Medon Station.

Dakota Territory
On the upper Missouri River below Fort Berthold, a party of Sioux fight with a boatload of miners.

Indiana
Indiana home guards drive a group of rebel guerillas from Hawesville, IN.


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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 October 1862: Thursday

Union - Military
KentuckyThere is some skirmishing on the Mackville Pike and Bardstown Road, an aftermath of the battle of Perryville the day before.

There are skirmishes at Dry Ridge, Dog Walk, or Chesser’s Store near Salt River.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish near Humboldt, Tennessee.

Confederacy – Government
The Confederate Congress organizes military courts for the armies in the field and defines their powers.

Confederacy -Military
Virginia
J. E. B. Stuart, following Lee’s suggestion, eludes garrisons and heads for the Potomac with about 18,000 men.

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

8 October 1862 – Wednesday – Battle of Perryville

Military – Government
President Lincoln congratulates Grant on the recent victories in Mississippi.

Military – Union
Kentucky
Along the Chaplin Hills above Doctor’s Creek near Perryville is fought what will be the only major battle of the war on Kentucky soil.

Parts of Buell’s Union army battle parts of Bragg’s. Both sides will obtain advantages at times, and a strong Confederate attack is fought off ny troops under a relatively new commander, Philip H. Sheridan.

Due to an atmospheric phenomenon by which battle noise was not heard back of the lines, Buell did not realize until late in the day that a major fight was in progress and failed to get his full force into battle. Similarly, parts of Bragg’s army were still in the Frankfort area.

By the day’s end the Union troops who had been fighting had won at least a partial victory and Bragg’s men had pulled off to the southeast, ending the Confederate invasion of Kentucky.

Casualties:
Union
845 killed, 2851 wounded, 515 missing.
4211 out of 37,000 estimated effectives.

Confederacy
510 killed, 2635 wounded, 251 missing
3405 out of 16,000 estimated effectives

There is a skirmish at Lawrenceburg.

Virginia
There is a Union reconnaissance from Fairfax Courthouse to Aldie, VA.

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

7 October 1862 – Tuesday

England
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, W. E. Gladstone, proclaims that Davis and the Confederate leaders have “made a nation,” and he anticipates the success of their fight for separation. His remarks are immediately criticized in England, and will be in the United States, too, when world of them arrives.

Union – Military/Government
Major General Gordon Granger assumes command of the Union Army of Kentucky. Brigadier General E. A. Carr assumes command of the Army of the Southwest.

Confederates – Military/Government
Middle and east Florida are placed under P. G. T. Beuregard’s southeast coast command.

Union – Military
Kentucky
Don Carlos Buell’s army, on the move in Kentucky against Bragg, nears the village of Perryville. The Confederate troops are divided, some at Frankfort and some near Perryville. There are skirmishes at Brown Hill and near Perryville.

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

6 October 1862: Monday

Union – Government
President Lincoln, disturbed by McClellan’s delays, sends instructions to the General in Maryland through Halleck: “The President directs that you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south. Your army must move now while the roads are good.”

Union – Military
Kentucky
Don Carlos Buell’s troops move after the retreating Confederates commanded by Bragg, who are heading toward Harrodsburg. Buell’s men occupy Bardstown.

There are skirmishes at Fair Grounds, Springfield, Burnt Cross Roads, Beach Fork and Grassy Mound.

Western Virginia
Union troops are sent on a reconnaissance from Bolivar Heights towards Charlestown. There is a skirmish at Big Birch.

Missouri
There are skirmishes at Sibley and Liberty.

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

Museum of the Confederacy to receive stolen battle flag

From Richmond Times-Dispatch: Museum of the Confederacy to receive stolen battle flag
A Confederate battle flag stolen decades ago in New Orleans will be presented to The Museum of the Confederacy this morning by the FBI.

The 14th Louisiana Infantry Regiment Confederate battle flag was stolen in the 1980s by a former volunteer at the Memorial Hall Museum (Confederate Memorial Hall) of New Orleans, the FBI said.

It was recovered Sept. 29 after information was given to the FBI's National Art Crime Team.

The team alerted FBI agents in Fredericksburg and they, with the assistance of the Caroline County Sheriff's Office, found the flag.

It was in the possession of a collector who bought it in 2004 without knowing it was stolen and who voluntarily turned the item over to the FBI.

The flag, kept in an evidence locker, will be turned over at 9:30 a.m. to The Museum of the Confederacy, 1201 E. Clay St. Thereafter, the flag will be returned to the Confederate Memorial Hall in New Orleans.

5 October 1862 – Sunday

Union – Military
Mississippi
Rosecrans’ troops pursue the retreating Confederates, ineffectively.

Tennessee
Union troops under E. I. C. Ord, from Bolivar, Tennessee, intercept the retreating Confederates at the Hatchie River near Pocahontas in the afternoon. There is brief but severe fighting. While the Union troops regroup, the battered Confederates extricate themselves and continue to Holly Springs, Mississippi. This ends the Corinth campaign.

Missouri
There are skirmishes at Cole Camp and Sim’s Grove on Cedar Creek.

Tennessee
There are skirmishes at Neely’s Bend on the Cumberland River and at Fort Riley, near Nashville.

Texas
Union naval forces capture Galveston with no resistance, and occupy the city briefly with a small force.

Kentucky
General Braxton Bragg’s army slowly pulls back from Bardstown, with Buell’s Union troops following.

Confederate Kirby Smith’s army is still in the Frankfort area.

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

4 October 1862, Saturday – Battle of Corinth, Mississippi, 2nd day

Union – Government
President Lincoln continues to visit camps, hospitals and battlefields with General McClellan, leaving in the afternoon for Washington.

Confederates – GovernmentAt the Kentucky state capitol of Frankfort, Richard Hawes is inaugurated Confederate governor in ceremonies attended by Bragg and other officers.

Confederates – Military
Mississippi
The Confederate troops under van Dorn renew their assault against the well-posted troops under Rosencrans. Both the assaults and Union counter attacks are costly, particularly at Battery Robinette, with little decided. Eventually the Confederates are repulsed. They withdraw early in the afternoon to Chewalla, ten miles northwest from Corinth.

More Union troops arrive after the battle has ended, but there is no pursuit until October 5.

Casualties
Union
355 killed, 1841 wounded, 324 missing
2520 out of about 23,000 effectives.

Confederacy
473 killed, 1997 wounded, 1763 missing
4233 out of probably 22,000 total troops.

The Southerners succeed in taking the pressure off Bragg in Kentucky by preventing reinforcements to Buell, but they fail to capture the important rail and road center of Corinth, or to wreck Rosecrans’ force and thereby make Grant pull back toward Ohio.

Kentucky
There are skirmishes near Bardstown, Clay Village, and on the Bardstown Pike.

Missouri
There are skirmishes at Newtonia, Granby, and in Monroe County.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish near Middleton.

Louisiana
There is a skirmish at Donaldsonville.

Virginia
There is a skirmish at Conrad’s Ferry.

There is a Union reconnaissance from Loudon Heights to Hillsborough from this day until the 6th.


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

3 October 1862, Friday – Battle of Corinth, Mississippi

Union – Government/Military
Reviews and conferences continue at McClellan’s headquarters in Maryland between the President and McClellan. Lincoln comments, as he looks over the camps, “This is General McClellan’s bodyguard.”

Confederates – Military/Naval-Civilian
The Confederate cruiser Alabama takes three more prizes. Yankee shippers demand action from the government.

Confederates – Military
Mississippi
In mid-morning, Confederates under Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price drive, from the northwest of Corinth, in against the Union troops under Rosecrans.

After severe fighting and piecemeal assaults, the Union troops are driven back into strong defensive redoubts closer to the city. By night the issue is still in doubt.

Grant, at Jackson, Tennessee, in overall command of the area, had not been sure where the combined Confederate attack would be made. Van Dorn was gambling that victory at Corinth would force the Union troops in West Tennessee to draw back to Kentucky and the Ohio River.

Virginia
There are skirmishes on the Blackwater and near Zuni.

Tennessee
There is a skirmish at La Fayette Landing.

Kentucky
There is a skirmish at Cedar Church, near Shepherdsville.

A battered force of Union troops who had evacuated Cumberland Gap arrive at Greenupsburg, after a 16 day march under harsh conditions and with much skirmishing.

Missouri
There is a skirmish at Jollification.

Texas
A Union naval expedition attacks the defenses of Galveston.


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

New Release Details Irish-American Story in American Civil War

Press Release: New Release Details Irish-American Story in American Civil War

“Famine to Freedom: The Irish in the American Civil War” (ISBN 1463513518) by J.J. Collins recounts the Irish-American journey of immigration, enlistment, military service and post-war work in the mid-19th Century.

London, United Kingdom, September 24, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Between 1845 and 1853, over one million Irish immigrants arrived in the United States.

Escaping the potato famine in Ireland, they arrived in America to find themselves embroiled not only in a fight for survival against prejudice and violence, but in a conflict between the Northern and Southern states that would come to a head in 1861 with the start of the American Civil War.

A thought provoking and insightful examination of the Irish role in the formation of America in the mid-eighteenth century and beyond, J.J. Collins’ debut is as fascinating as it is heartbreaking, graphically depicting the struggle of one of the most oppressed immigrant groups in American history. During the Civil War, the Irish conscripts and volunteers served mostly for the union, acquitting themselves with honor and bravery while representing states such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. Over the course of the war, Irish American soldiers would rise to the heights of military rank, serve as the decisive factor in a number of battles, and help shape its outcome.

Tracing the Irish-American narrative after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox courthouse, the war’s aftermath and later political and social impact of the Irish community is fundamental in the shaping of America as we know it today. Providing surprising information and a sobering commentary on the formation of our nation, Famine to Freedom: The Irish in the American Civil War deftly portrays the experience of an immigrant culture that was fundamental in the shaping of the United States.

2 October 1862 - Thursday

Union – Government
President Lincoln moves from Harper’s Ferry to the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, occupying a tent next to General McClellan’s. The President makes a memo of total troops in the Army of the Potomac, coming up with 88,095 men.

Union – Military
Kentucky
There is fighting at Shepherdsville Road.

Troops under Don Carlos Buell move slowly toward Bardstown from the Louisville area.

Missouri
There is fighting near Columbus.

Texas
There is fighting near Beaumont.

Mississippi
There is fighting at Baldwyn and near Ramer’s Crossing.

Confederates – Military
Mississippi
Confederate troops move on Corinth.


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

1 October 1862 - Wednesday

Union - GovernmentDisturbed ever since Antietam about operations of the Army of the Potomac, or the lack of them, President Lincoln, with a party advisers, journeys from Washington to Harper’s Ferry to confer with McClellan and other officers.

The Union gunboat flotilla on western waters is transferred, administratively, from the War Department to the Department of the Navy.

David Dixon Porter is named Commander of the new Mississippi Squadron, replacing Charles Davis.

Confederates – Civilian
The Richmond Whig says of the Emancipation Proclamation: “It is a dash of the pen to destroy four thousand millions of our property, and is as much a bid for the slaves to rise in insurrection, with the assurance of aid from the whole military and naval power of the United States.

Confederates – Government/Military
Major General John C. Pemberton is given command of the new Confederate Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, replacing Van Dorn. His main duty is the defense of Vicksburg on the Mississippi, which everyone knows is the aim of Union operations in that area.

Confederates – Military
Kentucky
Braxton Bragg’s campaign is reaching its climax in Kentucky. The cities located on the Ohio River had been successfully defended by troops under Don Carlos Buell, but there is fighting on the Bardsville Pike near Mount Washington and on Fern Creek along the Louisville and Frankfort Road.

Maryland
There is much skirmishing between Confederate and Union cavalry along the Potomac near Sharpsburg.

There is much skirmishing between Confederate and Union cavalry near Shepherdstown and Martinsburg.

Mississippi
There is fighting at Ruckersville.

Tennessee
There is fighting at Davis Bridge and near Nashville.

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

Civil War: Order No. 11 reduced border to a wasteland

From Joplin Globe: Civil War: Order No. 11 reduced border to a wasteland
By Andy Ostmeyer

Solomon Young epitomized everything Americans admire in one of their own: self-made, a restless, westering soul hewing a life out of the wilderness with nothing but “a gun and an ax and two babies and a blanket,” according to family tradition.

Young was the son of a patriot — his father having fought in the American Revolution — and Young himself freighted goods along the Santa Fe Trail and drove cattle to California, an agent of Manifest Destiny.

That the country his father helped create — now his country — would turn on him, and that he, his wife, Harriet, and those babies would suffer at its hands must have been inconceivable. But the more Young’s generation opened up the new nation, the more they forced the question that would result in their suffering: Should slavery follow Americans into the West?

Slavery followed Young, who arrived in western Missouri in the 1840s. He was a slave owner, but as the United States fractured over the issue, he remained, like many in the state, a supporter of his country. Young even signed an oath in 1862 proclaiming his loyalty to the Union; he had waged no war against the United States.

In fact, he and his family saw themselves as victims — not perpetrators — of the violence that bled into every edge of the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War.

Kansas Jayhawkers and Union soldiers raided Solomon Young’s Jackson County farm time and again, slaughtered his hogs and confiscated his hay, corn, wagons and more. Some of those Jayhawkers even grabbed a treasured family quilt that Harriet had sewn in 1839 — perhaps the blanket of family tradition — and threw it in the mud. At one point, the raiders nearly hanged one of Young’s sons — stretching the neck of Harrison — while Solomon was away, trying to get the boy to tell them where his father could be found.

Then came August of 1863 and the brutality that had become a way of life on the frontier escalated to an unprecedented level: William Quantrill and his men burned Lawrence, killing civilians, some just boys.

Union Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing, commander of the District of the Border, with headquarters in Kansas City, responded immediately with one of the harshest measures the U.S. government ever took against its own citizens.

Order No. 11 would drive out tens of thousands of residents on the Missouri side of the border — Solomon Young and family included — turning them into refugees and making a wasteland of the farms and homes these self-made pioneers had hewn with their axes.

Solomon Young’s 10-year-old daughter, Martha, never forgot.

Or forgave.

She remembered the final scene all her long life as her family was driven out, forced into what she characterized as “bitter exile,” taking with them little more than her parents had first brought to the border two decades earlier.

The feeling of injustice left by Order No. 11 ran deep, so deep that Martha could not help but pass it on to her own child, who, in time, would see in it a lesson he would bring to bear in yet another war.

Eye for an eye

Quantrill’s raid on the abolitionist stronghold of Lawrence, Kan., on Aug. 21, 1863, is generally seen as the immediate provocation for Order No. 11. That day, nearly 200 men and boys were massacred and 185 homes and businesses were burned.

But the border had been aflame long before that, and Lawrence was only the latest in a long line of cities and villages on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri line reduced to smoke and ashes.

Missourians pointed to the ruins of Dayton and Columbus.

Kansas pointed to attacks on the villages of Aubry and Gardner.

Missourians remembered Osceola, where thousands were left homeless by Kansas Jayhawkers who torched the town in 1861.

Kansans, of course, had Lawrence.

And so it went, atrocity stacked up on atrocity, each escalating rather than deterring violence.

Historian Albert Castel has written that many residents in western Missouri saw Quantrill and others like him not as terrorists or guerrillas, but as “avengers.”

More than that, many of those same residents in western Missouri had brothers and sons who joined the guerrillas, including Solomon Young. His daughter, Sarah Ann — Martha’s older sister — had married Jim Crow Chiles, who rode with Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson.

“Consequently, they aided them in every possible way, from feeding and sheltering them to smuggling them ammunition and acting as spies,” Castel wrote of the families who lived along the border in western Missouri. “Even anti-Confederates assisted the partisans out of fear of reprisals ... in effect the federal forces in western Missouri were opposed by an entire people.”

Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield claimed that two-thirds of the families in western Missouri were kin to the guerrillas and actively supported their bushwhacking, according to Castle, and even before Lawrence was sacked, Schofield had proposed forcibly relocating those trouble-making families to Arkansas.

Then came Lawrence.

Castel called the Lawrence raid the climax of nearly a decade of fighting along the border, and the most “horrible atrocity of the entire Civil War.”

It was inevitable that the Union would match the escalation.

“All persons living in Jackson, Cass and Bates Counties, Missouri, and in that part of Vernon County included in the (military) district ... are hereby ordered to remove from their present places of residence within 15 days from the date hereof.”

Order No. 11, dated Aug. 25, 1863, was signed by Ewing.

There were some exceptions for people living within a mile of designated Union strongholds, but for tens of thousands of others, there was no choice.

Ewing sent soldiers to enforce the order, and they did so, according to one historian, with “savage efficiency,” joined by Jayhawkers. Some historians have concluded that hundreds of men were shot as the Union cleaned out the western border of Missouri. Homes and farms were burned to keep the families from returning.

“They piled all the bedding, barrels of molasses, sugar, all clothing and provisions in the yard and started a fire which destroyed everything, including the house and mill,” one victim wrote. “They left, taking all the horses, and cattle with them, leaving a pair of old oxen and a surrey they thought useless.”

The exodus burned a groove in the memory of young Francis Twyman, one of the refugees, who even 50 years later could recall the events as if they had just happened.

“The road from Independence to Lexington was crowded with women and children, women walking with their babies in their arms, packs on their backs and four of five children following after them — some crying for bread, some crying to be taken back to their homes.”

But there were no homes left.

One Union squad boasted of burning 110 homes. Many other soldiers had similar stories to tell. Fires spread to the prairies and woods that September.

“The air grew hazy with smoke,” wrote historian and Quantrill biographer Edward Leslie. “The bleak terrain would be referred to for decades as the ‘burnt district.’”

“Another woman had two cows hitched to a wagon ... inside the wagon was a very sick child,” wrote Twyman. “The wagon halted, the mother got out with her sick babe in her arms and seated herself under the friendly shade of a tree. It was apparent that the child was dying. There sat the mother with her child dying in her lap. Her husband had been killed ... O, the anguish of that brokenhearted mother as she sat there, with tears streaming down her pale cheeks knowing she was powerless to save her child.

“The crowd surged on ...” she wrote.

Thirty thousand people lived in Cass, Jackson and Bates counties and that part of Vernon County in the military district, according to the 1860 census, says Tom Rafiner, a historian and author who has studied the impact of Order No. 11 in Cass County.

“By the time Order No. 11 was completely implemented there were no people living in Bates County. Zero in Vernon County,” he said.

Cass County had 800 residents “at most,” he said.

Jackson County had been largely depopulated, too; Solomon Young and family were among the refugees.

“I think it is very reasonable to assume that by the time it was completely implemented in 1863, there were 25,000 people who were gone,” Rafiner said. “Twenty-two hundred square miles of western Missouri were converted from what it had been before the war started to complete desolation.”

One Union soldier described the country afterward: “Not a man, woman or child is to be seen in the country to which Order No. 11 applies ... turn which way you will, everything denotes a state of utter desolation and ruin.”

Two years later, a minister, George Miller, returning to the area after the war, was stunned by what had happened.

“For miles and miles we saw nothing but lone chimneys. It seemed like a vast cemetery — not a living thing to break the silence ... Man no longer existed here.”

Harshest treatment

If the goal of Order No. 11 was to create a neutral zone that protected Kansas, it succeeded, said Rafiner, but if the goal was stopping the bushwhacking in Missouri, it didn’t. In fact, according to historian James McPherson and others who have studied the period, guerrilla raids became even more aggressive, even more daring.

“It moved all of that violence to central Missouri,” said Rafiner, which is exactly where many of the refugees had landed after they were forced from their homes.

Rafiner believes that in no other place in the country was the civilian population hit as hard during the Civil War as it was in western Missouri — not in the Shenandoah Valley by Union Gen. Phil Sheridan in 1864, and not in Georgia or the Carolinas during William Tecumseh Sherman’s campaigns in 1864-1865.

“There was no single event that compared to what happened in western Missouri,” said Rafiner. “It was unprecedented.”

That view is shared by other historians.

Castel, one of the leading historians of the war on the frontier, wrote: “With the exception of the hysteria-motivated herding of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during World War II, it stands as the harshest treatment ever imposed on United States citizens under the plea of military necessity in our nation’s history.”

Ewing’s order was sharply criticized by some Union supporters at the time, among them a Federal soldier named George Caleb Bingham, who was so incensed by what he witnessed that he vowed to use his talent as an artist to vilify Ewing, and did so with a controversial painting titled “Order No. 11.” It depicts a family being driven from its home, one of them shot by a Kansan while Union soldiers loot the furniture.

Some historians have argued that the painting cost Ewing the governorship of Ohio when he returned there after the war.

Ewing had his defenders, though.

Schofield, the Union commander who ultimately would become the top commanding general of the U.S. Army after the war and later a Secretary of War, deemed Order No. 11 “wise and just — in fact, a necessity.”

Castel concluded his historic study of Order No. 11 by noting that many sources at the time, including Miller, the minister who returned to the area after the war, estimated that 80 percent of the people in the area supported the guerrillas.

“Under the laws and practices of war,” wrote Castel, “whenever enemy civilians willingly assist guerrillas, then they must expect to take the consequences, and among the consequences is forced evacuation of their homes.”

No coincidence

As early as 1861, John Charles Fremont, commander of the Western District of the Union Army, with authority over Missouri, pushed for a hard war that did not spare civilians. He declared martial law throughout the state, announced the death penalty for guerrillas, and authorized the confiscation and emancipation of slaves.

President Abraham Lincoln, fearing that such aggressive moves would alienate supporters in tenuously held border states, such as Missouri and Kentucky, revoked Fremont’s orders. Lincoln still clung to the hope that he could keep the war from collapsing into a “remorseless revolutionary struggle,” said McPherson, author of numerous books on the period.

With Union victories in 1862 at Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Shiloh and elsewhere, Lincoln believed that the limited war strategy — McPherson called it the “soft war” strategy — might hold, but as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson rolled back Union hopes in late 1862 and early 1863, a harder war was inevitable.

Order No. 11 was a legalization of that hard war, a blurring of the lines between civilians and soldiers, and between military property and civilian property, and it would soon spread to the East.

According to McPherson, “Most of the Union commanders who subsequently became famous practitioners of total war spent part of their early Civil War careers in Missouri — including (Ulysses) Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. This was more than coincidence. What they saw and experienced in that state helped to predispose them toward a conviction that, in Sherman’s words, ‘We are not only fighting hostile armies but a hostile people’ and must make them ‘feel the hard hand of war.’”

Sheridan implemented a total war strategy in the Shenandoah Valley, breadbasket of the Confederacy, burning thousands of barns and countless fields, and leaving little in it, he said, “for man or beast.”

No one is more famous — or infamous — for the scorched earth tactic than Sherman — Ewing’s brother-in-law, by the way — who used it to devastating effect through Georgia and the Carolinas, where farms, homes and cities, including the state capitals of Milledgeville, Ga., and Columbia, S.C., followed Osceola and Lawrence into the ash heap. Many of Sherman’s top Corps commanders during the Georgia and Carolinas campaigns — Schofield among them — also were men who had known the war on the frontier.

Martha Young’s boy

In 1905, more than 40 years had passed since Order No. 11 drove Solomon Young and his family from their farm.

Solomon died in 1892, but his wife, Harriet, was still alive when her grandson — Martha’s son — strolled into her parlor wearing the blue uniform of the Missouri National Guard.

Harriet told her grandson it was the first time a blue uniform had been in her home.

“Do not wear that uniform in my house again,” she warned him.

The story is one of many her grandson, born in Lamar in 1884, liked to tell. That boy was molded to his core not only by his father’s Democratic politics, but also by his mother’s Southern heritage and their experiences during the war, experiences passed down through Harriet and her daughter, Martha, who by that time had married John Truman. John and Martha named their son after Martha’s brother, Harrison, the boy who had survived that neck stretching during the war.

Harry Truman grew up listening to stories told by his mother and grandmother, his uncles and others who knew the war firsthand. On the streets of his hometown, he also met old men who had once ridden with Quantrill, as well as freed slaves. Truman, a formidable student of history, consumed their stories of the Civil War on the frontier and made studying that war a lifelong passion.

In Washington, as a U.S. senator, he walked old battlefields, and attended lectures by leading Civil War scholars of the day, sometimes skipping out on Senate business to do so.

During World War II, Truman was named to head up the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, looking for fraud and waste. He took a lesson from the Civil War and made sure the Truman Committee, as it was called, would not make the mistake of those radical Republican senators whose meddling in military matters undermined Lincoln’s war effort.

But it was as president after World War II that Harry Truman implemented one of the lessons from the war on the frontier.

The experience passed down to Truman by his mother’s family, the refugees of an earlier war, had shaped his world view and would become an important part of his support for the Marshall Plan, according to historians such as Ethan Rafuse, who teaches at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and David Shafer, whose career in the National Park Service has included tours at the Fort Scott and Harry Truman national historic sites.

The Marshall Plan — an aid effort the United States launched after World War II to provide financial support to war-ravaged European countries to return them to prosperity — also was framed by Truman’s 20th century experience as a soldier in World War I, the consequences of the Versailles Treaty, his experience as a U.S. senator and president during World War II, and fears that communism would spread throughout Europe.

But as Shafer has written, the Civil War “burrowed deep into the soul and sinew” of Truman, and as much as anything was responsible for his perspective. What’s more, Truman himself said after his presidency that his awareness of what his family in particular and the South in general had endured influenced his support for the Marshall Plan.

“You can’t be vindictive about a war,” Truman said, according to Rafuse.

“For Harry Truman, the past is always present,” said Shafer. “His basic understanding of the border war was always in the background for him.”

According to Rafuse and Shafer, Truman sought to avoid the postwar bitterness and recrimination he had experienced as a boy, a bitterness still so potent in 1945 that his mother, Martha, at the age of 92, when visiting her son in the White House, refused to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. More than eight decades after she was exiled by Order No. 11, Martha said she would rather sleep on the floor.

“My mother and father hated the Yankees until both of them died,” Truman said at one point after he left office, according to Shafer. “And I didn’t want hate to be this war’s gift to the future.”



Source notes: This narrative was constructed from multiple sources, including: “Battle Cry of Freedom,” and “Drawn with the Sword,” both by James McPherson; “The Devil Knows How to Ride,” by Edward Leslie; “Black Flag,” by Thomas Goodrich; “Truman” by David McCulloch; “Order No. 11 and the Civil War on the Border,” by Albert Castel in the Missouri Historical Review; “Far More Than A Romantic Adventure: The American Civil War in Harry Truman’s History and Memory,” by Ethan Rafuse in the Missouri Historical Review; “Border State Son, Harry S. Truman and the War Between The States,” by David Shafer in North and South; and interviews with McPherson, Leslie, Rafuse, Shafer and historian Tom Rafiner.