Tag Archives: civil war

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This Month In The Civil War

By Sandy McBride

 

Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Country

August, 1863

William Clark Quantrill was an enigma. He was raised in the state of Ohio, but in 1859, he went west, traveling to Lawrence, Kansas. At that time the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in Kansas and neighboring Missouri were at often violent odds. He got a job as a teacher, but soon found more lucrative pursuits.  He joined a group of anti-slavery ruffians known as Jayhawkers.  They raided pro-slavery settlements, burning, looting and killing.

The community of Lawrence had been established in 1854 in Kansas territory by settlers who opposed slavery.  Whether new states would be admitted to the Union as slave states or free states was an ongoing debate in Congress.  Statehood for Kansas was being presented by both sides in 1856.

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Kate Hewitt & John Reynolds: A Civil War Love Story

By Sandy McBride

John Fulton Reynolds was a career soldier.  He was a West Point graduate, an experienced commander who so impressed President Abraham Lincoln with his ability as a military man that the president offered him command of the Army of the Potomac as it pursued General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate Army of Virginia on their northward move in June of 1863.  Because Lincoln would not assure him there would be no political interference with the job, Reynolds politely declined and remained in the field.  He was well-respected, a much-loved leader of men and married to his job.  There was no time for romance . . . or so his family, friends and comrades-in-arms thought.

They would learn otherwise.

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This Month in the Civil War – July, 1863 New York City’s Draft Riots – By Sandy McBride

In the early days of July, 1863, thousands of Americans lay dead or dying while thousands more were suffering greatly as a result of two major confrontations in the Civil War.  With the Union finally able to claim two pivotal victories, one in the three-day battle in the Pennsylvania countryside at Gettysburg and another in the successful siege of the Mississippi River stronghold at Vicksburg, it would seem that the Federal government finally had the upper hand over the rebellious Confederate states.

It is said that “War is hell”, and for sure, a civil war is true hell.  Every family . . . every man, woman and child . . . on either side of a warring, divided nation is invested in a civil war in one way or another. Every facet of life is affected. By July, 1863, our divided nation was war-weary.  And the ugliness was about to get even uglier.

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Grant Takes Vicksburg – By Sandy McBride

THIS MONTH IN THE CIVIL WAR – July, 1863

Vicksburg, Mississippi was a natural fortress.  On a high bluff on the east side of the wide Mississippi River where it makes a sharp hairpin turn, the city was protected on its land sides by terrain so rough and hilly that it made ground assaults perilous, but also lent itself to the building of fortifications. Whoever controlled Vicksburg controlled the river.

The Union’s first attempts to capture Vicksburg and thus open transportation routes on the Mississippi occurred in June of 1862 when Union Admirals David Farragut and Charles Henry Davis attacked the city from the river.  It was the first of a long series of failed attempts by Federal forces to dislodge the rebels from their stronghold.

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July, 1863: Gettysburg Part I – By Sandy McBride

In the beginning, it was about shoes.

In the green and glorious countryside of northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania at the end of June in 1863, two opposing armies groped their way toward destiny, neither knowing for sure where the other was or where it was headed.

There was a small town called Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania where nine roads converged, almost like the spokes of a wheel.  It was rumored that there were shoes to be had in Gettysburg, and many of the Confederate soldiers who had marched all the way from Virginia still had no shoes.

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June, 1863: The Battle of Brandy Station – By Sandy McBride

Encouraged by the success of his army in defeating Union forces at Chancellorsville, and convinced that the stifling heat of the approaching summer would force Ulysses S. Grant to give up his quest to capture Vicksburg in the west, in mid-May of 1863 General Robert E. Lee presented a new idea to President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government.  He would invade the north.

Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon proposed sending General James Longstreet, one of Lee’s most trusted commanders, into Mississippi to reinforce General John Pemberton at Vicksburg.   Lee, however, disagreed.  Longstreet was 1,000 miles from Vicksburg and the southern railroads were mangled, making it very difficult to move a large number of men and needed materiel to the west.  If Pemberton could hold out long enough, Lee theorized, Grant would give up on Vicksburg.

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Roundabout Road To Vicksburg – By Sandy McBride


This Month in the Civil War – May, 1863

  General Ulysses S. Grant’s attempt to cross his Army of the Tennessee into Mississippi at Grand Gulf on April 29, 1863 met with fierce resistance from the Confederates whose hastily constructed defenses atop a 50 foot high promontory featured 16 artillery pieces.  As Admiral David Porter bombarded them from his ships in the river, the rebels fought back fiercely.  A duel went on for five hours, with Grant watching the action from a tug in the middle of the Mississippi.

Seeing that the Confederates were not about to give in, Grant opted to seek out a new crossing site where his soldiers would have a passable route overland to Grand Gulf.  He needed Grand Gulf for a supply base as he moved to capture the crucial Mississippi river port of Vicksburg.

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The Battle of Chancellorsville – By Sandy McBride

Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson liked to say that his goal as a commander was to “mystify, mislead and surprise the enemy”.  On May 2, 1863, he once again fulfilled that goal admirably.

Jackson had turned 39 in January.  He had fought fourteen full-scale battles in 8 months, and had not seen his wife in a year.  He had a five month old daughter he had never seen at all.  He took a brief respite from the war when in the last nine days of April, he was able to have Anna and the baby come to visit him at the Yerby house overlooking Fredericksburg, Virginia. There the couple enjoyed a few days of quiet time, walking in the woods and along the heights, even though across the Rappahannock River they could plainly see the Union gun emplacements and the yellow observation balloons rising above the enemy camp.

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This Month in The Civil War – Movement & Deception – By Sandy McBride

In April, 1863 the American Civil War was in its 25th month.  The winter had been a hard one, with excessive snow and rain and cold. For the soldiers of both sides, conditions were miserable.  Encamped in often inadequate shelter, lacking proper shoes and clothing, enduring poor pay and poor rations, for the soldiers, the spring warmth and improved travel conditions could not come soon enough.

In the Mississippi Valley, Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant was determined to get his men into position to capture the key port of Vicksburg, “the Gibraltar of the South”, from the well-fortified rebels, 60,000 strong under the command of General John Pemberton.  Grant had made seven attempts to get into Vicksburg through the cold, wet winter months, and all had failed. The warming days of April meant troops could soon be on the move overland. It was time to pull out all stops and take the city.

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This Month in the Civil War – March 1863 – by Sandy McBride

In the mid 1850’s, Fitzhugh Lee of Virginia and William Averell of New York were friends and fellow cadets at West Point Military Academy.  When the United States erupted into a Civil War in 1861, Lee and Averell would find themselves fighting on opposite sides. Fitzhugh Lee would become a cavalry officer in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, while Averell would join the Union cavalry. When General Joseph Hooker assumed command of the Army of the Potomac in February, 1863 after the Union’s defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, he gathered the scattered Union cavalry units into one strong cavalry.  Averell was put in command of one of three divisions of that newly consolidated cavalry.

After the Fredericksburg clash ended in January, these two great armies had settled into encampments fairly close together in the Virginia countryside along the Rappahannock River.  There was, of course, some curiosity and concern on each side as to what the other side was planning to do next.

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