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An unidentified volunteer in the United States Colored Troops (USCT), probably with his wife and two daughters. Ambrotype, between 1863 and 1865. Despite the hardships it caused them and their families, many black soldiers reacted to the U.S. government’s sudden determination that they would be paid less than white troops by refusing to accept any pay until the decision was reversed.
MAY 1, 1863: The Confederate Congress passes a resolution declaring that captured officers of black regiments who are “deemed as inciting servile insurrection” should be “put to death or be otherwise punished at the discretion” of a military tribunal. Black enlisted men are to “be delivered to the authorities of the State or States in which they shall be captured to be dealt with according to the present or future laws of such State or States.” The prisoner exchange cartel established in July of 1862, and based on the equal treatment of the men of both armies, begins to break down. In England, noted actress Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble, former wife of a Southern slave owner, this month publishes her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in an effort to persuade the English government not to support the Confederacy. An account of the cruelty of slavery as she perceives it (marked by “Scorn, derision, insult, menace—the handcuff, the lash—the tearing away of children from parents”), the Journal will have such an effect that portions will be read aloud in the House of Commons. In July, when an American edition is published, it will be equally well received—in the Union. In Mount Vernon, Ohio, leading Copperhead (Peace Democrat) Clement Vallandigham delivers a fiery speech before a large audience (which includes two army captains, dressed as civilians and taking careful notes). Denouncing “this wicked, cruel and unnecessary war… for the freedom of the blacks and the enslavement of the whites,” Vallandigham also lambastes Ambrose Burnside’s General Order No. 38 (see April 13, 1863) as “a base usurpation of arbitrary authority.” His subsequent arrest by soldiers who break down the door of his house in the middle of the night will cause a riot during which his angry supporters set fire to the offices of a Republican newspaper—and inadvertently destroy both the paper and a half block of adjoining buildings. In Virginia, Robert E. Lee leaves Major General Jubal Early, with some ten thousand men and limited artillery support, to protect the city of Fredericksburg and advances to meet Joseph Hooker’s army. Hooker, meanwhile, begins the day cautiously. It is nearly 11:00 AM when he orders an advance by three Union columns over three different routes. After they run into heavy Confederate resistance (as well as the treacheries of Wilderness terrain), Hooker’s caution deepens to a timidity that stuns some of his subordinates and startles Lee: in midafternoon Hooker recalls the columns and forms a defensive line around Chancellorsville, thus surrendering the initiative to Lee. “The men went back disappointed,” Union brigadier general Alpheus S. Williams will report, “not without grumbling.” As night falls and the Federals entrench, Lee meets with Stonewall Jackson and develops, for the following day, a risky plan that violates a principal tenet of military tactics.4
MAY 2–4, 1863: Outnumbered by the enemy, and already separated from Jubal Early’s men protecting Fredericksburg, Lee divides his army again, sending Stonewall Jackson and his troops on a fourteen-mile march to attack the Union right flank, which Jeb Stuart’s reconnaissance has shown to be vulnerable. After marching most of the day, Jackson’s men smash into General Oliver O. Howard’s Eleventh Corps at about 6:00 pm, as many of Howard’s men are cooking their dinner. Rebel yells, stunned Union soldiers, and the cries of the wounded and dying turn the once placid evening into a nightmare as the Union corps buckles and falls back, pell-mell, to Chancellorsville. “Men on foot on horseback on mules & in teams were rushing & piling back,” Union soldier Charles Parker will report some days later. “Some had no caps some not coats all going for dear life.” For the Confederates, the night’s triumph is tempered by a terrible accident: riding forward with a small party at about 9:00 PM on this shadow-filled, moonlit night, Jackson is caught in an encounter between a Federal unit and a Confederate brigade and is shot by mistake by his own men. He is carried to the rear for medical attention; Jeb Stuart assumes temporary command of Jackson’s troops.5
Fanny Kemble (1809–1893). Steel engraving, ca. 1873. A celebrated actress who abhorred what she had seen of American slavery as the former wife of Georgia slave owner Pierce Butler, Kemble published the diary of her experiences in the South primarily to discourage the British government from recognizing the Confederacy.
Battle of Chancellorville. Color lithograph by Kurz & Allison, 1889–90. This view of the battle includes, at right, a depiction of the mortal wounding of Stonewall Jackson. Hit in the right hand, the left wrist, and above the left elbow, Jackson was taken to Dr. Hunter McGuire, who amputated his arm just below the shoulder. But the doctor could not prevent pneumonia from invading the lungs of the weakened general.
MAY 3, 1863: “Where is Gen. Hooker?” an anxious President Lincoln wires to Hooker’s chief of staff, Major General Daniel A. Butterfield. Hooker and his men entrenched around the Chancellor house are being hit hard on the right of their line by Jeb Stuart’s Confederates—infantry pressing forward under heavy fire while Confederate artillery, perfectly positioned on high ground, rakes the Union line with shells. One shell splits the pillar on the Chancellor house porch next to which Hooker is standing, briefly knocking him out and making him shaky for the rest of the day. Other shells set fire to the house. As Lee orders all his troops to press forward, and Major General Darius N. Couch, acting for Hooker, orders a Union retreat, the Federals hastily evacuate their wounded from the house, along with the Chancellor family and other civilians who have been sheltering in the basement. “At our last look,” fourteen-year-old Sue Chancellor will later remember, “our old home was completely enveloped in flames.” While Hooker’s men establish a new line anchored by the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers, other Union troops, under Major General John Sedgwick, assault Jubal Early’s Confederates at Fredericksburg. After confusion, delays, and ferocious fighting, the Northerners gain possession of the high ground above the city that so many of their comrades died trying to attain just a few months before (see December 13, 1862). This causes Lee to postpone a final assault on Hooker; dividing his force yet again, he sends men to reinforce Early. Lee also takes a moment to respond to a note from the wounded Stonewall Jackson: “Could I have directed events,” Lee writes, “I should have chosen for the good of the country to have been disabled in your stead.”6
MAY 4, 1863: The battle of Chancellorsville comes to an end as Confederate troops regain their lost ground at Fredericksburg (General Sedgwick and his Federal troops withdraw across the Rappahannock after nightfall) while, near Chancellorsville, an uncertain Hooker does nothing—to the everlasting frustration of many of his men. Among some, frustration will deepen to anger the night of May 5–6, when they, too, are ordered to recross the Rappahannock. “When the time came to show himself, [Hooker] was found without the qualities necessary for a general,” an irate Captain Charles F. Morse, of the Second Massachusetts Infantry, will write home on May 7. “I doubt if, ever in the history of this war, another chance will be given us to fight the enemy with such odds in our favor as we had last Sunday, and that chance has been worse than lost to us.” Against all odds, and at rending cost to both armies (some thirty thousand men killed, wounded, or missing), Robert E. Lee has won his most brilliant victory of the Civil War.7
Thomas Jonathan (“Stonewall”) Jackson (1824–1863), CSA. Photographic print on carte de visite mount, date unknown. By 1863 a near-legendary military commander, Jackson was deeply mourned throughout the Confederacy. “Would that the battle of Chancellorsville had never have been fought,” the Knoxville Register editorialized, “if the brilliant victory have [sic] cost us the life of Stonewall Jackson.”
The Trial of Vall. Ink drawing on lined paper, ca. 1863. This eccentric political cartoon depicts, in three primitively drawn scenes, the controversial trial of Copperhead leader Clement Vallandigham and its aftermath. Above, left, Vallandigham demands of the military judge that he be tried by a jury; above, right, the military trial proceeds; bottom, Vallandigham (extreme left) is dragged off to prison in the Dry Tortugas (a fate that did not actually befall him).
MAY 6, 1863: In Washington, where he has been anxiously awaiting news of the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln learns, via a telegram from Major General Daniel Butterfield, that Hooker has suffered a stunning defeat at Chancellorsville. Lincoln’s friend newsman Noah Brooks is with the president when he receives the wire. “I shall never forget that picture of despair,” Brooks will later report. “Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, saying, ‘My God! My God! What will the country say! What will the country say!’ ”8
MAY 7, 1863: In Cincinnati, Ohio, a military commission convicts noted civilian Clement Vallandigham of having expressed “disloyal sentiments and opinions, with the object… of weakening the power of the Government in its effort to suppress the unlawful rebellion” and orders him imprisoned for the duration of the war. Because of General Burnside’s sparse communication, President Lincoln is forced to follow the case largely by news-paper accounts—many of them peppered with thunderous protests and a host of new epithets directed against the president (including “demagogue,” “Caesar,” and “despot”). “A crime has been committed against the most vital right of the poor and the rich… the right to think, to speak, to live,” the Dubuque Herald will thunder editorially on May 14. Troubled by Burnside’s actions, the protests, and the constitutional questions provoked by this episode, Lincoln will commute Vallandigham’s sentence to exile in the Confederacy. On May 26, the Copperhead leader will be placed in Confederate hands at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He will eventually travel to Canada, where he will continue his campaign for governor of Ohio by mail.9
MAY 10, 1863: “It becomes my melancholy duty to announce to you the death of Genl. Jackson,” Secretary of War Seddon wires Robert E. Lee. “He expired at three and a quarter p.m. today. His body will be conveyed to Richmond in the train tomorrow.” A terrible blow to Lee (who will say, “I know not how to replace him”), Stonewall Jackson’s death from pneumonia after the amputation of his wounded arm (see May 2, 1863) plunges the entire Confederacy into mourning. “How can I record the sorrow which has befallen our country!” Virginian Judith McGuire will write in her diary on May 12. “The good, the great, the glorious Stonewall Jackson is numbered with the dead!… The body lies in state to-day at the Capitol, wrapped in the Confederate flag, and literally covered with lilies of the valley and other beautiful Spring flowers. Tomorrow the sad cortège will wend its way to Lexington, where he will be buried, according to his dying request, in the ‘Valley of Virginia.’ ”10
Battle of Jackson, Mississippi—Gallant Charge of the 17th Iowa, 80th Ohio and 10th Missouri, Supported by the First and Third Brigades of the Seventh Division. Lithograph published by Middleton, Strobridge & Co., ca. 1863.
MAY 14, 1863: On the move and living off the land in Mississippi, Grant’s army has clashed with Confederates at Port Gibson (May 1) and Raymond (May 12). Today, two Union columns under James B. McPherson and William T. Sherman battle with troops covering the Confederate withdrawal from the Mississippi state capital, Jackson. Ordered by Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston, recently appointed area commander, the retreat will soon prove controversial. After fighting that results in 290 Federal casualties and 845 Confederate killed, wounded, and captured, Union forces enter the town, raise the Stars and Stripes, and indulge in a celebration hosted by General Grant, who has been traveling with Sherman’s troops. A blow to Southern morale, Jackson’s fall further isolates Vicksburg: before leaving, the Federals will burn part of the town and sever the railroad lines that connect the two cities. In Vicksburg, Northern-born Confederate lieutenant general John C. Pemberton is caught between two imperatives: both he and President Davis believe it is essential to defend the city at all costs; General Johnston believes the city is indefensible and has ordered Pemberton to evacuate his troops and join up with Johnston’s men. Pemberton elects to remain with the city, and will conduct raids against Union communications—or attempt to.11
MAY 15, 1863: Having earlier spoken against a suggestion that two of his divisions be sent to reinforce Pemberton at Vicksburg, a move that would weaken his already outnumbered army as it faces the still strong Army of the Potomac, Robert E. Lee today outlines a daring plan at a strategy conference in Richmond: after receiving reinforcements, he will invade Pennsylvania. Such a bold move will draw Union forces out of Virginia—and meeting and defeating the Federals on their home ground, Lee believes, will deal a blow to Northern morale and to the Republican Party, strengthen the hand of the Union’s Peace Democrats, and increase Confederate chances of European recognition. The post-Chancellorsville glow surrounding Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia leads the cabinet to approve Lee’s plan.12
MAY 16, 1863: Grant’s forces, principally the corps led by James B. McPherson, engage Pemberton’s Confederates, who are occupying Champion Hill, a seventy-foot-high ridge overlooking the surrounding Mississippi countryside. Several hours of skirmishing precede four hours of all-out fighting; the hill and an adjoining crossroads change hands three times, until finally Pemberton’s men are forced to withdraw—with McPherson pursuing until it grows too dark to see. This crucial victory nets the Union some twenty-seven pieces of Confederate artillery and hundreds of prisoners, and it further weakens Pemberton by cutting off one of his divisions (which will later join up with Johnston). Pushing on toward Vicksburg behind Pemberton and McPherson, Grant and some of his staff bed down after dark on the porch of a house being used as a Confederate hospital, now filled with some of the thirty-eight hundred Southern casualties from Champion Hill. “While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousands, or the ten thousand with great composure,” Grant will write in his memoirs, “but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend.”13
Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton (1814–1881), CSA, n.d. The Confederate commander at Vicksburg, Pemberton had served with Ulysses S. Grant during the 1846–48 Mexican War. “I knew him very well, therefore,” Grant wrote in his postwar memoirs, “and greeted him [when negotiations for Vicksburg’s surrender began] as an old acquaintance.”
Marching Prisoners over the Mountains to Frederick, M.D. Pencil and Chinese white drawing by Alfred R. Waud, 1863. In a letter to his father, Union sergeant Warren H. Freeman disputed the general belief that Rebel prisoners were ragged and half-starved. “Those that I saw,” he reported, “were fully equal in looks and condition to the average of our men.”
MAY 17, 1863: Grant’s forces deal Pemberton’s Confederates another jolting blow at Big Black River Bridge, within ten miles of Vicksburg, sending the battered and footsore Southerners reeling back into the city. Close behind them are Grant’s troops, now, after their stunning seventeen-day campaign, right on top of their objective. But Vicksburg is surrounded by some of the most formidable fortifications constructed during the war, and within them Pemberton’s men will regain their fighting spirit. The following day, in Virginia, Sergeant Warren Freeman, of the Thirteenth Massachusetts Infantry, will describe other Confederate soldiers, captured during the Chancellorsville Campaign, in a letter to his father: “Our papers speak about the prisoners that we take as looking half-starved, ragged, etc. Now I could never see this. Those that I saw, and I should think there were 2,000 of them, were fully equal in looks and condition to the average of our men; they say we can never subdue them, that they will fight till there is not a man left.”14
MAY 18, 1863: From Vicksburg, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton answers a May 17 communiqué from General Joseph Johnston ordering him to avoid “losing both troops and place” by evacuating Vicksburg “[i]f it is not too late.” “I have decided to hold Vicksburg as long as is possible,” Pemberton writes, “with the firm hope that the government may yet be able to assist me in keeping this obstruction to the enemy’s free navigation of the Mississippi River. I still conceive it to be the most important point in the Confederacy.”15
MAY 19–22, 1863: Buoyed by his army’s success and convinced that Pemberton’s Confederates are demoralized by their recent battering, General Grant orders an assault on Vicksburg at 2:00 PM on May 19. It is repulsed, although, as Grant will later report, “it resulted in securing more advanced positions for all our troops where they were fully covered from the fire of the enemy.” After working to strengthen their position over the following two days, on May 22, aware that Johnston’s Confederates are some fifty miles to the rear of his army and might advance to Vicksburg’s rescue at any time, Grant attempts to breach Vicksburg’s defenses with another assault. After a furious cannonade that sets the air “ablaze with burning and bursting shells, darting like fiery serpents across the sky,” as Captain James H. Jones, of the Thirty-eighth Mississippi Infantry, inside the city, will write, Grant’s men move on the Confederate works—where they are met with murderous rifle and artillery fire. “Still, they never faltered, but came bravely on,” Jones will report. “Surely no more desperate courage than this could be displayed by mortal men.” This second Federal assault also fails. As Grant begins laying siege to the city, General in Chief Halleck sends reinforcements to help secure the Union position.16
MAY 22, 1863: The U.S. War Department issues General Orders, No. 143, establishing the Bureau of Colored Troops to coordinate and administer the raising of African American regiments in every part of the country. The order also establishes boards to examine candidates for commissions to command black troops (Section III); stipulates that no recruiting of African Americans can be conducted by unauthorized persons (Section IV); and specifies that noncommissioned officers of Colored Troops be selected and appointed “from the best men of their number in the usual mode of appointing noncommissioned officers”(Section VIII). Major Charles F. Foster, Assistant Adjutant General of U.S. Volunteers, will be appointed chief of the bureau and will serve in that position until October 1867.17
MAY 27, 1863: Union forces make the first of two all-out assaults on the Confederate Mississippi River bastion of Port Hudson, Louisiana, 240 miles south of Vicksburg, which has been under Union siege since May 23. In this harrowing action, soldiers of the First Louisiana Native Guards (later, the Seventy-third U.S. Colored Infantry; see September 27, 1862) and the Third Louisiana Native Guards (later, the Seventy-fifth U.S. Colored Infantry) conduct themselves with extreme and costly heroism: some 20 percent of the two regiments are casualties, including two of the regiment’s black officers, Captain André Cailloux and sixteen-year-old lieutenant John H. Crowder, both killed in action. Reporting on this battle, the New York Times will state, on June 11, “It is no longer possible to doubt the bravery and steadiness of the colored race, when rightly led.” In New York City, a government agent enrolling eligible men for the Federal draft (draftees will be selected by lottery from the enrollment lists) arrests an auctioneer named Thomas Gaffney for forcibly resisting enrollment. In this heavily Democratic city rife with tensions between rich and poor, abolitionists and anti-abolitionists, immigrants and native-born, and black people and white, sentiment against the draft is high. Yet, despite a few such incidents, most New Yorkers remain calm, believing that the state’s Democratic politicians will find some way to prevent the Federal government from actually conscripting men from the city.18
The Battle at Milliken’s Bend. Wood engraving based on a drawing by Theodore R. Davis, published in Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863. Union general Elias S. Dennis, who witnessed the battle, later reported, “It is impossible for men to show greater gallantry than the negro troops in that fight.”
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Brigadier General George A. Custer (1838–1876), USA, between 1863 and 1865. His courage in leading a heroic charge at Aldie, Virginia, resulted in his promotion, at age twenty-three, to brigadier general.
JUNE 3, 1863: A “peace convention” organized by former mayor Fernando Wood, a Copperhead, takes place in New York City. In its coverage the following day, the New York Times will call the gathering “one of the largest recently held in the City” and declare that it is characterized by “its open, straightforward, avowed sympathy with the principles and the cause of the Secessionists.”19
JUNE 4, 1863: The U.S. War Department devastates the morale of black soldiers already in uniform and hinders the recruitment of black soldiers when it announces that, in line with a provision of the Militia Act of July 17, 1862, specifying pay for black laborers, African American soldiers will henceforth be paid less than their white counterparts: $10 a month (white soldiers receive $13), out of which $3 is to be used for clothing (white soldiers receive a clothing bonus). This announcement, which directly counters the policy of equal pay that the War Department established in August 1862, elicits a storm of protest from black soldiers, their white officers, and many civilians. Yet black soldiers are not given the option of leaving the service if they object to this radical and discriminatory revision of rules. Many determine that their only recourse is to refuse to accept any pay until the discriminatory policy is reversed—despite the hardship this will cause them and the even greater hardship it will cause their families, many of whom will be turned away from white-run charities in the North as the pay strike continues.20
JUNE 7, 1863: At Milliken’s Bend, on the Mississippi River above Vicksburg, two newly formed regiments of “contraband” African American soldiers, as yet untrained, armed only with old muskets, and assisted by the gunboats USS Lexington and USS Choctaw, drive off a Confederate brigade attempting to disrupt Grant’s supply line. One of the regiments’ white officers will later describe the brutal clash as “a horrible fight, the worst I was ever engaged in, not even excepting Shiloh”—and he unstintingly praises his men. “They met death coolly, bravely–not rashly did they expose themselves, but all were steady and obedient to orders.” The black regiments sustain 35 percent casualties; some captured black soldiers are reportedly murdered. The valor of black troops in this engagement, recently appointed assistant secretary of war Charles A. Dana will note, “completely revolutionized the sentiment of the army with regard to the employment of negro troops. I heard prominent officers who formerly in private had sneered at the idea of the negroes fighting express themselves after that as heartily in favor of it.”21
JUNE 8, 1863: “There is always hazard in military movements,” Robert E. Lee writes Secretary of War James Seddon today, “but we must decide between the positive loss of inactivity and the risk of action.” As he writes, his men are concealing their preparations for the Army of Northern Virginia’s move into Pennsylvania so successfully that Joseph Hooker is growing increasingly eager to secure evidence of Lee’s intentions, for a major offensive is rumored to be afoot. A reconnaissance attempt by an infantry corps on June 5 was unfruitful. Today, Hooker dispatches General Alfred Pleasonton and the Army of the Potomac cavalry on another attempt. They head toward Culpeper, Virginia—unbeknownst to them, the area where most of Lee’s army is encamped, protected by Jeb Stuart’s cavalry.
Military Standards of the Cavalry During the American Civil War. Pencil, black ink, and watercolor drawing, between 1860 and 1865, artist unknown. At the June 9, 1863, battle of Brandy Station, Virginia, Union horsemen for the first time more than held their own against Jeb Stuart’s storied mounted troops.
Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell (1817–1872), CSA, between 1860 and 1865. Victorious at the second battle of Winchester, Ewell then led his troops of the Army of Northern Virginia’s Second Corps across the Potomac and into Maryland.
Major General Robert H. Milroy (1816–1890), USA, between 1860 and 1865. After Milroy’s defeat at Second Winchester, he never again held a field command.
JUNE 9, 1863: Crossing the Rappahannock River in two columns, Alfred Pleasonton and his Union cavalry surprise Jeb Stuart and initiate the greatest cavalry battle of the war at Brandy Station, Virginia. Through charges and countercharges, men and horses mix in the dusty havoc of all-out fighting until Pleasonton is finally forced to withdraw because of approaching Confederate infantry. The Federals had found Lee’s army—and had emerged from this battle with Stuart’s storied cavalry with a new sense of pride in their own abilities. Stuart and his cavalry will screen the Army of Northern Virginia’s right flank from prying Union eyes as Lee’s army moves north (while Stuart will smart for some time from critical Southern newspaper accounts that claim he was “disgracefully surprised” at Brandy Station).22
JUNE 10, 1863: President Lincoln, concerned by a telegram from General Hooker proposing a move against Richmond rather than pursuit of Lee’s army, wires the general:
If left to me, I would not go South of the Rappahannock, upon Lee’s moving North of it. If you had Richmond invested to-day, you would not be able to take it in twenty days; meanwhile, your communications, and with them, your army would be ruined. I think Lee’s Army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point. If he comes toward the Upper Potomac, follow on this flank, and on the inside track, shortening your lines, whilst he lengthens his. Fight him when oppertunity [sic] offers. If he stays where he is, fret him, and fret him.23
JUNE 13, 1863: Having received what he considers reliable reports that Lee’s army is, in fact, moving north through the Shenandoah Valley, Joseph Hooker orders the Army of the Potomac to pursue, in a manner that will keep his force always between Lee and Washington. Heat, dust, lice, nagging thirst—and excellent foraging from secessionist Virginians—are what many of Hooker’s soldiers will remember about the next few days of hard marching.24
JUNE 14, 1863: Union general Nathaniel Banks calls on the seven thousand Confederates under siege in Port Hudson, Louisiana, to surrender—and when they do not, he orders a second all-out assault on the Confederacy’s second remaining Mississippi River bastion by some six thousand Federal troops. It is as unsuccessful as the first (see May 27, 1863), resulting principally in 1,792 killed, wounded, and missing Union soldiers versus 47 Confederate casualties. The siege of Port Hudson continues. In Virginia, Richard Ewell’s corps of Lee’s army meets and defeats more than six thousand Federals under Major General Robert H. Milroy (who did not believe, until too late, that Confederates were approaching in force) at the second battle of Winchester, Virginia. After nearly overrunning the Federal garrison during fighting that begins at 6:00 pm, Ewell’s men intercept the Union troops as they are attempting to withdraw from the town in the postmidnight dark. The Confederates take some four thousand prisoners, confiscate wagons, stores, and cannon, and clear the way for the remainder of Lee’s men to move untroubled into Union territory.25
Cave Life in Vicksburg. Etching by Adalbert J. Volck (1828–1912), included in Sketches from the Civil War in North America, 1861, ’62, ’63, by V. Blada (a Volck pseudonym), 1863–1864. Mrs. Mary Loughborough’s residential cave was “in the first line of hills back of the heights,” as she reported in 1864, “and, of course… being so near, many [shells] that passed over the first line of hills would fall directly around us.”
JUNE 16, 1863: In a day of heavy communication between President Lincoln and Joseph Hooker, the president again presses Hooker to move aggressively against Lee’s army (see June 10, 1863): “As it looks to me, Lee’s now returning toward Harper’s Ferry gives you back the chance that I thought McClellan lost last fall.” Lincoln finds he must also deal with the bad relations between Hooker and General in Chief Halleck. At 10:00 PM he telegraphs Hooker: “To remove all misunderstanding, I now place you in the strict military relation to Gen. Halleck, of a commander of one of the armies, to the General-in-Chief of all the armies…. I shall direct him to give you orders, and you to obey them.”26
JUNE 17, 1863: In Georgia, the Confederate ironclad CSS Atlanta runs aground after a brief battle with the Union warships Weehawken and Nahant at the mouth of the Wilmington River and is forced to surrender. The loss of Atlanta, a ship considered superior to the revered ironclad Virginia (Merrimac), is a blow to Confederate pride. Adding insult to injury, the Union navy will incorporate Atlanta into its own blockading squadron. At Aldie, Virginia, where Federal cavalry, trying to keep track of Lee’s northward movement, battle successfully to dislodge Confederates from the village, George Armstrong Custer leads a heroic charge that will shortly result in his promotion, at age twenty-three, to brigadier general—making Custer, for a time, the youngest Union general. From “inconveniently near the rebel works, in view of Vicksburg,” Union lieutenant Cyrus E. Dickey writes to his sister in Illinois: “This is a queer phase of war to us all; the ground around Vicksburg is a network of ravines running parallel to the rebel works. Our troops are occupying these ravines, have terraced the slopes, and dug caves for tents. During a bombardment from the enemy these caves are at a premium. The timid boys who have not dug caves for themselves try to buy out others who have dug their holes. Good caves today run up to $250.” At about this same time, in Vicksburg, Mrs. Mary Webster Loughborough, occupying one of the many caves in which the city’s civilians have taken refuge, is suffering through a heavier than usual Union bombardment when she is startled by shouts and
a most fearful jar and rocking of the earth, followed by a deafening explosion, such as I had never heard before. The cave filled instantly with powder, smoke and dust. I stood with a tingling, prickling sensation in my head, hands, and feet, and with a confused brain. Yet alive!—was the first glad thought that came to me;—child, servants, all here, and saved!… A mortar shell had struck the corner of the cave, fortunately so near the brow of the hill, that it had gone obliquely into the earth, exploding as it went, breaking large masses from the side of the hill…. A portion of earth from the roof of my cave had been dislodged and fallen. Saving this, it remained intact.27
Major General Daniel Butterfield (1831–1901), USA. Army of the Potomac chief of staff Butterfield, with his bugler, Oliver Willcox Norton, turned a prewar bugle call, “Extinguish Lights,” into the haunting “Taps.” Yet Butterfield’s temper and officiousness earned him the nickname Little Napoleon.
Drawing Number 1 in Sketches with Co B, 8th Reg. Pa. Ma. Under the Officers of the Old “Southwark Gaurd [sic] in Harrisburg, Pa.” Watercolor and graphite drawing by James Fuller Queen (1820/21–1886). As Lee’s army moved through Maryland and into Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtin deployed state troops and called for more volunteers to repel the invasion.
JUNE 18, 1863: “They are asking me,” an irritated General in Chief Halleck wires Joseph Hooker today, “why does not General Hooker tell where Lee’s army is; he is nearest to it.” Despite the efficiency of the Army of the Potomac’s own intelligence arm, the Bureau of Military Information, which Hooker established, and despite the ample evidence provided by the second battle of Winchester that Lee’s men are moving northward through the Shenandoah Valley, there is still confusion surrounding what part of Lee’s army is where. Hooker and his chief of staff, Daniel Butterfield, claim that they cannot, in Butterfield’s words, “go boggling around until we know what we are going after.” Yet some of Hooker’s subordinate officers consider Hooker’s own lack of heart to be at the heart of the problem. Provost Marshal Marsena Patrick will confide to his diary that Hooker “acts like a man without a plan and is entirely at a loss what to do, or how to match the enemy, or counteract his movements.”28
JUNE 20, 1863: Pursuant to a December 31, 1862, act of Congress and a presidential proclamation of April 20, 1863, fifty western counties formerly part of the Confederate state of Virginia are today admitted to the Union as the state of West Virginia—under a state constitution stipulating that children born of slaves after July 4, 1863, are free and all other slaves are free as of their twenty-fifth birthday. As Arthur Boreman assumes the governorship of the new state, Francis H. Pierpont, head of the “restored [Unionist] government” of the state of Virginia, moves his headquarters to Union-occupied Alexandria, directly across the river from Washington, DC (see May 26, June 11, 1861).29
JUNE 21, 1863: “Yankeedom is in a great fright at the advance of Lee’s army to the Potomac, and considers this part of Pennsylvania south of the Susquehanna as good as gone,” Confederate War Department official Robert Kean writes in his journal. “The public records have been removed from Harrisburg. I hope they might be destroyed, and all the public buildings also, as they did at Jackson [see May 14, 1863]…. Why some energy cannot be infused into the western operations is hard to understand.”30
Engineers Filling Bombs, 1864. Illustration from The Army and Navy of the United States from the Period of the Revolution to the Present Day, by William Walton, 1889–1895, Vol. 1. At Vicksburg on June 22, 1863, Union engineers exploded mines they had placed in tunnels under the Confederate defenses, creating a huge crater that became a bloody battlefield.
Major General William S. Rosecrans (1819–1898), USA. Steel engraving, based on a photograph by H. Wright Smith, in The Southern Rebellion: Being a History of the United States from the Commencement of President Buchanan’s Administration through the War for the Suppression of the Rebellion, by William A. Crafts, Vol. 1, 1865.
JUNE 22, 1863: The Army of Northern Virginia begins to cross the Potomac River, one corps under Richard Ewell moving today toward Hagerstown, Maryland. Corps commanders A. P. Hill and James Longstreet will have their men across within two days. At Vicksburg, where both Union besiegers and Confederate besieged have been digging tunnels in which to lay mines, Union forces set off a massive explosion under one section of Confederate fortifications, which “commenced an upward movement,” Grant’s chief engineer, Andrew Hickenlooper, will report, “gradually breaking into fragments… until it looked like an immense fountain of finely pulverized earth, mingled with flashes of fire and clouds of smoke, through which could occasionally be caught a glimpse of some dark objects,—men, gun-carriages, shelters, etc.” When the dust settles, Federal troops rush into the huge resulting crater and begin a bloody struggle against Confederates. “[H]and-to-hand conflict rages for hours,” Illinois soldier Wilbur F. Crummer will later recall; “hand grenades and loaded shells are lighted and thrown over the parapet [and down on the Union troops] as you would play ball… as many as a dozen men being killed and wounded at one explosion…. Many a brave hero laid down his life in that death hole, or, as we most appropriately called it, ‘Fort Hell.’ ” For forty-eight hours, the Federals pay a terrible price to hold the crater and attempt to move past it, but it proves impossible to further breach the Confederate lines and they finally withdraw. The siege continues.31
JUNE 23, 1863: Having regrouped and built up his army after the grueling battle of Murfreesboro (see December 31, 1862–January 2, 1863), Union major general William S. Rosecrans begins his Tullahoma Campaign, which will prevent Braxton Bragg from detaching any of his Tennessee-based force to go to the aid of Vicksburg and will, by July 3, force Bragg to withdraw from middle Tennessee to Chattanooga.32
JUNE 25, 1863: Finally convinced that Lee has moved north of the Potomac River, General Hooker begins sending his own men into Maryland.33
JUNE 26, 1863: At midafternoon, the calm routine of Gettys-burg, Pennsylvania, professor and minister Michaels Jacobs is rudely disrupted when Confederate general Jubal Early and about two hundred men ride into town, “shouting and yelling like so many savages from the wilds of the Rocky Mountains,” the irate professor will later report; “firing their pistols, not caring whether they killed or maimed man, woman, or child.” Soon after, an additional five thousand Southern infantrymen appear, many of whom are in need of new clothes and good (or any) shoes. Lee’s incursion into Union territory is a quest for needed supplies as well as a military/political campaign, and Early demands that the townspeople provide his men with a list of goods or five thousand dollars in cash. After city leaders prove to Early’s satisfaction that Gettysburg is unable to comply with either demand, Rebel troops confiscate all available liquor, damage the railroad, and move on. At the same time, larger elements of Lee’s army converge on Chambersburg and threaten the state capital of Harrisburg—sending all the black people they capture during their march south into slavery. As Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtin calls for sixty thousand volunteers to repel the invasion, General Hooker reports that the Army of the Potomac is nearing Frederick, Maryland.34
Generals of the Army of the Potomac: from left, Gouverneur K. Warren, William H. French, Army of the Potomac commander George G. Meade, Henry J. Hunt, Andrew A. Humphreys, and George Sykes, September 1863. “You know how reluctant we both have been to see me placed in this position,” Meade wrote to his wife after he was selected to replace Joseph Hooker, “[but], as a soldier I had nothing to do but accept.”
A Short History of General J. A. [Jubal Anderson] Early. Booklet in a series designed to be included in cigarette packs, 1888. Early’s “visit” to Gettys-burg with some five thousand Confederates on June 26 presaged the pivotal battle that would take place there.
JUNE 27, 1863: A dispute between General Hooker and General in Chief Halleck about whether Union troops should evacuate Harpers Ferry and reinforce the Army of the Potomac in Maryland leads Hooker to request “that I may at once be relieved from the position I occupy”—most probably to pressure Halleck into giving him the Harpers Ferry troops. Instead, Halleck passes the general’s request on to President Lincoln, providing the president a ready opportunity to deal with a growing concern. As Lincoln will explain to his cabinet the following morning (and Gideon Welles will record in his diary), he has recently “observed in Hooker the same failings that were witnessed in McClellan after the Battle of Antietam.—A want of alacrity to obey, and a greedy call for more troops which could not, and ought not to be taken from other points.” Though at this stage in the building military crisis it is a risky act, the president removes Hooker from command of the Army of the Potomac.35
JUNE 28, 1863: Dispatched from Washington to Fifth Corps headquarters near Frederick, Maryland, Brigadier General James Hardie brings Major General George Gordon Meade orders to assume command of the Army of the Potomac. An 1835 graduate of West Point whose spectacles and sometimes prickly personality have led some of his troops to call him “that damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle,” Meade has also been dubbed “Old Reliable” for his steadiness on the battlefield and his competence in command. As news of the change travels through the army and is generally well received, Meade makes plans to advance toward the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, making certain his troops will remain able to cover both Washington and Baltimore, should that become necessary. In Vicksburg, where lack of proper food has become an even greater concern than Union bombardments from gunships on the river and land-based cannon, “Many Soldiers” send their commanding general, John C. Pemberton, a letter: “Our rations have been cut down to one biscuit and a small bit of bacon per day, not enough scarcely to keep soul and body together, much less to stand the hardships we are called upon to stand…. If you can’t feed us, you had better surrender, horrible as the idea is, than suffer this noble army to disgrace themselves by desertion…. This army is now ripe for mutiny, unless it can be fed.”36
The Food Question Down South. Wood engraving published in Harper’s Weekly, May 9, 1863. In this editorial cartoon, Confederate president Jefferson Davis offers a new pair of boots to General P. G. T. Beauregard—who would much rather have food for his troops. While the Union cartoonist might have exaggerated the condition of Beauregard’s command, in besieged Vicksburg, General John Pemberton’s troops had such meager rations there was some talk of mutiny.
Administration Escort of the President, 1865. Illustration from The Army and Navy of the United States from the Period of the Revolution to the Present Day, by William Walton, 1889–1895, vol. 1. Looking out from his window on June 30, 1863, Walt Whitman described, in a letter to his mother, President Lincoln’s escort, including “about thirty cavalry.”
JUNE 29, 1863: “It is reported that the Rebels are 110,000 strong in infantry, with 20,000 cavalry,” Army of the Potomac brigadier general Alpheus S. (“Old Pap”) Williams writes to his daughters. “I think the report is greatly exaggerated, but they have been all winter recruiting by conscription, while we have been all winter running down. Still, I don’t despair. On the contrary, now with a gentleman and a soldier in command I have renewed confidence that we shall at least do enough to preserve our honor and the safety of the Republic. But we run a fearful risk, because upon this small army everything depends.”37
JUNE 30, 1863: Writing to his mother from Washington, Walt Whitman reports on one of the prominent citizens of the city:
Mr. Lincoln passes here (14th St.) every evening on his way out [to the Soldiers’ Home, where the Lincolns spend the hot summer evenings]. I noted him last evening about half-past 6—he was in his barouche, two horses, guarded by about thirty cavalry…. He looks more careworn even than usual, his face with deep cut lines, seams, and his complexion gray through very dark skin—a curious looking man, very sad…. He was alone yesterday. As he came up, he first drove over to the house of the Sec. of War, on K st., about 300 feet from here; sat in his carriage while Stanton came out and had a 15 minutes interview with him (I can see from my window), and then wheeled around the corner and up Fourteenth st., the cavalry after him. I really think it would be safer for him just now to stop [spend his nights] at the White House, but I expect he is too proud to abandon the former custom.
In Pennsylvania, as Union intelligence indicates that Lee’s army is concentrating around Chambersburg or Gettysburg, with the latter being most likely, General Meade orders Major General John F. Reynolds to take two army corps to Gettysburg. Brigadier General John Buford and two cavalry brigades have already arrived in the town and are keeping a watchful eye on all ten roads leading into it. Their activities are observed from afar by a Confederate brigade, whose commander reports to his division commander and General A. P. Hill that Army of the Potomac horsemen are in Gettysburg. Hill determines to move in that direction the following day.38
Soldier’s Home, Washington, D.C. Color lithograph published by Charles Magnus, ca. 1868. For refuge from Washington’s oppressive summer weather, the Lincolns would often spend nights in the two-story Anderson Cottage on the 300-acre campus of the Soldier’s Home, which had been established in the 1850s as a retirement community for disabled veterans.
“Unless the siege of Vicksburg is raised, or supplies are thrown in, it will become necessary very shortly to evacuate the place.”
—GENERAL JOHN PEMBERTON, JULY 1, 1863
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