Fear grips Washington; Hooker reenlists

• Fear has arrested the U.S. Capitol. Rumors fly of an invasion by the 'rebels,' the Northerners not understanding that the South does not want to invade the North. They don't want anything in the North. They want to be left to themselves to govern themselves. Nonetheless, today Confederate spies are arrested in Washington, and the Adams Express Company is prohibited from carrying letters or packages south of Washington./1861
• Daniel Shriver recruits a company of Confederate troops in Wheeling, western Virginia, known as the Shriver Grays. They move to Harpers Ferry, join the Confederate Army, and become Company G, 27th Virginia Infantry./1861

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Joe Hooker

• President Lincoln appoints Joseph Hooker as Brigadier General and assigns him to the defenses of Washington despite the deep personal disdain General Winfield Scott has for him. Scott had blocked his reenlistment the first time he tried to come back to the US Army. Despite his being a West Point graduate and Mexican War hero with a field promotion at the battle of Chapultepec, Hooker was persona non grata to Winfield Scott, and Hooker had resigned some years earlier to be a businessman and farmer in California. This time Lincoln removed the obstacle to his reenlisting./1861

Wheeling Convention closes; Lincoln: "Protect the gold"

• At the First Wheeling Convention in Wheeling, western Virginia, Unionist Virginians who are so much against Virginia’s secession that they wish to secede from their own state, agree on the third and last day of debate that the Convention should wait until after Virginia’s referendum on secession on May 23 before deciding how to move forward. The convention passes resolutions calling for the election of delegates to their own intrastate secession convention on June 4 and the convening of a Second Convention at Wheeling, Virginia, on June 11./1861
• One month after surrendering Fort Sumter, Robert Anderson is promoted to Brigadier General in the US Artillery./1861

USS Bainbridge off Cuba 1862

• Today the USS Bainbridge is ordered to the Atlantic coast of Panama to guard this major transshipment point for cargo from the American west coast--including the gold mines of California. Lincoln is concerned that California gold shipments would be very attractive to Southern privateers, since the Confederate government desperately needs gold to buy munitions abroad./1861

Related articles

• Unionist Virginians meet, Kansas City ordnance seized (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)

Richmond the new capital, St. Louis Riots continue

St. Louis riots continue a 2nd day

• Confederate Congress votes by States 5 to 3 to move the capital to Richmond, Virginia. The three against are Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama/1861 
• In Wheeling, western Virginia, and San Francisco, California, pro-Union demonstrations are held though strong secessionist sympathies are also found in the Bay Area./1861

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US Capt N. Lyon

• In St. Louis, Missouri, the disturbance and deaths which US Captain Nathaniel Lyon caused yesterday continues overnight. The city’s mayor, trying to calm the city, orders all saloons closed. Today shots are fired at the German Volunteers at the intersection of 5th and Walnut streets and once again they return fire into the mob. Capt. Nathaniel Lyon sends in the US 5th Reserve Regiment to handle the still-angry crowd of St. Louis civilians, and the regiment again fires on the citizens, killing six or seven. Eventually, Lyon restores Federal control by implementing martial law, and the outgunned secessionists slowly back down. Later in the evening, US General William S. Harney, Capt. Lyon’s commanding officer, returns to St. Louis and is most unhappy at Lyon’s provocation of the now hostile city. In reaction, the Missouri General Assembly approves the previously stalled “Military Bill,” putting Missouri on a war footing, granting

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  Gov. C.F. Jackson

  Governor Claiborne Jackson wide executive powers, and creating a new Missouri State Guard to resist the Union invasion with Sterling Price as its Major General. Unionists call it a "secession act in all but name."/1861
• The US Navy begins the blockade of Charleston, South Carolina, with the arrival of the steamer Niagara./1861
•  In Little Rock, Arkansas, a political clash between Governor Henry Rector and the Arkansas Secession Convention erupts regarding who holds authority in the now seceded state. The convention creates a military board to command the state’s armed forces, but many members of the militia refuse to follow the board’s orders./1861

Related articles

• April 29, 1861: Lyon seizes the St. Louis Arsenal (gathkinsons.net)
• April 21, 1861: Lyon authorized to muster troops (gathkinsons.net)
• St. Louis Massacre (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)
• May 10, 1861: The Camp Jackson affair (gathkinsons.net)
• More Blood in St. Louis; Jackson Needs More Guns (civilwardailygazette.com)
• Deadly Riots in St. Louis; Western Virginia's Rebellion Against Rebellion (civilwardailygazette.com)
• May 10, 1861: Sherman witnesses the "Battle" of St. Louis (civilwar-online.com)

Illinois militia steal from St. Louis arsenal

• Much to President Lincoln’s relief, New York's 7th Regiment arrives in Washington, having gone around Baltimore by boat. Lincoln considers the monstrous anti-Constitutional act of sending US troops to prevent the Maryland Legislature from meeting and potentially arming the people of that state against the United States, but he concludes it would not be justifiable./1861
• Governor John Letcher proclaims Virginia a part of the Southern Confederacy./1861

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  U.S. Arsenal, St. Louis, Missouri

  Missouri is on the verge of secession, and St. Louis has one of the largest federal arsenals west of the Appalachian mountains. No wonder President Davis has been urging Missiouri governor Claiborne Jackson to seize it. Others also had their eye on that St. Louis arsenal. In a daring nighttime theft to damage Missouri secessionists, Illinois militiamen led by Captain James H. Stokes of Chicago, secretly steam on the Mississippi River from Alton, Illinois, to St. Louis, Missouri, and by theft remove 10,000 muskets from the Federal Arsenal with the help of federal troops there. In his return to Alton, Illinois, the next morning, he supplies munitions to the Illinois state militia./1861
• Brig. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner is appointed commander of the Department of California, replacing Col. Albert Sidney Johnston, who resigns to become a full General commanding Confederate Department No. 2, which encompasses most of the western Confederacy./1861
• Battle of Indianola, Texas. Major C. C. (Caleb Chase) Sibley surrenders 420 United States Infantry troops to Confederate forces capture at Saluria, Texas./1861

Related articles

• April 17, 1861: Claiborne Fox Jackson of Missouri refuses troops (gathkinsons.net)
• April 16, 1861: Gov. Letcher says no troops (gathkinsons.net)
• April 17, 1861: Governor Letcher calls out the Virginia militia (civilwar-online.com)
• Missouri supports Crittenden Compromise; Arkansas to have referendum (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)

US troops garrison Fort Taylor, Key West

Fort Taylor at Key West

• Louisiana troops occupy Fort Pike near New Orleans/1861

• Knowing of many installations being seized by state militias and hearing talk that the local militia might take Fort Taylor at Key West, Florida, Captain John Brannam of Battery B, 1^st US Artillery, under cover of darkness and with four months provisions, moves his 44 men from their barracks east of town into Fort Taylor, preventing Florida troops from occupying the installation. Fort Taylor will become an important coaling station for the Union blockade operations in the future/1861

• In Washington, the US House Committee of Thirty-Three, the counter-part of the US Senate Committee of Thirteen and composed (theoretically) of one Congressman from each state, has had the same lack of success in finding a way forward in the Secession Crisis. Today, however, Rep. Thomas Corwin of Ohio scrapes together all the ideas discussed, and on behalf of the Committee of Thirty-Three, submits to Congress a proposed Constitutional amendment to take away federal authority over slavery and leave it to the states, to extend the Missouri Compromise line to California and receive New Mexico as a slave state, and federal enforcement of fugitive slave laws. It also would repeal state personal liberty laws./1861

Buchanan tries compromise

• President Buchanan, in an effort to revive the Crittenden Compromise, urges its adoption, extending the Missouri Compromise line of 1820 to the California border. Buchanan’s Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, resigns ahead of his state’s impending secession. He is replaced by Chief Clerk Moses Kelly as Acting Secretary./1861

• Federal troops at Fort Barrancas in Pensacola, Florida, open fire on a small group of men who advance on the installation/1861

Crittenden Compromise

United States Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky introduces a resolution before a special Congressional committee to conciliate Southerners by restoring the Missouri Compromise line, extending the 36 degree 30 minute line to separate slave and non-slave soil to the California border, to protect slavery where it is established, and to compensate owners whose fugitive slaves are not recovered/1860