Fort Hatteras, NC, falls

Bombardment of Fort Hatteras, North Carolina

• Fort Hatteras, at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, falls into Union hands after a day and night of heavy bombardment in which Fort Hatteras sustains considerable damage. Colonel William F. Martin and Commodore Samuel Baron, CSN, surrender the Confederate garrison of 670. The Federals lose only one man. Butler returns to Fort Monroe, leaving the captured forts garrisoned. Union losses are 1 killed, 2 wounded.   Confederate losses are 5 killed, 51 wounded, 715 prisoners. This action eliminates blockade-running in the area and has propaganda value in that Northern troops have successfully invaded North Carolina. The Federal takeover of Cape Hatteras means the Yankees can command Hatteras Inlet which is a great advantage in stopping what has been an important route for Blockade runners. The capture of Cape Hatteras is an important victory for the Union, especially after the disaster at Manassas/Bull Run, Virginia, last month and Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, this month. It is the first Union naval victory and first successful incursion into Southern territory. It also gives the Union a toehold on the North Carolina coast and seals an important outlet to the Atlantic. Of this successful joint operation US Admiral D.D. Porter later wrote: “This was our first naval victory, indeed our first victory of any kind, and should not be forgotten The Union cause was then in a depressed condition, owing to the reverses it had experienced. The moral effect of this affair was very great, as it gave us a foothold on Southern soil and possession of the Sounds of North Carolina if we chose to occupy them. It was a death blow to blockade running in that vicinity, and ultimately proved one of the most important events of the war.” Hatteras Inlet will become a coal and supply depot for US blockading ships./1861
• Off Apalachicola, Florida, the USS R.R. Cuyler, commanded by Captain Francis B. Ellison, seizes and burns the blockade runner Finland, which was prepared to receive a cargo of cotton and run the blockade./1861
• At Marlborough Point, Virginia, the U.S.S. Yankee under Commander T. T. Craven and the U.S.S. Reliance, under Lieutenant Mygatt, engage the Confederate battery there. Meanwhile four U.S. steamers engage the Confederate battery at Aquia Creek, Virginia, for three hours./1861

• Today in Middletown, New Jersey and Newton, Long Island, New York, peace conferences convene. While the South is incredulous that Lincoln would invade them for exercising their perfectly legal 10^th Amendment rights to secede, many in the North agreed with them. Others feel the “erring sisters” can be brought back into the Union more quickly and with less bloodshed through negotiation rather than battle. Because Lincoln is bent on an aggressive policy of war, the conferences have no bearing on the Lincoln Administration./1861
• A skirmish occurs at Morse's Mills, Missouri./1861

Related articles

• Hatteras Expedition departs, CS win at Kessler's Cross Lanes (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)
• Hatteras Inlet, NC: Expedition arrives (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)
• Hatteras' Fort Clark, NC, falls (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)
• August 29, 1861: The Battle of Forts Hatteras and Clark ends (civilwar-online.com)

Hatteras' Fort Clark, NC, falls

Bombardment of Forts Hatteras and Clark

• Today, while under fire, the United States Expeditionary Force under command of Ben Butler and Silas Stringham lands on Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with wet powder. While eight US Navy warships heavily bombard Forts Clark and Hatteras, the 900 Union troops come ashore to attack the rear of the Confederate batteries. Confederates unsuccessfully attempt to prevent the Federal attack and abandon Fort Clark under the heavy bombardment. The ships’ heavy cannonade forces the Confederates to evacuate Fort Clark. Commodore Samuel Baron, CSN, with two small vessels joined the defenders that evening. The Federals take abandoned Fort Clark with no resistance and begin firing on Confederate-held Fort Hatteras./1861
• Union Commander Dahlgren, Commandant of the Washington Navy Yard, sends 400 seamen on steamboat Philadelphia to Alexandria, Virginia, to report to Brigadier General William B. Franklin for the defense of Fort Ellsworth. This timely naval reinforcement strengthens the fort’s defenses and consequently that of the nation’s capital. /1861 
• The USS Yankee, commanded by Cdr. T.T. Craven, captures the schooner Remittance near Piney Point, Virginia./1861

• The United States War Department gives Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant the command of Union troops in southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois./1861 
• Skirmishes occur in Missouri at Ball's Mills and Lexington, in Virginia at Bailey's Cross Roads and Bailey's Corners, and in Western Virginia at Gauley Bridge./1861

Related articles

• Hatteras Expedition departs, CS win at Kessler's Cross Lanes (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)
• Surprised and Routed at Carnifex Ferry; To Hatteras! (civilwardailygazette.com)
• Floyd Hopes to Ditch Wise; Benjamin Butler Doesn't Plan an Attack (civilwardailygazette.com)

Hatteras Inlet, NC: Expedition arrives

• The Outer Banks of North Carolina are a series of long, narrow islands that separate Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic Ocean, and Hatteras Inlet is the only deep-water passage connecting the two. In the first months of the war, the Outer Banks have provided perfect conditions for surreptitious Confederate blockade runners and raiders. From a vantage point atop the Hatteras lighthouse, Confederate privateers can see the Gulf Stream which Northern ships use to increase speed traveling to Northern ports. Privateers lay in wait until ships appear on the horizon and then overhaul them. Northern insurance adjusters have put pressure on the Lincoln Administration’s War Department to do something about the losses. During the summer of 1861, the CSS Winslow has wreaked havoc on Union shipping off North Carolina, and Federal naval and army officials combined forces to bring the area under control. To protect Hatteras Inlet, the Confederates have built two fortresses of sand and wood, garrisoned with 350 soldiers. Today the United States Expeditionary Force under command of General Benjamin Butler and Flag Officer Silas Stringham which left Hampton Roads, Virginia, yesterday, arrives off Cape Hatteras in view of Forts Hatteras and Clark with preparation for battle in the morning./1861
• Skirmishes occur at Antietam Iron Works, Maryland, and in Virginia at Ball’s Cross Roads and Bailey's Cross Roads./1861

Hatteras Expedition departs, Battle at Kessler's Cross Lanes

Hatteras Expedition leaves Hampton Roads

• Skirmishing breaks out at Wayne Court House, Blue's House, and Cross Lanes, western Virginia/1861 
• From his throne in Hawaii, King Kamehameha IV proclaims the neutrality of the Hawaiian Islands in the War./1861 
• In Western Virginia, Brigadier General John Floyd, commanding Confederate forces in the Kanawha Valley, crosses the Gauley River and attacks Col. Erastus Tyler's 7th Ohio Regiment encamped at Kessler's Cross Lanes. The Union forces are surprised and routed with 245 casualties. Confederate losses are 40. Floyd then withdraws to the river and takes up a defensive position at Carnifex Ferry./1861 
• Hampton Roads, Virginia, is the scene of the disembarkation of the first Federal expeditionary fleet from Fortress Monroe. Its mission is to attack and capture Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, a haven for blockade runners. The amphibious force, composed of eight vessels and 900 New York troops, is commanded jointly by Flag Officer Silas Stringham and General Benjamin Butler. This joint Army-Navy operation has 500 men from the German-speaking 20th New York Volunteers, 220 from the 9th New York Volunteers, 100 from an Army unit calling themselves Union Coast Guard (actually the 99th New York Volunteers), and 20 army regulars from the 2nd U.S. Artillery on board the USS Adelaide and USS George Peabody. Stringham’s naval assault includes the USS Minnesota, Cumberland, Susquehanna, Wabash, Pawnee, Monticello, the US Revenue Service cutter Harriet Lane (used at Fort Sumter), and the tug Fanny, needed to tow some of the landing craft. Hatteras Inlet was the most important of the four inlets deep enough for ocean-going vessels, so North Carolina has constructed two forts there, named Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark. Fort Hatteras is on the sound side of Hatteras Island. Fort Clark is a half a mile southeast, nearer to the Atlantic Ocean, but neither are strong. Fort Hatteras has only ten mounted guns, with five more unmounted within the fort. Fort Clark has only five. Most of them are inadequate for coastal defense, only relatively light 32-pounders or smaller and of limited range. Worse is the scant numbers of soldiers. North Carolina raised and equipped 22 infantry regiments at the beginning of the war, but 16 of these are defending Virginia. The 6 regiments left are deployed to defend the entire North Carolina coastline. Only a few companies of the 7th North Carolina Volunteers occupy both forts at Hatteras Inlet. Other coastal forts are in similar weak shape. Less than 1,000 men garrison Forts Ocracoke, Hatteras, Clark, and Oregon, and reinforcements are as far away as Beaufort. Unbelievably, North Carolina militia authorities did not keep the sad state of their coastal defenses a secret and allowed captured and shipwrecked Yankee sea captains and others free access to the forts and their environs. At least two have provided valuable full descriptions to the US Navy Department./1861 
• Union Captain A.H. Foote is ordered by the War Department in Washington to relieve Commander J. Rodgers in command of the Army’s gunboat flotilla on the Western rivers./1861
• The US tug Fanny under Lieutenant Crosby reports the capture of the blockade runner sloop Mary Emma at the headwaters of the Manokin River, Maryland./1861 
•  The USS Daylight under Commander Lockwood recaptures the brig Monticello in the Rappahannock River, Virginia./1861

Related articles

• Floyd Hopes to Ditch Wise; Benjamin Butler Doesn't Plan an Attack (civilwardailygazette.com)

US Army changes & NC Stone Fleet ready

• In Washington, President Lincoln orders a commission for Kentuckian Simon Bolivar Buckner as brigadier general of volunteers (which he will refuse in preference for a Confederate general’s commission),  and George Thomas of Virginia is appointed US brigadier general of volunteers, Army of the Cumberland. US General Wool takes command at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, superseding Benjamin Butler. In a reorganization, the US Departments of Northeastern Virginia, Washington (DC), and the Shenandoah are merged into the US Department of the Potomac, officially forming the Union Army of the Potomac, which would commit most of the bloodshed in the Eastern Theater of the war. Maj. Gen. Henry “Old Brains” Halleck is made commander of the new Department of the Potomac. Today also Lincoln watches another exhibition of J. D. Mills' gun, dubbed by Lincoln "coffee mill gun,” near the Washington Monument and advises the government to pay double the sum that mechanics say it is worth if delivered in 30 days. /1861

• 

  North Carolina coast
  

  US Lieutenant Reigart B. Lowry writes US Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox regarding the progress for sinking a stone fleet to block the inlets to the North Carolina sounds: "We have nineteen schooners properly loaded with stone, and all our preparations are complete to divide them in two divisions and place them in tow of this steamer [Adelaide] and of the Governor Peabody. I think all arrangements are complete, as far as being prepared to 'sink and obstruct' . . . the obstructing party could place their vessels in position, secure them as we propose, by binding chains, spars on end in the sand to settle by action of the tide, anchors down, and finally sink them in such a way as to block the channel so effectually that there could be no navigation through them for several months to come, at least till by the aid of our new gunboats the outside blockade could be effectual."/1861
• Skirmish at Brunswick, Missouri./1861

Related articles

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• A Diary of American Events. - August 9, 1861 (dotcw.com)
• August 13, 1861: The Swamp Fox maneuvers in SE Missouri (gathkinsons.net)

Rumors of Davis-Beauregard breach

Pres. Davis

Gen. Beauregard

• In Richmond, Virginia, persistent rumors are being whispered of a growing breach in the relationship between President Jefferson Davis and General P.G.T. Beauregard. Clearly, Beauregard’s personal pride and Davis’ thin skin have not mixed well, but the personal problems could create big problems for the strategic future of the Confederacy. Jewish Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin, a close friend of the President’s, seems to have taken Davis’ side as well. The rumors say that after the brilliant victory at Manassas, that Beauregard wanted desperately to invade Maryland, surround the District of Columbia, and finish the work of independence quickly by forcing a treaty of peace. Davis, holding to the principle of self defense, refused Beauregard’s plan. Days or even a few weeks following the battle, a relatively Southern small force could have taken Washington, but whether Beauregard’s intelligence knew in time is now irrelevant since that window of opportunity has now passed./1861

• Near Cape Fear, North Carolina the USS Penguin under Commander John L. Livingston pursues the blockade runner Louisa, which strikes a shoal and sinks./1861

Related articles

• August 11, 1861: "something like a rupture has occurred . . ." (civilwar-online.com)
• August 4, 1861: Jefferson Davis to P.G.T. Beauregard (civilwar-online.com)
• August 10, 1861: P.G.T. Beauregard to Jefferson Davis (civilwar-online.com)
• July 29, 1861: P.G.T. Beauregard to William Porcher Miles (civilwar-online.com)
• August 5, 1861: P.G.T. Beauregard to First Myers (civilwar-online.com)
• August 5, 1861: The Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut (civilwar-online.com)

Apaches attack West Texas Confederates

Image via Wikipedia

Fort Davis, West Texas

• Confederate States Army troops at Fort Davis in West Texas, are attacked by Mescalero Apaches. The native warriors raid the garrison's livestock herd, killing two guards and making off with about 100 horses and or cattle./1861
• Off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the Confederate privateer, CSS York captures the schooner George G. Baker. Then the USS Union under Commander J.R. Goldsborough recaptures the George G. Baker. Then the York’s crew sets the ship afire to prevent her capture by the Union./1861

Battle at Manassas

US General Rickett's Battery fleeing the field at Manassas, Virginia

Image via Wikipedia

"There stands Jackson like a stone wall ..."

Image by The National Guard via Flickr

4th Alabama

• About 25 miles southwest of Washington the first major battle of the War places US Gen. Irvin McDowell’s 35,000, some of whom are regular troops against Confederate Generals P. G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston’s 30,000 volunteers. With neither army well-trained and dressed in both blue and gray with similar flags, the day would shape up to be confusing. Unknown to McDowell’s troops situated at Sudley Ford on Bull Run, Johnston has combined forces with Jackson. McDowell hopes to surprise the Confederates by striking them on the left flank at the Stone Bridge, but after Northern Artillery opens at 5 o’clock in the morning, the Southerners learn of the Union advance. Confederate General N.G. Evans meets McDowell’s troops as they approach from Sudley Ford, holding the Southern position until around noon. The Confederates then fall back to Henry House Hill where Evans, Jackson, and others, make a strong stand. McDowell's feint on the Confederate front is believed to be the real attack until McDowell hits Beauregard's flank in force when McDowell’s forces advance on Henry House Hill around 2 o’clock as Beauregard and Johnston reinforce Evans’ tired troops. An order from Old Bory to Ewell directing an attack on McDowell's left does not reach him, but the stand that Thomas J. Jackson’s men take on the field in the midst of smoke and dust inspires Gen. Barnard Bee to rally his South Carolinians, “There stands Jackson like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.” Thus the famous sobriquet. Bee died in the next charge. Despite Union attempts to charge Henry House Hill, the Southerners hold fast and are successful in driving the Federals back in defeat. As Union forces press hard against the Confederate left flank, the 4th Alabama Volunteer Infantry plugs the gap while other Southern forces form a defensive line behind them. The 4th holds its ground for more than an hour, repulsing four assaults by Union troops. (The 4th Alabama would fight in every major engagement in the Eastern Theater of the war, surrendering less than 100 men at Appomattox in April 1865.) Finally the Confederates regroup and attack. As McDowell’s men pull away, panic strikes when a shell destroys a wagon which blocks the main road of retreat. Union troops scatter and run, every man for himself. Though for a time it could have gone the opposite direction, the Confederates rout McDowell at the Battle of Manassas Junction, Virginia. The battle is costly. Confederates lose 387 dead, 1,582 wounded, 13 missing. Union losses are 460 killed, 1,124 wounded, and 1,312 missing.  President Jefferson Davis observes the Southern victory from Manassas, while in Washington, Lincoln, hearing of the complete defeat, sequesters himself with his Cabinet, and everyone North and South realize the war has begun with earnest./1861  
• As Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon is in the southwest portion of Missouri pursuing the secessionist Missouri State Guard, Unionist Missouri Home Guard companies are forming throughout the state, while stranded secessionists are still trying to organize. At Kahoka, Missouri, David Moore has been elected colonel of the 1st Northeast Missouri Home Guard Regiment, but he has dissension in his own command and a growing secessionist force under Colonel Martin E. Green of the Missouri State Guard’s 2nd Division at a training camp on the Horseshoe Bend of the Fabius River. Green has just formed the 1st Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Division, Missouri State Guard commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph C. Porter and Major Benjamin W. Shacklett. Colonel Moore decides to strike the local secessionist and then fall back to Athens to be close to the Croton, Iowa, supply depot and support from the Iowa militia. On July 21, with the help of a company of Illinois militia and a company of Iowa Home Guards he attacks the village of Etna in Scotland County, Missouri, and drives off Shacklett's MSG cavalry. He then fell back to Athens./1861

• Now back in Georgia, Robert Toombs, who has recently resigned as Confederate Secretary of State, is made a Brigadier General of a Georgia brigade./1861

• General Banks supersedes General Patterson in command of the Department of the Shenandoah. /1861 
• The USS Albatross, under Naval Commander Prentiss, engages the CSS Beaufort, commanded by Lieutenant R. C. Duvall, in Oregon Inlet, North Carolina. The Albatross with heavier guns forces the Beaufort to withdraw./1861

Bull Run Animated Map from Civil War Trust on Vimeo.

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• Battle of Blackburn's Ford and Johnston Steals a March (civilwardailygazette.com)
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• July 18, 1861: The Battle of Blackburn's Ford (civilwar-online.com)
• Jackson Arrives at Manassas; Patterson in the Dark, Out the Door (civilwardailygazette.com)
• Armies mass at Manassas Junction (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)
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Lincoln to McDowell: "You are all green -- Fight"

• After the Union victories at Rich Mountain and Laurel Hill in West Virginia, George B. McClellan is eager to press further into Virginia. Accordingly, General Irvin McDowell advances toward Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia, with 40,000 Union troops./1861
• In the harbor of Wilmington, North Carolina, the USS Daylight arrives to establish a blockade. The Daylight cannot handle the job itself, however, and additional vessels will soon be needed./1861

Image via Wikipedia

Irvin McDowell

• Union troops try to cross the Potomac River at Seneca Falls, northwest of Washington but are repulsed by the Confederates led by a company of the Louisiana Tiger Rifles./1861
• US General Irvin McDowell commands the largest army ever assembled by the United States of America at 35,000 strong. But with such little training, the army was little more than an armed mob. President Lincoln wants action to keep the Northern public excited about subjugating the South and the practical reason that many of the three month enlistments will be up on July 22. When McDowell asked for more time for training, the President replied “You are green, it is true; but they are green also. You are all green alike.” When McDowell’s request is proven true in another week on the battlefield, Lincoln will forget his encouragement, and McDowell’s head will roll for losing./1861

North Carolina adopts a state flag

• In Raleigh, the North Carolina Secession Convention votes to adopt a state flag of a blue field with a white horizontal bar and a red vertical bar on the left side with an insignia star and two dates: May 20th, 1775 (Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence) and May 20th, 1861 (Secession from the United States)./1861 

• 

  John Winder
  

  Career US Army officer from Maryland, John H. Winder, is today commissioned Brigadier General in the Confederate Army and assigned  one of the most difficult jobs of the war – Assistant Inspector General for the military Camps of Instruction in the Richmond vicinity. Winder is charged with arming, clothing and equipping the Confederate recruits, local law enforcement, setting commodity prices in a city that is doubling in population, handling paperwork for those unfit for service, capturing deserters, caring for the sick and wounded, and later overseeing military prisons for prisoners of war. His job would prove nearly impossible, hamstrung by the Confederacy's dismal supply system and diminishing resources. Northern newspapers would accuse him of intentionally starving Union prisoners. President Jefferson Davis, Secretary James Seddon, and Adjutant Samuel Cooper would later agree that he was a much-maligned man, set to perform a task made impossible by the inadequacy of supplies of men, food, clothing, and medicines. Despite the criticisms, Winder would order that Federal prisoners receive the same ration as did Confederate soldiers in the field, scanty as it was./1861 
• Career US Navy officer, George N. Hollins, is commissioned a captain in the Confederate States Navy. A veteran of the War of 1812, Hollins joined the navy at age 15 and had a long and distinguished career. The Maryland native had been commander of the USS Susquehanna in the Mediterranean squadron when hostilities erupted. When he put in at Naples in May 1861, he received orders to return to New York. There he resigned his commission. After a brief stop in his hometown, Baltimore, Hollins offered his services to the Confederacy and receives his commission today./1861.

Johnston evacuates Harper's Ferry

Image via Wikipedia

J.E. Johnston

• Confederate troops retreating from Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, under command of Joseph E. Johnston, take with them the entire munitions manufacturing plant and move it to North Carolina where it will produce munitions for the Confederacy. Along with others which were captured and moved south, the use of the munitions production plants will force US Chief of Ordnance, General James Wolfe Ripley to place large orders for guns from private manufacturers, profiting small arms companies like Colt, Remington, and Winchester./1861
• The CSS Sumter under Raphael Semmes sails down the Mississippi River to await conditions to run the blockade./1861 

Related articles

• June 12, 1861: Joe Johnston writes to Robert E. Lee (civilwar-online.com)
• "Aren't you glad Harper's Ferry has been evacuated without bloodshed? - Woolsey family letters. Eliza Woolsey Howland to Joseph Hpwland (still in Albany.) (dotcw.com)
• April 22, 1861: Raphael Semmes takes command of CSS Sumter (civilwar-online.com)
• Harpers Ferry Burned and Evacuated! (civilwardailygazette.com)

Confederates surprised at Philippi, Virginia

• CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana. (Jefferson Davis birthday, 1808).
• The Democrats and the Union lose a strong supporter when Stephen F. Douglas dies unexpectedly at age 48 in Chicago, Illinois,, complications following rheumatic fever or typhoid. In Washington, President Lincoln mourns the “Little Giant” of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates who had defeated the President in the 1858 US Senate race in Illinois but who lost to Lincoln in the 1860 Presidential election./1861



Battle of Philippi, western Virginia

• Union troops under Colonel R.F. Kelley march out of the mountains through the night in driving rain and this morning surprise Confederate forces under Colonel G.A. Porterfield, at Philippi, western Virginia, and the raw Confederates retreat rapidly under fire. The Confederate troops flee the field so quickly that the Northerners call their triumph the “Philippi Races.” Only a skirmish with about 3000 Union soldiers routing roughly 800 Confederate soldiers, no one is killed in this first land engagement of the war. It helps propel the Union commander - General George B. McClellan to fame. The Confederate defeat also has a bearing on western Virginia’s secession from the Old Dominion as the absence of Confederate troops in the area encourages pro-Union Virginians in the west to declare their support for the North./1861 
• In Washington, Lincoln, continuing under the paranoia of an imminent invasion of the District of Columbia by the demon Southerners, writes commander of the Army Winfield Scott, "I have accounts from different sources, tending to some expectation of an attack being made upon our forces across the Potomac to-morrow morning. I think it prudent to say this to you, although it is highly probable you are better informed than I am[.]"/1861



CSS Savannah flying both US and CS flags

• The privateer Savannah, which left port in Charleston, South Carolina, only yesterday, overhauls the brig Joseph and sends her into Georgetown, SC. In the afternoon the brig U.S.S. Perry attacks and captures the privateer Savannah. Her cruise is ended and her crew is arrested and taken to New York./1861 
• Confederate Secretary of War Stephen F. Mallory instructs Lieutenant John Mercer Brooke to develop an ironclad design for construction in the South./1861
• Against its will but forced by Governor Henry M. Rector, the Arkansas Secession Convention finally adjourns, but political turmoil will continue in Confederate Arkansas. General William J. Hardee will be assigned to command Confederate forces in Arkansas, but many soldiers will not want to join the regular army and risk being moved away from their home state. A lack of organization and cohesive command will plague Arkansas for the remainder of 1861./1861

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• Calls for "New Virginia", Jackson seizes train (wbts-calendar.blogspot.com)
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• The Day Before the Attack on Philippi (civilwardailygazette.com)

Beauregard takes command; Jackson burns B&O assets

T.J. Jackson

• Miscommunication and zeal lead the Confederate forces under Colonel Thomas J. Jackson in western Virginia to continue destroying Baltimore and Ohio Railroad assets. Major General Robert E. Lee had on May 6 ordered Jackson to destroy B&O railroad bridges to frustrate the Union advance on Harper's Ferry. After burning the B&O Railroad bridge over Opequon Creek two miles east of Martinsburg, western Virginia, Jackson’s men set fire to fifty coal cars and run them off the destroyed trestle, where they will burn for two months, the intense heat melting the axles and wheels. The fifty-two remaining locomotives and rail cars at the round house in Martinsburg are thereby left stranded, preventing their removal by rail to the south./1861



PGT Beauregard

• Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard takes command of the Confederate Army of the Potomac at the Alexandria Line, succeeding Milledge L. Bonham. The immediate concern is Col. R.F. Kelley in western Virginia who is moving US troops despite driving rain. Beauregard’s command would become known as the Army of Northern Virginia./1861
• The privateer Savannah leaves Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, to go hunting for Yankee trading vessels./1861 

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North Carolina secedes

NC State Flag of 22d NCV

• In Raleigh, North Carolina, delegates to a State Secession Convention convene at 11AM in the southern wing of the State Capitol on the anniversary of the 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The Lincoln regime has already committed an act of war against the state by blockading its coast. Little was left to discuss. Debate ends at 6 o'clock p.m. when the convention adopts an Ordinance of Secession by unanimous vote, becoming the eleventh state to leave the Union. The ordinance reads in part, “"We do further declare and ordain, That the union now subsisting between the State of North Carolina and the other States under the title of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of North Carolina is in the full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.” Immediately after passage of the Ordinance, Major Graham Davee, private secretary to Governor Ellis, opens a window on the west side of the Capitol and announces North Carolina’s secession to Ellis Artillery Captain Stephen Dodson Ramseur. One hundred guns salute the resumption of North Carolina’s independence followed by a ten gun salute to the other independent States. Shortly thereafter the convention adopts the Confederate Constitution followed by a twenty-gun salute. /1861

• 

  NC State Capitol in 1861

  Governor Magoffin proclaims Kentucky's neutrality in the coming War./1861 

• In blatant violation of ethical, moral, and Constitutional law, all United States Marshals in the Northern states at the pre-arranged time of mid-afternoon visit every local telegraph office in the Union and confiscate every single telegram which had been sent in the past year. The Lincoln Administration is now openly spying on its own U.S. citizens, looking for pro-secessionist evidence or indications, Confederate spies, or suspicious patterns of messages, and making lists of suspects./1861

1861 NC Oath of Allegiance (Larger: Click image)

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• State Capitol Commemorates 150th Anniversary of North Carolina 's Secession Vote
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Queen Victoria grants Confederacy belligerent status

• In London, Queen Victoria announces Great Britain’s neutrality in regard to the warring States, stating that the British will not assist either side, but instead give each the rights accorded to belligerent powers. Gaining belligerent status is a very important diplomatic step forward for the Confederate States of America in getting international recognition as a nation. Under belligerent status, Britain will continue to trade with the Southern States. British ports around the globe will also be open to Confederate vessels to refit, repair, and refuel their ships, a major advantage, but will not be supplied with weapons – at least not officially. Her Majesty’s vessels also will continue to enter Southern ports, completely ignoring the Lincoln Naval Blockade, but will be prohibited from engaging in any military activities. Britain’s decision is a diplomatic failure and major irritation for the Lincoln Administration, denying the Administration’s demand that the Confederate armies be seen as rebels and war criminals trying to destroy their rightful government. Ironically, the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain arrives in London today to speak with the Queen to ask specifically that the British government not to grant belligerent rights to the South. Victoria makes her announcement just hours before Adams' arrival./1861 

• The citizens of North Carolina, forced to reconsider secession from the Union because of Lincoln’s demand for a quota of troops to raise an army to invade his own country, elects delegates to the Secession Convention./1861

• What would become known as the First Wheeling Convention convenes with 436 elected delegates from 17 Virginia counties at Washington Hall in Wheeling, western Virginia. Several delegates had attended the General Assembly at Richmond. Fueled by a long list of grievances and many years of mostly failure to redress them, the Unionists of western Virginia meet as West Virginia's first official state body, although earlier organizational meetings had occurred shortly after Abraham Lincoln was elected President. Lincoln would quickly pledge his unconstitutional support to meddle in a sovereign state’s affairs to carve out a new Unionist state. The first day of the convention is mostly taken up with parliamentary actions./1861
• Major General of the Ohio Militia, George B. McClellan, is appointed as commander of the United States Department of Ohio which includes a portion of western Virginia./1861

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