They Got Across The River

Major General Frederick Steel

Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith caught up with Union General Frederick Steel's force on April 30th 1864, bring on the Battle of Jenkin's Ferry.

After having been slammed at Mark’s Mills and Poison Spring, and being low on supplies, Major General Frederick Steele’s Union forces were in retreat from Camden, Arkansas. On the afternoon of April 29th 1864 they began crossing the flooded Saline River at Jenkin’s Ferry. On April 30th the Confederate’s caught up and made repeated attacks on the Union troops. The Federals fought off the attacks and managed to cross the river with men and supply wagons. General Edmund Kirby Smith’s Confederates lost the last chance to destroy Steele’s army due to his army being deployed piecemeal. They failed to hit the Union’s vulnerable left, choosing instead frontal attacks, which devastated Kirby’s men.

Both armies had high casualties, with the Confederates reporting 443 dead, wounded or missing, and the Union side reporting 521 casualties. The battle is still consider a Union victory as they held back the Rebel’s until they could cross the Saline River. The Union troops continued to retreat toward Little Rock, Arkansas.

Fitz

Fitzhugh Lee; Robert E Lee’s nephew, died on April 28th 1905.

Fitzhugh Lee was born November 19th 1835 at Clermont in Fairfax County Virginia the son of Sydney Smith Lee.  He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he came close to being expelled by his famous uncle.  He graduated in 1856.

In 1861 Lee was serving as an instructor at West Point, but with the start of the Civil War he resigned his United States commision and became a First Lieutenant in the Confederate Army, serving as a staff officer in the Peninsula campaign. He would become one of the youngest cavalry commanders at 27 during the war serving as General Robert E Lee’s chief of cavalry corp.

After the Civil War was over Fitzhugh became a farmer in Stafford Co, Virginia, elected governor of Virginia, and accepted an appointment from President Grover Cleveland as consul general in Havana, Cuba. He was one of only three ex-Confederate generals to serve as a Major General with the United States Volunteer Army during the Spanish-American War.

He died in Washington, DC on April 28th 1905.

They Didn't Make It Home

Seven miles north of Memphis Tennessee on April 27th 1865 the steamboat the Sultana exploded and sank.

The boat which was only made to hold 376 people was carrying about 2,300 crew, civilians and recently released Union Prisoners of War.  About 1,700 never made it home. Around 2am three of the steamboat’s four boilers blew up.

The Sultana, a paddle wheeler, was built in Cincinnati Ohio in 1863 at the John Lithoberry Shipyard. She sailed the Ohio and Mississippi river between St Louis and New Orleans. She was considered to be state of the art, with modern safety gauges, three fire fighting pumps and a metallic lifeboat. In April 1865 recently release Union Prisoner of War were gathered in Vicksburg where the government was paying $5 a man to steamboats for the trip to Cairo Illinois. The soldiers were packed onto the Sultana so closely there was no place to sleep and even barely room to stand. The explosion was due to a leaky and poorly repaired steam boiler. The explosion threw some of the deck passengers into the water, while the rest of boat caught fire.

An archaeologist may have found the remains of the Sultana in 1982 under about 32 feet of dirt in a soybean field on the Arkansas side of the river.

Largest Group Of Confederates

Confederate General Joseph E Johnson’s army was camped at Greensboro on April 26th 1865 when he surrendered to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place.

After General Robert E Lee’s surrender seventeen days earlier at Appomattox Court House, Confederate General Joseph E Johnson knew it was time. Johnson with a detachment of the 5th South Carolina cavalry traveling east along the Hillsborough road toward Durham Station met Union General William Tecumseh Sherman who was riding west with an escort of the 9th and 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry at the farm of James and Nancy Bennett. The first day’s negotiations were interrupted by a telegram informing them of President Abraham Lincoln’s death. The first surrender agreement made on April 18th was rejected by the politicians in Washington, DC as being to generous. The two Generals met again on April 26th 1865  and signed papers that disbanded the largest Confederate force of the war, 98,270 soldiers.

Confederate General Richard A Taylor’s force in Alabama would surrender a week latter, and Kirby Smith would do the same with his Trans-Mississippi Army in New Orleans a month latter.

Crossing Cane River

Toward the end of the Red River Expedition on April 23rd 1864, Union Major General Nathaniel P Banks being followed by Confederate forces evacuated Grand Ecore and retreated to Alexandria. The forward command being lead by Brigadier General William H Emory ran into confederate Brigadier General Hamilton P Bee’s cavalry near Monett’s Ferry on the Cane River.

Bee’s order was to keep the Union troops from crossing. Emory was reluctant to attack the strong position in the front of the Confederate line, and sent two brigades to search for another crossing. One brigade found a way around and hit the Confederate’s in their flank, causing them to retreat.

The Union troops put down a pontoon bridge and by the next day all had crossed the river. The chance to capture or destroy Bank’s army at Monett’s Ferry was gone.

Some other reading
Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West

Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink: Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs from the Red River Campaigns, 1863-1864

In God We Trust

The United States Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1864 on April 22nd 1864, mandating the words “In God We Trust” to be placed on coins minted as US currency. Due to the increasing religious feeling resulting from the horrors of the Civil War, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P Chase heard pleas from many Americans asking that God be recognized on US coins. The legislation passed on the 22nd authorized minting a two-cent piece, with the motto in the design.

The Last Ride

On Friday April 21st 1865 Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington DC. The train would travel 1,654 miles pretty much retracing the route that president elect Lincoln had taken in 1861. Known as the Lincoln Special, that engine had the late president’s photo on the cowcatcher and carried about 300 mourners. It also held the remains of young Willie Lincoln who had been disinterred to be reburied in Springfield L with his father. When the train stopped in Baltimore MD Lincoln’s coffin was removed to the Merchant’s Exchange Building, where about 10,000 people viewed it in three hours. It was placed on a decorated horse drawn hearse and transport to the view area. This was repeated through out 180 citied and seven states on its way to Springfield IL. Each stop was published in the paper. Many mourners would wait five hours to view the President’s body.

A prairie fire in 1911 near Minneapolis MN would destroy the train that had carried Lincoln’s body to it’s final resting place.

A book you might enjoy
The Lincoln Funeral Train: The Final Journey and National Funeral for Abraham Lincoln