Kirby's Army

The Confederate Army of Kentucky was designated such August 25th 1862 and led by Edmund Kirby Smith.


The Army of Kentucky was designated and placed under the command of Kirby Smith August 25th 1862. This army was made of troops from the Confederate Department of Eastern Tennessee. It was made up of infantry divisions of Thomas J Churchill, Patrick Cleburne, Henry Heth and Carter L Stevenson. It also included the Confederate cavalry brigades of John Hunt Morgan and John S Scott.

Following the Battle of Perryville Kirby Smith received a promotion and was given the command of the Department of Trans Mississippi.

A National Battlefield

The Petersburg Military Park was designated a National Battlefield on August 24th 1962.

The Petersburg National Battlefield is central to Petersburg, Virginia, but also includes parts of Dinwiddie County, Hopewell and Prince George Counties.  Sites include the Crater, and the Battle of Five Forks which is sometimes called the “Waterloo of the Confederacy”.  The battlefield also takes care of the 9 acre Poplar Grove National Cemetery.

This is a site worth looking at for more about The Petersburg Battlefields

They Lost 35% Of The Unit

The 21st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was organized in Worchester, Massachusetts and mustered into Union service August 23rd 1861.


The 21st Massachusetts Infantry was garrisoned at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland after being mustered into service on August 23rd 1861. The regiment was part of the Coastal Division under the command of Union Major General Ambrose E Burnside. They saw action in the Battle of Roanoke Island and the Battle of New Bern, before being attached to the Army of the Potomac in July 1862. The 21st took part in many of the big battles in the east including the Battle of Chantilly, where they lost at least 35% of the unit on September 1st 1862. They moved to the Department of the Ohio from March 1863 to January 1864. The 21st rejoined the Army of the Potomac in early May 1864, and took part in Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S Grant’s Overland Campaign.

After three years of service the 21st had 152 men killed, 400 were discharged because of wounds, 69 were prisoner of war, and 300 had left because disease. Their numbers had been reduced from 1000 to about 100 men.

A recommended web site for further reading is Twenty-First Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Three Years

An Early Civil Rights Fighter

Benjamin Lundy a Quaker, abolitionist, and the publisher of several anti-slavery newspapers died August 22nd 1839.


Benjamin Lundy born was January 4th 1789 in New Jersey. He worked on the family farm, and attended local schools. In 1815 while living in ST Clairsville, Ohio he founded the Union Humane Society. Shortly after in 1821 he began publishing the “Genius of Universal Emancipation” in Mount Pleasant, Ohio. Lundy met William Lloyd Garrison in 1829 and they co-edited the paper. Lundy traveled lecturing on anti-slavery, and searching for a home place for escaped slaves to colonize. This included two trips to Haiti in 1825 and 1829, and the Canadian Wilberforce Colony in 1831. He moved to Lowell, La Salle, Illinois where he died August 22nd 1839.

A good web site for more information is Benjamin Lundy
Pioneer Quaker Abolitionist, 1789-1839

A Raid In Retaliation

Confederate leader William Clarke Quantrill led a raid on Lawrence, Kansas August 21st 1863, which became known as the Lawrence Massacre.


Lawrence, Kansas was at the beginning of the Civil War a target for those who were pro-slavery. It was a strong hold for those known as Jayhawker’s, people who were abolitionist and pro-Union to use as a base for making raids into neighboring Missouri.

Confederate William Clarke Quantrill’s attack on the town was in retaliation for these raids, particularly one made on Osceola, Missouri in September 1861. In this attack on Osceola, led by Senator James H Lane, nine men were executed. Quantrill had planned the attack carefully, and organized many independent Guerrilla groups to converge on Lawrence, Kansas in the pre-dawn hours of August 21st 1863. Somewhere between 300 and 450 men descended on Lawrence. They set fire to the town, burning down all but two businesses and about a quarter of the buildings. They killed 185 to 200 males in town and raided for over four hours. By nine in the morning Quantrill’s Raiders where on there way out of what was left of the town of Lawrence. One of the targets of the raid, Senator James H Lane escaped by running out into a cornfield, hiding in his nightshirt.

Another web site that might be of interest to you is Quantrill's Raid The Lawrence Massacre Battle of Lawrence

Close Only Counts With Grenades

The Ketchum Hand Grenade, used by the Union Army was patented August 20th 1861 by William F Ketchum.


The Ketchum Hand Grenade was a cast iron ball with cardboard fins to stabilize it in flight. The percussion cap which set off the powder charge was in the noise of the grenade, and would go off when it landed. They often didn’t land right and so didn’t detonate. The Ketchum’s came in three sizes 1, 3 and 5 pounds. It had three pieces, a plunger, the casing and a tailpiece. The Ketchum had to be thrown in an arc, so that it would land nose first and the plunger would cause detonation.

William Ketchum demonstrated his grenade for the army, throwing it like a dart and hitting targets which exploded with high power. When Union troops used them, however they found the grenades had weaknesses. As seen from the Confederate side, Lieutenant Howard C Wright said that the grenades started “falling among the Arkansas troops they did not know what to make of them, and the first few which they caught not having burst, they threw them back upon the enemy in the ditch. This time many of them exploded.”

An Early Battle In Missouri

The Battle of Bird’s Point was fought August 19th 1861 in Missouri.


The Battle of Bird’s Point or the First Battle of Charleston was fought August 19th 1861 in Charleston, Missouri. Union Colonel Henry Dougherty led a force into the area to clean out a Confederate camp. There had been several skirmishes fought in the area leading up the Battle between local secessionists and pro-Union forces. The fight resulted in 40 Confederate and 1 Union dead.