A President's Cousin

Libby Prison

On January 12th 1865 Edwin Louis Hayes was brevetted Brigadier General.

Edwin L Hayes was born in Ellicottville,NY the son of Harvey B Hayes. He was a cousin of President Rutherford B Hayes, and was age 34 when he enlisted on August 26, 1862 to serve for three years. In September of 1863 he was captured and sent to Libby Prison for eleven months [he was part of the men who dug an escape tunnel from the prison]. After the war he spent a short time as the Reconstruction Governor of NC. He died at his home at the age of 98, the oldest living Civil War General.

Cut Off and Forced To Surrender

The Battle of Arkansas Post [aka the Battle of Fort Hindman] fought near the mouth of the Arkansas River as part of the Vicksburg Campaign began on the evening of January 9th 1863, and ended on this date, January 11th 1863.

Beginning on the evening of January 9th 1863 Union boats unloaded troops near Arkansas Post. The troops moved up the river toward Fort Hindman, where Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s corps forced the Confederates to retreat to the fort and its rifle pits. Than on January 10th1863 Naval Officer Rear Admiral David D Porter moved his ships in to bomb the Fort, pulling back as dark fell.

On January 11th Union artillery began firing on the fort from across the river, shutting down the Confederate guns from the fort, allowing the Union to move into position for attack. Porter’s ironclads began shelling the fort and passed by in front, cutting off any chance the Confederates had of retreat. Do to this envelopment the Confederate forces surrendered that afternoon.

Although this was a Union victory it did not contribute to capturing Vicksburg, and resulted in a high number of Union casualties [1,047 wounded and 134 killed]. This did eliminate an impediment to shipping on the Mississippi River for the Union government.

Back in MO

A Confederate force under Brigadier General John S Marmaduke, captured the town of Ozark, MO on this date in 1863.

A good book about General Marmaduke Confederate States Army Trans-Mississippi order book, 1862-1864: Brigadier-General John S. Marmaduke

Florida's Step Into War

The first action of the Civil War in Florida occurred on January 6th 1861.

This was when a unit of militia from Quincy took the Federal arsenal near Appalachiancola, from a small garrison of Union soldiers. The Floridians forced their way into the arsenal, but no shots were fired. The Confederates used the facilities as a training camp.

First In, Last Out

When the Civil War began, Delaware was only superficially a slave state, with just 3% of the population being slaves. Two weeks after South Carolina seceded, Delaware’s legislature voted on January 3rd 1861 not to seceded and to stay in the Union. The Governor said that Delaware was the first state to ratified the Constitution, and join the Union, and it would be the last to leave it. Most of the men who fought in the war served for the Union, in the Delaware State regiments. Those who fought for the Confederacy went to Maryland or Virginia. Delaware was the only slave holding state in which no Confederate regiments or militia was raised.

Also good reading
http://www.bessel.org/cwlr/delaware.htm

The Old War Horse

One of the principal Confederate Generals James Longstreet died on this day in 1904. He was born January 8th 1821 in the Edgefield District of SC. He was the fifth child of James and Mary Ann [Dent] Longstreet, who owned a cotton plantation near Gainesville. It was his father who felt a military career was the way James should go, and to get him the right education he was sent to live with an uncle in Augusta,GA, where he attended Richmond County Academy. He got an appointment to West Point in 1838, but was a poor student who ranked 54 out 56 cadets when he graduated in 1842. It was here that he made one of his closest friends, Ulysses S Grant who was a year behind him. They both saw service during the war with Mexico

Longstreet was General Robert E Lee’s “Old War Horse”, and saw action as a corp commander in the Army of Northern Virginia, and with General Braxton Bragg in the Army of Tennessee. There is still controversy over his role at Gettysburg and the disastrous assault known as Pickett’s Charge.

After the war Longstreet joined the Republican Party and found himself on wrong side of Southern politics, and it damaged his reputation. However through his old friend President Ulysses S Grant he enjoyed a career as a US Government civil servant, marshal and diplomat. He subsequently settled onto a 65 acre farm where he raised turkeys and had orchards and a vineyard. A fire there in April 1889 destroyed the house and many of his personal Civil War possessions. After long years of having his reputation trashed, Longstreet wrote his memoirs in 1896 “From Manassas to Appomattox where he refuted many of the arguments.

General Longstreet’s last years were spent in poor health from rheumatism and deafness. He developed Cancer in his right eye, and than came down with pneumonia. He died January 2nd 1904, and is buried in the Alta Vista Cemetery.

Some other good reading on the subject

http://www.discoveret.org/kcwrt/history/hlo-text.htm

http://www.nnp.org/nni/Publications/Dutch-American/longstreet.html

General James Longstreet: the Confederacy's Most Modern General

The Beginning of the Ending

A US federal law, the "Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves" went into effect on January 1, 1808. This legally ended the transatlantic slave trade. It was December 1805 when Senator Stephen Roe Bradley from Vermont, brought out a bill against the importation of certain persons therein described [the word slaves was added latter] into any port or place with in the United States after the first day of January 1808. President Thomas Jefferson signed the bill into law on March 3rd 1807. The fifteenth Congress changed the law, calling the act of importing slaves piracy, and said that any citizen of the US found guilty of such piracy could be given the death penalty. It would of course take another fifty-seven years and a war to end slavery.

Other reading
Speech of C.M. Clay of Fayette, in the House of Representatives of Kentucky: upon the bill to repeal the law of 1835, "to prohibit the importation of slaves into this state".