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Highlights ~ American Civil War 1864
APRIL 12, 1864 The Fort Pillow Massacre
During the American Civil War, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest's Confederate raiders attack the isolated Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, overlooking the Mississippi River. The fort, an important part of the Confederate river defense system, was captured by federal forces in 1862. Of the 500-strong Union garrison defending the fort, more than half the soldiers were African-Americans.
After an initial bombardment, General Forrest asked for the garrison's surrender. The Union commander refused, and Forrest's 1,500 cavalry troopers easily stormed and captured the fort, suffering only moderate casualties. However, the extremely high proportion of Union casualties--231 killed and more than 100 seriously wounded--raised questions about the Confederates' conduct after the battle. Union survivors' accounts, later supported by a federal investigation, concluded that African-American troops were massacred by Forrest's men after surrendering. Southern accounts disputed these findings, and controversy over the battle continues today.
The enlistment of African-Americans into the Union army began after the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and by the war's end 180,000 African Americans had fought in the Union army and 10,000 in the navy.
May 11, 1864 Confederate Cavalry General J.E.B. Stuart is mortally wounded
A dismounted Union trooper fatally wounds J.E.B. Stuart, one of the most colorful generals of the South, at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, just six miles north of Richmond. Stuart died the next day.
During the 1864 spring campaign in Virginia, General Ulysses S. Grant applied constant pressure on Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. In early May, the two armies clashed in the Wilderness and again at Spotsylvania Court House as they lurched southward toward Richmond. Meanwhile, Grant sent General Phil Sheridan and his cavalry on a raid deep behind Confederate lines. The plan was to cut Lee's supply line and force him out of the trenches in retreat. Sheridan's troops wreaked havoc on the Rebel rear as they tore up railroad tracks, destroyed supply depots, and held off the Confederate cavalry in several engagements, including the Battle of Yellow Tavern.
Although Sheridan's Federal troops held the field at the end of the day, his forces were stretched thin. Richmond could be taken, Sheridan wrote later, but it could not be held. He began to withdraw back to the north.
The death of Stuart was a serious blow to Lee. He was a great cavalry leader, and his leadership was part of the reason the Confederates had a superior cavalry force in Virginia during most of the war. Yet Stuart was not without his faults: He had been surprised by a Union attack at the Battle of Brandy Station in 1863, and failed to provide Lee with crucial information at Gettysburg. Stuart's death, like Stonewall Jackson's the year before, seriously affected Lee's operations.
May 12, 1864: Bloody day at the Bloody Angle
Close-range firing and hand-to-hand combat at Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, result in one of the most brutal battles of the Civil War. After the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5-6), Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee raced respective Union and Confederate forces southward. Grant aimed his army a dozen miles southeast of the Wilderness, toward the critical crossroads of Spotsylvania Court House. Sensing Grant's plan, Lee sent part of his army on a furious night march to secure the road junction before the Union soldiers got there. The Confederates soon constructed a five-mile long system of entrenchments in the shape of an inverted U.
On May 10, Grant began to attack Lee's position at Spotsylvania. After achieving a temporary breakthrough at the Rebel center, Grant was convinced that a weakness existed there, as the bend of the Confederate line dispersed their fire. At dawn on May 12, Union General Winfield Scott Hancock's troops emerged from the fog and overran the Rebel trenches, taking nearly 3,000 prisoners and more than a dozen cannons. While the Yankees erupted in celebration, the Confederates counterattacked and began to drive the Federals back. The battle raged for over 20 hours along the center of the Confederate line—the top of the inverted U—which became known as the "Bloody Angle." Lee's men eventually constructed a second line of defense behind the original Rebel trenches, and fighting ceased just before dawn on May 13.
Around the Bloody Angle, the dead lay five deep, and bodies had to be moved from the trenches to make room for the living. The action around Spotsylvania shocked even the grizzled veterans of the two great armies. Said one officer, "I never expect to be fully believed when I tell what I saw of the horrors of Spotsylvania."
And yet the battle was not done; the armies slugged it out for another week. In spite of his losses, Grant persisted, writing to General Henry Halleck in Washington, "I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
May 15, 1864: Battle of New Market, Virginia
On this day, students from the Virginia Military Institute take part in the Battle of New Market, part of the multipronged Union offensive in the spring of 1864 designed to take Virginia out of the war. Central to this campaign was Ulysses S. Grant's epic struggle with Robert E. Lee around Richmond.
Union General Franz Sigel had been sent to apply pressure on a key agricultural region, the Shenandoah Valley. He marched south out of Winchester in early May to neutralize the valley, which was always a threat to the North. The Shenandoah was not only a breadbasket that supplied Southern armies, it also led to the Potomac north of Washington. The Confederates had used the valley very effectively in 1862, when Stonewall Jackson kept three Federal armies occupied while keeping pressure off of Richmond.
But the Confederates were hard pressed to offer any opposition to Sigel's 6,500 troops. Lee was struggling against Grant and was badly outnumbered. He instructed John Breckinridge to drive Sigel from the valley but could offer him little in the way of troops to do the job. Breckinridge mustered a force of regular troops and militia units and pulled together 5,300 men. They included 247 cadets from the nearby Virginia Military Institute, some of the boys just 15 years old.
On May 15, Breckinridge attacked Sigel's troops at New Market. Sigel fell back a half mile, reformed his lines, and began to shell the Confederate center. It was at this juncture that Breckinridge reluctantly sent the VMI cadets into battle. The young students were part of an attack that captured two Yankee guns. Nine of the cadets were killed and 48 were wounded, but Sigel suffered a humiliating defeat and began to withdraw from the valley.
The courage of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market became legendary, and the pressure was temporarily off of the Rebels in the Shenandoah Valley. Breckinridge was able to send part of his force east to reinforce Lee.
June 19, 1864 - Confederate raider C.S.S. Alabama sunk.
Off the coast of Cherbourg, France, the Confederate raider CSS Alabama loses a ship-to-ship duel with the USS Kearsarge and sinks to the floor of the Atlantic, ending an illustrious career that saw some 68 Union merchant vessels destroyed or captured by the Confederate raider.
At the outset of the Civil War, the Union began an increasingly successful blockade of Southern ports and coasts, crippling the economies of the Confederate states. In retaliation, Confederate raiders, outfitted in the South and abroad, launched an effective guerrilla war at sea against Union merchant shipping. In 1862, the CSS Alabama, a 1,000-ton screw-steam sloop of war, was built at Liverpool, England, for the Confederate Navy. Britain had proclaimed neutrality in the Civil War but was sympathetic to the Southern cause and gave tacit aid to the Confederacy in the opening years of the conflict. Before the Alabama was put to sea, the Union government learned of its construction, but the protestations of the U.S. ambassador did not prevent it from sailing from Liverpool. After leaving British waters disguised as a merchant ship, the Alabama was outfitted as a combatant by supply ships and placed in commission on August 24, 1862.
The CSS Alabama was captained by Raphael Semmes of Mobile, Alabama, who as commander of the Confederate raider Sumter had captured 17 Union merchant ships earlier in the war. The warship was manned by an international crew--about half Southerners, half Englishmen--and rounded out by a handful of other Europeans and even a few Northerners. Leaving sunk and burned U.S. merchant ships in its wake, the Alabama cruised the North Atlantic and West Indies, rounded Africa, and visited the East Indies before redoubling the Cape of Good Hope back to Europe. By the time the Alabama docked at Cherbourg for a badly needed overhaul on June 11, 1864, it had inflicted immense damage on the seaborne trade of the United States, destroying 60-odd U.S. merchant ships during its two-year rampage.
The USS Kearsarge, a steam-sloop that had been pursuing the Alabama, learned of its presence at Cherbourg and promptly steamed to the French port. On June 14, the Kearsarge arrived and took up a patrol just outside the harbor. After being fitted and stocked over five more days, the Alabama steamed out to meet its foe on June 19. A French ironclad lurked nearby to ensure that the combat remained in international waters.
After an initial exchange of gunfire, the battle quickly turned against the Alabama, whose deteriorated gunpowder and shells failed to penetrate the Kearsarge's chain-cable armor. Within an hour, the Alabama was reduced to a sinking wreck. Captain Semmes tried to retreat back to Cherbourg, but his way was blocked by the Kearsarge, and he was forced to strike his colors. The crew abandoned ship, and the Alabama went down into the Channel. The survivors were rescued by the Kearsarge and the British yacht Deerhound, which had been observing the battle. Those picked up by the latter, including Semmes and most of his officers, were taken to England and thus escaped arrest.
After traveling to Switzerland for a much-needed rest, Semmes returned to the Confederacy via Mexico. Appointed a rear admiral, he helped command the Confederate Navy in Virginia's James River. After the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, he returned to Mobile to practice law and write about his war experiences. After years of U.S. protests, the British finally agreed in 1871 to take responsibility for the damages caused by British-built Confederate raiders. In 1872, an international arbitration panel ordered Britain to pay the United States $15.5 million in damages, of which more than $6,000,000 was inflicted by the Alabama.
June 27, 1864; Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
On this day in 1864, Union General William T. Sherman launches a major attack on Confederate General Joseph Johnston's army at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia.
Beginning in early May, Sherman began a slow advance down the 100-mile corridor from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Atlanta, refraining from making any large-scale assaults. The campaign was marked by many smaller battles and constant skirmishes but no decisive encounters. Johnston was losing ground, but he was also buying time for the Confederates. With Sherman frustrated in Georgia, and Ulysses S. Grant unable to knock out Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia, the Union war effort was stalled, casualty rates were high, and the re-election of Abraham Lincoln appeared unlikely.
In the days leading up to the assault at Kennesaw Mountain, Sherman tried to flank Johnston. Since one of Johnston's generals, John Bell Hood, attacked at Kolb's Farm and lost 1,500 precious Confederate soldiers, Sherman believed that Johnston's line was stretched thin and that an assault would break the Rebels. So he changed his tactics and planned a move against the center of the Confederate lines around Kennesaw Mountain. He feigned attacks on both of Johnston's flanks, then hurled 8,000 men at the Confederate center. It was a disaster. Entrenched Southerners bombarded the Yankees, who were attacking uphill. Three thousand Union troops fell, compared to just 500 Confederates.
The battle was only a marginal Confederate victory. Sherman remained in place for four more days, but one of the decoy attacks on the Confederate flanks did, in fact, place the Union troops in a position to cut into Johnston's rear. On July 2, Johnston had to vacate his Kennesaw Mountain lines and retreat toward Atlanta. Sherman followed, and the slow campaign lurched on into the Georgia summer.
July 7, 1864 General Jubal Early's Washington Raid
In an attempt to draw off some of the Union army pursuing Lee in Virginia and assaulting the important depot of Petersburg, Lee assigned irascible Confederate General Jubal Early to undertake a back-door raid on the federal capital of Washington, DC. Early's virulent disposition as well as his passionate loyalty to the Southern cause made him the ideal candidate for such a daring raid.
Early accomplished this by crossing the Potomac north of Washington, and then methodically working his way south through week defenses until he found his army within attack range of the city's surrounding defenses.
Early's march had initially been cheered on by Marylanders who favored the secessionists. But as Early's troops looted and burned the surrounding countryside, local passions turned against them. Spending the night in (now suburban) Rockville, Maryland, Early was determined to march on, and destroy the Capitol the following day. However, the defenses surrounding Washington were well manned, and an urgent appeal to Gen Grant went out to send additional troops.
The skirmishes and battles lasted several days, with the final thrust being against Fort Stevens. President Lincoln, known for his unpredictability and curiosity, liked to show up unannounced at the fort to see how the battle was going. Never one to shirk from danger, this tall president, wearing his tall beaver stovepipe hat, climbed the top battlements to get a better idea of how war was fought and whether Washington was in serious danger. His distinctive outline immediately attracted the sharpshooters in Early's forces, and they showered him with lead.
According to one legend, Lincoln was hauled off the parapet by a federal Captain named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who, not knowing the identity of the civilian, shouted, "Get down here, you damn fool! They're going to kill you!"
By July 12, reinforced federal troops finally pushed Early far enough back to claim the battlefield. The president and VIPs had watched the battle and were impressed, although many of them had never seen the aftermath of a battle -- hundreds of dead bodies and groaning, screaming wounded.
Late that evening as they retreated toward Virginia, one of Early's staff officers overheard Early, "...equipped in his falsetto drawl: 'Major, we haven't taken Washington, but we've scared Abe Lincoln like hell!'" Another officer suggested that "this afternoon when that Yankee line moved out against us, I think some other people were scared hell as hell's brimstone!" To which Early replied, with a laugh, "That's true but it won't appear in history."
Both armies, following the battle, laid waste to civilian property and leveled farms and manors...without any attempt to compensate the innocent civilians involved.
Thus ended a brutal battle that has been consigned in history books as a "skirmish."
July 30, 1864 - During the siege of Petersburg : Battle of the Crater
On this day, the Union's ingenious attempt to break the Confederate lines at Petersburg by blowing up a tunnel that had been dug under the Rebel trenches fails. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly planned Yankee attack wasted the effort and the result was an eight-month continuation of the siege.
The bloody campaign between Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate Robert E. Lee ground to a halt in mid-June, when the two armies dug in at Petersburg, south of Richmond. For the previous six weeks, Grant had pounded away at Lee, producing little results other than frightful casualties. A series of battles and flanking maneuvers brought Grant to Petersburg, where he opted for a siege rather than another costly frontal assault.
In late June, a Union regiment from the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry began digging a tunnel under the Rebel fortifications. The soldiers, experienced miners from Pennsylvania's anthracite coal regions, dug for nearly a month to construct a horizontal shaft over 500 feet long. At the end of the tunnel, they ran two drifts, or side tunnels, totaling 75 feet along the Confederate lines to maximize the destruction. Four tons of gunpowder filled the drifts, and the stage was set.
Union soldiers lit the fuse before dawn on July 30. The explosion that came just before 5:00 a.m. blew up a Confederate battery and most of one infantry regiment, creating a crater 170 feet long, 60 to 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. As one Southern soldier wrote, "Several hundred yards of earth work with men and cannon was literally hurled a hundred feet in the air." However, the Union was woefully unprepared to exploit the gap. The Yankees were slow to exit the trenches, and when they did the 15,000 attacking troops ran into the crater rather than around it. Part of the Rebel line was captured, but the Confederates that gathered from each side fired down on the Yankees. The Union troops could not maintain the beachhead, and by early afternoon they retreated back to their original trenches.
This failure led to finger pointing among the Union command. General Ambrose Burnside, the corps commander of the troops involved, had ordered regiments from the United States Colored Troops to lead the attack, but the commander of the Army of the Potomac, George G. Meade, nixed that plan shortly before the attack was scheduled. Fearing that it may be perceived as a ploy to use African-American soldiers as cannon fodder, Meade ordered that white troops lead the charge. With little time for training, General James H. Ledlie was left to command the attack.
The Battle of the Crater essentially marked the end of Burnside's military career, and on April 15, 1865, he resigned from the army.
August 5, 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" When Union Rear Adm. David Farragut gave one of history’s most famous military orders, he was talking about the kind of torpedo that the Confederate submarine HL Hunley used to sink the U.S.S. Housatonic on February 17 1864. Not torpedoes as we now think of them—sleek underwater missiles—but rather mines of black powder.
While the Hunley was attempting to break the Union blockade of Charleston Harbor in February 1864, the Confederacy was still shipping and receiving vital supplies through the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile Bay, Alabama. To capture the forts that guarded the bay, Farragut’s fleet of 18 ships closed in on August 5, 1864.
The Confederates had mined the bay’s narrow channel with torpedoes that floated just below the surface. The lead Union ship, an ironclad monitor, struck one and instantly sank. The lead wooden ship, a steam sloop, halted, throwing the column of warships into confusion. Farragut ordered his flagship, the Hartford, to steam to the head of the fleet—the torpedoes, and the consequences, be damned.
Union Admiral David Farragut leads his flotilla through the Confederate defenses at Mobile, Alabama, to seal one of the last major Southern ports. The fall of Mobile Bay was a huge blow to the Confederacy, and the victory was the first in a series of successes that secured the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
Mobile became the major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico after the fall of New Orleans, Louisiana, in April 1862. With blockade runners carrying critical supplies from Havana, Cuba, into Mobile, Union General Ulysses S. Grant made the capture of the port a top priority after assuming command of all Federal forces in early 1864.
Opposing Farragut's force of 18 warships was a Rebel squadron of only four ships; but it included the C.S.S. Tennessee, said to be the most powerful ironclad afloat. Farragut also had to contend with two powerful Confederate batteries inside of Forts Morgan and Gaines. On the morning of August 5, Farragut's force steamed into the mouth of Mobile Bay in two columns led by four ironclads and met a devastating fire that immediately sank one of Farragut's wooden frigates, the U.S.S. Tecumseh. The rest of the fleet fell into confusion but Farragut rallied them with the words, "Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!" Although the authenticity of the quote is questionable, it nevertheless became one of the most famous in history.
The Yankee fleet quickly knocked out the smaller Confederate ships, but the Tennessee fought a valiant battle against overwhelming odds before it sustained heavy damage and surrendered. The Union laid siege to Forts Morgan and Gaines, and both were captured within two weeks. Confederate forces remained in control of the city of Mobile, but the port was no longer available to blockade runners.
The Battle of Mobile Bay lifted the morale of the North. With Grant stalled at Petersburg, Virginia, and General William T. Sherman unable to capture Atlanta, the capture of the bay became the first in a series of Union victories that stretched to the fall election.
August 25, 1864 Battle of Ream's Station, Virginia
Confederate troops secure a vital supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, when they halt destruction of the Weldon and Petersburg Railroad by Union troops.
The railroad, which ran from Weldon, North Carolina, was a major supply line for General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. For more than two months, Lee had been under siege at Petersburg by General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac. Grant had tried to cut the rail line in June and again in August. On August 18, his troops succeeded in capturing a section of the track, but the Confederates simply began to stop the trains further south of Petersburg and haul the supplies by wagon into the city.
Grant responded by ordering his troops to tear up the track and move further south. Soldiers from General Winfield Hancock's corps tore up eight miles of rail, but Lee moved quickly to halt the operation. On August 25, General Ambrose P. Hill's infantry and General Wade Hampton's cavalry were ordered to attack the Federals at Ream's Station, and they drove the Yankees into defensive positions. The Union earthworks, hastily constructed the day before, were arranged in a square shape that was too small and so Confederate shells easily passed over the top. The green troop in Union General John Gibbon's division was unnerved by the bombardment, and a Confederate attack broke through the Yankee lines. The Union force retreated in disarray.
Hancock's corps lost 2,700 men, most of whom were captured during the retreat. Hill and Hampton lost just 700. The battle was a stinging defeat for Hancock's proud Second Corps, which had held the Union line against Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, and was considered among the best in the Army of the Potomac. Gibbon and Hancock blamed each other for the disaster, and both soon left their positions in the Second Corps.
September 4, 1864 John Hunt Morgan is killed
An amazing career ends when feared Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan is killed during a Union cavalry raid on the town of Greenville, Tennessee.
An Alabama native, Morgan grew up in Kentucky and attended Transylvania University before being expelled for poor behavior. He served under Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War and became a successful hemp manufacturer in Kentucky afterwards. Morgan was a strong sympathizer with the Southern cause in the 1850s, and moved to Alabama when Kentucky did not secede from the Union.
After joining the Confederate Army, Morgan quickly became a colonel in the cavalry. He fought at Shiloh and soon became famous for his cavalry raids. In one year, starting in July 1862, Morgan made four spectacular raids on Union-held territory. In the first raid, Morgan rode 1,000 miles around Kentucky, disrupting Yankee supply lines and capturing 1,200 Union soldiers. His force, consisting of as many as 1,800 troopers, traveled light and lived off the land. By December 1862, Morgan's raids had successfully diverted 20,000 Union troops in order to secure supply lines and communications networks.
His fourth raid was the most dramatic, but it ended in disaster. Leaving Tennessee in July 1863 with 2,400 men, Morgan headed again for Kentucky. This time, he continued northward into the Union states. Morgan's force swept through southern Indiana and Ohio before heading back to the Ohio River, but Union troops blocked his passage back to Kentucky, and Yankee cavalry chased him into northeastern Ohio. He and the remnants of his force were trapped, and they surrendered at Salineville, Ohio, on July 26.
Morgan and his officers were incarcerated at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. On November 23, 1863, he and some of his men tunneled out of the prison and escaped to the South. He returned to duty and commanded the Department of Southwestern Virginia.
At the time of his death, Morgan was preparing for a raid on Knoxville, Tennessee. Alerted to his presence, Union cavalry attacked his headquarters at Greenville. Morgan was shot and killed while trying to join his men.
September 7, 1864 Atlanta is ordered evacuated
In preparation for his march to the sea, Union General William T. Sherman orders residents of Atlanta, Georgia, to evacuate the city.
Even though Sherman had just successfully captured Atlanta with minimal losses, he was worried about his supply lines, which stretched all the way to Louisville, Kentucky. With Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest on the loose, Sherman expected to have a difficult time maintaining an open line of communication and reasoned that he could not stay in Atlanta for long. The number of troops committed to guarding the railroad and telegraph lines was almost as many as he had with him in Atlanta.
For Sherman, the defeated residents of Atlanta could only hinder him in his preparations since they represented mouths to feed in addition to his own army. Furthermore, he did not want to bear responsibility for women and children in the midst of his army. Eviction of the residents was Sherman's most logical solution. He wrote, "I have deemed it to the interest of the United States that the citizens now residing in Atlanta should remove, those who prefer it to go South, and the rest North."
The mayor of Atlanta, James Calhoun, protested, but Sherman curtly replied, "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." The general provided transportation south of the city, where the refugees would be let loose near the defeated army of Confederate General John Bell Hood. Between September 11 and 16 some 446 families, about 1,600 people, left their homes and possessions. One young Atlanta woman, Mary Gay, lamented bitterly that her fellow citizens "were dumped out upon the cold ground without shelter and without any of the comforts of home." They had only the "cold charity of the world."
Sherman's order surely didn't win him any fans among the Southerners, but he was only starting to build his infamous reputation with the Confederates. In November, he embarked on his march to the sea, during which his army destroyed nearly everything that lay in its path.
September 27, 1864 Unarmed Yankees are massacred in Centralia
A guerilla band led by William "Bloody Bill" Anderson sacks the town of Centralia, Missouri, killing 22 unarmed Union soldiers before massacring 120 pursuing Yankees.
The Civil War in Missouri and Kansas was rarely fought between regular armies in the field. It was carried out primarily by partisan bands of guerilla fighters, and the atrocities were nearly unmatched. In 1863, Confederate marauders sacked Lawrence, Kansas, and killed 250 residents.
In 1864, partisan activity increased in anticipation of Confederate General Sterling Price's invasion of the state. On the evening of September 26, a band of 200 Confederate marauders gathered near the town of Centralia, Missouri. The next morning, Anderson led 30 guerillas into Centralia and began looting the tiny community and terrorizing the residents. Unionist congressmen William Rollins escaped execution only by giving a false name and hiding in a nearby hotel.
Meanwhile, a train from St. Louis was just pulling into the station. The engineer, who spotted Anderson's men destroying the town, tried to apply steam to keep the train moving. However, the brakeman, unaware of the raid, applied the brakes and brought the train to a halt. The guerillas took 150 prisoners from the train, which included 23 Union soldiers, and then set it on fire and opened its throttle; the flaming train sped away from the town. The soldiers were stripped and Anderson's men began firing on them, killing all but one within a few minutes. The surviving Yankee soldier was spared in exchange for a member of Anderson's company who had recently been captured.
That afternoon, a Union detachment commanded by Major A. V. E. Johnston arrived in Centralia to find the bushwhackers had already vacated the town. Johnston left some troops to hold the tiny burgh, and then headed in the direction of Anderson's band. Little did he know he was riding right into a perfect trap: Johnston's men followed Rebel pickets into an open field, and the Southern partisans attacked from three sides. Johnston and his entire command were quickly annihilated. Anderson's men scalped and mutilated many of the bodies before moving back into Centralia and killing the remaining Federal soldiers. In all, the bushwhackers killed some 140 Yankee troops.
A month later, Anderson was killed attempting a similar attack near Albany, Missouri.
October 1, 1864 Rose Greenhow dies
Confederate spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow drowns off the North Carolina coast when a Yankee craft runs her ship aground. She was returning from a trip to England.
At the beginning of the war, Maryland native Rose O'Neal Greenhow lived in Washington, D.C., with her four children. Her deceased husband was wealthy and well connected in the capital, and Greenhow used her influence to aid the Southern cause. Working with Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jordan, she established an elaborate spy network in Washington. The effectiveness of the operation was soon demonstrated when Greenhow received information concerning the movements of General Malcolm McDowell's army shortly before the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. A female courier carried messages from Greenhow to Confederate General Pierre G.T. Beauregard at his Fairfax, Virginia, headquarters. Beauregard later testified that because of the gained intelligence, he requested extra troops from General Joseph Johnston's nearby command, helping the Confederates score a dramatic victory against the Yankees in the first major battle of the war. Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent Greenhow a letter of appreciation the day after the battle.
Federal authorities soon learned of the security leaks, and the trail led to Greenhow's residence. She was placed under house arrest, and other suspected female spies were soon arrested and joined her there. The house, nicknamed "Fort Greenhow," still managed to produce information for the Rebels. When her good friend, Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson, visited Greenhow, he carelessly provided important intelligence that Greenhow slipped to her operatives. After five months, she and her youngest daughter, "Little Rose," were transferred to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. She was incarcerated until June 1862, when she went into exile in the South.
Greenhow and Little Rose spent the next two years in England. Greenhow penned a memoir titled My Imprisonment and traveled to England and France, drumming up support for the Southern cause. She then decided to return to the Confederacy to contribute more directly to the war effort. Greenhow and her daughter were on board the British blockade-runner Condor when it was intercepted by the U.S.S. Niphon off Cape Hattaras, North Carolina. The Yankee ship ran Condor aground near Forth Fischer. Greenhow was carrying Confederate dispatches and $2,000 in gold. Insisting that she be taken ashore, she boarded a small lifeboat that overturned in the rough surf. The weight of the gold pulled her under, and her body washed ashore the next morning. Greenhow was given a hero's funeral and buried in Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina, her body wrapped in the Confederate flag.
