Created by spartans_christian on Apr 15, 2011
Last updated: 04/17/11 at 05:52 PM
civil war timeline has no followers yet. Be the first one to follow.
The next morning, the two schooners crossed the bar, took position, and began firing on the Confederate shore battery. The shots from both land and shore fell far short of the targets. The ships then moved nearer until their projectiles began to fall amongst the Confederate guns.
The Confederate cannons, however, still could not hit the ships. After dark, the Confederates evacuated, taking as much property as possible with them and spiking the four guns left behind.
On the morning of the 25th, the schooners moved up to the battery and destroyed it while Acting Master Frederick Crocker, commander of the expedition, received the surrender of the town.
Union control of Sabine Pass made later incursions into the interior possible.
http://americancivilwar.com/statepic/tx/tx001.html
On March 1865, a gentleman's agreement was struck to forgo fighting between Union and Confederate forces on the Rio Grande. In spite of this agreement, Col. Theodore H. Barrett, commanding forces at Brazos Santiago, Texas, dispatched 250 men of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment and 50 men of the 2nd Texas Cavalry Regiment under the command of Lt. Col. David Branson, to the mainland, on May 11, 1865, to attack Rebel outposts and camps.
www.buffalosoldier.net/PalmitoRanch,LastBattleoftheCivilWar.htm
The Red River Campaign or Red River Expedition consisted of a series of battles fought along the Red River in Louisiana during the American Civil War from March 10 to May 22, 1864. The campaign was a Union initiative, fought between approximately 30,000 Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, and Confederate troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, whose strength varied from 6,000 to 15,000.
The campaign was primarily the plan of Union General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck, and a diversion from Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's plan to surround the main Confederate armies by using Banks's Army of the Gulf to capture Mobile, Alabama. It was a dismal Union failure, characterized by poor planning and mismanagement, in which not a single objective was fully accomplished. Taylor successfully defended the Red River Valley with a smaller force. However, the decision of Taylor's immediate superior, General Edmund Kirby Smith to send half of Taylor's force north to Arkansas rather than south in pursuit of the retreating Banks after the Battle of Mansfield and the Battle of Pleasant Hill, led to bitter enmity between Taylor and Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Campaign
This most famous and most important Civil War Battle occurred over three hot summer days, July 1 to July 3, 1863, around the small market town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It began as a skirmish but by its end involved 160,000 Americans.
Before the battle, major cities in the North such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and even Washington were under threat of attack from General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia which had crossed the Potomac River and marched into Pennsylvania.
The Union Army of the Potomac under its very new and untried commander, General George G. Meade, marched to intercept Lee.
ADVERTISEMENT
On Tuesday morning, June 30, an infantry brigade of Confederate soldiers searching for shoes headed toward Gettysburg (population 2,400). The Confederate commander looked through his field glasses and spotted a long column of Federal cavalry heading toward the town. He withdrew his brigade and informed his superior, Gen. Henry Heth, who in turn told his superior, A.P. Hill, he would go back the following morning and "get those shoes."
http://www.historyplace.com/civilwar/battle.htm
Early on April 9, the remnants of John Broun Gordon’s corps and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry formed line of battle at Appomattox Court House. Gen. Robert E. Lee determined to make one last attempt to escape the closing Union pincers and reach his supplies at Lynchburg. At dawn the Confederates advanced, initially gaining ground against Sheridan’s cavalry. The arrival of Union infantry, however, stopped the advance in its tracks. Lee’s army was now surrounded on three sides. Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9. This was the final engagement of the war in Virginia.
http://www.nps.gov/hps/abpp/battles/va097.htm
On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
From mid-Oct. 1862, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made several attempts to take Vicksburg. Following failures in the first attempts, the Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs, the Yazoo Pass Expedition, and Steele's Bayou Expedition, in the spring of 1863 he prepared to cross his troops from the west bank of the Mississippi River to a point south of Vicksburg and drive against the city from the south and east. Commanding Confederate batteries at Port Hudson, La., farther south prevented the transportation of waterborne supply and any communication from Union forces in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Naval support for his campaign would have to come from Rear Adm. David D. Porter's fleet north of Vicksburg. Running past the powerful Vicksburg batteries, Porter's vessels, once south of the city, could ferry Federals to the east bank. There infantry would face 2 Confederate forces, one under Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton at Vicksburg and another around Jackson, Miss., soon to be commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston.
In Jan. 1863 Grant organized his force into the XI Corps under Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand, the XV Corps under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, the XVI Corps under Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, and the XVII Corps under Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson. Simultaneous with Grant's Vicksburg offensive, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks began his maneuvering along the Red River in Louisiana. Hurlbut's corps was subsequently transferred to New Orleans. With his 3 remaining corps, Grant began operations late in March. On the 29th and 30th McClernand's and McPherson's men, at Milliken's Bend and Lake Providence, northwest of Vicksburg, began working their way south, building a military road to New Carthage, La., preparatory to a move south to Hard Times, La., a village opposite Bruinsburg, Miss.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/battleofvicksburg.htm
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/
In the fall of 1862, Union Commodore William B. Renshaw sailed into Galveston harbor and demanded the surrender of the island city by its occupants. With virtually no defense force, the Confederate commander on the island, Colonel Joseph J. Cook, had little choice but to comply.
About the same time in late 1862, Major General John B. Magruder was named Confederate commander of the District of Texas. Upon arriving in Houston, Magruder immediately began making plans to recapture Galveston. To implement his plan, Magruder outfitted the decks of two river steamers, the Bayou City and the Neptune, with bails of cotton. The compressed cotton would be used to protect an on-board attack force to challenge the Federal fleet in Galveston harbor. A land force would also be used in a joint land-sea attack.
On New Years Eve, the Confederate Cottonclads, as the curious looking vessels were called, threaded their way from Harrisburg, through Galveston Bay, and toward the western entrance to Galveston harbor.
http://www.lsjunction.com/events/galvestn.htm
For many southerners, the election of Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1860 was equivalent to a declaration of war on the South. A few, including Texas' aging Governor Sam Houston, argued against secession. They proclaimed the benefits of mediation and compromise. Further, if Texas did separate from the Union, Houston reasoned, she would fare better as an independent republic than as a member of the Confederacy.
Houston's views, however, carried little weight among the secessionists in the state, who were clearly in the majority. But by refusing to call the legislature into session, the increasingly unpopular Houston temporarily blocked his opponents from any official action.
The secessionists countered Houston's maneuver by calling on the people of Texas to elect delegates to a Session Convention to meet in Austin. Their purpose was to consider what action Texas should take on the secession issue in light of the recent sequence of events. As a result, a total of 177 delegates were elected, representing two members from almost every county.
The convention met on January 28, 1861. Four days later, on February 1, it's members voted by a margin of 166 to 8 to secede. They drafted and signed an Ordinance of Secession, which "repealed and annulled" the Texas annexation laws of 1845. The Ordinance of Secession was subsequently approved by popular vote in a statewide election.
http://www.lsjunction.com/events/conv1861.htm
On April 10, 1861, Brig. Gen. Beauregard, in command of the provisional Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, demanded the surrender of the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Garrison commander Anderson refused. On April 12, Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort, which was unable to reply effectively. At 2:30 pm, April 13, Major Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter, evacuating the garrison on the following day. The bombardment of Fort Sumter was the opening engagement of the American Civil War. Although there were no casualties during the bombardment, one Union artillerist was killed and three wounded (one mortally) when a cannon exploded prematurely while firing a salute during the evacuation on April 14.
http://www.nps.gov/hps/abpp/battles/sc001.htm
Update Sources