Click 👉Today in History (general history) Aug. 21.
On This Day in Confederate History, Aug. 21.
1863: Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Kansas occurred on this day. Captain William Clarke Quantrill with 450 partisan rangers, called guerillas by the enemy, attacked Lawrence, Kansas in retaliation for attacks by Federal raiders under James H. Lane's Jayhawkers who were headquartered there. Female family members of some of Quantrill's men had been arrested and imprisoned in a building in Kansas City, Mo. The building collapsed and killed four of the young women were killed and others were seriously injured and/or crippled. The Jayhawkers had also burned Osceola, Mo. Quantrill's partisan rangers struck Lawrence the morning of the 21st but Lane escaped through a cornfield in his nightshirt. The raid was over by 9 o'clock that morning with 150 men and boys old enough to carry firearms dead and most of the town burning. The North labeled the raid as a "massacre."
1864: The weather has cleared for the third and last day of the Battle of Globe Tavern, Va., and finds the Federals safely in the new earthworks. The Confederates under Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood and Brig. Gen. John C.C. Sanders of Mahone's Division launched attacks on the Federals in their earthworks and were repulsed. Among the dead was young General Sanders, who was just 24 years old. The Confederates withdrew leaving the Federals in control of the three miles of Weldon Railroad, thus cutting that rail line to Richmond and Petersburg. However, the Confederates soon established a wagon train supply line to get their vital supplies to those cities. Federal casualties for the three-day battle were 251 killed, 1,148 wounded and 2,897 missing or captured. The Confederates lost 211 men killed, 990 wounded, and 419 missing or captured.
Confederate General Birthdays, Aug. 21.
Brigadier General William Barksdale was born on this day in 1821 in Rutherford County, Tennessee. Before the war, he was an attorney in Mississippi, editor of a newspaper, congressman, and a committed secessionist. When the War for Southern Independence erupted, Barksdale resigned from the U.S. Congress and accepted a position as quartermaster general in the Mississippi Militia. He was appointed a colonel of the 13th Mississippi Infantry on May 1, 1861, and participated in the battles of First Manassas and Balls Bluff. In 1862, he fought in the Peninsula Campaign, the battles of Savage Station, Malvern Hill (and was promoted to brigadier general on Aug. 12, 1862), Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Fredericksburg. In 1863, he led his brigade at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Barksdale was then mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1862, leading his Mississippians in a famous charge in the Peach Orchard sector. He was captured and died on July 3, 1863. Barksdale was buried in his family plot without a marker in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Miss. There are cenotaphs to his memory at both that cemetery and Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Miss.
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