Click 👉TODAY IN HISTORY (general history) Jan. 27.
ON THIS DAY IN CONFEDERATE HISTORY, Jan. 27.
1863: The Confederate Fort McAllister in Georgia undergoes a day-long bombardment by the Federal ironclad USS Montauk. The Yankee warship was firing from the Ogeechee River.
1864: General Braxton Bragg is called by President Davis to Richmond, Virginia if he is well. Bragg had failed miserably in the aftermath of his victory at the Battle of Chickamauga, Ga. in the debacle at the Battle of Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863. Bragg resigned on Nov. 29, 1863, and Davis immediately accepted it. The president then gave Bragg a desk job as a military adviser.
1865: There is fighting between Confederates and Federals at DeKalb, Alabama. The Federals had been foraging in the area and Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest sent a detachment to suppress them. The Confederates caught the foragers in an ambush. Several bluecoats were wounded, and the rest retreated and got away on their horses.
CONFEDERATE GENERAL BIRTHDAYS, Jan. 27.
Lieutenant General Richard Taylor was born on this day in 1826 in Louisville, Kentucky. He was the son of General and President Zachary Taylor and was raised largely on the frontier at army posts where his father was stationed. He attended Harvard College and graduated from Yale. Taylor was also an avid reader of classical and military history. He had no military training or experience, except as a volunteer aide-de-camp for his father during the Mexican American War. He settled into running the family plantations. His older sister, Sarah Knox Taylor, married Jefferson Davis but the marriage ended in a tragedy three months later when she died of illness. Taylor was elected to the Louisiana Legislature from 1855 to 1861. He represented St. Charles Parish at the Louisiana Secession Convention and voted for secession. In the War for Southern Independence, after serving as a volunteer on the staff of Braxton Bragg at the beginning of the war, he was commissioned the colonel of the 9th Louisiana Infantry. His regiment was too late to take part in the First Battle of Manassas. President Davis promoted Taylor to brigadier general on Oct. 21, 1861, and was given command of the First Louisiana Brigade. He led it with distinction in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862. He was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and missed the Seven Days Battles. Taylor received a promotion to major general on July 28, 1862, and was given command of the District of Western Louisiana. He had to build his army practically from scratch but was able to patch together some veteran regiments as a base and built it up to a crack fighting force. Greatly outnumbered, he had to use Fabian tactics against the enemy but by 1864 was able to defeat the Federals in the Red River Campaign of 1864. Taylor was promoted to lieutenant general and was put in command of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana in the final days of the war. He surrendered his department about a month after Appomattox. Afterward, he lived in New Orleans and wrote one of the best wartime memoirs, Destruction and Reconstruction, which has been much quoted by historians ever since. He died April 12, 1879, of dropsy and was buried at Metairie Cemetery.
Brigadier General William Henry Fitzhugh Payne, in 1830, Fauquier County, Virginia. He attended the Virginia Military Institute for one year and studied law at the University of Virginia. Payne practiced law in Warrenton, Virginia. He also served as the Commonwealth's Attorney for Fauquier County for a few years. At the beginning of the war, he volunteered as a private but later he became a captain in the Black Horse Cavalry. Payne was promoted to major in the 4th Virginia Cavalry and commanded the regiment in the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862 where he was severely wounded and captured. After being exchanged, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and fought at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and was captured at the Battle of Hanover Station. Payne was again exchanged and promoted to brigadier general and led a brigade in Early's Valley Campaign of 1864, and afterward was severely wounded at the Battle of Five Forks in 1865. Following the war, Payne practiced law in Virginia, and served as the general counsel for the Southern Railway Company and in the Virginia legislature. He died March 29, 1904, in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Warrenton City Cemetery.
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