Click 👉TODAY IN HISTORY (general history) Feb. 23.
ON THIS DAY IN CONFEDERATE HISTORY, Feb. 23.
1861: Texas voters validated Texas' secession by a pro-secession vote of 46,129 to 14,697. Governor Sam Houston campaigned against secession, but voters decided otherwise. The vote became official on March 2, 1861, and the Secession Convention authorized the state to apply for admission to the Confederacy. Texas supplies some 70,000 men to the Confederate armies during the war including some of its most famous units. The Federals never conquer Texas but there were small incursions along the coast. Although the battles were small, Galveston, and Sabine Pass in 1863 were important and Palmito Ranch was the very last battle of the war.
1863: Confederate forces skirmish with Federals in Athens, Kentucky, and Fort Caswell, North Carolina.
1865: Carolinas Campaign: Confederates forces skirmished with Sherman's bummers near Camden, South Carolina. Sherman had about 60,000 men in two armies to carry out the Federal scorched earth policy against the people of the South while the Confederate forces were scattered, and the Confederate government was debating about reappointing Gen. Joseph E. Johnston to rebuild the army to give serious resistance to Sherman. Vice President Alexander Stephens was urging Gen. Robert E. Lee to appoint Johnston, but Lee would only go so far as to recommend him to President Davis, but Davis still had misgivings about Johnston.
CONFEDERATE GENERAL BIRTHDAYS, Feb. 23.
Brigadier-General Gilbert Moxley Sorrell was born on this day in 1838 in Savannah, Georgia. At the beginning of the war, he was a bank clerk in Savannah and enlisted as a private in the Georgia Hussars of the State Militia. Sorrell participated in the capture of Fort Pulaski, Georgia. He secured a position on Brig. Gen. James Longstreet's staff July 21, 1861, at the First Battle of Manassas, Va. He has commissioned a captain on Sept. 11, 1861, was promoted to lieutenant colonel on June 24, 1862, and lieutenant colonel on June 18, 1863. He served on Longstreet's staff until October 1864 when he was appointed a brigadier general and commanded an infantry brigade in Mahone's Division. Sorrell's battles were First Manassas, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Hatcher's Run. Following the war, he became an executive with the Ocean Steamship Company and served on the board of directors for the Georgia Historical Society. Sorrell died Aug. 10, 1901, in Roanoke, Va., and was buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia.
Major General Jeremy Francis Gilmer was born on this day in 1818 in Guilford County, North Carolina. He graduated in 1839 fourth in his class at West Point and was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers as a second lieutenant. He was then an assistant professor of engineering at West Point. Gilmer was next assigned to Fort Schuyler, N.Y. Harbor in 1840. In the Mexican-American War, Gilmer was the Chief Engineer of the Army of the West in the New Mexico Territory and surveyed battlefields near Mexico City. After that war, Gilmer had engineering assignments in Georgia and California. During the War for Southern Independence, he left the U.S. Army and joined the Confederate Army. He served as the chief engineer on Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston's staff as a lieutenant colonel. Gilmer was severely wounded at the Battle of Shiloh, Tenn. When he recovered from his wound, he was promoted to brigadier general and made chief engineer for the Army of Northern Virginia in August 1862 stationed in Richmond, Va. A year later he was promoted to major general and made the Chief of the Engineer Bureau of the Confederacy. He also worked on the defenses of Atlanta, Ga., and Mobile, Ala. Following the war, Gilmer became president and engineer of the Savannah, Ga. Gas Company and director of the Georgia Central Railroad. Gilmer died Dec. 31, 1883, in Savannah and was buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery there.
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