Click 👉TODAY IN HISTORY (general history) March 18.
ON THIS DAY IN CONFEDERATE HISTORY, March 18.
1861: The Arkansas secession convention voted 39-35 against seceding from the Union. The Arkansas convention was led by unionists and held a unionist majority from the beginning. It does provide for a vote of the people on the issue later in the summer.
1862: President Jefferson Davis moved Judah Benjamin from his Secretary of War position to Secretary of State. Benjamin was much more able in his new cabinet post.
1863: Major General Franklin Gardner at Port Hudson, La. has his Confederates gather an enormous number of supplies and equipment from the retreating Northern Army of the Gulf. The riches are reportedly 15 wagon loads of supplies and livestock as well. The below picture of Pvt. Louis Cormier depicts the typical Confederate uniform issued to troops at Port Hudson and Vicksburg in 1863. A group picture of the Port Hudson shows most of those soldiers in the picture are wearing this type of uniform.
1864: Major General Richard Taylor on this day in the Red River Campaign keeps his Army of Western Louisiana stationary at a position 50 miles from Natchitoches while waiting for reinforcements. He especially needs cavalry to keep an eye on Federal forces which were gathering forces and supplies at Alexandria, Louisiana in the central part of the state.
1865: The Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Joseph E. Johnston at Bentonville, North Carolina gets ready to try to block Maj. Gen. W.T. Sherman's Federal juggernaut of 60,000 bummers who have been burning and looting their way across the Carolinas. Johnston has only about 21,000 Southern soldiers.
At Mobile, Alabama: Confederate forces under Maj. Gen. Dabney Maury with just 6,000 men, prepares for an attack by a Federal Army under Maj. Gen. E.R.S. Canby with 45,000 men. Major fortifications around the city include Fort Blakely under Brig. Gen. St. John Liddell and Spanish Fort under Brig. Gen. Randall L. Gibson.
CONFEDERATE GENERAL BIRTHDAYS, March 18.
Brigadier General William Robertson Boggs was born on this day in 1829 in Augusta, Georgia. He graduated from West Point in 1853 and ranked fourth in his class of 47 cadets. He got a choice assignment as a brevet second lieutenant in the Topographical Bureau. Despite his promising career, he only reached the rank of first lieutenant by 1861. He resigned from the U.S. Army when Georgia seceded and became a staff officer for General Braxton Bragg. Boggs was appointed Chief Engineer for Georgia in 1862, and in 1863 was promoted to brigadier general and became chief of staff for General E. Kirby Smith in the Trans-Mississippi Department. He resigned as chief of staff after quarreling with Smith and was temporarily commander of the District of Louisiana. He was awaiting orders in Houston when the war ended and he was paroled on June 9, 1865. Following the war, he was a railroad construction engineer, and a professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and died in Winston-Salem, N.C. Sept. 11, 1911, and was buried in Salem Cemetery.
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