Click 👉TODAY IN HISTORY (general history) April 12.
ON THIS DAY IN CONFEDERATE HISTORY, April 12.
1861: BATTLE OF FORT SUMTER: After Lincoln's failure to negotiate with Confederate peace commissioners, and after misleading South Carolina officials and sending reinforcements to Fort Sumter to deliberately provoke Confederates, General P.G.T. Beauregard, acting on orders from his government, ordered Confederate shore batteries in Charleston, S.C. to open fire at 4:30 o'clock in the morning of 12 April 1861. He had given Major Robert Anderson a last chance to evacuate, but Anderson again rejected peace by giving a deceptive answer. Federal batteries on Fort Sumter returned fire at 7 o'clock. Lincoln got the war he provoked.
Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard in an
early war CDV photograph.
(M.D. Jones Collection)
1862: GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE: In Georgia, 21 Northern spies and saboteurs penetrate Confederate lines, and steal the locomotive "General" but before they can destroy the Western and Atlantic Railroad between Atlanta a Chattanooga, alert railroad conductor William Fuller gets on their trail with a detachment of Confederate soldiers with the locomotive "Texas." The "Great Locomotive Chase" lasts for 87 miles before the Confederates catch up and arrest the spies and saboteurs. The master spy James J. Andrews and seven others were tried and convicted as spies and unlawful combatants and hanged. Others succeeded in escaping or were later exchanged for Confederate prisoners of war. Six of the returned spies were the first recipients of the U.S. Medal of Honor. Conductor Fuller was treated as a Confederate hero, receiving the commendation of the Georgia State Legislature and being commissioned by Gov. Joseph E. Brown a captain in the Independent State Road Guards.
Captain William A. Fuller
Hero of the "Great Train Chase"
1863: The first day of the Battle of Bisland Plantation (aka Fort Bisland) in South Louisiana occurs in the Bayou Teche Campaign of 1863. Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor gathers the Army of Western Louisiana to try to stop Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks' Army of the Gulf which is invading Bayou Teche to clear out the rebels before commencing the Siege of Port Hudson, La., which was the southern anchor to Vicksburg, Miss. for keeping the Mississippi River open and the Trans-Mississippi connected to the eastern Confederacy.
1864: The Battle of Blair's Landing takes place in the Red River Campaign in Louisiana. Brig. Gen. Tom Green led his Texas and Louisiana cavalry and artillery in attacking the grounded Federal gunboats and transports on Red River at Blair's Landing. The fleet was defended by Brig. Gen. Kilby Smith's detachment of the 17th Army Corps fired back from behind cotton battles on the decks, and the gunboats' own guns. The Confederates were attacking vigorously and effectively until Green was decapitated by a Federal shell. The Confederates soon fell back.Brig. Gen. Tom Green
1865: At Mobile, Alabama is occupied by Federal troops, but as Grant later inferred, it had come too late to be relevant to the outcome of the war. And the same could be said of the Federal occupation on the same day in Montgomery, Alabama. CONFEDERATE GENERAL BIRTHDAYS, April 12.
Brigadier George Burgwyn Anderson was born on this day in 1831 near Hillsboro, North Carolina. He graduated in 1852 from West Point, 10th in ranking out of 43 cadets. He resigned from the U.S. Army on April 21, 1861, and was appointed colonel of the 4th North Carolina Infantry on July 16, 1861. He was promoted on June 9, 1862, to brigadier general. Anderson's battles and campaigns included Williamsburg, Malvern Hill, and South Mountain, where he was mortally wounded. The wound became infected and his foot had to be amputated. He died on Oct. 17, 1862.
Brig. Gen. George B. Anderson
👱
Brigadier General George Gibbs Dibrell was born on this day in 1822 in Sparta, Tennessee. In his prewar years, Dibrell practiced law, and served as a justice of the peace, clerk of court, and clerk at the Bank of Tennessee. In the War for Southern Independence, he organized and was the colonel of the 8th Tennessee Cavalry. Throughout the war he served under both of the two great western Confederate cavalry generals, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler. His battles included Mill Springs, Corinth, Saltville, and Bentonville. Promoted to brigadier general in 1865, he escorted President Jefferson Davis at the end of the war from Greensboro, N.C. to Georgia. Anderson was then captured on May 9, 1865, and paroled. Following the war, he was involved in restoring railroads and industries. Dibrell also served as a delegate to the Tennessee state constitutional convention of 1870, in the Tennessee legislature for a short period, and was elected to the U.S. Congress. Dibrell died May 9, 1888, in Sparta, Tenn., and was buried in the Old Sparta Cemetery.
Brig. Gen. George G. Dibrell
👋
No comments:
Post a Comment