Click 👉TODAY IN HISTORY (general history) April 29.
ON THIS DAY IN CONFEDERATE HISTORY, April 29.
1861: The Maryland State Legislature votes against seceding from the Union. The legislature met in a special session in the strongly pro-Union town of Frederick. The vote was 53-13 against secession.
1862: Admiral D.G. Farragut lands in New Orleans with 250 Marines from the USS Hartford marches to City Hall and removes the Louisiana state flag. City officials had refused to lower their state flag and were still defiant. The flag was adopted by Louisiana in February 1861 to represent the state's new independent status after seceding on January 26, 1861.
1863: The Battle of Grand Gulf takes place south of Vicksburg. The Federal Gunboats of Admiral D.D. Porter begins bombarding the Confederate forts protecting Grand Gulf. While one of the forts is knocked out, Fort Wade and Fort Coburn fight on, and the Federals decide to not try an amphibious landing there. Federal casualties were 18 killed and 57 wounded. The Confederates lost three dead and 19 wounded. The USS Tuscumbia is knocked out of action. The Federals will have to find another place to cross the river.
1865: President Jefferson Davis's party making its way to the Trans-Mississippi Department, reaches Yorkville, South Carolina. The president had hopes of continuing the struggle for Southern Independence in Texas as the base. There was still a large Confederate Army there and in Louisiana that had not yet surrendered. However, the army there was rapidly breaking up.
CONFEDERATE GENERAL HISTORY, April 29.
Brigadier General Henry Watkins Allen was born on this day in 1820 in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Prior to the war, he became a lawyer in Mississippi. Allen also gained some military experience serving as a volunteer in the Texas Army in 1842 as captain of the Mississippi Guards. He spent the summer on the western frontier in Texas fighting Mexicans and Indians. His term of service was up in October 1842 and he went back to Mississippi. He served in the Mississippi Legislature, studied law at Harvard University, and in 1852 became co-owner of a plantation in Louisiana. He was elected to the Louisiana Legislature in 1853. In the War for Southern Independence, Allen served as colonel of the 4th Louisiana Infantry and was seriously wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. He then led a brigade at the Battle of Baton Rouge on Aug. 5, 1862, and was wounded in both legs. While recuperating, he served as a military judge in Mississippi. Allen was also a major general in the Louisiana Militia and was commissioned a brigadier general in the Confederate Army on Aug. 19, 1863. Elected governor of Louisiana, Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman called him the best administrator in the Confederacy. Allen personally led a brigade of state militia in the Red River Campaign in 1864. After the war, his property having been destroyed by the enemy, he moved to Mexico City and died there on April 22, 1866. His body was reinterred in New Orleans 10 years later, then moved again years later and reburied on the grounds of the Louisiana State Capital in Baton Rouge.
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