Click 👉 TODAY IN HISTORY (general history) Dec. 25
HAVE A MERRY AND BLESSED CHRISTMAS
1862: General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, on Dec. 13, 1862, had established his winter headquarters at Moss Neck Manor which was two miles from the Rappahannock River in Virginia. On December 25, 1862, he wrote a letter to his wife Anna and hosted a Christmas Day party for Generals Lee, Stuart, and others in the mansion. They dined on turkey, sipped wine, and sang Christmas carols.
General John Hunt Morgan's Confederate Cavalry Brigade raids a Federal outpost near Bear Wallow, Kentucky in continuation of disrupting Yankee communications prior to the Murfreesboro Campaign in 1862.
1863: A Confederate salt works near Bear Inlet, North Carolina is destroyed by Federal raiders.
1864: General Hood's Army of Tennessee skirmishes with Federals at Richland Creek, Devils Gap, and White's Station, Tennessee in the aftermath of the Battle of Nashville.
CONFEDERATE GENERAL BIRTHDAYS, Dec. 25
Brigadier General Milledge Luke Bonham was born in 1813 at Red Bank, South Carolina. He was the younger brother of James Butler Bonham who died fighting at the Alamo in 1836. He got prewar military experience in the South Carolina militia and in the Mexican-American War in which he served as colonel of the 12th U.S. Infantry. Bonham was elected to the 35th & 36th U.S. Congress and served until the day after South Carolina seceded. He then traveled to other Southern states promoting secession. In the war, he was a brigadier general commanding a brigade of infantry, six companies of cavalry, and two batteries of artillery at the First Battle of Manassas. Bonham resigned from the army on Jan. 27, 1862, when he became a member of the Confederate Congress. He was then elected governor of South Carolina on Dec. 17, 1862. After the war, he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, railroad commissioner, owned an insurance business, and was a planter. He died Aug. 27, 1890, at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., and was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Columbia, S.C.
Brigadier General Preston Smith was born in 1823 in Giles County, Tennessee. He had a successful law practice in Memphis until he was elected colonel of the 154th Tenn. Inf. in 1861. Smith fought with his regiment at the Battle of Shiloh and received a severe should wound. He then commanded a brigade in Cleburne's Division at the Battle of Perryville, after which he was promoted to brigadier general on Oct. 27, 1862. Smith was killed in action on Sept. 19, 1863, at the Battle of Chickamauga, Ga. Smith is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.
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