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
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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
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