November 15, 1864 – Civil War Union General William T. Sherman Begins His March to the Sea

On this day in history, Union General William T. Sherman, leading some 60,000 soldiers, began a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. As the American Battlefield Trust writes about Sherman’s motivations:

He sought to utilize destructive war to convince Confederate citizens in their deepest psyche both that they could not win the war and that their government could not protect them from Federal forces. He wanted to convey that southerners controlled their own fate through a duality of approach: as long as they remained in rebellion, they would suffer at his hands, once they surrendered, he would display remarkable largess.”

General William Tecumseh Sherman

After capturing Atlanta in early September, Sherman split his army, keeping 60,000 men and sending the rest back to Nashville with General George Thomas to deal with the remnants of General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee, the force Sherman had defeated to take Atlanta.

Sherman wrote to his general in chief, Ulysses S. Grant, that if he could march through Georgia it would be “proof positive that the North can prevail.” He told Grant and Lincoln that he would not send couriers back, but to “trust the Richmond papers to keep you well advised.” Grant telegraphed back his blessings on November 2. Sherman loaded surplus supplies on trains and shipped them back to Nashville. On November 15, the army began to move, burning the industrial section of Atlanta before they left.

His forces followed a “scorched earth” policy, destroying military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property, disrupting the Confederacy’s economy and transportation networks. The operation broke the back of the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual surrender. Sherman’s decision to operate deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be one of the major campaigns of the war, and is considered by some historians to be an early example of modern total war.

On December 21, Savannah surrendered to Sherman. Sherman famously telegraphed President Lincoln, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.”

On December 26, the president replied in a letter:

Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift, the capture of Savannah. When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that ‘nothing risked, nothing gained,’ I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is yours; for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce.”

November 14, 1860 – Speech Against Secession by Future Confederate VP Alexander H. Stephens

Alexander Hamilton Stephens, 1812-1883, was an American politician who eventually served as the vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, and later as the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1883. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives before and after the Civil War prior to becoming governor.

Abraham Lincoln served one term in Congress, from 1847 to 1849, and became friends with Stephens during that time. Both men at that time were members of the Whig Party, and both opposed the Mexican-American War. Both spoke out forcefully in Congress against the war. On February 2, 1848, Lincoln wrote his law partner William H. Herndon how impressed he was by Stephens, observing to him:

I just take up my pen to say, that Mr. Stephens of Georgia, a little slim pale faced consumptive man, with a voice like Logan’s, has just concluded the very best speech, of an hour’s length, I ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet. If he writes it out any thing like he delivered it, our people shall see a good many copies of it.”

As talk of secession grew in the South in the 1850s, Stephens went on the record firmly opposed to it. (He eventually changed his views, especially because of his support of slavery and the need to do whatever was necessary to retain the practice.)

Photograph by Julian Vannerson, 1859

On this day in history, November 14, 1860, Stephens gave a speech to the George legislature, in which he said:

Fellow-citizens, we are all launched in the same bark; we are all in the same craft in the wide political ocean—the same destiny awaits us all for weal or for woe. We have been launched in the good old ship that has been upon the waves for three quarters of a century, which has been in many tempests and storms, has many times been in peril, and patriots have often feared that they should have to give it up, yea, have at times almost given it up; but still the gallant ship is afloat. Though new storms now howl around us, and the tempest beats heavily against us, I say to you, don’t give up the ship; don’t abandon her yet. If she can possibly be preserved, and our rights, interests, and security be maintained, the object is worth the effort. Let us not, on account of disappointment and chagrin at the reverse of an election, give up all as lost; but let us see what can be done to prevent a wreck. [Some one said, The ship has holes in her.] And there may be leaks in her, but let us stop them if we can; many a stout old ship has been saved with richest cargo, after many leaks, and it may be so now. [Cheers.]”

The ship of the South, however, was inexorably moving toward secession.

Lincoln wrote to Stephens on December 22, 1860, asking:

Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.”

Stephens responded on December 30 by stating that the tolerance of slavery by the North alone was not enough to bridge the differences of North-South sentiment:

We at the South do think African slavery, as it exists with us, both morally and politically right. This opinion is founded upon the inferiority of the black race. You, however, and perhaps a majority of the North, think it wrong. Admit the difference of opinion.”

After Georgia’s special convention voted to secede in January 1861, Stephens threw in with the secessionists, now characterizing the growing movement in the South as a “revolution” that hearkened back to the noble cause of the War for Independence.

On March 21, 1861, Stephens delivered his infamous “Cornerstone Speech” a few weeks before the Civil War began, in which he defended slavery as a fundamental and just result of the supposed inferiority of the black race. He stated:

Our new government . . . its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.”

After the war, Stephens was imprisoned until October 1865. The following year, the Georgia legislature elected Stephens to the United States Senate, but the Senate declined to seat him due to his role in the Civil War. He won election to the House of Representatives in 1873 and held that office until 1882, when he resigned from Congress to become governor of Georgia. Stephens served as governor until his death in March 1883.

Alexander H. Stephens. Oil painting by John White Alexander. Published as cover of “Harper’s Weekly,” 27:145 (March 10, 1883), via Wikipedia

April 26, 1822 – Birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, Social Critic & American Landscape Architect

Frederick Law Olmsted, born on this day in Hartford, Connecticut, is considered to be the father of landscape architecture. Most notably, along with his partner Calvert Vaux, he created Central Park in New York City. Olmsted was also designer of the US Capitol grounds as well as other public parks and spaces around the country.

Olmsted began his professional career as a journalist. He was commissioned by the “New York Daily Times” (now “The New York Times”) to embark on an extensive research journey through the American South from 1852 to 1857. Olmsted sent back periodic dispatches to the newspaper about the lives and beliefs of Southerners. Olmsted was convinced – at first, anyway – that there had to be common ground between the two increasingly bellicose sides of North and South, if only he (and they) could discover what it was.

[Fans of the late Tony Horwitz may be aware that he decided to follow in the path of Frederick Law Olmsted for his final book, “Spying on the South” (2019).]

Frederick Law Olmsted in 1857 – Credit: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service/Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site

Olmsted’s articles were eventually collected into three volumes: A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), A Journey Through Texas (1857), and A Journey in the Back Country in the Winter of 1853-4 (1860). [Horwitz, who was writing around the time of the 2016 election, wondered if the same sort of divisions were tearing apart the country as had characterized the pre-Civil War years. Thus, to get a better handle on what was happening in America, Horwitz used Omsted’s books as tour guides to plan his own trip, or, as he called it, “a ramble across America with long-dead Fred as my guide.” Both men thought the divisions they saw to be irreconcilable.]

Olmsted also took other trips that influenced his switch into landscape design. In 1850 he traveled to England to visit public gardens, where he was greatly impressed by Joseph Paxton’s Birkenhead Park. He subsequently wrote and published Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England in 1852. His visit to Birkenhead Park inspired his later contribution to the design of Central Park in New York City. As the website for Fund for a Better Waterfront notes:

Central Park looks like a natural landscape but in fact was a major engineering feat. More than 10 million cartloads of material were removed. Four million trees and shrubs were planted. It was the partnership of Vaux and Olmsted that established one of the world’s greatest parks.”

Interestingly, this site also observes:

The cost to build Central Park in the 1850s and 1860s was $13.9 million, greatly exceeding the original $1.5 million budget. Olmsted fought bitterly with some of his superiors to justify park expenditures. Olmsted estimated that the three wards surrounding Central Park were valued at $26.4 million in 1856, a year before construction began. After completion of the park in 1873, this same property was worth $236 million. In the years ahead, the tax revenues generated more than compensated for cost of building Central Park.”

Olmsted & Vaux original design for Central Park

In 1861 Olmsted took leave as Director of Central Park to work in Washington, D.C., as Executive Secretary of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the Red Cross. He tended to the wounded during the American Civil War, and helped design a system of “floating hospital” ships to transport the ill and wounded of the Union Army. In 1862 during Union General George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, Olmsted headed the medical effort for the sick and wounded in New Kent County, in Virginia. Olmsted was also one of the six founding members of the Union League Club of New York.

After the war, as Library of Congress historian Barbara Bair observed, he emerged as the  foremost spokesperson for the public parks movement:

His treatises on the planning, access and use of public parks influenced the creation of the Emerald Necklace system of greenways in Boston and the formation of Yosemite National Park by an Act of Congress in 1890.  The Olmsted legacy reached into Canada with Mount Royal Park, and was manifested at Niagara Falls, in the Stanford and University of California, Berkeley, campuses in California and Gallaudet University in the District of Columbia.”

In 1895, senility forced Olmsted to retire. After Olmsted’s retirement and death, his sons John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. continued the work of their father, doing business as the Olmsted Brothers. The firm lasted until 1980. Many works by the Olmsted sons are mistakenly credited to Frederick Law Olmsted today.

Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted by James Notman, Boston via Wikipedia

The Library of Congress Manuscript Division holds both Olmsted’s personal papers and the records of Olmsted Associates. These collections are digitized and available online, which you can access here.

April 7, 1865 – Lincoln Telegraphs Grant to “Press the Thing”

Lincoln struggled throughout the Civil War to find a general for the Union Army who would be aggressive in pursuing Confederate troops. He finally got that general in Ulysses S. Grant.

In May, 1864, Grant launched the attack known as the Wilderness Campaign. Grant suffered horrific casualties but proposed by telegram to “fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” Lincoln responded in an August 17, 1864 telegram:

“I have received your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bulldog’s grip and chew and chop, as much as possible.”

Lincoln continued to use the telegraph to urge on Grant. On April 7, 1865, as the noose tightened around the Confederacy, he sent this telegram:

To Ulysses S. Grant
Head Quarters Armies of the United States,
City-Point,
Lieut Gen. Grant. April 7. 11 AM. 1865

Gen. Sheridan says “If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender.” Let the thing be pressed. A. LINCOLN

Two days after this famous telegram was sent, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, at the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the town of Appomattox Court House , Virginia. Thus ended four years of Civil War, which resulted in approximately 630,000 deaths and over one million casualties.

May 28, 1863 – African-American Regiment 54th Massachusetts Infantry Leaves Boston to Fight the Civil War in South Carolina

The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment was the first military unit consisting of black soldiers to be organized in the North during the Civil War. According to an online Massachusetts history site:

Prior to 1863, no concerted effort was made to recruit black troops as Union soldiers. The adoption of the Emancipation Proclamation in December of 1862 provided the impetus for the use of free black men as soldiers and, at a time when state governors were responsible for the raising of regiments for federal service, Massachusetts was the first to respond with the formation of the Fifty-fourth Regiment.”

Colonel Robert Shaw, born into a prominent Boston abolitionist family, was selected as the head of the infantry and organized the group made of freed or escaped slaves.

On this day in history, after the presentation of the unit’s colors by the governor and a parade through the streets of Boston, the regiment then departed Boston on a transport ship for the coast of South Carolina.

The infantry were only paid $10 a week while white soldiers received $13 a week. At Colonel Shaw’s urging, they protested the disparity but were not paid equal wages until towards the end of the war.

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw

The African-American soldiers lost an assault at Fort Wagner (located on Morris Island in the Charleston Harbor, South Carolina) in July 1863, where Shaw was killed. As battlefields.org reports:

When the Federal forces were within 150 yards of the fort, Taliaferro [leader of the Confederate forces] instructed his soldiers to fire. As he crested the flaming parapet, Shaw waved his sword, shouted ‘Forward, 54th!’ and then pitched headlong into the sand with three fatal wounds.”

Although Union forces were not able to take and hold the fort at that time, the 54th was widely acclaimed for its valor during the battle. This helped encourage the further enlistment and mobilization of African-American troops, a key development that President Abraham Lincoln once noted as helping to secure the final victory.

Leadership of the 54th was taken over after Shaw’s death by the Quaker abolitionist Edward Needles Hallowell. Hallowell’s brother Norwood, who originally served as Shaw’s second in the 54th, took command of the 55th Massachusetts, another all-black regiment.

The 54th and Hallowell continued to serve with distinction during the war.

February 1, 1861 – Texas Secedes from the Union

On this day in history, Texas became the seventh state to secede from the Union. Texas was very dependent on slave labor; in 1860, about 30 percent of the state’s population of 640,000 were slaves. Whites were not eager to give up slavery; what if they actually had to do all the unpleasant work themselves?!

In a “Declaration of Causes” published on February 2, 1861, Texas declared:

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.”

Texas then joined the Confederate States of America on March 2. Sam Houston, who fought in the Texas War of Independence and was the Texas Republic’s first governor before being elected governor of the young state, refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Thus he was ousted from the governorship.

Sam Houston, circa 1850

Speaking on April 19, Houston said:

Some of you laugh to scorn the idea of bloodshed as the result of secession, but let me tell you what is coming….Your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded at the point of the bayonet….You may after the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, as a bare possibility, win Southern independence…but I doubt it.”

The secession of Texas completed the first round of secession that took place before Lincoln took office. Four more states seceded upon the formal start of the Civil War, with the April 1861 firing on Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina. Four remaining slave states — Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri – stayed in the Union, albeit with populations that showed divided loyalties.

Confederate states after Fort Sumter

January 21, 1824 – Birth of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson

Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, one of Robert E. Lee’s most outstanding generals in the Army of Northern Virginia, was born in Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), on January 21, 1824.

Jackson in November, 1862

General Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory is said to have been the Battle of Chancellorsville, the largest battle in Virginia’s history. But it was also the scene of Lee’s greatest loss, for this is where friendly fire slew Stonewall Jackson.

Robert Krick, former chief historian of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park for thirty years, published a series of articles that examines the Chancellorsville campaign in detail. They are no longer available online, but I managed to copy them before they were removed.

He sets the scene:

“At the end of April 1863, an immense Northern army maneuvered into the dense thickets west of Fredericksburg known as ‘the Wilderness of Spotsylvania,’ trying once more to beat the Confederates who had slaughtered their comrades so easily the preceding December in the Battle of Fredericksburg. The battle that ensued involved more men, and resulted in more casualties, than any other engagement ever fought on Virginia soil.”

Robt. E. Lee in Battle Dress

Lee was relying on the prowess of the “Mighty Stonewall” Jackson, whose accomplishments so far had seemed to live up to his legendary status. Krick writes, “[a]ll day long on May 2, 1863, Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson led a column on a secret march across the front of the Federal army around Chancellorsville. Late in the afternoon he reached a wonderful vantage point behind his enemy, who remained unaware of impending disaster.” Although the Federals had mounting evidence that Confederates were slipping west, they thought their enemies were retreating, and that they might even take off in pursuit the next day. But as they looked forward to a quiet night, something changed. Krick reports: “Then some thrashing in the thickets to westward began to draw attention. Quail and rabbits dashed out of the brush. Behind them arose the spine-chilling, blood-freezing, ululating screech of the Rebel Yell. No one would be chasing Confederates in the foreseeable future.”

Surprise – a hallmark of attacks by Jackson – unhinged the Federal line. Krick relates:

“Confederates heading east in the fading twilight of May 2, 1863, ran roughshod over their foes. An evening full of excitement and victory for Southerners offered no real options for Northerners other than brief resistance followed by flight. Many Federals – probably most of them – made no resistance at all, nor could they reasonably have been expected to do so. Troops never have tolerated surprise attacks from behind.”

“The spectral image of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson heightened the impact. ‘Jackson was on us,’ an Ohio soldier wrote, ‘and fear was on us.’ An attacker from Alabama professed to know that ‘Jackson went forth from every Yankee tongue as they broke pell-mell.’ In his official report, a colonel from Massachusetts drolly described his fleeing friends as being ‘under the influence of an aversion for Stonewall Jackson.'”

Jackson Two Weeks Before His Death

Later on the night of May 2, 1863, Jackson rode out in the darkness to determine how he might exploit the day’s victory and turn it into an even greater triumph. Unfortunately, an entire regiment of Carolinians had gone forward as skirmishers, and moreover they had encountered a group of wandering lost Federals. In the brush and the darkness, shots rang out. General A.P. Hill tried to yell out and halt the fire, shouting through the darkness that there were friends to their front. A Confederate major bellowed back, “It’s a lie! Pour it into them, boys!” And as Krick writes, “the boys did.” Three bullets found their way into the arms of Stonewall Jackson; two shattered his left arm, and another went nearly through his right hand. He died eight days later.

A full Moon illuminates the scene as General A. P. Hill binds the wounds of Stonewall Jackson minutes after the fatal volley at Chancellorsville. (Robert K. Krick)

His death was a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting not only its military prospects, but the morale of its army and the general public; as Jackson lay dying, General Robert E. Lee sent a message to Jackson saying “Give General Jackson my affectionate regards, and say to him: he has lost his left arm but I my right.” When Lee learned of Jackson’s death, he told a friend, “William, I have lost my right arm” and “I’m bleeding at the heart.”

It could be argued that Lee’s success was in large measure a result of Jackson’s brilliance and courage, and that once Jackson was gone, the Southern cause lost its best hope.

Robert Krick is widely regarded as the foremost authority on Chancellorsville. He has a number of books that retell the story of what happened to Stonewall Jackson, such as The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia (Louisiana State University Press, 2004).

January 10, 1861 – Florida Becomes Third State to Secede from the Union

Florida was admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1845. On this day in history, delegates to the Florida Convention in Tallahassee voted to secede from the United States of America, following similar declarations by South Carolina and Mississippi. The following month, Florida was one of six Deep South states to form the Confederate States of America.

The secession ordinance of Florida simply declared its severing of ties with the federal Union, without stating any reasons. Five days earlier, however, John C. McGehee, President of the Florida Secession Convention, had declared, per a National Park Service history of Florida’s secession:

At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property. As we stand our doom is decreed.”

NPS explains:

He believed remaining in the Union meant allowing rule by those who were ‘sectional, irresponsible to us, and driven on by an infuriated fanatical madness that defies all opposition” and who would “destroy every vestige of right growing out of property in slaves.'”

McGehee had reason to be concerned. He owned 100 enslaved people. It was the foundation of his wealth and power. The NPS site reports:

The secession convention had 69 delegates representing Florida’s 36 counties. Every delegate was a white male owning, on average, 10 enslaved people. They argued and debated about when, not if, to secede. A majority favored immediate secession while some wanted to wait until Georgia and Alabama left first.”

The NPS site notes ironically:

Delegates voted on January 10: 62 delegates voted yea and seven nays. ‘Then was heard from the people who thronged the hall one simultaneous shout declaratory of the dawn of liberty,’ one reporter wrote.”

A new Constitution, also produced on this date, set out the rights of “free white men.” Article XV, Section 1 provided that “The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves.” Section 2 added: “The General Assembly shall have power to pass laws to prevent free negroes, mulattoes, and other persons of color from immigrating to this State, or from being discharged from on board any vessel in any of the ports of Florida.”

Florida played an active role in the Civil War. At least 17,000 Floridians fought in the conflict. The state was an important source of foodstuff for the South and the coastline had many bays and inlets that allowed blockade-runners to evade the Union Army.

The war ended in April 1865. By the following month, United States control of Florida had been re-established, slavery had been abolished, and Florida’s Confederate Governor John Milton had committed suicide.

October 20, 1864 – Report of Massacre of African American Soldiers in Saltville, Virginia during the Civil War

A website dedicated to the history of Company E, 5th Regiment Cavalry U.S. Colored Troops, recounts that in early 1864, Union General Stephen G. Burbridge, commander of the Military District of Kentucky, authorized within his command the formation of “colored” regiments comprised of freedmen, ex-slaves, and slaves (accepted for enlistment at the “request” of their owners). On June 30, 1864, Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, responsible for organizing colored regiments in the Mississippi Valley for the Union Army, established the 5th United States Colored Cavalry (5th USCC) and authorized the officers of the newly formed regiment to begin selecting recruits. Colonel James Brisbin, a well-known abolitionist, became commander of the regiment.

On this day in history, Col. Brisbin, the superintendent of the Organization of Kentucky Black Troops, wrote a letter to the Adjutant General of the Army to inform him on the military service of his Black recruits from the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry.

When the recruits came up to the main body of whites at Prestonburg, Kentucky, they were “the subject of much ridicule and many insulting remarks by the White Troops and in some instances petty outrages such as the pulling off the Caps of Colored Soldiers, stealing their horses etc was practiced by the White Soldiers.”

Brisbin reports that these insults were borne “patiently” by the Black troops and they did not respond to the white taunts.

On October 2, the entire group had to prepare for battle with the enemy at the salt works in western Virginia. As Marlitta H. Perkins observed, in one history of salt during the Civil War:

Salt played a major role during the Civil War. Salt not only preserved food in the days before refrigeration, but was also essential in the curing of leather and dyeing of uniforms. Prior to the war, large quantities of salt were imported from England, Portugal and the British West Indies, but a significant amount was also produced domestically. During the Civil War, salt production facilities in Saltville, Va., Virginia’s Kanawha Valley and Avery Island, Louisiana, were crucial to the Confederate war effort, especially after the Union blockaded delivery of salt to the Confederate states. Union general William Tecumseh Sherman once said that ‘salt is eminently contraband,’ as an army that has salt can adequately feed its men.”

Southerners were so desperate for salt during the war they collected and reused loose salt grains from meat, brushing off their salted meat and boiled it out of the floorboards of smokehouses. In any event, the beef supply dwindled because salt was essential to the diet of cattle, who would not fatten up without it. (See, Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War by Andrew F. Smith, p. 22.) Historian Rick Beard wrote that the lack of salt and other supplies was a major factor in the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War.

At the salt mines in Virginia, Colonel Brisbin recounted that the point to be attacked was the side of a high mountain, the Confederates being posted about half way up behind rifle pits made of logs and stones to the height of three feet.  Col Jas. F. Wade, in charge of the Black troops, ordered his force to charge. Brisbin writes:

Of this fight I can only say that men could not have behaved more bravely.  I have seen white troops fight in twenty-seven battles and I never saw any fight better.  At dusk the Colored Troops were withdrawn from the enemies works, which they had held for over two hours, with scarcely a round of ammunition in their Cartridge Boxes.”

He adds:

On the return of the forces those who had scoffed at the Colored Troops on the march out were silent.”

African-American Union soldiers at Dutch Gap, Virginia, November 1864. It shows typical Union uniforms and the 1853 Enfield rifles used by US Colored Troops, Library of Congress

Unfortunately, those who fell into the hands of the Confederates during the battle were brutally murdered. Brisbin added:

This battle, known as the First Battle of Saltville, has been called the Saltville Massacre.

In his 1995 book, The Saltville Massacre, author Thomas Mays, presents accounts of what took place from letters and diary entries of the men present at the battle. Mays concluded that “A conservative estimate of the number of black murdered at Saltville is forty-six.”

You can read Brisbin’s entire letter here.

August 30, 1861 – Civil War Union General John C. Frémont Issues an Emancipation Proclamation for Missouri; Lincoln Rescinds It

The U.S. Senate passed the First Confiscation Act on August 5, 1861 allowing the federal government to seize property, including slaves, being used to support the Confederate rebellion. Although President Lincoln feared that the act might push the border states to secede, he signed the act into law the next day. When, however, Union General John C. Frémont took the additional step, on his own initiative, to issue a proclamation freeing all slaves in Missouri that belonged to secessionists, Lincoln drew the line. In a letter dated September 11 (text here), Lincoln ordered Fremont to change his proclamation to conform to the First Confiscation Act.

“Maj. Genl. John C. Fremont, 1861” via Missouri History Museum

As the site “Mr. Lincoln and Freedom” points out:

At the beginning of the Civil War, emancipation was not a popular sentiment among Union Army officers.” Moreover, as indicated above, Lincoln considered it essential not to alienate the border states in any way that would drive them from the Union.”

In May of the following year, Union General David Hunter issued a similar proclamation freeing slaves in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Again, Lincoln was forced to issue a public statement revoking the proclamation. As in the previous instance he disavowed advance knowledge of the measure, declaring:

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, proclaim and declare, that the government of the United States, had no knowledge, information, or belief, of an intention on the part of General Hunter to issue such a proclamation; nor has it yet, any authentic information that the document is genuine–  And further, that neither General Hunter, nor any other commander, or person, has been authorized by the Government of the United States, to make proclamations declaring the slaves of any State free; and that the supposed proclamation, now in question, whether genuine or false, is altogether void, so far as respects such declaration.”

Lincoln, February 9, 1861

He concluded his statement, however, by urging the slave-holding border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri to “‘adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery,'” as encouraged by Congress’s Joint Resolution of March 1862:

You can not if you would, be blind to the signs of the times — I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partizan politics — This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproach upon any — It acts not the pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything — Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as, in the providence of God, it is now your high previlege [sic] to do — May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it.”