January 7, 1864---Two pardons and a funeral

JANUARY 7, 1864:  

President Lincoln (U.S.A.) and President Davis (C.S.A.) both pardon two young deserters from their respective armies, commuting the men’s death sentences to terms of imprisonment. The two Presidents, who had been born months apart in adjoining counties in Kentucky, both shared a horror of sending frightened young men to stand in front of firing squads, and pardoned or commuted the sentences of many a young man despite the objections of their field commanders, who felt that pardons and commutations undermined military discipline. 

  

Caleb Blood Smith, President Lincoln’s former Secretary of The Interior and now a Federal Judge, dies at age 55 in Indianapolis. Smith was an unpopular Secretary, described as a man with "neither heart nor sincerity about him." As Secretary of The Interior he had been chiefly responsible for Indian Affairs, and the disastrous Sioux War of 1862 had erupted on his watch, ultimately forcing him from office.

January 6, 1864---Massapequa answers the call!

JANUARY 6, 1864:   

John G. Floyd, a scion of the Floyd family of South Oyster Bay (Massapequa) New York, after having enlisted in the Union Army in 1862 and having fought at Frederick, Maryland, Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, Fairfax, Virginia, Burnside’s Mud March, and Anderson, Tennessee,  is mustered out of the U.S. Army as a Captain.

In New Mexico Territory, Kit Carson begins a war against the Navajo Nation.

 

January 5, 1864---"Shame on every skulking fellow . . ."

JANUARY 5, 1864:   

Unknowingly echoing (somewhat) the ideas in General Patrick Cleburne’s private letter to General Joseph Johnston,  the Confederate Union of Milledgeville, Georgia issues a call for “Negro nurses, negro teamsters” to assume support services in the Confederate Army, and pronounces, “Shame on every skulking fellow who is loafing at home or absent from his duty.” Other than Substitutions, recently called to service, the reality is that few absent “fellows” are either skulking or loafing. Most deserters who avoid the firing squad or the stockade are just struggling to keep themselves and their families alive in these bitter days. The large majority of men at home are elderly, ill or infirm.

January 4, 1864---A Confederate Kentuckian comes back to the Union

JANUARY 4, 1864:    

President Lincoln pardons Josiah Pillsbury, Auditor of the Confederate State of Kentucky, of treason against the United States. Pillsbury was one of only five State Government officers in Confederate Kentucky. Pillsbury, a well-known and popular man in Lincoln’s State of birth had several high-ranking Union men supporting his petition, and Lincoln had always been of the opinion that treating Kentucky with kid gloves was the linchpin to winning the war. Lincoln issued 324 pardons as President, with only 64 of them relating to service for the Confederacy. Pillsbury’s is one of just 17 pardons for treason that Lincoln issued to a Confederate.

January 3, 1864---"We know not where to get anything more."

JANUARY 3, 1864:    

Julia Johnson Fisher, a housewife living on the south coast of Georgia makes the following entry in her diary, reflecting the straitened circumstances of the average Confederate:

. . .  [T]he three little girls. I am sorry to lose them and they seem equally sorry to go. The sabbaths are so quiet and lonely they weary us . . . The oldest is scarcely ten years of age and very sickly. She told me today that although she could not read and write she can iron and scrub. It is said that she and the next, aged eight, cook, wash, etc. . . . If this war continues long I fear that such will be our fate, the negroes are becoming so scarce. Dianah returned after dinner with her two children--had walked about eight miles in the rain. She brought a hen and a bottle of syrup for Clarence--a Christmas gift . . . There is no cloth to be had and no thread, no yarn--nor anything to do with. Time passes heavily . . .  For three long years the world has been comparatively lost to us. We know nothing of the changes that have taken place during that time. In dress we are just where we were in 1860---for fashion, but rags and wrinkles are more plentiful . . . I have used bedticking---sheets---curtains and the linings of my dresses [for clothing] and now we know not where to get anything more.