March 8, 1864---A new and improved way to kill a Reb . . .

MARCH 8, 1864:       

The Model 1864 Manhattan Navy Pistol is patented. An improvement on the Model 1861 Colt Navy Revolver, it was lighter in weight, less prone to jamming, and more accurate at long range. 

March 7, 1864---Longstreet disobeys Orders

MARCH 7, 1864:        

General James Longstreet C.S.A. refuses to heed direct orders from President Jefferson Davis to move his Command from the borders of Tennessee into southern Kentucky. 

 

It was Davis’ hope that an invasion of Kentucky might reignite the war there and stimulate action among Confederates within the State. Longstreet however knows that he simply does not have enough men to launch an offensive into the now tightly-held Union Commonwealth of Kentucky; he also knows that whatever Confederates there may have been in Kentucky at the beginning of the war have all long since emigrated southward; but mostly he knows that Davis has no reinforcements to send him. He refuses to sacrifice to no advantage the men he has.

March 6, 1864---The C.S.S. DAVID strikes again---and misses (again)

MARCH 6, 1864:       

The submarine C.S.S. DAVID attacks the blockade ship U.S.S. MEMPHIS outside of Charleston Harbor but fails to sink her. The DAVID’s skipper was always aggressive, but the sub was always ineffective. 

March 5, 1864---Once the Vice-President of The United States, now a Confederate General

MARCH 5, 1864:        

General John C. Breckinridge, C.S.A., the former U.S. senator, U.S. Vice President, and runner-up to Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election, takes control of Confederate forces in the Appalachian Mountains of western Virginia. He commanded all troops in this increasingly obscure theatre until he was elevated to the position of the Confederacy's Secretary of War in the closing weeks of the Civil War.

March 4, 1864---The Taste of Crow

MARCH 4, 1864:        

The Nashville Daily Union rather whimsically reports that:

“A number of rebels come to Nashville daily and take the oath of amnesty. Some of them take it with 'wry faces.' The fact is, they are like the fellow that, on a wager, eats the crow. They can 'eat crow’; but d____d if they have a hankering for it!”