July 31, 1863---FLORIDA needs an overhaul

JULY 31, 1863:     

The Commerce Raider C.S.S. FLORIDA seeks safe harborage in Brest, France for repairs. The raider took 37 prizes in her career, and her progeny took 23 more for a total of 60 ships seized.

July 30, 1863---"Not a man shall be a slave . . . "

JULY 30, 1863:           

President Lincoln, horrified by the murders of captured U.S.C.T. soldiers at the hands of Southerners, issues an Order of Retaliation. Despite the harshness of the language, Lincoln rarely resorted to capital punishment in practice:

“It is the duty of every government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever class, color, or condition, and especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of nations and the usages and customs of war as carried on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment of prisoners of war as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person, on account of his color, and for no offence against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism and a crime against the civilization of the age.

The government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy shall sell or enslave anyone because of his color, the offense shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession.

It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war.”

An African-American woman from Buffalo, New York, writes to President Lincoln regarding her son who fought at Battery Wagner:

Excellent Sir   My good friend says I must write to you and she will send it   My son went in the 54th regiment.  I am a colored woman and my son was strong and able as any to fight for his country and the colored people have as much to fight for as any.  My father was a Slave and escaped from Louisiana before I was born morn forty years agone   I have but poor edication but I never went to schol, but I know just as well as any what is right between man and man.  Now I know it is right that a colored man should go and fight for his country, and so ought to a white man.  I know that a colored man ought to run no greater risques than a white, his pay is no greater his obligation to fight is the same.  So why should not our enemies be compelled to treat him the same, Made to do it.

My son fought at Fort Wagoner but thank God he was not taken prisoner, as many were   I thought of this thing before I let my boy go but then they said Mr. Lincoln will never let them sell our colored soldiers for slaves,  if they do he will get them back quck   he will rettallyate and stop it.  Now Mr Lincoln dont you think you oght to stop this thing and make them do the same by the colored men   they have lived in idleness all their lives on stolen labor and made savages of the colored people, but they now are so furious because they are proving themselves to be men, such as have come away and got some edication.  It must not be so.  You must put the rebels to work in State prisons to making shoes and things, if they sell our colored soldiers, till they let them all go.  And give their wounded the same treatment.  it would seem cruel, but their no other way, and a just man must do hard things sometimes, that shew him to be a great man.  They tell me some do you will take back the Proclamation,  don't do it.  When you are dead and in Heaven, in a thousand years that action of yours will make the Angels sing your praises I know it.  Ought one man to own another, law for or not,  who made the law, surely the poor slave did not.  so it is wicked, and a horrible Outrage, there is no sense in it,  because a man has lived by robbing all his life and his father before him, should he complain because the stolen things found on him are taken.  Robbing the colored people of their labor is but a small part of the robbery   their souls are almost taken, they are made bruits of often.  You know all about this

Will you see that the colored men fighting now, are fairly treated.  You ought to do this, and do it at once, Not let the thing run along   meet it quickly and manfully, and stop this, mean cowardly cruelty.  We poor oppressed ones, appeal to you, and ask fair play.  Yours for Christs sake

Hannah Johnson.

[In another handwriting]  Hon. Mr. Lincoln   The above speaks for itself   Carrie Coburn   

July 29, 1863---John "Bull"

JULY 29, 1863:           

Fading Confederate hopes for international recognition are dashed when Queen Victoria announces that there is “no reason to depart from the strict neutrality which Her Majesty has observed from the beginning [of the war],” even though official British neutrality had, if anything, been strictly pro-Confederate to this point. 

July 28, 1863---The Battle of Stony Lake

JULY 28, 1863:           

The Battle of Stony Lake, Dakota Territory (now North Dakota). A large force of Sioux warriors attempt to probe Union lines, and are repulsed with light fighting. The Sioux continue their retreat across the Dakota Territory, with U.S. forces in pursuit.

July 27, 1863---The Death of William Lowndes Yancey

JULY 27, 1863:           

Confederate fire-eater William Lowndes Yancey, who had been considered for the Provisional Presidency of the Confederacy in 1861, dies in Montgomery, Alabama. A radical secessionist and States’ Rights advocate, Yancey, as Senator from Alabama, spent most of the war vehemently opposing the wartime “arrogation of power” by the central government of the Confederacy.