JANUARY 9, 1864:
The
Battle of Loudon Heights:
The North
American continent is locked in subzero cold as far south as Memphis,
Tennessee. All Americans, though particularly Southerners, are suffering from
the truly arctic conditions, especially with shortages of firewood and coal.
John Singleton Mosby’s vaunted Rangers choose this day to launch a surprise
attack against Union troops stationed in Loudon County, Virginia. For the first
time, Mosby’s Rangers are decisively repulsed. Although casualties are light on
both sides, one of the dead is Willie Mosby, the brother of The Gray Ghost.
In a measure of how dire the South’s military manpower needs
have become the Richmond Daily Dispatch reports
that:
In Georgia there have
been exempted — civil officers, 522; railroad employees, 616; telegraph
employees, 13; newspaper employees, 174; ministers of the gospel, 274; shoe
makers, 504; tanners, 377; blacksmiths, 590; wagonmakers, 266; millers, 409;
factory employees, 554; school teachers, 266; salt manufacturers 151;
overseers, 201; ferrymen, 10; physicians, 486; militia officers, 397 (?); (N.
C. 3,437;) aliens, 628; (Va. 69;) express company, 13; cadets, 12; manufacture
of dental instruments, 3; batters, 14; nitre and mining service, 120; mail
contractors and carriers, 4; shepherds, 107; physical disability, 1,499;
substitutes 7,000.
Altogether, this number makes up a bare fraction of the
number under arms. That the Confederacy is counting so closely is a bad augury.
The number of Exempts (6,711 minus the disabled) almost equals the number of
Substitutions (7,000). “Aliens” includes citizens of other Confederate States
(are their own States looking for them?)
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