October 1, 1864---"Wild Rose"

OCTOBER 1, 1864:             

The death of Rose O’Neill Greenhow. Greenhow (born c. 1820) was one of the Confederacy’s earliest and most effective spies. Living in her townhouse on fashionable Lafayette Square, Washington D.C. in the early days of the war, Greenhow was neighbors with many of the Lincoln Administration’s leading lights to whom she regularly opened her salon. Much sensitive business was discussed at these soirees, all within the sharp-eared Rose’s hearing. Unbeknownst to most, she was also having affairs with several Union officers, a Senator, a couple of Congressmen, and a few minor Administration officials from whom she was cadging battle plans and written orders in the midst of their pillow talk. After the war, it was disclosed that Greenhow was chiefly responsible for passing on the information that allowed the ill-prepared and outnumbered Confederacy to win the First Battle of Bull Run.

 

 

Her extensive spy network was discovered in 1862, and she was placed under house arrest, along with several female friends. The house on Lafayette Square became known as “Fort Greenhow.” Unbelievably enough, the popular “At Homes” continued, and Greenhow kept entertaining her paramours. Victorian ethics being what they were, her dalliances were not bruited about. When Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War discovered that Greenhow still had a busy social calendar, he tossed her into prison (where she continued to be visited by her male companions). Finally, she was exiled South by the exasperated Stanton, who had to argue with a plethora of highly-placed individuals before he could send her South. She was officially received in Richmond, where Jefferson Davis breveted her a Captain and gave her a large stipend.

Rose was sent on to Europe, where she acted as a Confederate consul for most of 1863 and 1864.  She was called “Wild Rose.” Her memoir My Imprisonment: The First Year of Abolition Rule in Washington became a European best-seller. She was feted by Queen Victoria and Napoleon III. 

Upon her return to the Confederacy, Greenhow was caught in the blockade. Her ship, the CONDOR, chased by a Union gunboat, ran aground off Wilmington, and the lifeboat she took to capsized in the rough surf. She drowned, and when her body was recovered she was buried with full military honors in Wilmington.   In her honor, the Women’s Auxiliary of The Sons of Confederate Veterans changed its name to The Order of The Confederate Rose in 1993.

September 30, 1864---The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm and New Market Heights (Day Two); The Battle of Peebles Farm

SEPTEMBER 30, 1864:    

The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm and New Market Heights (Day Two):         

After losing control of the outer forts of Richmond’s defensive ring, Robert E. Lee counterattacks the Union positions with 12,000 Petersburg troops he has just brought to Richmond. The attack, though forceful, goes nowhere, as the Union troops have reinforced the captured forts, entrenched, and put up obstacles.

Of the 27,000 Union troops engaged, about 3,400 are casualties. The Confederacy loses 2,000 of 14,000 men. The ferocity of the battle may be guessed by considering this one statistic: Of the 16 Medals of Honor bestowed upon U.S.C.T. in the war, 14 are bestowed for this engagement.

After the battle, Lee has no choice but to dig in and leave his reinforcements in place. Petersburg is permanently weakened and the Rebs and Yanks face each other in their miserable trenches outside Richmond all through the winter.

The Battle of Peebles Farm:  As fighting rages along the line at Chaffin’s Farm and New Market Heights, a corresponding battle is going on at Peebles Farm. Ulysses S. Grant’s attacks the inner defensive ring near Peebles Farm with the intention is to pressure Lee’s lines into collapse, and indeed Lee must rush troops from Chaffin’s Farm (on the eastern side of his defensive ring) to Peebles Farm (on the western side of his defensive ring) and back again to meet the dual threats. The Confederate line at Peebles Farm (along the Squirrel Level Road) ultimately caves in, and the Federals occupy Fort Archer in the Confederate outer defensive ring.

September 29, 1864---The Battle of Chaffin's Farm And New Market Heights (Day One)

SEPTEMBER 29, 1864:    

The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm and New Market Heights (Day One):           

This battle was really an extended series of engagements against Confederate Fort Harrison, Fort Johnson, and Fort Gilmer, all part of the defensive ring around Petersburg and Richmond. Ulysses S. Grant reasoned that if he could strike at a number of widely-separated points along the lengthy and thinly-held Confederate defensive line that protected the two cities, he could break through somewhere, and, at the very least, permanently isolate the two cities from one another. 

African-American troops under General Edward Ord moved in force against Fort Harrison in New Market Heights outside Richmond. Robert E. Lee had less than 2,000 men in this area of the line, and they quickly surrendered their outer positions, retreating to an inner ring of defenses closer to Richmond. These defenses, far stronger than the outer ring, could not be breached, but the Union had taken and was holding several Confederate strong points along the line. Lee had to rush troops from Petersburg to Richmond to meet this threat, and, as a result, weakened the Petersburg defenses.    

September 28, 1864---Edward Wynkoop and Black Kettle forge a separate peace

SEPTEMBER 28, 1864:    

After a vicious summer of Indian war on the Great Plains, Major Edward Wynkoop brings Chief Black Kettle and other Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs to Denver to finalize a peace agreement between the tribes and the Federal government. Black Kettle’s “Dog Soldiers” agree to lay down their arms and they release white captives in exchange for an agreement not to be harassed by settlers and soldiers.  

September 27, 1864---The Sacking of Centralia; Marianna Burning

SEPTEMBER 27, 1864:    

General Sterling Price C.S.A. continues his scorched earth raids in Missouri. Price’s avowed goal is to seize St. Louis and disrupt the Union Presidential election. In reality, Price has no chance of taking heavily pro-Union St. Louis, and has to limit himself to snatch-grab-and-burn raids in the countryside.

Price is leading the Missouri State Guard. Although the Guard has had as many as 28,000 men at one time, it is shrunken to less than 8,000, and many of these are irregulars --- desperadoes, bushwhackers, and outlaws --- although Price prefers to call them “guerrillas.”  Nominally Confederate, most of these men attack any target of opportunity.

Missouri, which has been suffering an internal civil war since 1854, has gotten no more peaceful. For every depredation of the Confederates, Union men hang Southern sympathizers and troops. For every Union action, pro-Confederate Missourians kill Unionists. The North-South split in Missouri is long-standing, personal, and full of rage.

Once a member of Quantrill’s Raiders, “Bloody Bill” Anderson has set up his own “command” of about 100 men. His subordinates include the Younger brothers, Cole, Jim, John and Bob, and Jesse and Frank James. Anderson’s men usually limit their destructiveness to Unionists, but they routinely scalp and sexually mutilate their victims.

On this day they enter Centralia, Missouri. After sacking the saloons, raping the women, and looting the town, they loot an arriving stagecoach and an arriving train. The train is carrying 23 Union soldiers on furlough, none of whom are armed. Anderson’s men line them up and shoot 22 of them, taking one, a sergeant, Thomas Goodman, as a hostage. They burn the train, the stagecoach, and the depot. This is the first successful train raid by Confederates in the war.  

Leaving the looted town behind, they return to their base. The shocked citizens of Centralia summon Union garrison forces (Missouri Volunteer Infantry) stationed nearby, and the Federals try to raid Anderson’s camp. Anderson, who has been alerted to the Union presence by local informers, has managed to assemble 150 men, who ambush a Union force of 125, kill most of them, and mutilate the bodies. A few men are left alive to be tortured, mutilated, and released as a warning to other Unionists.

Anderson delivers his unharmed captive, Union sergeant Goodman, to General Price. Although Price is personally horrified by the fact that Anderson and his men have decorated their mounts with scalps and other body parts, he commends Anderson for the raid, and tasks him to cut rail lines through the State.  

The Battle of Marianna, Florida:    Asboth’s Raid through the “Secession Belt” of Florida reaches the “buckle.” The small planation market town of Marianna is the home of Florida’s fanatically fire-eating Governor, John Milton. The local militia decides to make a stand against the Union forces despite being outnumbered at two-to-one, 800 to 400. The Confederate line gets off one solid volley, which kills most of the Union men lost in the battle. General Szandor Asboth is shot in the face.  Instead of scattering, the Federals charge, and a brutal, short, bloody fight ensues. After the town is taken, Asboth orders it burned in retribution. Losses are ten men killed to a side.

Although the battle of Marianna is just another one of the 10,000 all-but-forgotten “little” battles of the Civil War, it has an impact far more significant than its size alone would indicate. The destruction of the sedate market town breaks the back of secessionism in Florida. It also creates a legacy of bitterness among the locals. For most of the war, Florida (excepting the larger port cities) has been comfortably nestled close to the Confederate bosom, and has remained untouched. Considered too underpopulated and too geographically isolated by Union commanders to be worth a major land campaign, Florida has avoided most of the destruction seen elsewhere in the South. The putting of Marianna to the torch caps Asboth’s “scorched earth” raid and breaks the fighting will of all but a few on the Floridian home front. The Florida Panhandle is driven into an economic and social decline from which it never completely emerges.

And Marianna never quite outlives its past. The Union dead are initially buried in shallow graves soon dug up by animals, who feed on the corpses. The townspeople then rebury the Yankees in waste ground, far away from the town’s graveyards and churches. Confederate sentiment remains strong well into the 20^th Century.

A meeting of the United Confederate War Veterans (1927) and a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan (1934) are stark reminders that the past is never entirely past.