Sunday, January 5, 2014

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.