October 6, 1863---The Death of Johnny Fry

OCTOBER 6, 1863:   

The Battle of Fort Baxter (The Battle of Fort Blair; The Fort Baxter Massacre). Quantrill’s Raiders, numbering 400, attack the Union outpost of Fort Baxter, Kansas, and are driven off. While retreating, they fall upon a small Union column of 150 lightly-armed men who are accompanying Major General James G. Blunt to his new Kansas command post. Quantrill orders the Union soldiers butchered. Only a few escape, including Blunt. One of the dead is Johnny Fry, the original rider of the Pony Express. 

October 5, 1863---The Battle of Pine Bluff, Arkansas

OCTOBER 5, 1863:    

The Battle of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Confederate troops numbering 2,000 try to take the Union-garrisoned town of Pine Bluff, and are repulsed by 1,000 Federals, a large number of whom are emancipated slaves.  

October 4, 1863---The lingering stench of death: Gettysburg in Autumn.

OCTOBER 4, 1863:    

Burials and reburials are still going on at Gettysburg. However, it is a hot Indian Summer, and the three-month sojourn that many of the corpses have already had in the ground (buried helter-skelter after the battle and now disinterred for reburial in the new National Cemetery) has turned the task both sickening and pestilential. The stench of death hovers like a miasma over the town. It is finally decided, on this day, that all handling of remains will be delayed until after the first frost. The frost occurs very late, on October 25^th.

Many of the wounded still remain in the hospitals that now spot the town. 

October 3, 1863---"At least 25,000"

OCTOBER 3, 1863:    

Even as Braxton Bragg’s men attack Union positions around Lookout Mountain, the Southern Press takes up the cry of Bragg’s subordinates that Bragg is an incompetent commander. However, even the Press (in the form of the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer) expresses concern at the number of Southerners (“at least 25,000”) who might be sacrificed in an attempt to take the heavily defended city of Chattanooga.  

The days of faith that "any one Southerner can lick ten Yankees" are clearly over.

October 2, 1863---Wheeler's Raid causes chaos

OCTOBER 2, 1863:   

Troops under General Joseph Wheeler C.S.A. manage to cut off most of the roads heading into Chattanooga, Tennessee, and are battering both the rail lines and the rugged overland main supply route used by the Federals in the city. The gross tonnage of supplies reaching Chattanooga is reduced to nearly nothing overnight. Braxton Bragg’s “Siege of Chattanooga,” announced a week earlier finally becomes a reality.