January 28, 1864---The "Thanks of Congress"

JANUARY 28, 1864:           

Union General Nathaniel P. Banks receives an official “Thanks of Congress” for his capture of Port Hudson in July 1863.  Altogether, 30 officers of the Union military received this honor during the Civil War.

January 27, 1864---The Battle of Fair Garden, Tennessee

JANUARY 27, 1864:   

The Battle of Fair Garden, Tennessee. After maintaining control of some Tennessee territory after the Battle of Dandridge on the 17^th, General James Longstreet had been sending out pickets in the region to extend his toehold into a bridgehead. On this day, Confederate and Union cavalry forces met on the road near Fair Garden. The battle became a classic (and bloody) 19^th Century sabre charge on horseback, in which the North lost 100 men and the South 165. The Federals chased the Confederates nearly out of the State, but the Union cavalry commander broke off the attack when he came within sight of Longstreet’s large main body.

January 26, 1864---The Battle of Athens, Alabama

JANUARY 26, 1864:           

The Battle of Athens, Alabama. 600 Confederate cavalrymen attacked the Union-fortified town of Athens. Despite being outnumbered 6-to-1, the Federals repulsed the Confederates.

January 25, 1864---"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"---but not to me . . .

JANUARY 25, 1864:            

The North Carolina Baptist Biblical Recorder reports that there are 830 Southern Baptist Ministers living as Draft “Exempts” in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.      

January 24, 1864---The Clap

JANUARY 24, 1864:           

As with all armies throughout time, sexually-transmitted diseases were a scourge upon fighting men in the Civil War. 

Along with the childhood diseases that ran rampant in military camps, venereal diseases were endemic wherever soldiers managed to come into contact with significant civilian populations (that would be virtually anywhere, of course). Nashville alone had over 1500 known prostitutes at this point in the war in its notorious Smokey Row. 

Total syphilis cases among Union soldiers numbered approximately 75,000. Total gonorrhea cases numbered approximately 110,000.  "Colored" troops had incidences of S.T.D.s less than half that of white troops. Confederate numbers are estimated to be 70,000 and 100,000. 

However, it is likely that at least that many thousands of cases went unreported or were documented as other illnesses in the sexually-repressive Victorian Age atmosphere of Civil War America. 

Part of the reason for the relatively low number of reported cases was the brutality of the medical treatments for venereal diseases, which included the forced application of caustic substances or boiling water to infected areas or the ingestion of arsenic and other poisons to check the infection. At least in the short run, the cures were often harder to bear than the diseases, though in a time before antibiotics sexually-transmitted diseases often had horrifying consequences.

Another treatment involved applying acute pressure to the penis (often with a spring-loaded wooden implement resembling a giant clothespin) to loosen accumulated pus in the urethra. The short, sharp banging sound made by the implement gave gonorrhea the slang name it is still known by:  The Clap.