October 6, 1864---Two skirmishes in The Valley

OCTOBER 6, 1864:          

Jubal Early’s and John S. Mosby’s forces launch a surprise attack against Union cavalry in the Valley under the command of General George Armstrong Custer.  The Confederates are repulsed after a heavy firefight. At the same time, other elements of Early’s force are repulsed in a skirmish near Fisher’s Hill. 

October 5, 1864---The Battle of Allatoona

OCTOBER 5, 1864:            

The Battle of Allatoona. The Confederate “Franklin-Nashville Campaign” begins. In the face of Union forces moving back north along the rail line from Atlanta, General John Bell Hood C.S.A. decides to stop their advance by cutting the Western & Atlantic Railroad at Allatoona. During the Atlanta Campaign, Sherman had avoided a battle with General Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A.’s forces at this very spot. Allatoona is protected by two lightly manned forts. Hood’s forces batter the forts with artillery and then try to rush both positions, but the Union defenders do not break, keeping fast to Sherman’s order to “Hold down the fort” (which becomes a household expression after the war). The attack is called off when the Confederates receive (false) information regarding a powerful reinforcing column said to be on its way to Allatoona. Although a brief battle, it is bloody. The Union loses 700 men killed, wounded or missing; the Confederacy, 900. 

October 4, 1864---Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez (1823-1890)

OCTOBER 4, 1864:            

The New Orleans Tribune, America’s first African-American owned daily newspaper, begins bilingual publication (in English and French) in New Orleans. Its publisher, Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez (1823-1890), a successful physician, used the newspaper to champion abolition, universal suffrage, desegregation and black property rights. Dr. Roudanez was the son of a French merchant and a free black woman. Although he was identified as “white” on his baptismal certificate, Dr. Roudanez identified with his mother’s people all his life. Educated in Paris, he lived most of his life in New Orleans.

On this same day, the National Convention of Colored Freemen, meeting in Syracuse, New York, adopts “The Bill of Wrongs and Rights.”

October 3, 1864---Forrest afire

OCTOBER 3, 1864:           

In Kentucky and Tennessee and in northern Georgia, General Nathan Bedford Forrest C.S.A. repeatedly cuts the rail line to Atlanta and takes the small towns of Big Shanty and Kennesaw Water Tank. 

General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A. is growing tired of Forrest’s constant raids, and sends General George H. Thomas U.S.A. back toward Chattanooga with several tens of thousands of men belonging to the Army of The Cumberland. The large Union force does not scare off The Wizard, but it does suppress for the moment any major action by General John Bell Hood C.S.A.’s still-depleted Army of Tennessee.

October 2, 1864---The Battle of Saltville, Virginia

OCTOBER 2, 1864:           

The Battle of Saltville, Virginia. After the Beefsteak Raid, the Confederates had used up a large portion of their salt stocks in preserving the purloined beef. Salt was a valuable war commodity for many reasons, and most of Virginia’s wartime salt came from aptly named Saltville, in the Virginia arrowhead.

Ulysses S. Grant, hoping to strangle the Rebel army just a little more, decided to destroy Saltville in order to deprive the Confederates of salt.  8,000 Union troops in Kentucky are dispatched to Saltville, including the Sixth United States Colored Cavalry.

Unfortunately, the mountainous terrain around Saltville made charges, cavalry or otherwise, impracticable. The Union troops discovered that the Saltville garrison (numbered about 3,000) was superbly positioned on the high ground. The raid began to fall apart.

When the local militia realized that black cavalrymen were in the town, they redoubled their attack. Largely ignoring the white Union troops, the Virginians focused most of their fire on the black columns, killing the black soldiers en masse.  All men taken prisoner --- white and black --- were shot.

Some of the Southerners, driven to hysteria, bayoneted the corpses. When their own officers tried to get control of the situation the local men threatened even them, and went on hacking and slashing and stabbing at the living, the nearly dead, and the dead. At least 500 of the 600 men assigned to the brand-new United States Colored Cavalry were slain during the battle, and another fifty at least were killed after they were taken prisoner. “We killed nearly all the negroes,” reported General Felix Robertson C.S.A.

If nothing else, the deportment of the U.S.C.C. men garnered adulation from the white soldiers who were in the battle. "I never thought they would fight until I saw them there. I never saw troops fight like they did. The rebels were firing on them with grape and canister and were mowing them down by the scores but others kept straight on. I have seen white troops fight in twenty-seven battles and never saw any fight any better," wrote a Colonel of (U.S.) Kentucky militiamen.