August 20, 1863---"Home, Sweet Home"

AUGUST 20, 1863: 

            

The Lawrence, Kansas City Band (Orchestra) performs for the first time. Among the selections played are “Hail Columbia!” and “Home, Sweet Home,” which is popular with the soldiers on both sides of the war.

"Home, Sweet Home" 

August 19, 1863---Raids near Jacksonville, Florida

AUGUST 19, 1863:     

Near Jacksonville, Florida, The U.S.S. NORWICH and the U.S.S. HALE attacked two Confederate signal stations on the St. Johns River, destroying one.

August 18, 1863---Emancipation Raids

AUGUST 18, 1863:    

General Thomas Ewing, Jr. U.S.A. orders raids on pro-Confederate Missouri military camps with the express intention of emancipating any slaves bound in service to the Confederacy.  

August 17, 1863---The Union Attack on Fort Sumter

AUGUST 17, 1863:      

After “softening up” Charleston Harbor and the City of Charleston for seventeen days, the Union begins to batter Fort Sumter, determined to destroy this symbol of Secesh resistance. Even as the Union Navy hammers at Sumter, Battery Wagner, itself under severe bombardment, blasts back at the enemy.

August 16, 1863---Near Lookout Mountain

AUGUST 16, 1863:    

The Union Army of The Cumberland begins a general advance designed to flank the Confederate Army of Tennessee, still encamped around Lookout Mountain after being defeated in the Tullahoma Campaign on July 4th. If the Union can flank the Confederacy, the Army of Tennessee will find their supply lines cut, thus forcing them to retreat deeper into Georgia. Unfortunately for the Union, the Tullahoma Campaign was remarkably bloodless on both sides, and the Rebels have had a month-and-a-half so far to regroup and resupply. Many of Pemberton’s paroled men from Vicksburg have “illegally” swelled Confederate numbers, and the Grays are spoiling for a fight, one which becomes the first major Civil War battle fought in Georgia---the Battle of Chickamauga.

August 15, 1863---The Fair Sex

AUGUST 15, 1863:        

Lieutenant John Wilkinson, C.S.N., skipper of the blockade runner Lee, departs from Wilmington, North Carolina, praising the bravery of his female passengers:

 “My observation of the conduct of the fair sex, under trying and novel circumstances, has convinced me that they face inevitable dangers more bravely and with more composure than men. I have frequently seen a frail, delicate woman standing erect and unflinching upon the deck, as the shells were whistling and bursting over us, while her lawful protector would be cowering ‘under the lee’ of a cotton bale.”