November 4, 1864---The Siege of Fayetteville, Arkansas

NOVEMBER 4, 1864:        

The Siege of Fayetteville, Arkansas. 

William “Buck” Brown, a notorious Confederate guerrilla attacked Union-held Fayetteville on October 25 with a force of 500 men and artillery. Brown began an indiscriminate and intermittent shelling of the town that continued for ten days. Civilians were killed, putting an end to any Confederate sympathy in Fayetteville. On November 4^th, Brown finally decided to break the siege and attack the town with an assist from General Sterling Price C.S.A.’s battered and almost-pointlessly wandering force, which had been in and out of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and the Indian Territory in just the last two weeks. Price was hoping to redeem himself by taking Fayetteville, and his 5,200 men, along with Brown’s 500 made three successive infantry charges, each of which was beaten back by the 1,000 Federal defenders. The Confederates lost 100 men killed and captured. The Union suffered 9 wounded. After the third charge, Price pulled out, and Brown’s irregulars gave up the siege leaving Fayetteville a Union city.

November 3, 1864---THe Battle of Johnsonville, TN

NOVEMBER 3, 1864:        

The Battle of Johnsonville. Nathan Bedford Forrest, his troopers, and his scratch navy, attack the Union supply depot and Johnsonville, Tennessee. Forrest is forced to scuttle his “flagship” the C.S.S. (lately U.S.S.) UNDINE ending his brief naval “career.” Other than that the Johnsonville Raid is a magnificent success. Forrest reported only 2 men killed and 9 wounded. He described the Union losses as 4 gunboats (including the U.S.S. KEY WEST, which was sunk), 14 transports, 20 barges, 26 pieces of artillery, $6,700,000 worth of property (ammunition, food, and supplies), and 150 prisoners. The supply depot was destroyed in a sheet of flame by his artillery bombardment, and control of the Tennessee River became contested. General George H. Thomas U.S.A.’s Army of The Cumberland, which had been shadowing John Bell Hood, found its main supply source cut off. This slowed, but ultimately did not stop Union actions in the Tennessee River region. As for Forrest, he and his men set off a three week rampage through the area. 

November 2, 1864---Pardon me . . .

NOVEMBER 2, 1864:       

Albert Hobbs, a New York State Assemblyman, requested and received from President Lincoln a pardon for his nephew Nathan Wilcox, whom General Grant had ordered hanged for desertion. 

In late 1864, desertion was a plague on the Confederate armies --- at one point in the ongoing Franklin-Nashville Campaign General John Bell Hood C.S.A. was leading only 4,500 effectives  in his Army of Tennessee (rated at 40,000 on paper). This was an extraordinary desertion rate; however, a number of these men quit Hood’s army to join Lee’s army or to become itinerant self-styled partisans. Then too, desertion was not an irrevocable act. Men returned to combat sometimes, after visiting their families or having a change of heart. Many of these deserters were summarily pardoned, especially given the Confederacy’s desperate manpower needs. Field officers often issued pardons, as did Jefferson Davis. Others re-enlisted under pseudonyms. Often, weather conditions and the prospect of victory or defeat had a tremendous impact on the desertion rate. At this point in the war, there was an almost constant leakage of men from the Southern ranks, a leakage which had not yet reached its flood tide.

Essentially the same conditions applied for the Union. During the war, at least 200,000 men walked off the blue line. Late in the war, men often decided for themselves that the war was won, and that they need not risk themselves any more. Some of these men had been fighting since 1861.  By 1864, ordered hangings and shootings for desertion in the Union army had become far more common, because of the available manpower pool, than in the Confederate army, but executions were often deferred or cancelled for reasons of unit morale or because pardons were routinely issued by President Lincoln, and more occasionally by his field commanders. Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln’s waspish Secretary of War, was driven to distraction by Lincoln’s constant habit of issuing pardons. Lincoln was often derided as “weak” on army discipline. In reality, he had just grown exhausted from all the bloodletting and wanted to commit no more.  In all, only 147 men were executed for desertion by the Union during the war.

November 1, 1864---The Emilie Davis Diaries

NOVEMBER 1, 1864:      

The new Constitution of Maryland comes into effect, ending slavery in the State. African-Americans throughout the North (and restored South) rejoice. Emile Davis, a black woman living in Philadelphia, writes in her diary:

 

to day is a holliaday with most everyone the Colored soldiers are in and everything seemes cherful i went to meeting quite a nice little meeting after meeting we went   to see the [indecipherable] at head quarters I have had no letter from nell this week she is [indecipherable] in a hury to answer my letters

Emilie, who was a domestic, kept three small pocket diaries, covering the years 1863, 1864, and 1865. They are an invaluable source as to what an “average” African-American in the North was experiencing during the Civil War. Due to Emilie’s use of different writing implements and her idiosyncratic spelling some of the text is unreadable.

October 31, 1864---The Battle Born State

OCTOBER 31, 1864:                   

“The Battle-Born State,” Nevada becomes the 36^th State of the Union. In one of the hapless James Buchanan’s last acts as President, he created the Nevada Territory on March 2, 1861 out of the western reaches of the Utah Territory. This was felt to be necessary as the Mormons of Utah Territory (“Deseret”) had begun harassing the “gentiles” of far western Utah. Most of the settlers in the new Nevada Territory were miners. Nevada therefore was a rough and tumble region, not amenable to the stern religious regulation of the Mormons.  

During the Civil War, several precious metal strikes, particularly the Comstock Lode around Virginia City, helped bolster the Union’s specie reserves. This wartime contribution was the “official” reason given for Nevada’s very fast path to Statehood. It was also used to explain Nevada’s subsequent annexations of land from the Utah and New Mexico Territories.

In fact, Nevada became a State because President Lincoln, having tried unsuccessfully to bring Colorado to Statehood, feared that he might need the extra electoral votes that Nevada as a territory could not provide. (As it turned out, Lincoln received but did not need the new State’s two electoral votes. One Elector was absent.)

Nevada’s application for Statehood was therefore expedited. The Territorial Government sent the proposed State Constitution to Washington D.C. for review on October 26^th. Fearing that the mails were too slow to allow for Statehood before the Presidential election, all the documents of Statehood were telegraphed to Washington. The Nevada Statehood package held the record as the longest telegraph ever sent for twenty years, and is still the most expensive telegraph ever sent, at $4303.27 (1864) or $59,294.92 (2010). 

Although Nevada only had 38,000 residents in 1864, this was not a legal bar to admission as a State. Although the Enabling Act of 1802 (which applied to States in the “Old Northwest”) required a minimum population of 60,000 for Statehood, the population requirement did not have to apply to Nevada, it was argued, and so Congress conveniently ignored it.

Nevada as a State was as divided as most other States when it came to taking sides in the Civil War. Though the majority of the population was Unionist and the Territorial / State government was firmly Republican, a significant number of settlers were pro-Confederates (Virginia City, one of the legendary towns of the “Old West,” had been founded by Virginian settlers in 1859). 

As of 1864, Virginia City had a population of 25,000, making it by far the largest city in the State. The population was divided equally between pro-Unionists and pro-Confederates, but the pro-Confederates were often forcibly silenced.  

(Virginia City was not known for its innate tolerance. Between 1863 and 1900 Jewish settlers were restricted to living in a rugged area just outside the city proper called Seven Mile Canyon. The original Jewish cemetery in the State is located in Seven Mile Canyon.) 

The Virginia City Fire Department was made up of firefighters all of whom had been born in New York City, and most of whom had served with the New York Fire Zouaves in the early days of the war. 

The Fire Zouaves, as they continued informally to be known, acted as a pro-Union paramilitary force in Virginia City, keeping pro-Confederates under close watch (and administering beatings when necessary). Most pro-Confederate militants were arrested and sent to Fort Churchill for the duration of the war. (The only Confederate flag to fly in Nevada flew over a saloon. The owner of the saloon was talked into taking it down when word of an approaching mob reached his ears.) 

Nevada raised both an infantry and a cavalry brigade for the Union, and Nevada men guarded the transcontinental trails as well.  

Nevada raised no Confederate military units though undoubtedly pro-Southern Nevadans joined C.S.A. units outside of the State.