January 19, 1864---Coal Torpedoes

JANUARY 19, 1864:            

An Anti-Conscription rally is held in Little Rock, Arkansas. Confederate flags are torn down.

On this day, a Confederate inventor creates the “coal torpedo.” A rough-hewn piece of hollowed-out iron painted black, a coal torpedo was loaded with gunpowder and dropped into the coal bin of a building or a ship where it was indistinguishable from real coal. When shoveled into a boiler, the coal torpedo would turn red-hot, igniting the gunpowder and causing a damaging---sometimes devastating---explosion. Coal torpedoes were not much used in the war, but the few that were were extremely destructive.

January 18, 1864---Southern draft resistance

JANUARY 18, 1864:           

The Confederacy, desperate for (white) manpower, having revoked Substitution, now broadens the draft age from 18-45 to 17-60. Mass protests erupt throughout the South, particularly in Union-friendly western North Carolina on this day.

January 17, 1864---The Battle of Dandridge, Tennessee

JANUARY 17, 1864:           

The Battle of Dandridge, Tennessee. To stop Confederate troops from moving back into Tennessee, Union forces engage troops belonging to General James Longstreet’s Command. The Confederates manage to push the Federals back to their initial staging point, but a shortage of ammunition, food and shoes precludes any follow-up action by Longstreet’s forces, and they remain in and around Dandridge. Fearing a massed attack, the Union commander breaks off, leaving the Confederates with a toehold in Tennessee. 

January 16, 1864---Pardons

JANUARY 16, 1864:            

President Lincoln personally approves a pardon for Confederate Private John S. Ennis based on a petition from Unionist Kentucky Congressman Henry Grider. Ennis was also from Lincoln’s birth State, and both Grider and Ennis came from prominent political families. Just as he had with ex-Confederate Josiah Pillsbury ten days before, Lincoln uses the Pardon Power to advance Reconstruction. 

January 15, 1864---"Four years have dealt us many sad blows."

JANUARY 15, 1864:            

"Four years have dealt us many sad blows." Of the 19 young men who graduated Ashland, Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College in 1859, five would die as a result of their military service, three from wounds and two from illness, a more than 25% mortality rate for the class. Others would be wounded, in some cases multiple times; for some, their health would be compromised for the rest of their lives. Stlll others would spend time in harsh conditions as prisoners of war. Leroy Edwards, who would spend a year in the infamous Union POW camp at Elmira, New York, kept a copy of the graduation program for the Class of 1859 that includes his pencilled annotations "died" and "killed" next to the names of his classmates who did not survive the war.