U.S. forces arrived in New Orleans #OTD in 1862, a day after passing the confederate positions at Forts Jackson & St. Philip. Confederate commander Mansfield Lovell refused to surrender to the small force of Marines, and a mob pulled down the flag they’d raised at the US Mint.🧵
A week later, Admiral Farragut returned with a stronger force, removing the Louisiana flag from city hall. Shortly after, General Benjamin Butler arrived and occupied the city with 5,000 U.S. troops. #CivilWar#ConfederateHeritageMonth
There were no particularly notable confederates who passed away #OTD, so to honor #ConfederateHeritageMonth today, we wish a very happy birthday to General Ulysses S. Grant, conqueror of the confederacy. #CivilWar@USGrantNPS
#OTD in 1865, the steamboat Sultana was heading north on the Mississippi River, overcrowded with thousands of U.S. soldiers who had just been released from prisoner of war camps at the end of the #CivilWar , when three of her boilers exploded.🧵
The troops had been held at the Cahaba and Andersonville prison camps, where they had been treated vastly differently. Andersonville was notorious for the poor treatment of prisoners and high death rate, while Cahaba prisoners were treated humanly by the camp commander.
All of the released prisoners were simply trying to get home now that the #CivilWar was over. They waited at @VicksburgNPS for any steamboat to take them, the U.S. Government having announced that they would pay captains on a per solider and per officer basis for the trip north.
The Siege of Fort Macon, NC, ended #OTD in 1862 when the confederate garrison surrendered to U.S. troops under General John Parke. The fort had been under siege for a month as part of General Ambrose Burnside’s North Carolina Expedition. #ConfederateHeritageMonth
John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of President Abraham Lincoln, was found and killed by a detachment of @USArmy soldiers #OTD in 1865, in a tobacco barn on the Garrett Farm near Port Royal, Virginia. #CivilWar#ConfederateHeritageMonth 🧵
Having escaped from Washington after the assassination, Booth spent nearly two weeks evading capture and seeking treatment for the leg he injured when he jumped to the @fordstheatre stage. He was accompanied by David Herold, one of his co-conspirators. #ConfederateHeritageMonth
They were guided to the Garrett Farm by a former confederate solider, Willie Jett. The Garrett family was unaware of who Booth was, or even that Lincoln had been assassinated, since the confederate mail system had stopped. #ConfederateHeritageMonth
The Battle of Marks’ Mills was fought #OTD in 1864, when confederate forces under James Fagan intercepted a wagon train of supplies intended for Gen. Frederick Steele's forces near Camden, AR. They were bottled up there after the failure of his Camden Expedition #CivilWar.🧵
On April 24, Steele sent about 1400 men and nearly 250 wagons under the command of Lt. Colonel Francis Drake, to forage for food. They were accompanied by several civilian wagons and nearly 300 formerly enslaved Black men who worked as laborers for the Army.
Encountering muddy roads and a swollen Moro Bayou bottom due to heavy spring rains, by mid-afternoon Drake ordered his men to camp for the night, sending the laborers ahead to cut logs to corduroy the muddy road. He was unaware that Fagan's cavalry was camped nearby.
John Doby Kennedy died #OTD in 1896. A law student prior to the #CivilWar, he elected to join the confederacy and commanded a regiment in the confederate losses at the Battles of @GettysburgNMP, Cedar Creek, Bentonville, and others. #ConfederateHeritageMonth🧵
After the war he was elected to the U.S. House, but was denied his seat when he refused to take the oath swearing allegiance to the federal government. He was also prominent in the effort to return South Carolina to majority white rule. #ConfederateHeritageMonth