#OTD in 1864, after the failure of his assaults the previous two days, General @USGrantNPS made one final attempt to draw out and do battle with Robert E. Lee’s entrenched Army of Northern Virginia near Spotsylvania Court House. #CivilWar🧵
Grant ordered General Winfield Scott Hancock to take II Corps toward the Fredricksburg-Richmond Railroad, and then march south, hoping that Lee would send his army to intercept the isolated Corps and give Grant an opportunity to engage them before they could entrench again.
Lee had his own plans. He’d ordered Richard Ewell to take his Corps north and east, to find the U.S. flank at that end of their line. Near the Harris Farm, also known as Bloomsbury Farm, Ewell’s men encountered U.S. Heavy Artillery units that had been converted to infantry.
Ewell’s men attacked, but the inexperienced U.S. troops held their ground. They were reinforced by General David Birney’s division, and inflicted heavy casualties on the confederates.
Fearing a general engagement, Lee ordered Ewell to withdraw. One third of Ewell’s engaged force had been killed, wounded or captured, but they had delayed Hancock’s movement south.
A @USArmy force under Colonel James Henry Carleton entered Tucson in the Territory of Arizona #OTD in 1862, ending a brief occupation by confederate forces without firing a shot. #CivilWar🧵
Originally part of the Territory of New Mexico, cities in the south of the territory had attempted to separate as a territory with legal slavery in the 1850’s but their petition was denied. After the Civil War began, the confederacy recognized the area as the Arizona Territory.
A small number of confederate troops arrived and occupied Tucson in March, 1862, ordered there by Henry Hopkins Sibley. They fought a pair of engagements with Apaches in the area, but ordered the town abandoned when they learned Carleton’s troops were approaching.
The Battle of Ware Bottom Church was fought #OTD in 1864. Part of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, the battle was fought when eight confederate brigades under P.G.T. Beauregard attacked the @USArmy positions of General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James. #CivilWar 🧵
It was a short, fierce engagement in which 1,400 of the 10,000 engaged troops became casualties. After it ended, Beauregard had his men construct the Howlett Line of defensive positions, further bottling up Butler’s larger force in the Bermuda Hundred Peninsula.
Felix Zollicoffer, a former Congressman and newspaper editor from Tennessee who joined the confederacy during the #CivilWar, was born #OTD in 1812. He and his wife Louisa, a direct descendant of Pocahontas, had 14 children, but only 6 survived past infancy.🧵
Though Zollicoffer did not support secession, he volunteered his service to the Provisional Army of Tennessee when it was formed. He had some brief experience in the @USArmy during the Second Seminole War, and so was named a brigadier general in the state’s army in July, 1861.
Named District Commander area of eastern Tennessee, Zollicoffer and his small force fought several small engagements with @USArmy forces over control of that part of the state as wells as Kentucky and the Cumberland Gap.
#OTD in 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts began a two-day speech on the floor of the Senate entitled “The Crime Against Kansas”, forcefully arguing for the admission of Kansas as a free state in which slavery would be illegal. #CivilWar🧵
He denounced slavery as well as the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, including Sen. Andrew Butler of South Carolina, saying he had “chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows..who though polluted in the sight of the world is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, slavery.”
Days later, Butler’s cousin, Rep. Preston Brooks, attacked Sumner on the floor of the Senate, beating him with a cane to avenge the honor of his cousin who he felt Sumner had insulted. The attack further polarized the pro- and anti-slavery factions leading up to the Civil War.
John Cabell Breckinridge, the 14th Vice President of the United States, who later commanded troops for the confederacy during the #CivilWar, died #OTD in 1875.🧵
Born into a prominent family in Lexington, KY, in 1821, Breckinridge received a law degree from @Transy University in 1841 and opened a law practice. He left that practice in 1847, and was commissioned as a Major in the 3rd Kentucky Infantry for service in the war with Mexico.
The unit saw no combat, but was part of the occupation force for 6 months. Upon returning to Kentucky and leaving the Army, Breckinridge entered politics, being elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1849.
The Battle of Big Black River Bridge was fought #OTD in 1863. Part of General Ulysses Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign, the battle was fought as a delaying action as the confederates withdrew from their loss the day before at Champion Hill. #CivilWar🧵
The confederate commander, John Pemberton, ordered John Bowen to hold the east bank of the river to delay the @USArmy advance, which was led by General John McClernand’s XIII Corps.
General Michael Lawler’s brigade surged forward toward the confederate works, through waist-deep water, and scattered the inexperienced rebel troops. They withdrew in disorder across a rail bridge and three steamboats that were tied to make a second bridge.