What was the most significant event on August 23 during the U.S. Civil War?

In 1862 combat engagements were distributed across the country in both the eastern and western theaters: “in or near Four Mile, Hickory Grove and Wayman’s Mill, Missouri; Bayou Sara, Louisiana; Big Hill, Kentucky; Greenville, Mississippi; Trinity, Alabama, and Fort Donelson, Tennessee; Moorefield in western Virginia. In Virginia proper things were hottest, with fighting at Rappahannock Station, Beverly Ford, Fant’s Ford, Smithfield, Sulphur Springs, and on the railroad between Harper’s Ferry and Winchester. A train was captured by Confederate forces.”
In 1863, a Confederate force was at the mouth of the Rappahannock River in Virginia. They the Union gunboats USS Satellite and USS Reliance coming their way. The Confederates attacked and captured the gunboats in a short time.

Below are a number of journal entries from 1861, 1862, 1863 and 1864 which shed light on what life was like for soldiers and civilians – the good, the bad and the ugly. In both 1861 and 1862 John Houston Bills, settler, planter and diarist provided entries from his diary. In 1863 Confederate Major General Richard Taylor wrote to Union Major General Nathaniel P. Banks to dispute the status of certain prisoners he had released and threatening to consider the Confederates paroled at Vicksburg and Port Hudson as exchanged unless he was satisfied by Banks' reply. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet members to sign a sealed memorandum without reading it. They complied. He was concerned that he might lose the upcoming election. Interestingly enough George B. McClellan was trying to be nominated as the democratic party candidate for President.
Friday, August 23, 1861: The Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: “August 23d. - A brother of Doctor Garnett has come fresh and straight from Cambridge, Mass., and says (or is said to have said, with all the difference there is between the two), that "recruiting up there is dead." He came by Cincinnati and Pittsburg and says all the way through it was so sad, mournful, and quiet it looked like Sunday.
I asked Mr. Brewster if it were true Senator Toombs had turned brigadier. "Yes, soldiering is in the air. Every one will have a touch of it. Toombs could not stay in the Cabinet." "Why?" "Incompatibility of temper. He rides too high a horse; that is, for so despotic a person as Jeff Davis. I have tried to find out the sore, but I can't. Mr. Toombs has been out with them all for months." Dissension will break out. Everything does, but it takes a little time. There is a perfect magazine of discord and discontent in that Cabinet; only wants a hand to apply the torch, and up they go. Toombs says old Memminger has his back up as high as any.
Oh, such a day! Since I wrote this morning, I have been with Mrs. Randolph to all the hospitals. I can never again shut out of view the sights I saw there of human misery. I sit thinking, shut my eyes, and see it all; thinking, yes, and there is enough to think about now, God knows. Gilland's was the worst, with long rows of ill men on cots, ill of typhoid fever, of every human ailment; on dinner-tables for eating and drinking, wounds being dressed; all the horrors to be taken in at one glance.
Then we went to the St. Charles. Horrors upon horrors again; want of organization, long rows of dead and dying; awful sights. A boy from home had sent for me. He was dying in a cot, ill of fever. Next him a man died in convulsions as we stood there. I was making arrangements with a nurse, hiring him to take care of this lad; but I do not remember any more, for I fainted. Next that I knew of, the doctor and Mrs. Randolph were having me, a limp rag, put into a carriage at the door of the hospital. Fresh air, I dare say, brought me to. As we drove home the doctor came along with us, I was so upset. He said: "Look at that Georgia regiment marching there; look at their servants on the sidewalk. I have been counting them, making an estimate. There is $16,000 - sixteen thousand dollars' worth of negro property which can go off on its own legs to the Yankees whenever it pleases."
Friday, August 23, 1861: Hardeman County plantation owner/ planter, merchant, and civic leader, John Houston Bills (The Pillars) wrote in his diary: “I go to Union City to visit R. H. Wood & his Company in camp. I find 1/3 of his men sick of Measles. The 22nd Reg. (Freemans) of which Capt. R.H. Woods Company is part, muster in the forenoon each day & perform well, also late in the evening. My daughter Evelina, (wife of Capt M.T. Polk) is delivered of a daughter, a promising child weighting 7 ½ lbs.” Tennessee Governor Harris declares Kentucky’s policy of armed neutrality a hostile act. The Memphis Daily Appeal writes, “The Drummer's Flag.—We have been shown an elegant flag of silk with the stars beautifully worked, which was presented by the ladies of Randolph to little Bedford, the ten year old drummer of the first regiment of Tennessee volunteers.”
Saturday, August, 23, 1862: In Bolivar, a different kind of war was going on... John Houston Bills, settler, planter and diarist tells us: “My back given way to my urinary infirmaty. I however attend the public meeting, hear a speech from Gen. McClernand & one from Mont Jones - resolutions favouring the restoration of the Union are passed, but few voices responding, no one contradicting. I am so worn down by the War. My feelings are all for peace, though I confess I am unable to say how would be best to effect it & therefore say nothing. I feel my nothingness & total impotency for good in an affair of such dimensions as this. Our people seem bent on fighting it out, which must be a desperate game & of doubtful issue. May God interfere for the good of Men!!”
Saturday, August, 23, 1862: George Michael Neese, of the Confederate artillery, recounts his battery’s experience as they move to flank Pope’s army, and the clashes between Stuart’s cavalry (and artillery) with the Yankees: “This afternoon about four o’clock we went in an orchard a little below the Springs hotel and opened fire on a Yankee ordnance train that was moving back from the river in the direction of Warrenton. It was heavily guarded and proved to be something more than an ordnance train, for immediately after we opened the Yanks returned our fire promptly and in a businesslike manner with a six-gun battery, but their gunnery was very indifferent and wild. They scattered their shell all over the adjacent fields, ranging in altitude from the earth to the moon. We kept up a steady fire for two hours. Then my gun, like a fidgety, naughty child, kicked loose from its mounting and had to be taken from the field for repairs. The other guns in the battery were fired at intervals until dark. . . . Jackson’s troops are camped near the river on the Rappahannock side opposite to the Sulphur Spring. Some of his men were building a bridge to-day across the Rappahannock near the Spring. . . . Down the river and not far away the whole country is full of Yankee infantry and artillery. I have not seen any of their cavalry to-day. I suppose they are hunting for us somewhere around Catlett, where we left our tracks last night. We have nothing on this side of the river but cavalry and our battery, and the river is past fording. If the Yanks knew how easily they could undo and rout us in our present situation they would make us get away from here quicker than lightning can scorch a cat.”
Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Sarah Morgan writes in her journal of the news that Baton Rouge has been sacked and looted by the Yankee soldiers: “Yesterday Anna and I spent the day with Lilly, and the rain in the evening obliged us to stay all night. Dr. Perkins stopped there, and repeated the same old stories we have been hearing, about the powder placed under the State House and Garrison, to blow them up, if forced to evacuate the town. He confirms the story about all the convicts being set free, and the town being pillaged by the negroes and the rest of the Yankees. He says his own slaves told him they were allowed to enter the houses and help themselves, and what they did not want the Yankees either destroyed on the spot, or had it carried to the Garrison and burned.”
Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Surgeon Alfred L. Castleman of the Army of the Potomac writes with disgust in his journal about the retreat and about the petty jealousies amongst the generals: “August 23rd.—We have now, at least for the present, bid farewell to "the Peninsula," the land of blasted hopes, the place of our disappointments, the hot-bed of disgrace to the finest army of modern times. General Pope having drawn off the rebel army to give us an opportunity to escape from our perilous position, we passed from Harrison’s Point to Hampton without a fight or without a hostile gun being fired. Never since the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow, has there been so disgraceful a failure as this Peninsula campaign indeed, not then. For, although Napoleon failed in the object of his enterprise, before he retreated he saw the Russian Capital in flames and his enemy abandon his stronghold, whilst we witnessed the daily strengthening of the enemy’s capital, and were driven out of the country we went to chastise, without having accomplished a single object of our visit. . . .
The jealousy of our commanders towards General Pope is so intense, that if I mistake not, it will, on the first occasion, "crop out" in such form as shall damage our cause more than all the cowardice, incompetency and drunkenness which have so far disgraced our campaigns. General Pope’s advance proclamation was construed into a strike at McClellan’s manner of warfare, and, notwithstanding that the former has publicly disclaimed any such intention, there has existed an intense bitterness between the friends of the two ever since, nor is it lessened by the subsequent failures of McClellan and the reported successes of Pope. It is interesting, but saddening, to witness the brightening of countenances among some of the staffs of the army of the Potomac, whilst listening to or reading the reports of the repulses of General Pope. Stonewall Jackson’s official report of his "splendid victory" over our army of Virginia, has caused more joy amongst them than would the wining of a splendid success by McClellan himself. Our Generals seem to have forgotten that this is the people’s war, not their’s; that it is waged at the cost of the treasure and of the best blood of the nation, not to promote the ambitious views of individuals or parties but to protect the people’s right to Government. I begin to fear that patriotism as an element of this army is the exception, not a rule.”
Sunday, August 23, 1863: Confederate Major General Richard Taylor wrote to Union Major General Nathaniel P. Banks to dispute the status of certain prisoners he had released and threatening to consider the Confederates paroled at Vicksburg and Port Hudson as exchanged unless he was satisfied by Banks' reply.
HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF WESTERN LOUISIANA, August 23, 1863. Major General N. P. BANKS, Commanding U. S. Forces in Louisiana: “GENERAL: I have received your communication of the 17th instant notifying me that you have directed the immediate return to duty of all prisoners paroled by me during my recent occupation of the La Fourche country. You state generally that the paroles were in violation of exchange.
In the absence of any more specific statement from you I am at a loss to imagine in what particular the cartel of exchange has been violated by restoring these prisoners to their liberty upon the usual obligation not to bear arms against the Confederate States until regularly exchanged, after a careful observance of the forms requisite to give efficacy to the parole and in accordance with the practice repeatedly sanctioned and acted upon by both belligerents in this department. If under such circumstances your Government thinks proper to disapprove of the engagement thus solemnly made by these men, the common law and usages of war, as recognized by the Government of the United States in the rules in regard to paroles published by authority of its War Department, require their return and surrender as prisoners of war.
I shall expect, then, the return to me of all the captured men whose engagement has been disowned by the United States Government. Should this not be done, and the order you announce to me be persisted in, I have the honor to inform you that all the prisoners taken and paroled at Vicksburg and Port Hudson and now within the limits of my military district will be released from their paroles and ordered to duty.
Respectfully, your obedient servant, R. TAYLOR, Major-General.”
Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Lincoln's "Blind Memorandum" President Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet members to sign a sealed memorandum without reading it. They complied. The text of the "Blind Memorandum" was later revealed to be the following: “MEMORANDUM. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 23, 1864. This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward. A. LINCOLN.”
The election of 1864 was rapidly approaching, and Lincoln feared he would be defeated. This was not an unreasonable belief. No American president had been re-elected to a second term since Andrew Jackson won his second term in 1832. And then there was the war news: despite months of bloody fighting, neither Richmond nor Atlanta had fallen.



Pictures: Union Soldiers with confederate dead; 1864-08 Damage to Fort Morgan, Alabama. Note the ghostly American flag on left; 1863-08-23 Chattanooga, TN Map; 1863-08 Cannonballs in Alexandria, VA


A. Friday, August, 23, 1861: Potomac Creek, Virginia - On August 22, two Union steamer ships, USS Yankee and USS Release, engaged the Confederate batteries at the mouth of the Potomac Creek. The batteries were commanded by Col. R.M. Cary. After a short time, the ships withdrew from the area.
B. Saturday, August 23, 1862: Skirmishing and attempted flanking movements along the Rappahannock River. Heavy rains have flooded the Rappahannock, securing the US Army of Virginia’s rear, and Maj Gen John Pope decides to advance on Confederate forces at Sulphur Springs. Longstreet attacked the Federal left in order to keep McDowell’s corps from moving to the west. In spite of Pope’s insistent orders that Gen. Sigel advance his corps and crush this one brigade, Sigel was slow to move: by evening, the river has gone down enough for Stonewall Jackson to build a bridge (and he does, as he personally supervises, covered in mud), and begins crossing more troops, thus saving Jubal Early.
Meanwhile, the first troops of the Army of the Potomac arrive, a division under the command of General John Reynolds.
Throughout this period, General-in-Chief Halleck is furious that his telegrams to Pope are leaking to the press.
C. Sunday, August 23, 1863: Confederates at Chattanooga, TN thoroughly confused. CSA Gen. Joseph Johnston was ordered to reinforce General Braxton Bragg in Chattanooga. He sent two divisions--about 9,000 men. CSA Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner with just nearly 9,000 men was ordered to fall back on Chattanooga conceding Knoxville to Ambrose Burnside’s 15,000-man Army of Ohio which was advancing into eastern Tennessee. Meanwhile, Maj Gen William Rosecrans had positioned Thomas’s XIV Corps and McCook’s XX Corps to the southwest of Chattanooga which were ready to strike across the mountain passes and get behind the Confederate army and the city. Rosecrans had also placed Crittenden’s XXI Corps in position to cross the Tennessee north of the city, so as to draw Bragg’s attention in that direction (which, in fact, it does).
Details: Sunday, August 23, 1863: Confederates at Chattanooga Thoroughly Confused.
“The necessity of combining with General Bragg compels me to draw most of my troops to this end of the district,” he began. “The impossibility of opposing the enemy’s advance at all points leads me to concentrate against his right.” He instructed his easterly comrades to check the enemy’s “advance as far as possible.” If it wasn’t possible, he was to retreat toward North Carolina. “That you may understand fully,” he concluded, “I will say there is no purpose of evacuated East Tennessee, but on the contrary it is proposed to defend it to the last.” Buckner was hopeful, and predicted that the Federals would gain some ground, but only “for a short time.”
Whatever lip service that Buckner paid to holding East Tennessee to the last, dissipated on this date. To Bragg’s headquarters, he admitted, “Alone I can do little against him [Burnside]. By co-operating with you we may effect something against Rosecrans before junction of their armies. I will endeavor to hold my troops in a position to do this, and if facts develop as I now believe I will constitute the right of your army.”
While Ambrose Burnside’s 15,000-strong Army of the Ohio crossed into Tennessee, Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland was preparing quite another kind of surprise for Braxton Bragg. The artillery fire upon Chattanooga had been part of an elaborate ruse. Their appearance led Bragg and pretty much everyone else, to assume that the two Federal armies were about to combine and cross the Tennessee at or slightly north of Chattanooga. In actuality, however, Rosecrans’ plan was to cross the bulk of his force well south of the city, using Burnside’s force to cover his extreme left flank.
Braxton Bragg assumed that Rosecrans was moving in the space between Chattanooga and Knoxville. For the next several days, he would act on that mistake, actually pulling troops away from the main body of the Federal Army. He even started a division on the road northeast to reinforce Buckner. All he could now do was wait for Rosecrans to appear somewhere up the river even though that was exactly where Rosecrans was not going to be.
Background: Things in Chattanooga were afoot. Confederate General Braxton Bragg seemed to have no knowledge at all that 60,000 Federals were advancing towards him and about to cross the Cumberland Mountains and Tennessee River. This all changed on the morning of August 21st, when Union artillery opened fire upon the city from across the Tennessee. A young colonel named John Wilder, commanding a brigade of mounted infantry – the vanguard of William Rosecrans’ advancing Army of the Cumberland – had scrambled across the hills and rained shot and shell upon them. They targeted two steamers, and destroyed them both. This sent the citizens scurrying and quick word to General Bragg, who was twenty miles away at a hospital in Georgia.
When Bragg returned that evening, the fact that the Northern troops might try to take Chattanooga seemed to have just dawned upon him. Not only was he met with Federal artillery (though only a partial battery), but also reports of Union movement up and down the Tennessee forty miles in either direction. From farther away in Knoxville, Tennessee, 100 miles northeast, Confederate General Simon Buckner sent word that another Federal Army, under Ambrose Burnside, was advancing from Kentucky. With his small force, there was no way he could hold East Tennessee.
In a flurry that night, he sent a message to General Joe Johnston in Mississippi, explaining that both Generals Rosecrans and Burnside were advancing upon him and he needed help. When Johnston received the message, he waited until morning before wiring Richmond to see if he had the authority to reinforce Bragg. After receiving incredibly clear instructions that he not only had the authority (which Johnston obviously knew), but needed to do, he sent a reply to Bragg, telling him that two divisions, about 9,000 men, would be on their way within twenty-four hours.
Bragg also called upon Richmond to see what they could do. They, of course, knew that Johnston was going to help and that Buckner in Knoxville would fall back upon Chattanooga. A general concentration would not only bolster the defenses, but would boost morale.
While Bragg saw to his own strategy, asking his lieutenants for a bit of advice, General Buckner quickly assessed the problem. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry had been on picket duty along the Tennessee, their extreme left at Kingston, forty miles east of Knoxville, and about seventy miles northeast of Chattanooga. Buckner had heard that Burnside’s force numbered near 50,000, but rightly believed it to be an exaggeration. But even if it were a quarter of that figure, they would still outnumber him two for every one.
“I am moving my infantry with a view to sustaining you at Kingston,” wrote Buckner to Forrest on the 22nd. “Burnside is certainly advancing, but his movement are not yet developed.” To one of his officers 100 miles even farther east, Buckner explained the move
http://civilwardailygazette.com/confederates-at-chattanooga-thoroughly-confused/
D. Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Fort Morgan, last of the Confederate fort on Mobile Bay, fell into federal hands following a spectacular barrage. Having withstood naval bombardment for more than two weeks, and attacks by Union soldiers ashore, Brigadier General Page surrenders Fort Morgan, the last Confederate outpost guarding the inlets to Mobile Bay. He said, “My guns and powder had all been destroyed, my means of defense gone…It was evident the fort could hold out but a few hours longer under a renewed bombardment.” Now gone is the last Confederate port of any size on the Gulf of Mexico not in Federal hands, leaving only Wilmington, North Carolina, as the last port open for Confederate blockade runners.


1. Friday, August 23, 1861: The Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: “August 23d. - A brother of Doctor Garnett has come fresh and straight from Cambridge, Mass., and says (or is said to have said, with all the difference there is between the two), that "recruiting up there is dead." He came by Cincinnati and Pittsburg and says all the way through it was so sad, mournful, and quiet it looked like Sunday.
I asked Mr. Brewster if it were true Senator Toombs had turned brigadier. "Yes, soldiering is in the air. Every one will have a touch of it. Toombs could not stay in the Cabinet." "Why?" "Incompatibility of temper. He rides too high a horse; that is, for so despotic a person as Jeff Davis. I have tried to find out the sore, but I can't. Mr. Toombs has been out with them all for months." Dissension will break out. Everything does, but it takes a little time. There is a perfect magazine of discord and discontent in that Cabinet; only wants a hand to apply the torch, and up they go. Toombs says old Memminger has his back up as high as any.
Oh, such a day! Since I wrote this morning, I have been with Mrs. Randolph to all the hospitals. I can never again shut out of view the sights I saw there of human misery. I sit thinking, shut my eyes, and see it all; thinking, yes, and there is enough to think about now, God knows. Gilland's was the worst, with long rows of ill men on cots, ill of typhoid fever, of every human ailment; on dinner-tables for eating and drinking, wounds being dressed; all the horrors to be taken in at one glance.
Then we went to the St. Charles. Horrors upon horrors again; want of organization, long rows of dead and dying; awful sights. A boy from home had sent for me. He was dying in a cot, ill of fever. Next him a man died in convulsions as we stood there. I was making arrangements with a nurse, hiring him to take care of this lad; but I do not remember any more, for I fainted. Next that I knew of, the doctor and Mrs. Randolph were having me, a limp rag, put into a carriage at the door of the hospital. Fresh air, I dare say, brought me to. As we drove home the doctor came along with us, I was so upset. He said: "Look at that Georgia regiment marching there; look at their servants on the sidewalk. I have been counting them, making an estimate. There is $16,000 - sixteen thousand dollars' worth of negro property which can go off on its own legs to the Yankees whenever it pleases."
The last bit of this diary entry is interesting. Chesnut and her doctor friend notice slave servants being taken to war with a Georgia regiment. The doctor speculates that the slaves will escape as soon as they can. A very different image from that presented by those who would have us believe that slaves willingly served in the Confederate army.
http://www.civilwar-online.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1861
2. Friday, August 23, 1861: Hardeman County plantation owner/ planter, merchant, and civic leader, John Houston Bills (The Pillars) wrote in his diary: “I go to Union City to visit R. H. Wood & his Company in camp. I find 1/3 of his men sick of Measles. The 22nd Reg. (Freemans) of which Capt. R.H. Woods Company is part, muster in the forenoon each day & perform well, also late in the evening. My daughter Evelina, (wife of Capt M.T. Polk) is delivered of a daughter, a promising child weighting 7 ½ lbs.” Tennessee Governor Harris declares Kentucky’s policy of armed neutrality a hostile act. The Memphis Daily Appeal writes, “The Drummer's Flag.—We have been shown an elegant flag of silk with the stars beautifully worked, which was presented by the ladies of Randolph to little Bedford, the ten year old drummer of the first regiment of Tennessee volunteers.”
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-a/part-nineteen-1
3. Saturday, August, 23, 1862: In Bolivar, a different kind of war was going on... John Houston Bills, settler, planter and diarist tells us: “My back given way to my urinary infirmaty. I however attend the public meeting, hear a speech from Gen. McClernand & one from Mont Jones - resolutions favouring the restoration of the Union are passed, but few voices responding, no one contradicting. I am so worn down by the War. My feelings are all for peace, though I confess I am unable to say how would be best to effect it & therefore say nothing. I feel my nothingness & total impotency for good in an affair of such dimensions as this. Our people seem bent on fighting it out, which must be a desperate game & of doubtful issue. May God interfere for the good of Men!!”
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-b/part-seventy-one
4. Saturday, August 23, 1862: Big Hill, Kentucky - On August 23, While travelling up the road to Lexington, Col. John Scott's Confederate troops ran into a force of Union cavalry atop Big Hill, on the western edge of the Cumberland Mountains.
The Union troops consisted of the 7th Kentucky Cavalry and a battalion of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry, commanded by Col. Leonidas Metcalfe. At Scott's approach, Metcalfe ordered a cavalry charge. As the army's Adjutant General, J. Mills Kendrick, reported later, Metcalfe then "had the mortification to find that not more than 100 of his regiment followed him; the remainder, at the first cannon shot, turned tail and fled like a pack of cowards." A few men from the 3rd Tennessee rescued Metcalfe.
Scott chased the federals up the road to Richmond, Kentucky, 20 miles southeast of Lexington. But during the chase, the Confederate troopers learned from a captured Union dispatch that heavy Union reinforcements were due in Richmond by August 23. The federals suffered 10 killed and 40 wounded. The confederates suffered 25 killed & wounded.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
5. Saturday, August 23, 1862: “Combat occurred in or near Four Mile, Hickory Grove and Wayman’s Milll, Missouri; Bayou Sara, Louisiana; Big Hill, Kentucky; Greenville, Mississippi; Trinity, Alabama, and Fort Donelson, Tennessee; Moorefield in western Virginia. In Virginia proper things were hottest, with fighting at Rappahannock Station, Beverly Ford, Fant’s Ford, Smithfield, Sulphur Springs, and on the railroad between Harper’s Ferry and Winchester. A train was captured by Confederate forces.”
https://bjdeming.com/2012/10/03/the-american-civil-war-150th-anniversary-august-20-26-1862/
6. Saturday, August, 23, 1862: George Michael Neese, of the Confederate artillery, recounts his battery’s experience as they move to flank Pope’s army, and the clashes between Stuart’s cavalry (and artillery) with the Yankees: “This afternoon about four o’clock we went in an orchard a little below the Springs hotel and opened fire on a Yankee ordnance train that was moving back from the river in the direction of Warrenton. It was heavily guarded and proved to be something more than an ordnance train, for immediately after we opened the Yanks returned our fire promptly and in a businesslike manner with a six-gun battery, but their gunnery was very indifferent and wild. They scattered their shell all over the adjacent fields, ranging in altitude from the earth to the moon. We kept up a steady fire for two hours. Then my gun, like a fidgety, naughty child, kicked loose from its mounting and had to be taken from the field for repairs. The other guns in the battery were fired at intervals until dark. . . . Jackson’s troops are camped near the river on the Rappahannock side opposite to the Sulphur Spring. Some of his men were building a bridge to-day across the Rappahannock near the Spring. . . . Down the river and not far away the whole country is full of Yankee infantry and artillery. I have not seen any of their cavalry to-day. I suppose they are hunting for us somewhere around Catlett, where we left our tracks last night. We have nothing on this side of the river but cavalry and our battery, and the river is past fording. If the Yanks knew how easily they could undo and rout us in our present situation they would make us get away from here quicker than lightning can scorch a cat.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1862
7. Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Sarah Morgan writes in her journal of the news that Baton Rouge has been sacked and looted by the Yankee soldiers: “Yesterday Anna and I spent the day with Lilly, and the rain in the evening obliged us to stay all night. Dr. Perkins stopped there, and repeated the same old stories we have been hearing, about the powder placed under the State House and Garrison, to blow them up, if forced to evacuate the town. He confirms the story about all the convicts being set free, and the town being pillaged by the negroes and the rest of the Yankees. He says his own slaves told him they were allowed to enter the houses and help themselves, and what they did not want the Yankees either destroyed on the spot, or had it carried to the Garrison and burned.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1862
8. Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Surgeon Alfred L. Castleman of the Army of the Potomac writes with disgust in his journal about the retreat and about the petty jealousies amongst the generals: “August 23rd.—We have now, at least for the present, bid farewell to "the Peninsula," the land of blasted hopes, the place of our disappointments, the hot-bed of disgrace to the finest army of modern times. General Pope having drawn off the rebel army to give us an opportunity to escape from our perilous position, we passed from Harrison’s Point to Hampton without a fight or without a hostile gun being fired. Never since the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow, has there been so disgraceful a failure as this Peninsula campaign indeed, not then. For, although Napoleon failed in the object of his enterprise, before he retreated he saw the Russian Capital in flames and his enemy abandon his stronghold, whilst we witnessed the daily strengthening of the enemy’s capital, and were driven out of the country we went to chastise, without having accomplished a single object of our visit. . . .
The jealousy of our commanders towards General Pope is so intense, that if I mistake not, it will, on the first occasion, "crop out" in such form as shall damage our cause more than all the cowardice, incompetency and drunkenness which have so far disgraced our campaigns. General Pope’s advance proclamation was construed into a strike at McClellan’s manner of warfare, and, notwithstanding that the former has publicly disclaimed any such intention, there has existed an intense bitterness between the friends of the two ever since, nor is it lessened by the subsequent failures of McClellan and the reported successes of Pope. It is interesting, but saddening, to witness the brightening of countenances among some of the staffs of the army of the Potomac, whilst listening to or reading the reports of the repulses of General Pope. Stonewall Jackson’s official report of his "splendid victory" over our army of Virginia, has caused more joy amongst them than would the wining of a splendid success by McClellan himself. Our Generals seem to have forgotten that this is the people’s war, not their’s; that it is waged at the cost of the treasure and of the best blood of the nation, not to promote the ambitious views of individuals or parties but to protect the people’s right to Government. I begin to fear that patriotism as an element of this army is the exception, not a rule.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1862
9. Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Gen. Halleck sends Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright to Kentucky to take command of the Department and troops there, and prepare to defend against the anticipated Confederate invasion.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1862
10. Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s Letter to Horace Greeley is published on this date in the New York Tribune. (Ironically, while Lincoln seems to suggest a cynical indifference to the fate of the slaves, at the time he writes this letter he has the Emancipation Proclamation sitting in his desk---which he has already shared with his Cabinet earlier in the summer---and he has apparently already decided to use it, just as soon as the Federal armies can come up with a convincing victory.) But these lines from his letter become some of the most oft-quoted words from the War: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by feeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. “
But many who read the letter as indifference to slavery miss the import of his concise closing thought: I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1862
11. Sunday, August 23, 1863: Rappahannock River, Virginia - On August 23, a Confederate force was at the mouth of the Rappahannock River. They spotted a couple of ships coming their way. The ships were the Union gunboats USS Satellite and USS Reliance. The Confederates managed to attack and capture the gunboats in a short time.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1863s.html
12. Sunday, August 23, 1863: To Northerners, Charleston was the symbol of rebellion. It was there that South Carolina officials voted for secession and started the inevitable march toward war. The firing on Fort Sumter, which started the conflict, only increased the North's belief that Charleston was a city of fire-eaters who deserved punishment. For most Northerners, Charleston's destruction seemed just retribution. The Confederates had ignored General Gillmore's (US) note, not believing it was official, no forewarning was given to the citizens of the town of a bombardment. Many civilians had already left the city before the campaign had begun and those that remained merely moved from the city's lower regions to areas out of range of the Federal guns. The city's manufacturing and industrial work continued, and all maritime activity was shifted up river. The Swamp Angel's 36th shot would be the final shot fired at Charleston, as the breech of the gun exploded and the gun was ruined. But the Swamp Angel accomplished a number of things. It was the first known firing of an artillery piece using a compass reading, and the distance covered by the Swamp Angel's shells was farther than any previous military bombardment. General Gillmore also gained the dubious distinction of being one of the first generals to bombard a civilian center in the hope of achieving a military end.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-c/week-124
13. Sunday, August 23, 1863: The parole and exchange system was breaking down. As bad as Civil War prisoner of war camps were in the first two years of the war, there was an important mitigating factor that reduced the suffering of captured soldiers to a great extent: the system of parole and exchange. When prisoners of war were captured in the field, instead of being transferred to a prison camp they were often issued a document called a "parole." These paroled soldiers could return home or to a designated camp in their own side's territory to wait until they were "exchanged"--traded for a paroled soldier on the other side. This arrangement ensured that captured soldiers could retain a large amount of freedom and the burden of their upkeep fell on their own side, which could feed, clothe, and care for their wounds with greater efficiency. Wounded soldiers that were captured were frequently exchanged via flag of truce steamboats along Virginia's James River.
The system worked reasonably well for the first two years of the war, but was highly dependent on trust that each side would hold up their end of the bargain. As the Confederacy grew increasingly short of fighting men, the was a strong incentive on the part of Confederate exchange commissioners to seek out reasons or excuses to argue that some violation of parole had occurred so that Southern paroled troops in Southern territory could be immediately returned to duty. Especially tempting to the South was the possibility of returning the 25,000 or so veteran troops that Pemberton surrendered at Vicks and Grant immediately paroled rather than shipping them to Northern prison camps. As Pemberton's former troops began popping up in action before the Union recognized them as properly paroled, the Union began to lose faith in the system of parole and exchange.
Another factor that would contribute to the break down of parole and exchange was the determination on the part of Confederate leadership to treat captured Black soldiers and and their White officers differently than other Union troops captured in battle. Union Black troops captured by the Confederates were subject to execution or re-enslavement; their officers faced the possibility of being tried for inciting servile insurrection--a charge that carried the death penalty.
As the Confederacy began to return its paroled troops to the line before they were properly exchanged, and as Black troops suffered abuse and different treatment in Southern captivity, the system of parole and exchange that had saved so many lives in the first two years of the war began to break down.
On this day 150 years ago, Confederate Major General Richard Taylor wrote to Union Major General Nathaniel P. Banks to dispute the status of certain prisoners he had released and threatening to consider the Confederates paroled at Vicksburg and Port Hudson as exchanged unless he was satisfied by Banks' reply.
Sunday, August 23, 1863: HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF WESTERN LOUISIANA, August 23, 1863. Major General N. P. BANKS, Commanding U. S. Forces in Louisiana: “GENERAL: I have received your communication of the 17th instant notifying me that you have directed the immediate return to duty of all prisoners paroled by me during my recent occupation of the La Fourche country. You state generally that the paroles were in violation of exchange.
In the absence of any more specific statement from you I am at a loss to imagine in what particular the cartel of exchange has been violated by restoring these prisoners to their liberty upon the usual obligation not to bear arms against the Confederate States until regularly exchanged, after a careful observance of the forms requisite to give efficacy to the parole and in accordance with the practice repeatedly sanctioned and acted upon by both belligerents in this department. If under such circumstances your Government thinks proper to disapprove of the engagement thus solemnly made by these men, the common law and usages of war, as recognized by the Government of the United States in the rules in regard to paroles published by authority of its War Department, require their return and surrender as prisoners of war.
I shall expect, then, the return to me of all the captured men whose engagement has been disowned by the United States Government. Should this not be done, and the order you announce to me be persisted in, I have the honor to inform you that all the prisoners taken and paroled at Vicksburg and Port Hudson and now within the limits of my military district will be released from their paroles and ordered to duty.
Respectfully, your obedient servant, R. TAYLOR, Major-General.”
http://www.civilwar-online.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1863
14. Tuesday, August 23, 1864: With his former difficult general, George McClellan, trying to be nominated the Democrat candidate for president in the fall elections, President Lincoln writes a memo concerning his expectation of failure at reelection.
https://bjdeming.com/2014/08/17/the-american-civil-war-150th-anniversary-august-18-24-1864/
15. Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Lincoln's "Blind Memorandum" On this day 150 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet members to sign a sealed memorandum without reading it. They complied. The text of the "Blind Memorandum" was later revealed to be the following: “MEMORANDUM. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 23, 1864. This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward. A. LINCOLN.”
The election of 1864 was rapidly approaching, and Lincoln feared he would be defeated. This was not an unreasonable belief. No American president had been re-elected to a second term since Andrew Jackson won his second term in 1832. And then there was the war news: despite months of bloody fighting, neither Richmond nor Atlanta had fallen.
http://www.civilwar-online.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1864
16. Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Alabama operations, Mobile Bay. Fort Morgan surrenders.
https://bjdeming.com/2014/08/17/the-american-civil-war-150th-anniversary-august-18-24-1864/
17. Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Fifty guerrilla fighters at Webster, Missouri, enter the town and plunder and rob it, before moving on. Some fighting at Abbeville, Mississippi with Union troops of Brig. General Joseph A. Mower.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/1864/week-176
18. Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Mississippi operations: Forrest’s superior, General Maury, reports that US General A. J. Smith’s advance into Mississippi has paused. Back in Memphis, a false report that Forrest is back causes the populace to “stampede.” Forrest establishes his headquarters at Grenada. Upon hearing news of the Union retreat from Oxford, Chalmers starts out after them with two columns and the two forces begin skirmishing. Bad weather slows everybody down.
https://bjdeming.com/2014/08/17/the-american-civil-war-150th-anniversary-august-18-24-1864/
19. Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Siege of Atlanta. General Sherman says: “On the 23d, however, we saw trains coming into Atlanta from the south, when I became more than ever convinced that cavalry could not or would not work hard enough to disable a railroad properly, and therefore resolved at once to proceed to the execution of my original plan. Meantime, the damage done to our own railroad and telegraph by Wheeler, about Resaca and Dalton, had been repaired, and Wheeler himself was too far away to be of any service to his own army, and where he could not do us much harm, viz., up about the Hiawaesee.”
https://bjdeming.com/2014/08/17/the-american-civil-war-150th-anniversary-august-18-24-1864/

A Friday, August, 23, 1861: Potomac Creek, Virginia - On August 22, two Union steamer ships, USS Yankee and USS Release, engaged the Confederate batteries at the mouth of the Potomac Creek. The batteries were commanded by Col. R.M. Cary. After a short time, the ships withdrew from the area.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1861s.html
B Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Virginia - Along the Rappahannock River, the two armies continue their wary maneuvering and artillery duels and skirmishes. Longstreet attacks the Federal left, in order to keep McDowell’s corps from moving to the west, as Gen. Pope had ordered. Jackson, however, having sent one brigade across the Rappahannock the previous day, over beyond the Federal right flank, was unable to cross any more troops since the torrential rains of the night before had swollen the river beyond anyone’s ability to bridge it. So Gen. Early’s brigade is isolated for most of the day. In spite of Pope’s insistent orders that Gen. Sigel advance his corps and crush this one brigade, Sigel is slow to move: by evening, the river has gone down enough for Jackson to build a bridge (and he does, as he personally supervises, covered in mud), and begins crossing more troops, thus saving Early.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1862
B+ Saturday, August 23, 1862: Manassas/Second Manassas Campaign: Heavy rains have flooded the Rappahannock, securing the US Army of Virginia’s rear, and General Pope decides to advance on Confederate forces at Sulphur Springs. The attack is not strong, allowing Jackson’s men to hold long enough to get a bridge built across the Rappahannock. Meanwhile, the first troops of the Army of the Potomac arrive, a division under the command of General John Reynolds (remember him from the movie Gettysburg?). Throughout this period, General-in-Chief Halleck is furious that his telegrams to Pope are leaking to the press.
https://bjdeming.com/2012/10/03/the-american-civil-war-150th-anniversary-august-20-26-1862/
B++ Saturday, August, 23, 1862: Overnight heavy rain stopped Lee from attacking Pope’s men as he had planned. However, armed with Pope’s dispatch book, Lee now planned to march the bulk of his men around Pope’s army cutting them off. To distract Pope’s men, a large force of Confederate troops would remain by the banks of the Rappahannock River and engage Pope’s men with fire. Lee’s whole plan was to isolate Pope’s force and then defeat Pope in battle, if he did not surrender.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/department-b/part-seventy-one
C Sunday, August 23, 1863: By this date, Gen. Joseph Johnston, in Mississippi, has been ordered to reinforce Bragg, and therefore dispatches two divisions--about 9,000 men--to Chattanooga. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, with just nearly 9,000 men, is ordered to fall back on Chattanooga, thereby conceding Knoxville to Burnside’s 15,000-man Army of Ohio (mostly the old IX Corps) advancing into eastern Tennessee. Meanwhile, Gen. Rosecrans has positioned Thomas’s XIV Corps and McCook’s XX Corps to the southwest of Chattanooga, ready to strike across the mountain passes and hopefully get behind the Confederate army and the city—and he has placed Crittenden’s XXI Corps in position to cross the Tennessee north of the city, so as to draw Bragg’s attention in that direction (which, in fact, it does).
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=August+23%2C+1863
C+ Sunday, August 23, 1863: Confederates at Chattanooga Thoroughly Confused
Things in Chattanooga were afoot. Confederate General Braxton Bragg seemed to have no knowledge at all that 60,000 Federals were advancing towards him and about to cross the Cumberland Mountains and Tennessee River. This all changed on the morning of August 21st, when Union artillery opened fire upon the city from across the Tennessee. A young colonel named John Wilder, commanding a brigade of mounted infantry – the vanguard of William Rosecrans’ advancing Army of the Cumberland – had scrambled across the hills and rained shot and shell upon them. They targeted two steamers, and destroyed them both. This sent the citizens scurrying and quick word to General Bragg, who was twenty miles away at a hospital in Georgia.
When Bragg returned that evening, the fact that the Northern troops might try to take Chattanooga seemed to have just dawned upon him. Not only was he met with Federal artillery (though only a partial battery), but also reports of Union movement up and down the Tennessee forty miles in either direction. From farther away in Knoxville, Tennessee, 100 miles northeast, Confederate General Simon Buckner sent word that another Federal Army, under Ambrose Burnside, was advancing from Kentucky. With his small force, there was no way he could hold East Tennessee.
In a flurry that night, he sent a message to General Joe Johnston in Mississippi, explaining that both Generals Rosecrans and Burnside were advancing upon him and he needed help. When Johnston received the message, he waited until morning before wiring Richmond to see if he had the authority to reinforce Bragg. After receiving incredibly clear instructions that he not only had the authority (which Johnston obviously knew), but needed to do, he sent a reply to Bragg, telling him that two divisions, about 9,000 men, would be on their way within twenty-four hours.
Bragg also called upon Richmond to see what they could do. They, of course, knew that Johnston was going to help and that Buckner in Knoxville would fall back upon Chattanooga. A general concentration would not only bolster the defenses, but would boost morale.
While Bragg saw to his own strategy, asking his lieutenants for a bit of advice, General Buckner quickly assessed the problem. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry had been on picket duty along the Tennessee, their extreme left at Kingston, forty miles east of Knoxville, and about seventy miles northeast of Chattanooga. Buckner had heard that Burnside’s force numbered near 50,000, but rightly believed it to be an exaggeration. But even if it were a quarter of that figure, they would still outnumber him two for every one.
“I am moving my infantry with a view to sustaining you at Kingston,” wrote Buckner to Forrest on the 22nd. “Burnside is certainly advancing, but his movement are not yet developed.” To one of his officers 100 miles even farther east, Buckner explained the move.
“The necessity of combining with General Bragg compels me to draw most of my troops to this end of the district,” he began. “The impossibility of opposing the enemy’s advance at all points leads me to concentrate against his right.” He instructed his easterly comrades to check the enemy’s “advance as far as possible.” If it wasn’t possible, he was to retreat toward North Carolina. “That you may understand fully,” he concluded, “I will say there is no purpose of evacuated East Tennessee, but on the contrary it is proposed to defend it to the last.” Buckner was hopeful, and predicted that the Federals would gain some ground, but only “for a short time.”
Whatever lip service that Buckner paid to holding East Tennessee to the last, dissipated on this date. To Bragg’s headquarters, he admitted, “Alone I can do little against him [Burnside]. By co-operating with you we may effect something against Rosecrans before junction of their armies. I will endeavor to hold my troops in a position to do this, and if facts develop as I now believe I will constitute the right of your army.”
While Ambrose Burnside’s 15,000-strong Army of the Ohio crossed into Tennessee, Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland was preparing quite another kind of surprise for Braxton Bragg. The artillery fire upon Chattanooga had been part of an elaborate ruse. Their appearance led Bragg and pretty much everyone else, to assume that the two Federal armies were about to combine and cross the Tennessee at or slightly north of Chattanooga. In actuality, however, Rosecrans’ plan was to cross the bulk of his force well south of the city, using Burnside’s force to cover his extreme left flank.
Braxton Bragg assumed that Rosecrans was moving in the space between Chattanooga and Knoxville. For the next several days, he would act on that mistake, actually pulling troops away from the main body of the Federal Army. He even started a division on the road northeast to reinforce Buckner. All he could now do was wait for Rosecrans to appear somewhere up the river even though that was exactly where Rosecrans was not going to be.
http://civilwardailygazette.com/confederates-at-chattanooga-thoroughly-confused/
D Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Fort Morgan, last of the Confederate forts on Mobile Bay, falls into federal hands following a spectacular barrage.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186408
D+ Tuesday, August 23, 1864: Having withstood naval bombardment for more than two weeks, and attacks by Union soldiers ashore, Brigadier General Page surrenders Fort Morgan, the last Confederate outpost guarding the inlets to Mobile Bay. He said, “My guns and powder had all been destroyed, my means of defense gone…It was evident the fort could hold out but a few hours longer under a renewed bombardment.” Now gone is the last Confederate port of any size on the Gulf of Mexico not in Federal hands, leaving only Wilmington, North Carolina, as the last port open for Confederate blockade runners.
https://sites.google.com/site/civilwarhardemancotn/departments/1864/week-176
FYI Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. PO3 Edward Riddle Maj William W. 'Bill' Price COL Lisandro MurphySSgt David M. SPC Maurice Evans SPC Jon O. SGT Jim ArnoldAmn Dale PreisachCW4 (Join to see) Sgt Jerry GenesioSSG (Join to see) COL (Join to see) SFC (Join to see)CWO4 Terrence Clark CSM Charles Hayden PO1 John Johnson~874029:TSgt George Rodriguez] SFC Randy PurhamSMSgt David A Asbury

LTC Stephen F. great read and share I will choose because of the importance and logistical importance:
1864: Fort Morgan, last of the Confederate fort on Mobile Bay, fell into federal hands following a spectacular barrage. Having withstood naval bombardment for more than two weeks, and attacks by Union soldiers ashore, Brigadier General Page surrenders For

Great Civil War history as always, thank you. LTC Stephen F.