What was the most significant event on June 17 during the U.S. Civil War?

Federal troops counter-ambushed the bushwhackers in Arkansas on Tuesday, June 17, 1862: Smithville, Arkansas. a Union force arrived at Smithville and was fired upon by a group of local bushwhackers. The Federals immediately returned fire, killing several of the bushwhackers. The rest fled the area.
Below are a number of journal entries from 1862 and 1863 which shed light on what life was like for soldiers and civilians – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Tuesday, June 17 1862: Sarah Morgan records in her journal: “Yesterday, and day before, boats were constantly arriving and troops embarking from here, destined for Vicksburg. There will be another fight, and of course it will fall. I wish Will was out of it; I don’t want him to die. I got the kindest, sweetest letter from Will when Miriam came from Greenwell. It was given to her by a guerrilla on the road who asked if she was not Miss Sarah Morgan.”
Tuesday, June 17 1862: Captain William Thompson Lusk, of the Union army near Charleston, writes his mother to tell of the disaster of the previous day as his troops partook in the ignoble Union defeat at the Battle of Secessionville: “My dear Mother: Yesterday was for us a hard, cruel, memorable day, memorable for its folly and wickedness, memorable for the wanton sacrifice of human life to gratify the silly vanity of a man already characterized . . . You have heard already from rebel sources, I doubt not, of yesterday’s disaster. I can only say that the plan of the attack was ordered by Gen. Benham in direct defiance of his subordinate Generals’ opinion. Gen. Wright, Gen. Stevens and Gen. Williams pronounced on the evening of the 15th, the project of storming the battery attacked, as conceived in utter folly. They entered their earnest protest against the whole affair. But Benham was excited by stories of Donelson and Newberne, and would not yield. Had the fort been taken, it would have done us no good, except that we could have spiked the three guns it contained, but had it been taken, the éclat, perhaps, would have made Benham a Major-General, and for this contemptible motive between six and seven hundred men strewed the field, dead and dying. I do not know how I escaped unhurt — it must have been your prayers, mother — but this I know, that sixteen boys of my company were killed or wounded, fighting nobly, fighting like heroes on the parapet of the work, but fighting vainly to give a little reputation to . . . Mother, when I see their pale fingers stiffened, their poor speechless wounds bleeding, do you wonder at the indignation that refuses to be smothered — that my blood should flow feverishly to think that the country which our soldiers love so well, loves them so little as to leave them to the mercies of a man of. . . . Tell Walter that when galloping across the field yesterday I saw a sword and scabbard lying in my path. I looked instinctively at my side, and found, when or how I cannot say, my sword-belt had been torn or cut, and the sword was gone, but you can understand the pleasure I experienced at discovering the sword in my path was Walter’s gift, which I strangely recovered.”
Wednesday, June 17, 1863: The Gettysburg Campaign: Battle of Aldie. “Gen. Pleasonton, commanding the Cavalry Corps in Hooker’s Army of the Potomac, is directed to send out scouts to find out where Lee’s army is, and where it is headed. Pleasonton sends out only one regiment, which, in probing Thoroughfare Gap, is prevented by a rebel cavalry brigade. In fact, everywhere the Yankees probe, they are blocked by the Rebel troopers. Lee’s march is still largely a mystery. Pleasonton asks Gen. Gregg to send a brigade to probe with more authority, and Gregg sends the reckless firebrand Judson Kilpatrick and his brigade. Kilpatrick rides into Aldie, a small crossroads town in the Bull Run mountains area of “Mosby’s Confederacy,” and surprises a fairly large number of Confederate cavalry---in fact, it is Fitzhugh Lee’s entire brigade, and a running battle developments piecemeal as more Rebels troopers come up and as Kilpatrick feeds in his regiments one by one. What “Little Kill” does not know is that he barely missed Jeb Stuart, who was making the town his headquarters. The fighting lasts several hours, and elements of two more Rebel brigades, under Chambliss and Robertson, are nearby but do not engage, since Stuart recalls his men to withdraw behind the mountains and the passes. Kilpatrick manages to drive off the gray troopers, but only just. Meanwhile, the lone regiment sent at first, under Col. Duffie, finds that the way behind them is blocked by Rebels, and so they are surrounded. Duffie asks Kilpatrick for help and is refused. He sends a message to Pleasonton. Duffie can get no answers, and so he has his regiment disperse, and most of them are captured by the Confederates. Only he and fewer than 90 troopers escape. “
Pictures: 1864-06-17 Battle of Lynchburg VA; 1864-06-17 Second Corps Attack on Petersburg June 17; Hunters raid civil war;

A. Tuesday, June 17, 1862: Engagement at St. Charles, Arkansas. After the fall of Memphis, Tennessee, the Confederate navy was on the defense. Three Confederate war ships made their way up Arkansas’s White River to save themselves and also to defend the White River from invasion by the Union troops.
Union major general Samuel R. Curtis and his Army of the Southwest advanced from Pea Ridge (Benton County) through the Ozark Mountains to Batesville (Independence County). Curtis later set up headquarters at Jacksonport (Jackson County), where the White and Black rivers converged.
Confederate major general Thomas C. Hindman, the “Lion of the South,” was in charge of the defense of Arkansas. Hindman’s main objective was to slow the Union side’s movement so that the Confederates could prepare to defend Arkansas. The main supply line to Jacksonport, Pocahontas (Randolph County), and Batesville was up the White and Black rivers. Curtis’s army hoped to use the White River as a way to receive supplies.
Captain Joseph Fry and Captain A. M. Williams picked the hamlet of St. Charles (Arkansas County) to set up two thirty-two-pounders, two three-inch rifled guns Lieutenant John W. Dunnington brought from the Little Rock Arsenal, a twelve-pounder howitzer and brass rifled cannon from the Maurepas, and two thirty-two pound guns to defend the White River. On the morning of June 17, 1862, four Federal ships—the ironclads Mound City and St. Louis and timberclads Lexington and Conestoga—traveled up the White for their rendezvous with Curtis and his men. Other smaller ships were also part of the Union flotilla.
Confederate captain Joseph Fry and Dunnington joined forces at St. Charles near De Witt (Arkansas County). Pleasant’s Twenty-ninth Arkansas Infantry had thirty-five sharpshooters dispatched to assist in the defense of St. Charles. Also present were the crews of the two Confederate war ships, Maurepas and Pontchartrain. They laid plans to defend St. Charles with the resources they had. Fry sent out scouts and found that Union troops and gunboats outnumbered the Confederates. Fry ordered the Maurepas and the steamers Mary Patterson and Eliza G. scuttled to block the White River and then manned the guns in the earthworks at St. Charles.
When the Union ships rounded the bend, Fry opened fire. An early volley from the big guns sent a round that tore though the Mound City’s steam drum and filled the ship with scalding steam. This shot is called the “most deadly shot” of the war. The commander of the Mound City, Augustus H. Kilty, ordered the ship abandoned. About 175 sailors were aboard; 105 died, and forty-four were injured. (The Mound City did not sink but was towed to safety and repaired to fight another day.) Many drowned or were shot as they swam to shore. Only three officers and twenty-two soldiers escaped injury.
With the Mound City disabled, Union colonel Graham N. Fitch’s Forty-sixth Indiana Infantry was ordered off its ships just belowSt. Charles and marched upriver. A successful attack on the Confederate flank enabled Union troops to storm the batteries and occupy St. Charles. The skirmish lasted a short while, but the Union troops outnumbered the Confederates, and fearing capture, the Confederates yielded to greater numbers. Fry thought his troops could not hold St. Charles, so he ordered a retreat. Hindman reported six Confederates killed and one wounded.
The Union side set up a supply stop on the White River at St. Charles and left the wounded to be cared for by the citizens of the town. The Union gunboats, except for the Mound City, went upriver as far as Crooked Point Cutoff in Monroe County but had to turn back because the river was too low. The Union vessels could not supply Curtis at Batesville because the river was not deep enough for them to ascend beyond DeValls Bluff (Prairie County). Curtis’s forces had to live off the countryside while they marched south to reach their supplies. Despite having the “most deadly shot” of the war, this skirmish is not listed in most books on the Civil War. The sinking of the Confederate ships at St. Charles left the White River in control of the Union side for the remainder of the war.
B. Wednesday, June 17, 1863: The Gettysburg Campaign: Battle of Aldie. By June 17, 1863, a little more than a week after the epic cavalry battle at Brandy Station, General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had managed to pass unseen into the Shenandoah Valley and begin its march north toward Maryland and Pennsylvania. General Joseph Hooker, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, wanted desperately to learn Lee’s whereabouts and the direction of his movements. To this end, he ordered General Alfred Pleasonton to move his cavalry corps into the passes of the Blue Ridge Mountains to find the missing Confederates. “Drive in his pickets,” Hooker ordered. “It is better that we lose men than to be without knowledge of the enemy.”
To counter Union scouting attempts, General J.E.B. Stuart entered the Loudoun Valley with his cavalry, determined to deny access to the passes to his Union counterpart. The highway of most concern to him was the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike (modern Route 50), which ran from Fairfax to the Shenandoah Valley by way of southern Loudoun and northern Fauquier counties. At the same time, however, he had to block the approaches to Snicker’s Gap to the north. The fact that the best roads leading from the south to both gaps intersected in Aldie made this quiet little mill town a vital piece of real estate for both armies.
Judson Kilpatrick’s brigade of Union cavalry reached Aldie around 2:30 on the afternoon of June 17 to be met by pickets from the 6th Virginia Cavalry who had been ordered to guard the intersection of the Little River Turnpike and the Carolina Road (modern Routes 50 and 15, which intersect at Gilbert’s Corner). The brief exchange of gunfire was a shock because Pleasonton thought Stuart was west of the Blue Ridge; nevertheless, Kilpatrick quickly ordered two companies of the 2nd New York Cavalry to attack and drive the enemy through the town. As the New Yorkers galloped through the village, they were met by Col. Thomas Rosser and the 5th Virginia Cavalry coming from the other direction. After a short, but nasty, saber fight, both sides withdrew to assess the situation. Neither had expected to fight in Aldie.
Col. Thomas Munford, once again commanding a brigade in Fitzhugh Lee’s absence, positioned his men astride both turnpikes, the 1st, 4th and 5th Virginia and James Breathed’s artillery battery on a ridge blocking the Ashby’s Gap road, and the 2nd and 3rd Virginia to the north guarding the road to Snicker’s Gap. Munford went with the latter, leaving Colonel Williams Wickham in command of the troops on the right flank. The first phase of the battle began to play out when Rosser posted Capt. Reuben Boston and approximately 50 men of the 5th Virginia along a ridge some 600 yards in front of the main Confederate line. They immediately came under fire from the guns of Capt. Alanson Randol’s combined Batteries E and G, 1st U.S. Artillery (the same guns that would open the Battle of Gettysburg two weeks later). For a short time, they were answered by two of Breathed’s guns posted in an orchard behind Boston’s position; but the Confederate guns soon pulled back to the more distant main position.
Boston was then attacked by the 2nd New York Cavalry, but easily repulsed them, inflicting heavy losses. Kilpatrick, who would commit his forces to the fight piecemeal all day, then sent the 6th Ohio to their assistance. After a bloody fight, the two regiments forced Boston’s small detachment to surrender. It was the first time a company-size body of Stuart’s troops had ever surrendered on the battlefield. Boston would spend nine months as a prisoner of war, only to face a court-martial when he returned to Virginia. The court, however, would find him innocent and rule that the blame for his surrender was Rosser’s for placing the men too far forward to be adequately supported by the rest of the regiment.
Boston’s surrender ended the fight along the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike. The action now shifted to the north, where dismounted Confederate sharpshooters posted behind stone walls awaited an attack by the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry. About the same time the New Yorkers first attacked Boston, Maj. Henry Higginson led a squadron (two companies) of the Bay Staters north on the Snickersville Pike. For the next three hours, the fighting along the road would see-saw back and forth as the 1st Massachusetts, later supported by the 4th New York and the 1st Maine, traded shots and saber blows with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Virginia regiments and one of Breathed’s cannon. Attacking down a narrow road bordered on both sides by high stone walls, one Union squadron after another galloped around a blind curve only to find the road filled with dead and wounded men and horses. By the time it was over, the 1st Massachusetts had suffered more than 200 casualties, the severest losses experienced by any Union cavalry regiment on a single day in the entire war.Munford always considered Aldie to be a Confederate victory, but as darkness began to fall that night, he withdrew from the field in obedience to an order from Stuart, who had problems of his own in Middleburg.
C. Friday, June 17, 1864: Battle of Lynchburg VA [June 17 – 18, 1864] CSA Lt. Gen. Jubal Anderson Early arrived in Lynchburg at one o'clock on June 17, having been sent by General Robert E. Lee. Three hours later, Brig. Gen. William W. Averell, encountered CSA Brig. Gen. John McCausland's and Brig. Gen. John D. Imboden's dismounted cavalry entrenched at the Quaker Meeting House, four miles from the city. The Confederates were driven back after Col. Carr B. White's brigade moved in to support Averell. Two brigades of CSA Major General Stephen Dodson Ramseur's division occupied the area around a redoubt two miles from the city and hindered the Union advance.
Maj. Gen. David Hunter made Sandusky his headquarters and planned the attack on Early's defenses. That night, trains could be heard moving up and down the tracks. Also, various instruments such as bugles and drums were heard by Hunter's troops. Even the people of Lynchburg made noise by having bands play and citizens scream. Their goal was to make the Confederate army seem larger than it really was.
Background: CSA Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge sent CSA Brig. Gen. John D. Imboden and his cavalry to join CSA Brig. Gen. John McCausland. Breckinridge arrived in Lynchburg the next day. Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill and Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays constructed a defensive line in the hills just southwest of the city. That afternoon, McCausland fell back to New London and skirmished with Averell's cavalry, which pursued him. The Union forces launched another attack on McCausland and Imboden that evening. The Confederates retreated from New London
D. Friday, June 17, 1864: The Second Battle of Petersburg, Day 3: Just as June 16 featured mostly attacks by one Union corps, the II, so June 17 would move the focus to yet another Union corps, the IX. Burnside’s IX Corps started early, with Potter’s Division attacking near the Shand House at dawn and scoring a major breakthrough against Johnson’s Tennessee Brigade. Bushrod Johnson, the division commander, ordered Elliott’s South Carolinians to form a new line to the rear, to which the Confederates retired. Bryce Suderow believes that Potter’s assault might have taken Petersburg had Ledlie’s Division and a II Corps division properly supported Potter.
Meanwhile, Warren’s V Corps of the Army of the Potomac arrived in the morning and was in place on Burnside’s left before noon. This meant the Union now had four corps, the XVIII, II, IX, and V, in order from left to right, to face the divisions of Hoke and Johnson on the Confederate side. The VI Corps, however, was landed at Bermuda Hundred and would not factor in the fighting on June 17-18 at Petersburg, where they might have made a difference.
Willcox’s Division of the IX Corps made the second attack of the day at 2 pm, also at the Shand House, but the typically tepid support provided by Warren’s V Corps on Willcox’s left helped to guarantee this effort went nowhere. The last assault of the day was made by the last White division of the IX Corps, Ledlie’s. Ledlie also assaulted near the Shand House at 6 pm, and this effort proved more successful. A brigade of Willcox and Barlow’s division of the II Corps provided added support. In back and forth fighting, Beauregard ordered the brigades of Ransom, Colquitt, Clingman, and Wise to counterattack, which they did successfully. By 10 pm on the 17th, the fighting was over and the Confederates had regained the lines they had held since after Potter’s dawn attack. During the night he fell back another 500-800 yards to what would become the “final” Confederate lines east of Petersburg during the Siege. These new lines tied into the Dimmock line southeast of Petersburg at Battery 25.
Beauregard still held Petersburg, and now Lee’s veterans from the Army of Northern Virginia would begin to arrive in force…

1. Monday, June 17, 1861: Nathaniel Lyons captures Boonville, Missouri
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186106
2. Tuesday, June 17, 1862 --- Sarah Morgan records in her journal: “Yesterday, and day before, boats were constantly arriving and troops embarking from here, destined for Vicksburg. There will be another fight, and of course it will fall. I wish Will was out of it; I don’t want him to die. I got the kindest, sweetest letter from Will when Miriam came from Greenwell. It was given to her by a guerrilla on the road who asked if she was not Miss Sarah Morgan.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+17%2C+1862
3. Tuesday, June 17, 1862 --- Captain William Thompson Lusk, of the Union army near Charleston, writes his mother to tell of the disaster of the previous day as his troops partook in the ignoble Union defeat at the Battle of Secessionville: “My dear Mother: Yesterday was for us a hard, cruel, memorable day, memorable for its folly and wickedness, memorable for the wanton sacrifice of human life to gratify the silly vanity of a man already characterized . . . You have heard already from rebel sources, I doubt not, of yesterday’s disaster. I can only say that the plan of the attack was ordered by Gen. Benham in direct defiance of his subordinate Generals’ opinion. Gen. Wright, Gen. Stevens and Gen. Williams pronounced on the evening of the 15th, the project of storming the battery attacked, as conceived in utter folly. They entered their earnest protest against the whole affair. But Benham was excited by stories of Donelson and Newberne, and would not yield. Had the fort been taken, it would have done us no good, except that we could have spiked the three guns it contained, but had it been taken, the éclat, perhaps, would have made Benham a Major-General, and for this contemptible motive between six and seven hundred men strewed the field, dead and dying. I do not know how I escaped unhurt — it must have been your prayers, mother — but this I know, that sixteen boys of my company were killed or wounded, fighting nobly, fighting like heroes on the parapet of the work, but fighting vainly to give a little reputation to . . . Mother, when I see their pale fingers stiffened, their poor speechless wounds bleeding, do you wonder at the indignation that refuses to be smothered — that my blood should flow feverishly to think that the country which our soldiers love so well, loves them so little as to leave them to the mercies of a man of. . . . Tell Walter that when galloping across the field yesterday I saw a sword and scabbard lying in my path. I looked instinctively at my side, and found, when or how I cannot say, my sword-belt had been torn or cut, and the sword was gone, but you can understand the pleasure I experienced at discovering the sword in my path was Walter’s gift, which I strangely recovered.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+17%2C+1862
4. Tuesday, June 17, 1862: Congress frees all slaves in territories of the United States
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
5. Tuesday, June 17, 1862: The commands of John C. Fremont [US] and Nathanael Banks [US] are consolidated under John Pope [US]. Fremont resigns.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
6. Tuesday, June 17, 1862: Braxton Bragg assumes command of the Army of Mississippi, relieving P. G. T. Beauregard
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
7. Tuesday, June 17 1862 --- Union troops under Gen. George W. Morgan re-occupy the Cumberland Gap area. At the same time, Gen. Ormsby Mitchel and his troops, having recently raided Chattanooga, Tennessee, still remain in the area. Together, these two forces, to most observers, seem to have Eastern Tennessee bottled up for the Union, fulfilling Lincoln’s desire that the mostly Unionist people of this end of the state be free from Confederate persecution.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+17%2C+1862
8. Tuesday, June 17, 1862: Smithville, Arkansas - On June 17, a Union force arrived at Smithville and was fired upon by a group of local bushwackers. The Federals immediately returned fire, killing several of the bushwackers. The rest fled the area.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
9. Tuesday, June 17 1862: Pass Manchac, Louisiana - On June 17, a Union force arrived at Pass Manchac and soon discovered the Confederate positions. The Federals attacked the Confederates and soon called for help from the nearby Union gunboat, USS New London. With the ship's help, the Federals were able to force the Confederates to withdraw from their positions.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
10. Wednesday, June 17, 1863: Warsaw Sound, South Carolina - On June 17, the casemate CSS Atlanta, gunboat CSS Isondiga, and the steamer CSS Resolute attacked a Union naval flotilla in Warsaw Sound, near Savannah. The Atlanta was commanded by Cmdr. William A. Webb, also commander of the small Confederate flotilla. The Union flotilla was comprised of the ironclad monitors USS Weehawken, commanded by Capt. John Rodgers, and the USS Nahant. Webb had fitted the Atlanta's bow with a percussion torpedo with which he hoped to sink the Weehawken. While the Atlanta was coming into the channel, it grounded itself and was only able to move again after some difficulty. The accident caused the Atlanta to experience steering trouble. When the Confederate ships came into range, the Weehawken opened fire while the Nahant moved into position. The Confederate ships quickly fled the area. The Union ships caught up with them and after a 2 hour naval battle, the Atlanta was forced to surrender.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1863s.html
11. Wednesday, June 17, 1863: The CSS Atlanta, an ironclad in Warsaw Inlet, engages the USS Weehawken and USS Nahant before surrendering.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186306
12. Wednesday, June 17, 1863 --- Siege of Vicksburg, Day 26
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+17%2C+1863
13. Wednesday, June 17, 1863 --- Siege of Port Hudson, Day 21
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+17%2C+1863
14. Saturday, June 17, 1865: Fire-eater Edmund Ruffin dies of his own hand at his plantation Redmoor, Amelia County, Virginia
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186506


A Tuesday, June 17 1862: Battle of St. Charles, Arkansas [Battle of White River, Arkansas]
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
A+ Tuesday, June 17 1862: Engagement at St. Charles, Arkansas. After the fall of Memphis, Tennessee, the Confederate navy was on the defense. Three Confederate war ships made their way up Arkansas’s White River to save themselves and also to defend the White River from invasion by the Union troops.
Union major general Samuel R. Curtis and his Army of the Southwest advanced from Pea Ridge (Benton County) through the Ozark Mountains to Batesville (Independence County). Curtis later set up headquarters at Jacksonport (Jackson County), where the White and Black rivers converged.
Confederate major general Thomas C. Hindman, the “Lion of the South,” was in charge of the defense of Arkansas. Hindman’s main objective was to slow the Union side’s movement so that the Confederates could prepare to defend Arkansas. The main supply line to Jacksonport, Pocahontas (Randolph County), and Batesville was up the White and Black rivers. Curtis’s army hoped to use the White River as a way to receive supplies.
Captain Joseph Fry and Captain A. M. Williams picked the hamlet of St. Charles (Arkansas County) to set up two thirty-two-pounders, two three-inch rifled guns Lieutenant John W. Dunnington brought from the Little Rock Arsenal, a twelve-pounder howitzer and brass rifled cannon from the Maurepas, and two thirty-two pound guns to defend the White River. On the morning of June 17, 1862, four Federal ships—the ironclads Mound City and St. Louis and timberclads Lexington and Conestoga—traveled up the White for their rendezvous with Curtis and his men. Other smaller ships were also part of the Union flotilla.
Confederate captain Joseph Fry and Dunnington joined forces at St. Charles near De Witt (Arkansas County). Pleasant’s Twenty-ninth Arkansas Infantry had thirty-five sharpshooters dispatched to assist in the defense of St. Charles. Also present were the crews of the two Confederate war ships, Maurepas and Pontchartrain. They laid plans to defend St. Charles with the resources they had. Fry sent out scouts and found that Union troops and gunboats outnumbered the Confederates. Fry ordered the Maurepas and the steamers Mary Patterson and Eliza G. scuttled to block the White River and then manned the guns in the earthworks at St. Charles.
When the Union ships rounded the bend, Fry opened fire. An early volley from the big guns sent a round that tore though the Mound City’s steam drum and filled the ship with scalding steam. This shot is called the “most deadly shot” of the war. The commander of the Mound City, Augustus H. Kilty, ordered the ship abandoned. About 175 sailors were aboard; 105 died, and forty-four were injured. (The Mound City did not sink but was towed to safety and repaired to fight another day.) Many drowned or were shot as they swam to shore. Only three officers and twenty-two soldiers escaped injury.
With the Mound City disabled, Union colonel Graham N. Fitch’s Forty-sixth Indiana Infantry was ordered off its ships just belowSt. Charles and marched upriver. A successful attack on the Confederate flank enabled Union troops to storm the batteries and occupy St. Charles. The skirmish lasted a short while, but the Union troops outnumbered the Confederates, and fearing capture, the Confederates yielded to greater numbers. Fry thought his troops could not hold St. Charles, so he ordered a retreat. Hindman reported six Confederates killed and one wounded.
The Union side set up a supply stop on the White River at St. Charles and left the wounded to be cared for by the citizens of the town. The Union gunboats, except for the Mound City, went upriver as far as Crooked Point Cutoff in Monroe County but had to turn back because the river was too low. The Union vessels could not supply Curtis at Batesville because the river was not deep enough for them to ascend beyond DeValls Bluff (Prairie County). Curtis’s forces had to live off the countryside while they marched south to reach their supplies. Despite having the “most deadly shot” of the war, this skirmish is not listed in most books on the Civil War. The sinking of the Confederate ships at St. Charles left the White River in control of the Union side for the remainder of the war.
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=532
B+ Wednesday, June 17, 1863 --- The Gettysburg Campaign: Battle of Aldie -- Gen. Pleasonton, commanding the Cavalry Corps in Hooker’s Army of the Potomac, is directed to send out scouts to find out where Lee’s army is, and where it is headed. Pleasonton sends out only one regiment, which, in probing Thoroughfare Gap, is prevented by a rebel cavalry brigade. In fact, everywhere the Yankees probe, they are blocked by the Rebel troopers. Lee’s march is still largely a mystery. Pleasonton asks Gen. Gregg to send a brigade to probe with more authority, and Gregg sends the reckless firebrand Judson Kilpatrick and his brigade. Kilpatrick rides into Aldie, a small crossroads town in the Bull Run mountains area of “Mosby’s Confederacy,” and surprises a fairly large number of Confederate cavalry---in fact, it is Fitzhugh Lee’s entire brigade, and a running battle developments piecemeal as more Rebels troopers come up and as Kilpatrick feeds in his regiments one by one. What “Little Kill” does not know is that he barely missed Jeb Stuart, who was making the town his headquarters. The fighting lasts several hours, and elements of two more Rebel brigades, under Chambliss and Robertson, are nearby but do not engage, since Stuart recalls his men to withdraw behind the mountains and the passes. Kilpatrick manages to drive off the gray troopers, but only just. Meanwhile, the lone regiment sent at first, under Col. Duffie, finds that the way behind them is blocked by Rebels, and so they are surrounded. Duffie asks Kilpatrick for help and is refused. He sends a message to Pleasonton. Duffie can get no answers, and so he has his regiment disperse, and most of them are captured by the Confederates. Only he and fewer than 90 troopers escape.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+17%2C+1863
B Wednesday, June 17, 1863: The Gettysburg Campaign: Battle of Aldie. By June 17, 1863, a little more than a week after the epic cavalry battle at Brandy Station, General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had managed to pass unseen into the Shenandoah Valley and begin its march north toward Maryland and Pennsylvania. General Joseph Hooker, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, wanted desperately to learn Lee’s whereabouts and the direction of his movements. To this end, he ordered General Alfred Pleasonton to move his cavalry corps into the passes of the Blue Ridge Mountains to find the missing Confederates. “Drive in his pickets,” Hooker ordered. “It is better that we lose men than to be without knowledge of the enemy.”
To counter Union scouting attempts, General J.E.B. Stuart entered the Loudoun Valley with his cavalry, determined to deny access to the passes to his Union counterpart. The highway of most concern to him was the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike (modern Route 50), which ran from Fairfax to the Shenandoah Valley by way of southern Loudoun and northern Fauquier counties. At the same time, however, he had to block the approaches to Snicker’s Gap to the north. The fact that the best roads leading from the south to both gaps intersected in Aldie made this quiet little mill town a vital piece of real estate for both armies.
Judson Kilpatrick’s brigade of Union cavalry reached Aldie around 2:30 on the afternoon of June 17 to be met by pickets from the 6th Virginia Cavalry who had been ordered to guard the intersection of the Little River Turnpike and the Carolina Road (modern Routes 50 and 15, which intersect at Gilbert’s Corner). The brief exchange of gunfire was a shock because Pleasonton thought Stuart was west of the Blue Ridge; nevertheless, Kilpatrick quickly ordered two companies of the 2nd New York Cavalry to attack and drive the enemy through the town. As the New Yorkers galloped through the village, they were met by Col. Thomas Rosser and the 5th Virginia Cavalry coming from the other direction. After a short, but nasty, saber fight, both sides withdrew to assess the situation. Neither had expected to fight in Aldie.
Col. Thomas Munford, once again commanding a brigade in Fitzhugh Lee’s absence, positioned his men astride both turnpikes, the 1st, 4th and 5th Virginia and James Breathed’s artillery battery on a ridge blocking the Ashby’s Gap road, and the 2nd and 3rd Virginia to the north guarding the road to Snicker’s Gap. Munford went with the latter, leaving Colonel Williams Wickham in command of the troops on the right flank. The first phase of the battle began to play out when Rosser posted Capt. Reuben Boston and approximately 50 men of the 5th Virginia along a ridge some 600 yards in front of the main Confederate line. They immediately came under fire from the guns of Capt. Alanson Randol’s combined Batteries E and G, 1st U.S. Artillery (the same guns that would open the Battle of Gettysburg two weeks later). For a short time, they were answered by two of Breathed’s guns posted in an orchard behind Boston’s position; but the Confederate guns soon pulled back to the more distant main position.
Boston was then attacked by the 2nd New York Cavalry, but easily repulsed them, inflicting heavy losses. Kilpatrick, who would commit his forces to the fight piecemeal all day, then sent the 6th Ohio to their assistance. After a bloody fight, the two regiments forced Boston’s small detachment to surrender. It was the first time a company-size body of Stuart’s troops had ever surrendered on the battlefield. Boston would spend nine months as a prisoner of war, only to face a court-martial when he returned to Virginia. The court, however, would find him innocent and rule that the blame for his surrender was Rosser’s for placing the men too far forward to be adequately supported by the rest of the regiment.
Boston’s surrender ended the fight along the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike. The action now shifted to the north, where dismounted Confederate sharpshooters posted behind stone walls awaited an attack by the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry. About the same time the New Yorkers first attacked Boston, Maj. Henry Higginson led a squadron (two companies) of the Bay Staters north on the Snickersville Pike. For the next three hours, the fighting along the road would see-saw back and forth as the 1st Massachusetts, later supported by the 4th New York and the 1st Maine, traded shots and saber blows with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Virginia regiments and one of Breathed’s cannon. Attacking down a narrow road bordered on both sides by high stone walls, one Union squadron after another galloped around a blind curve only to find the road filled with dead and wounded men and horses. By the time it was over, the 1st Massachusetts had suffered more than 200 casualties, the severest losses experienced by any Union cavalry regiment on a single day in the entire war. Munford always considered Aldie to be a Confederate victory, but as darkness began to fall that night, he withdrew from the field in obedience to an order from Stuart, who had problems of his own in Middleburg.
http://www.visitloudoun.org/trip-ideas/civil-war/the-story/cavalry-battles-of-1863
C. Friday, June 17, 1864: Siege of Petersburg, Battle of Richmond Turnpike, Virginia [June 17 – 18, 1864]
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186406
C+ Friday, June 17, 1864: The Second Battle of Petersburg, Day 3: Just as June 16 featured mostly attacks by one Union corps, the Second, so June 17 would move the focus to yet another Union corps, the Ninth. Burnside’s Ninth Corps started early, with Potter’s Division attacking near the Shand House at dawn and scoring a major breakthrough against Johnson’s Tennessee Brigade. Bushrod Johnson, the division commander, ordered Elliott’s South Carolinians to form a new line to the rear, to which the Confederates retired. Bryce Suderow believes that Potter’s assault might have taken Petersburg had Ledlie’s Division and a Second Corps division properly supported Potter.
Meanwhile, Warren’s Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac arrived in the morning and was in place on Burnside’s left before noon. This meant the Union now had four corps, the Eighteenth, Second, Ninth, and Fifth, in order from left to right, to face the divisions of Hoke and Johnson on the Confederate side. The Sixth Corps, however, was landed at Bermuda Hundred and would not factor in the fighting on June 17-18 at Petersburg, where they might have made a difference.
Willcox’s Division of the Ninth Corps made the second attack of the day at 2 pm, also at the Shand House, but the typically tepid support provided by Warren’s Fifth Corps on Willcox’s left helped to guarantee this effort went nowhere. The last assault of the day was made by the last White division of the Ninth Corps, Ledlie’s. Ledlie also assaulted near the Shand House at 6 pm, and this effort proved more successful. A brigade of Willcox and Barlow’s division of the Second Corps provided added support. In back and forth fighting, Beauregard ordered the brigades of Ransom, Colquitt, Clingman, and Wise to counterattack, which they did successfully. By 10 pm on the 17th, the fighting was over and the Confederates had regained the lines they had held since after Potter’s dawn attack. During the night he fell back another 500-800 yards to what would become the “final” Confederate lines east of Petersburg during the Siege. These new lines tied into the Dimmock line southeast of Petersburg at Battery 25.
Beauregard still held Petersburg, and now Lee’s veterans from the Army of Northern Virginia would begin to arrive in force…
http://www.beyondthecrater.com/resources/bat-sum/petersburg-siege-sum/first-offensive-summaries/the-second-battle-of-petersburg-summary/
D Friday, June 17, 1864: Battle of Lynchburg, Virginia [June 17 – 18, 1864]
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186406
D+ Friday, June 17, 1864: Battle of Lynchburg, Virginia [June 17 – 18, 1864] Battle: Early arrived in Lynchburg at one o'clock on June 17, having been sent by General Robert E. Lee. Three hours later, Averell encountered McCausland's and Imboden's dismounted cavalry entrenched at the Quaker Meeting House, four miles from the city. The Confederates were driven back after Col. Carr B. White's brigade moved in to support Averell. Two brigades of Major General Stephen Dodson Ramseur's division occupied the area around a redoubt two miles from the city and hindered the Union advance.
Hunter made Sandusky his headquarters and planned the attack on Early's defenses. That night, trains could be heard moving up and down the tracks. Also, various instruments such as bugles and drums were heard by Hunter's troops. Even the people of Lynchburg made noise by having bands play and citizens scream. Their goal was to make the Confederate army seem larger than it really was.
http://thomaslegion.net/battleoflynchburg.html

Aftermath and Analysis: Lynchburg, which served as a Confederate supply base, was approached within 1-mile (1.6 km) by the Union forces of General David Hunter as he drove south from the Shenandoah Valley. Under the false impression that the Confederate forces stationed in Lynchburg were much larger than anticipated, Hunter was repelled by the forces of Confederate General Jubal Early on June 18, 1864, in the Battle of Lynchburg. To create the false impression, a train was continuously run up and down the tracks while the citizens of Lynchburg cheered as if reinforcements were unloading. Local prostitutes also took part in the deception, misinforming their Union clients of the large number of Confederate reinforcements.
The Battle of Lynchburg was fought on June 17–18, 1864, less than two miles outside Lynchburg, Virginia, as part of the American Civil War. The Union Army of West Virginia, under Maj. Gen. David Hunter, attempted to capture the city but was repulsed by Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Anderson Early.
Then, Early's army moved sixty miles in three days chasing Hunter. At that point, Early halted the pursuit and awaited for Hunter to make a move. Hunter decided to move across the Shenandoah Valley and into West Virginia.
The Battle of Lynchburg proved to be quite helpful in the Confederates' fight against the Union. Hunter's retreat made it possible for Early to freely move up the Shenandoah Valley. Early's army advanced up through Maryland and even made it as far as Washington, D.C. This was an obvious victory for the Confederates because it allowed them to move further north and allowed their supply lines to remain open via the railroads.
http://thomaslegion.net/battleoflynchburg.html
FYI SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D MAJ Roland McDonald SSG Franklin BriantCPO William Glen (W.G.) Powell1stSgt Eugene Harless PO3 (Join to see)MSG Greg Kelly CPT (Join to see) LTC Thomas Tennant GySgt Jack Wallace LTC David BrownLTC (Join to see) SFC Eric Harmon SSG Bill McCoySPC (Join to see) MAJ Byron Oyler SSG (Join to see) Sgt Axel HastingA1C Pamela G Russell

I was more affected by what happened on Jun 17th 1991. Mt Pinatubo

LTC Stephen F.
I'm going to have to say the Naval engagement, mostly because it's my Navy! :)