Posted on Jun 29, 2016
What was the most significant event on June 27 during the U.S. Civil War?
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First Federal naval officer killed at Mathias Point, Virginia in 1861: Commander James H. Ward developed a Potomac River Flotilla to disrupt the flow of weapons and insurgents between Maryland and Virginia. “The Potomac Flotilla was composed of an assortment of improvised vessels. Ward’s own flagship, Thomas Freeborn, was purchased by the government and then retrofitted with a novel gun-carriage that Ward designed for river operations. In June 1861, Ward learned that Confederates were constructing an artillery position on Mathias Point on the Virginia side of the Potomac. On June 27, Ward planned to land a Union force at Mathias Point to drive away the Rebels. His gunboats shelled the position, but Ward was shot by the Confederates and died. Commander James H. Ward was the first Union Navy officer killed in the Civil War, and both the engagement at Mathias Point and his death were heavily covered in the press.”
The confederates suffer the “heaviest casualties the war had yet seen” at Gaines Mill, Virginia in 1862.
George McLellan whines to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in 1862: Gen. McClellan writes to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton his assessment of the fight at Gaines Mill, sending it via telegraph about midnight: “. . . I have lost this battle, because my force was too small. I again repeat that I am not responsible for this, and I say it with the earnestness of a general, who feels in his heart, the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed to-day. I still hope to retrieve our fortunes, but to do this, the government must view the matter in the same earnest light that I do. You must send me very large reinforcements, and send them at once. . . . I only wish to say to the President, that I think he is wrong in regarding me as ungenerous, when I said that my force was too weak. I merely reiterated a truth, which to-day has been too plainly proved. If at this instant I could dispose of ten thousand fresh men, I could gain the victory to-morrow.
I feel too earnestly to-night, I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades, to feel otherwise than that the government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the game is lost.
If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other persons in Washington.
You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”
Future POTUS assess restructuring of the Army of Virginia in 1862: Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes, on duty with his regiment, the 23rd Ohio in the mountainous regions of western Virginia, notes in his diary the forming of the Army of Virginia, with Gen. John Pope in command: “General Pope appointed to “the Army of Virginia” — being the combined forces of Fremont, Shields, Banks, and McDowell, now in the Valley of Virginia. Sorry to see Fremont passed over but glad the concentration under one man has taken place. General Pope is impulsive and hasty, but energetic, and, what is of most importance, patriotic and sound — perfectly sound. I look for good results. —“
Pictures: 1864-06-27 Kennesaw Mountain June-27-Map; 1862-06-27 Gaines Mill 1430 pm Map; 1862-06-27 Gaines's Mill 1900 Map; 1863-06-27 Battle of Portland Harbor
A. 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia. Federal naval and army units attempt to land and capture Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia, which command the Potomac. The Federals are beaten off. The USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance arrived in the area between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM; sources give conflicting times. The action began with a bombardment of the point in order to support the landing party. The Union force sent out skirmishers which drove off the Confederates. The Union landing party had brought replacement guns with them but had not yet unloaded them when some 400 to 500 Confederates appeared.
Ward who accompanied the original landing had returned to the Thomas Freeborn to direct more fire against the attacking Confederates. Meanwhile, Chaplin had withdrawn his shore part while the ships bombarded the Confederate force. Ward signaled Chaplin to land and prepare sand-bag breastworks.
The Confederate commander, Col. Daniel Ruggles, ordered his men to attack the Union position by moving through the woods to minimize observation from the river. By 5:00 Pm Chaplin’s men had completed the breastwork and moved to the boats to bring up the artillery. The Confederate forces counterattacked and the Union force which heavily outnumbered was forced to withdraw completely.
During the withdrawal Comdr. Ward was shot through the abdomen by a rifleman while siting a gun. He was dead within 45 minutes, the first Union naval officer to die in the Civil War. Four other Union sailors were wounded while the Confederates sustained no casualties.
B. 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): Very costly confederate victory. In the early hours Fitz John Porter’s Union corps abandoned its position at Beaver Dam Creek and established a new defensive line behind Boatswain’s Swamp, just north of the Chickahominy River. Anxious to renew his assaults from the day before, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, sent the bulk of his force forward with the intention of driving them across the river. The Federals beat back successive waves of disjointed attacks, inflicting some of the heaviest casualties the war had yet seen. By dusk, however, Lee’s Confederates were more organized. With daylight fading, the reinforced Southerners assaulted Porter’s anemic defensive line and sent the Northerners fleeing toward the river. Only darkness prevented Porter’s corps from complete disaster. During the night, the Federals limped across the Chickahominy and burned the bridges behind them.
Once again, Lee tries the same strategy he used for the previous day’s battle at Mechanicsville (Beaver Dam Creek): to force the Federal right, turn it, and hopefully destroy it---and once again, poorly coordinated Confederate attacks prevent the success Lee hopes for. To do this, he needed Jackson to push around the isolated flank of the Federal army, which is mostly Porter’s V (Fifth) Corps, 27,000 strong. Porter’s three divisions, under Morell, Sykes, and McCall, are deployed behind Boatswain’s Creek, a tributary whose course is a swampy vale with heavy vegetation. McCall is held in reserve. Jackson is supposed to hit behind Porter’s flank, supported by D.H. Hill, whose whole force has now crossed to the north side of the Chickahominy, and A.P. Hill is supposed to drive at Porter’s line closer to the Chickahominy, supported by Longstreet’s divisions---a total of 57,000 men attacking about half of that number under Porter’s command. What happens instead comes partly from D.H. Hill’s advance, toward Old Cold Harbor, which he believes is beyond and even behind the Union flank; when he approaches Cold Harbor, he finds that Yankees from Sykes’ division are firmly in position in front of him. The Confederate attacks do not begin until after 2:00 PM.
A.P. Hill launches attacks again (as yesterday) without the coordinated support of his colleagues, and Northern artillery shreds his formations so that he can only hold his ground and exchange with the Yankees in an infantry firefight, hoping for Jackson to arrive. Longstreet launches some diversionary attacks on Porter’s left. Jackson is slow in getting to his position, which he finds is not the right place to attack, and so countermarches his troops to find a better position. When he finally engages the enemy, he feeds his brigades in piecemeal, Ewell’s troops finally going forward @ 4:00 PM, with Elzey’s and Trimble’s brigades in the fore; these are thrown back with losses.
Lee orders a more coordinated attack, and orders Jackson to pour in all his troops at once, with a renewal of A.P. Hill’s attacks, and with D.H. Hill feeling for the Union flank. Porter senses the coming Rebel assault, and asks for reinforcements; he receives brigades from Slocum’s VI Corps. After 7:00 PM, an hour before dusk, the Confederate attack goes forward: Jackson has Whiting’s division and Walker’s Stonewall Brigade in front. Whiting’s brigade of Texans (supported by Hampton’s Legion and Law’s Brigade), under Brig. Gen. John B. Hood, goes in with wild abandon, and takes heavy losses, but plows through the heavy woods and swamp, and pierces the Union line. In spite of inflicting heavy losses on the Rebels, Porter’s line begins to crumble on the left (where Longstreet sends in Wilcox and Pickett), the center (Hood’s attack), and the right (as D.H. Hill hits the Union flank).
As the Union infantry retreats, Porter’s artillery now has a clear field of fire, and are able to claw the advancing Rebels dreadfully with canister before the attack hits. The Yankees lose 14 guns to capture. The Union retreat is uneven: some regiments retreat in order, and some disintegrate and panic, leading to over a thousand being captured. Thus ends an incredibly bloody battle, considering the brief amount of time it took.
C. 1863: The Battle of Portland Harbor, Maine. Confederate raiders plan foiled. the raiders led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN left the port area and seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing. 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake and gave chase. The wind was against the confederate raiders and they torched the Cushing and escaped in lifeboats and were captured and treated as prisoners of war.
BATTLE: When the raiders left the port area on June 27, they proceeded to the federal wharf. Having the advantage of surprise, the crew seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing, whose namesake was a Massachusetts congressman, United States Attorney General and Minister to Spain. Their original intent was to seize a steamer called the sidewheel steamer Chesapeake, but its boilers were cold. Too much time would be needed to get the steam up in her, so they abandoned it for Cushing. They made their escape and fled out to sea.
News spread of the Confederate actions and the Army garrison at Fort Preble in nearby South Portland was informed of the rebel intrusion. They had been observed by several persons while taking over the cutter, and public fury was fanned by the incident. Along with 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake, whose steam was finally up. All of the civilians on board were issued muskets to defend against the Confederates. Forest City, a faster boat, caught up to Cushing and Archer first.
Cushing opened fire upon Forest City when it was within the 2 mi (3.2 km) range of Cushing. The captain of Forest City was afraid to pursue any further. Cushing, being a revenue cutter, had two secret compartments hidden in the captain's stateroom. Lieutenant Read had not discovered the cache of powder and ammunition that were stored there. If he had, the outcome could have been very different. Chesapeake, which had left port sometime after Forest City with Portland's Mayor Jacob McLellan in command, finally caught up and continued on toward Cushing. The wind was beginning to blow against the Confederate sailors and the steamers soon caught sight of Cushing. Read ordered Cushing torched so the munitions were destroyed by exploding in the cutter after it was abandoned by her twenty-four crewmen escaped in lifeboats. They surrendered to Mayor McLellan and were held as prisoners of war at Fort Preble. Archer was also soon captured and all the rebels were returned to Portland.
Background: Confederate naval raider’s led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN abandon their own ship named the Tacony and capture the Archer, a Maine fishing schooner out of Southport. The rebels disguised themselves as fishermen and entered Portland Harbor late in the evening. They planned to slip back out of the harbor and try to destroy the area's commercial shipping capability.
D. 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Union attack failed. The frontal assault cost Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. During the month of June battles fought around Marietta, Georgia led Johnston to establish a seven-mile long, formidably entrenched, arc shaped line beginning at Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain, a mere fifteen miles outside of Atlanta. With the roads in this vicinity all but impassable, Sherman could no longer flank his enemy. Frustrated, Sherman considered a course of action he had previously refused to enact: attack the enemy’s fortifications head-on. On June 24, he drew up an order for an assault on the 27th which called for Maj. Gen. James McPherson, whose army held the Union left near the Kennesaw Mountain, and Maj. Gen. George Thomas, who held the center, to select points of attack to break the enemy line while Gen. John Schofield maneuvered on the right to draw out Johnston’s line.
At 8:00 a.m. on June 27, over fifty cannons on McPherson's front opened fire on Kennesaw Mountain. Troops of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps started skirmishing in the dense undergrowth to prevent the Rebels from shifting forces to Little Kennesaw and Pigeon Hill. Three brigades under Maj. Gen. John A Logan's Fifteenth Corps moved forward, but despite overrunning some of the rifle pits fronting them and capturing a number of Rebels, they could not get within fifteen yards of the principal Confederate defenses. Most Federals became mired in the undergrowth and punishing musketry as they attempted to ascend the slope. Well-directed fire by Maj. Gen. Samuel French's artillery on Little Kennesaw and a Confederate counterattack eventually drove off the Yankees.
At the center of the Union line, the two armies were only 400 yards apart. Thomas chose portions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps to make the attack against the Rebels. Facing them was Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division, which had built abatis, driven sharp wooden stakes in the ground and strengthened its entrenchments with headlogs and Brig. Gen. George Maney's Tennessee brigade (under Maj. Gen. Frank Cheatham) whose position jutted forth in an inverted V salient on a rise now known as Cheatham's Hill. Federal artillery opened at 8:00 a.m., shelling the Rebel works for a quarter hour before advancing an hour later under heavy fire, stalling at the abatis around 45 yards from the enemy works. Some Federals got close to the enemy works. Union Colonel Daniel McCook, Jr. stood at the Rebel parapet urging his men on when he was shot in the chest. Reacting quickly, Col. Oscar Harmon of the One Hundred and Twenty Fifth Illinois took command of the brigade, but he was shot five minutes later, mortally wounded. On McCook's left, Brig. Gen. Charles Harker urged his men forward astride his white horse, before being mortally struck in the arm and chest. After 10:00 a.m., the Union attack became disorganized and the men fell back. Some men of Col. John Mitchell's brigade made it up the slope to one of Maney's entrenched salients where the lines became so close that the Tennesseans threw rocks at the advancing Federals. Eventually Mitchell's men had to retreat and find cover anywhere from twenty to a hundred yards from the Confederate works and dig in with their bayonets at what was later called the "Dead Angle."
By 11:30 that morning, the Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Although the survivors of the assaulting columns at Cheatham Hill spent the next five days in advanced works only thirty yards from the Confederate position, there was no more heavy-fighting at Kennesaw. Only on July 2nd when Sherman sent McPherson and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman's cavalry around the Confederate left did Johnston once again fall back to another defensive position at Smyrna.
FYI CWO4 Terrence Clark MSG Roy Cheever Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SMSgt Lawrence McCarter PO3 Edward Riddle MAJ Roland McDonald SSG Byron Hewett CMDCM John F. "Doc" Bradshaw COL (Join to see) SPC Michael Terrell COL Lisandro Murphy SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL] MAJ Ken Landgren LTC Trent Klug CWO3 Dennis M. CPT Kevin McComas]SSgt David M. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D.
The confederates suffer the “heaviest casualties the war had yet seen” at Gaines Mill, Virginia in 1862.
George McLellan whines to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in 1862: Gen. McClellan writes to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton his assessment of the fight at Gaines Mill, sending it via telegraph about midnight: “. . . I have lost this battle, because my force was too small. I again repeat that I am not responsible for this, and I say it with the earnestness of a general, who feels in his heart, the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed to-day. I still hope to retrieve our fortunes, but to do this, the government must view the matter in the same earnest light that I do. You must send me very large reinforcements, and send them at once. . . . I only wish to say to the President, that I think he is wrong in regarding me as ungenerous, when I said that my force was too weak. I merely reiterated a truth, which to-day has been too plainly proved. If at this instant I could dispose of ten thousand fresh men, I could gain the victory to-morrow.
I feel too earnestly to-night, I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades, to feel otherwise than that the government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the game is lost.
If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other persons in Washington.
You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”
Future POTUS assess restructuring of the Army of Virginia in 1862: Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes, on duty with his regiment, the 23rd Ohio in the mountainous regions of western Virginia, notes in his diary the forming of the Army of Virginia, with Gen. John Pope in command: “General Pope appointed to “the Army of Virginia” — being the combined forces of Fremont, Shields, Banks, and McDowell, now in the Valley of Virginia. Sorry to see Fremont passed over but glad the concentration under one man has taken place. General Pope is impulsive and hasty, but energetic, and, what is of most importance, patriotic and sound — perfectly sound. I look for good results. —“
Pictures: 1864-06-27 Kennesaw Mountain June-27-Map; 1862-06-27 Gaines Mill 1430 pm Map; 1862-06-27 Gaines's Mill 1900 Map; 1863-06-27 Battle of Portland Harbor
A. 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia. Federal naval and army units attempt to land and capture Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia, which command the Potomac. The Federals are beaten off. The USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance arrived in the area between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM; sources give conflicting times. The action began with a bombardment of the point in order to support the landing party. The Union force sent out skirmishers which drove off the Confederates. The Union landing party had brought replacement guns with them but had not yet unloaded them when some 400 to 500 Confederates appeared.
Ward who accompanied the original landing had returned to the Thomas Freeborn to direct more fire against the attacking Confederates. Meanwhile, Chaplin had withdrawn his shore part while the ships bombarded the Confederate force. Ward signaled Chaplin to land and prepare sand-bag breastworks.
The Confederate commander, Col. Daniel Ruggles, ordered his men to attack the Union position by moving through the woods to minimize observation from the river. By 5:00 Pm Chaplin’s men had completed the breastwork and moved to the boats to bring up the artillery. The Confederate forces counterattacked and the Union force which heavily outnumbered was forced to withdraw completely.
During the withdrawal Comdr. Ward was shot through the abdomen by a rifleman while siting a gun. He was dead within 45 minutes, the first Union naval officer to die in the Civil War. Four other Union sailors were wounded while the Confederates sustained no casualties.
B. 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): Very costly confederate victory. In the early hours Fitz John Porter’s Union corps abandoned its position at Beaver Dam Creek and established a new defensive line behind Boatswain’s Swamp, just north of the Chickahominy River. Anxious to renew his assaults from the day before, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, sent the bulk of his force forward with the intention of driving them across the river. The Federals beat back successive waves of disjointed attacks, inflicting some of the heaviest casualties the war had yet seen. By dusk, however, Lee’s Confederates were more organized. With daylight fading, the reinforced Southerners assaulted Porter’s anemic defensive line and sent the Northerners fleeing toward the river. Only darkness prevented Porter’s corps from complete disaster. During the night, the Federals limped across the Chickahominy and burned the bridges behind them.
Once again, Lee tries the same strategy he used for the previous day’s battle at Mechanicsville (Beaver Dam Creek): to force the Federal right, turn it, and hopefully destroy it---and once again, poorly coordinated Confederate attacks prevent the success Lee hopes for. To do this, he needed Jackson to push around the isolated flank of the Federal army, which is mostly Porter’s V (Fifth) Corps, 27,000 strong. Porter’s three divisions, under Morell, Sykes, and McCall, are deployed behind Boatswain’s Creek, a tributary whose course is a swampy vale with heavy vegetation. McCall is held in reserve. Jackson is supposed to hit behind Porter’s flank, supported by D.H. Hill, whose whole force has now crossed to the north side of the Chickahominy, and A.P. Hill is supposed to drive at Porter’s line closer to the Chickahominy, supported by Longstreet’s divisions---a total of 57,000 men attacking about half of that number under Porter’s command. What happens instead comes partly from D.H. Hill’s advance, toward Old Cold Harbor, which he believes is beyond and even behind the Union flank; when he approaches Cold Harbor, he finds that Yankees from Sykes’ division are firmly in position in front of him. The Confederate attacks do not begin until after 2:00 PM.
A.P. Hill launches attacks again (as yesterday) without the coordinated support of his colleagues, and Northern artillery shreds his formations so that he can only hold his ground and exchange with the Yankees in an infantry firefight, hoping for Jackson to arrive. Longstreet launches some diversionary attacks on Porter’s left. Jackson is slow in getting to his position, which he finds is not the right place to attack, and so countermarches his troops to find a better position. When he finally engages the enemy, he feeds his brigades in piecemeal, Ewell’s troops finally going forward @ 4:00 PM, with Elzey’s and Trimble’s brigades in the fore; these are thrown back with losses.
Lee orders a more coordinated attack, and orders Jackson to pour in all his troops at once, with a renewal of A.P. Hill’s attacks, and with D.H. Hill feeling for the Union flank. Porter senses the coming Rebel assault, and asks for reinforcements; he receives brigades from Slocum’s VI Corps. After 7:00 PM, an hour before dusk, the Confederate attack goes forward: Jackson has Whiting’s division and Walker’s Stonewall Brigade in front. Whiting’s brigade of Texans (supported by Hampton’s Legion and Law’s Brigade), under Brig. Gen. John B. Hood, goes in with wild abandon, and takes heavy losses, but plows through the heavy woods and swamp, and pierces the Union line. In spite of inflicting heavy losses on the Rebels, Porter’s line begins to crumble on the left (where Longstreet sends in Wilcox and Pickett), the center (Hood’s attack), and the right (as D.H. Hill hits the Union flank).
As the Union infantry retreats, Porter’s artillery now has a clear field of fire, and are able to claw the advancing Rebels dreadfully with canister before the attack hits. The Yankees lose 14 guns to capture. The Union retreat is uneven: some regiments retreat in order, and some disintegrate and panic, leading to over a thousand being captured. Thus ends an incredibly bloody battle, considering the brief amount of time it took.
C. 1863: The Battle of Portland Harbor, Maine. Confederate raiders plan foiled. the raiders led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN left the port area and seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing. 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake and gave chase. The wind was against the confederate raiders and they torched the Cushing and escaped in lifeboats and were captured and treated as prisoners of war.
BATTLE: When the raiders left the port area on June 27, they proceeded to the federal wharf. Having the advantage of surprise, the crew seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing, whose namesake was a Massachusetts congressman, United States Attorney General and Minister to Spain. Their original intent was to seize a steamer called the sidewheel steamer Chesapeake, but its boilers were cold. Too much time would be needed to get the steam up in her, so they abandoned it for Cushing. They made their escape and fled out to sea.
News spread of the Confederate actions and the Army garrison at Fort Preble in nearby South Portland was informed of the rebel intrusion. They had been observed by several persons while taking over the cutter, and public fury was fanned by the incident. Along with 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake, whose steam was finally up. All of the civilians on board were issued muskets to defend against the Confederates. Forest City, a faster boat, caught up to Cushing and Archer first.
Cushing opened fire upon Forest City when it was within the 2 mi (3.2 km) range of Cushing. The captain of Forest City was afraid to pursue any further. Cushing, being a revenue cutter, had two secret compartments hidden in the captain's stateroom. Lieutenant Read had not discovered the cache of powder and ammunition that were stored there. If he had, the outcome could have been very different. Chesapeake, which had left port sometime after Forest City with Portland's Mayor Jacob McLellan in command, finally caught up and continued on toward Cushing. The wind was beginning to blow against the Confederate sailors and the steamers soon caught sight of Cushing. Read ordered Cushing torched so the munitions were destroyed by exploding in the cutter after it was abandoned by her twenty-four crewmen escaped in lifeboats. They surrendered to Mayor McLellan and were held as prisoners of war at Fort Preble. Archer was also soon captured and all the rebels were returned to Portland.
Background: Confederate naval raider’s led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN abandon their own ship named the Tacony and capture the Archer, a Maine fishing schooner out of Southport. The rebels disguised themselves as fishermen and entered Portland Harbor late in the evening. They planned to slip back out of the harbor and try to destroy the area's commercial shipping capability.
D. 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Union attack failed. The frontal assault cost Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. During the month of June battles fought around Marietta, Georgia led Johnston to establish a seven-mile long, formidably entrenched, arc shaped line beginning at Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain, a mere fifteen miles outside of Atlanta. With the roads in this vicinity all but impassable, Sherman could no longer flank his enemy. Frustrated, Sherman considered a course of action he had previously refused to enact: attack the enemy’s fortifications head-on. On June 24, he drew up an order for an assault on the 27th which called for Maj. Gen. James McPherson, whose army held the Union left near the Kennesaw Mountain, and Maj. Gen. George Thomas, who held the center, to select points of attack to break the enemy line while Gen. John Schofield maneuvered on the right to draw out Johnston’s line.
At 8:00 a.m. on June 27, over fifty cannons on McPherson's front opened fire on Kennesaw Mountain. Troops of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps started skirmishing in the dense undergrowth to prevent the Rebels from shifting forces to Little Kennesaw and Pigeon Hill. Three brigades under Maj. Gen. John A Logan's Fifteenth Corps moved forward, but despite overrunning some of the rifle pits fronting them and capturing a number of Rebels, they could not get within fifteen yards of the principal Confederate defenses. Most Federals became mired in the undergrowth and punishing musketry as they attempted to ascend the slope. Well-directed fire by Maj. Gen. Samuel French's artillery on Little Kennesaw and a Confederate counterattack eventually drove off the Yankees.
At the center of the Union line, the two armies were only 400 yards apart. Thomas chose portions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps to make the attack against the Rebels. Facing them was Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division, which had built abatis, driven sharp wooden stakes in the ground and strengthened its entrenchments with headlogs and Brig. Gen. George Maney's Tennessee brigade (under Maj. Gen. Frank Cheatham) whose position jutted forth in an inverted V salient on a rise now known as Cheatham's Hill. Federal artillery opened at 8:00 a.m., shelling the Rebel works for a quarter hour before advancing an hour later under heavy fire, stalling at the abatis around 45 yards from the enemy works. Some Federals got close to the enemy works. Union Colonel Daniel McCook, Jr. stood at the Rebel parapet urging his men on when he was shot in the chest. Reacting quickly, Col. Oscar Harmon of the One Hundred and Twenty Fifth Illinois took command of the brigade, but he was shot five minutes later, mortally wounded. On McCook's left, Brig. Gen. Charles Harker urged his men forward astride his white horse, before being mortally struck in the arm and chest. After 10:00 a.m., the Union attack became disorganized and the men fell back. Some men of Col. John Mitchell's brigade made it up the slope to one of Maney's entrenched salients where the lines became so close that the Tennesseans threw rocks at the advancing Federals. Eventually Mitchell's men had to retreat and find cover anywhere from twenty to a hundred yards from the Confederate works and dig in with their bayonets at what was later called the "Dead Angle."
By 11:30 that morning, the Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Although the survivors of the assaulting columns at Cheatham Hill spent the next five days in advanced works only thirty yards from the Confederate position, there was no more heavy-fighting at Kennesaw. Only on July 2nd when Sherman sent McPherson and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman's cavalry around the Confederate left did Johnston once again fall back to another defensive position at Smyrna.
FYI CWO4 Terrence Clark MSG Roy Cheever Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SMSgt Lawrence McCarter PO3 Edward Riddle MAJ Roland McDonald SSG Byron Hewett CMDCM John F. "Doc" Bradshaw COL (Join to see) SPC Michael Terrell COL Lisandro Murphy SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL] MAJ Ken Landgren LTC Trent Klug CWO3 Dennis M. CPT Kevin McComas]SSgt David M. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D.
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1862: Village Creek, Arkansas “On June 27, a Confederate force set up an ambush at Stewart's Plantation. The plantation was located about 8 miles from Village Creek. When a Union forage train neared, the Confederates sprang the trap. A number of Federals were casualties and a few wagons were captured.”
1863: New General of the Army of the Potomac. “Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, commander of the Army of the Potomac, is convinced that Lee’s army outnumbers his---proving that many were susceptible to McClellan’s disease---and wishes to incorporate the 10,000 men at Harper’s Ferry under Gen. French into his forces. After wiring Halleck on this topic, he waits until French receives a reply from Gen. Halleck, which tells French that he should not obey Hooker’s orders. In a fit of pique, Hooker tenders his resignation, which Halleck and Pres. Lincoln accept with alacrity. SANDY HOOK, June 27, 1863-1 p. m. (Received 3 p. m.). To Major General H. W. HALLECK, General-in-Chief: “My original instructions require me to cover Harper's Ferry and Washington. I have now imposed upon me, in addition, an enemy in my front of more than my number. I beg to be understood, respectfully, but firmly, that I am unable to comply with this condition with the means at my disposal, and earnestly request that I may at once be relieved from the position I occupy.” JOSEPH HOOKER,”
President Lincoln quickly gives the command to Gen. George G. Meade of Pennsylvania, effective immediately
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.
Friday, June 27, 1862: John Beauchamp Jones, of the Confederate War Department, hears the sounds of battle outside of Richmond, and voices the growing admiration most Southerners are feeling for Lee: “What genius! what audacity in Lee ! He has absolutely taken the greater portion of his army to the north side of the Chickahominy, leaving McClellan’s center and left wing on the south side, with apparently easy access to the city. This is (to the invaders) impenetrable strategy. The enemy believes Lee’s main forces are here, and will never think of advancing. We have so completely closed the avenues of intelligence that the enemy has not been able to get the slightest intimation of our strength or the dispositions of our forces.”
Friday, June 27, 1862: Judith White McGuire of Richmond, describes in her journal the effect of the Lee’s many thousand: “Yesterday was a day of intense excitement in the city and its surroundings. Early in the morning it was whispered about that some great movement was on foot. Large numbers of troops were seen under arms, evidently waiting for orders to march against the enemy. . . . I am told (for I did not witness it) that it was a scene of unsurpassed magnificence. The brilliant light of bombs bursting in the air and passing to the ground, the innumerable lesser lights, emitted by thousands and thousands of muskets, together with the roar of artillery and the rattling of small-arms, constituted a scene terrifically grand and imposing. What spell has bound our people? Is their trust in God, and in the valour of our troops, so great that they are unmoved by these terrible demonstrations of our powerful foe? It would seem so, for when the battle was over the crowd dispersed and retired to their respective homes with the seeming tranquility of persons who had been witnessing a panorama of transactions in a far-off country.”
Friday, June 27, 1862: Charles Francis Adams, Sr., U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, in a letter home on this date, offers observations on the cotton trade and its effect upon the enemy’s war effort: “The cotton problem in England is becoming more and more serious. The stock has got down to about two hundred and fifty thousand bales, and there is a demand for export which is reducing it faster than was anticipated. At present it is calculated that by November there will be none left. Provided always that the slaveholders should be so foolish as to persevere in destroying it and themselves. It has seemed to me all along that they were mere suicides, and I believe it more firmly every day.”
Pictures: 1862-06-27 battle of Gaines Mill seven days’ battles; 1861-06-27 Engagement at Mathias Point, U.S.S. Thomas Freeborn is on the left; 1862-06-27 the battle of Gaines Mill Union Cavalry Charge - Everett; 1861-06-27 Union troops who landed on the Virginia side of the Potomac at Mathias Point
A. Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia. Federal naval and army units attempt to land and capture Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia, which command the Potomac. The Federals are beaten off.
The USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance arrived in the area between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM; sources give conflicting times. The action began with a bombardment of the point in order to support the landing party. The Union force sent out skirmishers which drove off the Confederates. The Union landing party had brought replacement guns with them but had not yet unloaded them when some 400 to 500 Confederates appeared.
Ward who accompanied the original landing had returned to the Thomas Freeborn to direct more fire against the attacking Confederates. Meanwhile, Chaplin had withdrawn his shore part while the ships bombarded the Confederate force. Ward signaled Chaplin to land and prepare sand-bag breastworks.
The Confederate commander, Col. Daniel Ruggles, ordered his men to attack the Union position by moving through the woods to minimize observation from the river. By 5:00 Pm Chaplin’s men had completed the breastwork and moved to the boats to bring up the artillery. The Confederate forces counterattacked and the Union force which heavily outnumbered was forced to withdraw completely.
During the withdrawal Comdr. Ward was shot through the abdomen by a rifleman while siting a gun. He was dead within 45 minutes, the first Union naval officer to die in the Civil War. Four other Union sailors were wounded while the Confederates sustained no casualties.
Background: The Battle of Mathias Point in terms of action was a minor engagement but it did have important results for both sides. Mathias Point is on the Potomac River in King George County, Virginia near Maryland’s Popes Creek. On June 27, 1861 two Union ships from the blockading squadron sailed up the Potomac River with the goal of eliminating the Confederate shore batteries at the point.
The two ships were the USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance. They were assigned to the Potomac Flotilla with the assignment of patrolling the river to prevent it from being blocked by the Confederates. The Thomas Freeborn was a sidewheel steam tug that had originally been built for the relief of Fort Sumter. She was equipped with two 32-pounder guns. Commanded by Comdr. James H. Ward, she served as his flagship.
The USS Reliance was a wooden screw steamer that had been built in 1860 and acquired by the Navy Department in May 1861. The Reliance had fought in several engagements with other Confederate shore batteries before Mathias Point. She carried a 24-pounder howitzer and a 12-pounder howitzer.
The Union Navy saw the Mathias Point batteries as being capable of blocking river traffic on the Potomac River. It could also serve as a base for communications with Confederate sympathizers in Maryland and even raids into the state. The batteries were somewhat concealed by being sited on the wooded promontory. Comdr. Ward took his two ships and a party of marines and sailors under Lt. James C. Chaplin. Their plan was to eliminate the Confederate batteries, clear the trees and replace the batteries with Union ones.
Aftermath: The Confederate shore batteries at Mathias Point continued to harass Union shipping along the Potomac River they were withdrawn in March 1862 to the defenses protecting Richmond.
B. Friday, June 27, 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): In the early hours of June 27, 1862, the third of the Seven Days' battles, Fitz John Porter’s Union corps abandoned its position at Beaver Dam Creek and established a new defensive line behind Boatswain’s Swamp, just north of the Chickahominy River. Anxious to renew his assaults from the day before, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, sent the bulk of his force forward with the intention of driving them across the river. The Federals beat back successive waves of disjointed attacks, inflicting some of the heaviest casualties the war had yet seen. By dusk, however, Lee’s Confederates were more organized. With daylight fading, the reinforced Southerners assaulted Porter’s anemic defensive line and sent the Northerners fleeing toward the river. Only darkness prevented Porter’s corps from complete disaster. During the night, the Federals limped across the Chickahominy and burned the bridges behind them.
Once again, Lee tries the same strategy he used for the previous day’s battle at Mechanicsville (Beaver Dam Creek): to force the Federal right, turn it, and hopefully destroy it---and once again, poorly coordinated Confederate attacks prevent the success Lee hopes for. To do this, he needed Jackson to push around the isolated flank of the Federal army, which is mostly Porter’s V (Fifth) Corps, 27,000 strong. Porter’s three divisions, under Morell, Sykes, and McCall, are deployed behind Boatswain’s Creek, a tributary whose course is a swampy vale with heavy vegetation. McCall is held in reserve. Jackson is supposed to hit behind Porter’s flank, supported by D.H. Hill, whose whole force has now crossed to the north side of the Chickahominy, and A.P. Hill is supposed to drive at Porter’s line closer to the Chickahominy, supported by Longstreet’s divisions---a total of 57,000 men attacking about half of that number under Porter’s command. What happens instead comes partly from D.H. Hill’s advance, toward Old Cold Harbor, which he believes is beyond and even behind the Union flank; when he approaches Cold Harbor, he finds that Yankees from Sykes’ division are firmly in position in front of him. The Confederate attacks do not begin until after 2:00 PM.
A.P. Hill launches attacks again (as yesterday) without the coordinated support of his colleagues, and Northern artillery shreds his formations so that he can only hold his ground and exchange with the Yankees in an infantry firefight, hoping for Jackson to arrive. Longstreet launches some diversionary attacks on Porter’s left. Jackson is slow in getting to his position, which he finds is not the right place to attack, and so countermarches his troops to find a better position. When he finally engages the enemy, he feeds his brigades in piecemeal, Ewell’s troops finally going forward @ 4:00 PM, with Elzey’s and Trimble’s brigades in the fore; these are thrown back with losses.
Lee orders a more coordinated attack, and orders Jackson to pour in all his troops at once, with a renewal of A.P. Hill’s attacks, and with D.H. Hill feeling for the Union flank. Porter senses the coming Rebel assault, and asks for reinforcements; he receives brigades from Slocum’s VI Corps. After 7:00 PM, an hour before dusk, the Confederate attack goes forward: Jackson has Whiting’s division and Walker’s Stonewall Brigade in front. Whiting’s brigade of Texans (supported by Hampton’s Legion and Law’s Brigade), under Brig. Gen. John B. Hood, goes in with wild abandon, and takes heavy losses, but plows through the heavy woods and swamp, and pierces the Union line. In spite of inflicting heavy losses on the Rebels, Porter’s line begins to crumble on the left (where Longstreet sends in Wilcox and Pickett), the center (Hood’s attack), and the right (as D.H. Hill hits the Union flank).
As the Union infantry retreats, Porter’s artillery now has a clear field of fire, and are able to claw the advancing Rebels dreadfully with canister before the attack hits. The Yankees lose 14 guns to capture. The Union retreat is uneven: some regiments retreat in order, and some disintegrate and panic, leading to over a thousand being captured. Thus ends an incredibly bloody battle, considering the brief amount of time it took. Confederate Victory.
Aftermath: (There is evidence that when McClellan understands Lee’s plan, he considers attacking with the main part of his army the thin line Lee has left south of the Chickahominy and driving through the Rebel line straight into Richmond. When he discovers Jackson out on the Union right flank, however, he abandons all such ambitions and thinks strictly in defensive terms thereafter. Little Mac assumes that 100,000 Rebels are in front of Richmond, and he faces them with only 64,000. In fact, his 64,000, who remain idle at day, face only 30,000 Southerners in a thin line. Huger and Magruder succeed in inflating the Yankees’ fears and intelligence estimates.)
Losses: Killed Wounded Missing or Captured Total
Union 894 3,107 2,836 6,837
Confederate 1,483 6,402 108 7,993
C. Saturday, June 27, 1863: The Battle of Portland Harbor, Maine. Confederate raiders plan foiled. the raiders led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN left the port area and seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing. 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake and gave chase. The wind was against the confederate raiders and they torched the Cushing and escaped in lifeboats and were captured and treated as prisoners of war.
BATTLE: When the raiders left the port area on June 27, they proceeded to the federal wharf. Having the advantage of surprise, the crew seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing, whose namesake was a Massachusetts congressman, United States Attorney General and Minister to Spain. Their original intent was to seize a steamer called the sidewheel steamer Chesapeake, but its boilers were cold. Too much time would be needed to get the steam up in her, so they abandoned it for Cushing. They made their escape and fled out to sea.
News spread of the Confederate actions and the Army garrison at Fort Preble in nearby South Portland was informed of the rebel intrusion. They had been observed by several persons while taking over the cutter, and public fury was fanned by the incident. Along with 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake, whose steam was finally up. All of the civilians on board were issued muskets to defend against the Confederates. Forest City, a faster boat, caught up to Cushing and Archer first.
Cushing opened fire upon Forest City when it was within the 2 mi (3.2 km) range of Cushing. The captain of Forest City was afraid to pursue any further. Cushing, being a revenue cutter, had two secret compartments hidden in the captain's stateroom. Lieutenant Read had not discovered the cache of powder and ammunition that were stored there. If he had, the outcome could have been very different. Chesapeake, which had left port sometime after Forest City with Portland's Mayor Jacob McLellan in command, finally caught up and continued on toward Cushing. The wind was beginning to blow against the Confederate sailors and the steamers soon caught sight of Cushing. Read ordered Cushing torched so the munitions were destroyed by exploding in the cutter after it was abandoned by her twenty-four crewmen escaped in lifeboats. They surrendered to Mayor McLellan and were held as prisoners of war at Fort Preble. Archer was also soon captured and all the rebels were returned to Portland.
Background: Confederate naval raider’s led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN abandon their own ship named the Tacony and capture the Archer, a Maine fishing schooner out of Southport. The rebels disguised themselves as fishermen and entered Portland Harbor late in the evening. They planned to slip back out of the harbor and try to destroy the area's commercial shipping capability.
D. Monday, June 27, 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Sherman began his Atlanta Campaign in May of 1864, clashing with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee as it withdrew towards Atlanta in the face of Sherman's successive flanking maneuvers. During the month of June, several battles were fought around Marietta, Georgia, including Pine Mountain and Kolb's Farm led Johnston to establish a seven-mile long, formidably entrenched, arc shaped line beginning at Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain, a mere fifteen miles outside of Atlanta. With the roads in this vicinity all but impassable, Sherman could no longer flank his enemy. Frustrated, Sherman considered a course of action he had previously refused to enact: attack the enemy’s fortifications head-on. On June 24, he drew up an order for an assault on the 27th which called for Maj. Gen. James McPherson, whose army held the Union left near the Kennesaw Mountain, and Maj. Gen. George Thomas, who held the center, to select points of attack to break the enemy line while Gen. John Schofield maneuvered on the right to draw out Johnston’s line.
At 8:00 a.m. on June 27, over fifty cannons on McPherson's front opened fire on Kennesaw Mountain. Troops of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps started skirmishing in the dense undergrowth to prevent the Rebels from shifting forces to Little Kennesaw and Pigeon Hill. Three brigades under Maj. Gen. John A Logan's Fifteenth Corps moved forward, but despite overrunning some of the rifle pits fronting them and capturing a number of Rebels, they could not get within fifteen yards of the principal Confederate defenses. Most Federals became mired in the undergrowth and punishing musketry as they attempted to ascend the slope. Well-directed fire by Maj. Gen. Samuel French's artillery on Little Kennesaw and a Confederate counterattack eventually drove off the Yankees.
At the center of the Union line, the two armies were only 400 yards apart. Thomas chose portions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps to make the attack against the Rebels. Facing them was Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division, which had built abatis, driven sharp wooden stakes in the ground and strengthened its entrenchments with headlogs and Brig. Gen. George Maney's Tennessee brigade (under Maj. Gen. Frank Cheatham) whose position jutted forth in an inverted V salient on a rise now known as Cheatham's Hill. Federal artillery opened at 8:00 a.m., shelling the Rebel works for a quarter hour before advancing an hour later under heavy fire, stalling at the abatis around 45 yards from the enemy works. Some Federals got close to the enemy works. Union Colonel Daniel McCook, Jr. stood at the Rebel parapet urging his men on when he was shot in the chest. Reacting quickly, Col. Oscar Harmon of the One Hundred and Twenty Fifth Illinois took command of the brigade, but he was shot five minutes later, mortally wounded. On McCook's left, Brig. Gen. Charles Harker urged his men forward astride his white horse, before being mortally struck in the arm and chest. After 10:00 a.m., the Union attack became disorganized and the men fell back. Some men of Col. John Mitchell's brigade made it up the slope to one of Maney's entrenched salients where the lines became so close that the Tennesseans threw rocks at the advancing Federals. Eventually Mitchell's men had to retreat and find cover anywhere from twenty to a hundred yards from the Confederate works and dig in with their bayonets at what was later called the "Dead Angle."
By 11:30 that morning, the Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Although the survivors of the assaulting columns at Cheatham Hill spent the next five days in advanced works only thirty yards from the Confederate position, there was no more heavy-fighting at Kennesaw. Only on July 2nd when Sherman sent McPherson and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman's cavalry around the Confederate left did Johnston once again fall back to another defensive position at Smyrna.
1. Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia Gideon Welles asked James Ward to develop a plan to recapture Fort Sumter. However, Ward’s plan was overruled by Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott. Ward then set about developing a Potomac River Flotilla to defend Washington D.C. and disrupt the flow of weapons and insurgents between Maryland and Virginia. The Potomac Flotilla was composed of an assortment of improvised vessels. Ward’s own flagship, Thomas Freeborn, was purchased by the government and then retrofit with a novel gun-carriage that Ward designed for river operations.
In June 1861, Ward learned that Confederates were constructing an artillery position on Mathias Point on the Virginia side of the Potomac. On June 27, Ward planned to land a Union force at Mathias Point to drive away the Rebels. His gunboats shelled the position, but Ward was shot by the Confederates and died. James H. Ward was the first Union Navy officer killed in the Civil War, and both the engagement at Mathias Point and his death were heavily covered in the press.
http://norwich.typepad.com/museum/2012/08/james-h-ward-first-us-navy-officer-killed-in-the-civil-war.html
2. Friday, June 27, 1862: Village Creek, Arkansas - On June 27, a Confederate force set up an ambush at Stewart's Plantation. The plantation was located about 8 miles from Village Creek. When a Union forage train neared, the Confederates sprang the trap. A number of Federals were casualties and a few wagons were captured.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
3. Friday, June 27, 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill [US] Battle of First Cold Harbor [CS] Battle of the Chickahominy [Alternate
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
4. Friday, June 27, 1862: John Bell Hood [CS] and George Pickett [CS] breakthrough Fitz John Porter's [US] line, forcing Union troops south of the Chickahominy River and severing McClellan's supply line to Eltham's Landing (White House, West Point)
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
5. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Gen. McClellan writes to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton his assessment of the fight at Gaines Mill, sending it via telegraph about midnight: “. . . I have lost this battle, because my force was too small. I again repeat that I am not responsible for this, and I say it with the earnestness of a general, who feels in his heart, the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed to-day. I still hope to retrieve our fortunes, but to do this, the government must view the matter in the same earnest light that I do. You must send me very large reinforcements, and send them at once. . . . I only wish to say to the President, that I think he is wrong in regarding me as ungenerous, when I said that my force was too weak. I merely reiterated a truth, which to-day has been too plainly proved. If at this instant I could dispose of ten thousand fresh men, I could gain the victory to-morrow.
I feel too earnestly to-night, I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades, to feel otherwise than that the government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the game is lost.
If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other persons in Washington.
You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
6. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- John Beauchamp Jones, of the Confederate War Department, hears the sounds of battle outside of Richmond, and voices the growing admiration most Southerners are feeling for Lee: “What genius! what audacity in Lee ! He has absolutely taken the greater portion of his army to the north side of the Chickahominy, leaving McClellan’s center and left wing on the south side, with apparently easy access to the city. This is (to the invaders) impenetrable strategy. The enemy believes Lee’s main forces are here, and will never think of advancing. We have so completely closed the avenues of intelligence that the enemy has not been able to get the slightest intimation of our strength or the dispositions of our forces.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
7. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Judith White McGuire of Richmond, describes in her journal the effect of the Lee’s many thousand: “Yesterday was a day of intense excitement in the city and its surroundings. Early in the morning it was whispered about that some great movement was on foot. Large numbers of troops were seen under arms, evidently waiting for orders to march against the enemy. . . . I am told (for I did not witness it) that it was a scene of unsurpassed magnificence. The brilliant light of bombs bursting in the air and passing to the ground, the innumerable lesser lights, emitted by thousands and thousands of muskets, together with the roar of artillery and the rattling of small-arms, constituted a scene terrifically grand and imposing. What spell has bound our people? Is their trust in God, and in the valour of our troops, so great that they are unmoved by these terrible demonstrations of our powerful foe? It would seem so, for when the battle was over the crowd dispersed and retired to their respective homes with the seeming tranquility of persons who had been witnessing a panorama of transactions in a far-off country.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
8. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Charles Francis Adams, Sr., U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, in a letter home on this date, offers observations on the cotton trade and its effect upon the enemy’s war effort: “The cotton problem in England is becoming more and more serious. The stock has got down to about two hundred and fifty thousand bales, and there is a demand for export which is reducing it faster than was anticipated. At present it is calculated that by November there will be none left. Provided always that the slaveholders should be so foolish as to persevere in destroying it and themselves. It has seemed to me all along that they were mere suicides, and I believe it more firmly every day.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
9. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes, on duty with his regiment, the 23rd Ohio in the mountainous regions of western Virginia, notes in his diary the forming of the Army of Virginia, with Gen. John Pope in command: “General Pope appointed to “the Army of Virginia” — being the combined forces of Fremont, Shields, Banks, and McDowell, now in the Valley of Virginia. Sorry to see Fremont passed over but glad the concentration under one man has taken place. General Pope is impulsive and hasty, but energetic, and, what is of most importance, patriotic and sound — perfectly sound. I look for good results. —“
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
10. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Siege of Vicksburg, Day 36
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
11. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Siege of Port Hudson, Day 31
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
12. Saturday, June 27, 1863: Henry Halleck issues an order making George Meade commander of the Army of the Potomac.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186306
13. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- New General of the Army of the Potomac. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, commander of the Army of the Potomac, is convinced that Lee’s army outnumbers his---proving that many were susceptible to McClellan’s disease---and wishes to incorporate the 10,000 men at Harper’s Ferry under Gen. French into his forces. After wiring Halleck on this topic, he waits until French receives a reply from Gen. Halleck, which tells French that he should not obey Hooker’s orders. In a fit of pique, Hooker tenders his resignation, which Halleck and Pres. Lincoln accept with alacrity. SANDY HOOK, June 27, 1863-1 p. m. (Received 3 p. m.). To Major General H. W. HALLECK, General-in-Chief: “My original instructions require me to cover Harper's Ferry and Washington. I have now imposed upon me, in addition, an enemy in my front of more than my number. I beg to be understood, respectfully, but firmly, that I am unable to comply with this condition with the means at my disposal, and earnestly request that I may at once be relieved from the position I occupy.” JOSEPH HOOKER,
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
14. Lincoln quickly gives the command to Gen. George G. Meade of Pennsylvania, effective immediately.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
15. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Guerillas under Brig. Gen. John Imboden raid Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, taking supplies, horses, cattle, wagons, and household goods of all kinds, including a considerable coffle of negroes, whom the Confederates claim are runaways. The raiders even have the cheek to offer to sell some of the goods back to the owners who had just been pilfered of said goods. But the blacks were taken south into bondage, despite the fact that the townspeople could attest to many of them having been born and raised in Mercersburg and the surrounding area.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
16. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Maj. Gen. John McClernand sends a letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, soliciting his help in getting McClernand restored to command of his corps in Grant’s army. McClernand, among other complaints, seems to feel that Grant had no authority to do so---that “General Grant has assumed power to relieve me from the command.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
17.
A Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia. Federal naval and army units attempt to land and capture Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia, which command the Potomac. The Federals are beaten off.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1861
A+ Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle of Mathias Point: The Battle of Mathias Point in terms of action was a minor engagement but it did have important results for both sides. Mathias Point is on the Potomac River in King George County, Virginia near Maryland’s Popes Creek. On June 27, 1861 two Union ships from the blockading squadron sailed up the Potomac River with the goal of eliminating the Confederate shore batteries at the point.
USS Thomas Freeborn at Mathias PointThe two ships were the USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance. They were assigned to the Potomac Flotilla with the assignment of patrolling the river to prevent it from being blocked by the Confederates. The Thomas Freeborn was a sidewheel steam tug that had originally been built for the relief of Fort Sumter. She was equipped with two 32-pounder guns. Commanded by Comdr. James H. Ward, she served as his flagship.
The USS Reliance was a wooden screw steamer that had been built in 1860 and acquired by the Navy Department in May 1861. The Reliance had fought in several engagements with other Confederate shore batteries before Mathias Point. She carried a 24-pounder howitzer and a 12-pounder howitzer.
The Union Navy saw the Mathias Point batteries as being capable of blocking river traffic on the Potomac River. It could also serve as a base for communications with Confederate sympathizers in Maryland and even raids into the state. The batteries were somewhat concealed by being sited on the wooded promontory. Comdr. Ward took his two ships and a party of marines and sailors under Lt. James C. Chaplin. Their plan was to eliminate the Confederate batteries, clear the trees and replace the batteries with Union ones.
The two ships arrived in the area between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM; sources give conflicting times. The action began with a bombardment of the point in order to support the landing party. The Union force sent out skirmishers which drove off the Confederates. The Union landing party had brought replacement guns with them but had not yet unloaded them when some 400 to 500 Confederates appeared.
Ward who accompanied the original landing had returned to the Thomas Freeborn to direct more fire against the attacking Confederates. Meanwhile, Chaplin had withdrawn his shore part while the ships bombarded the Confederate force. Ward signaled Chaplin to land and prepare sand-bag breastworks.
The Confederate commander, Col. Daniel Ruggles, ordered his men to attack the Union position by moving through the woods to minimize observation from the river. By 5:00 Pm Chaplin’s men had completed the breastwork and moved to the boats to bring up the artillery. The Confederate forces counterattacked and the Union force which heavily outnumbered was forced to withdraw completely.
During the withdrawal Comdr. Ward was shot through the abdomen by a rifleman while siting a gun. He was dead within 45 minutes, the first Union naval officer to die in the Civil War. Four other Union sailors were wounded while the Confederates sustained no casualties.
The Confederate shore batteries at Mathias Point continued to harass Union shipping along the Potomac River they were withdrawn in March 1862 to the defenses protecting Richmond.
http://northagainstsouth.com/the-battle-of-mathias-point/
B Friday, June 27, 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): In the early hours of June 27, 1862, the third of the Seven Days' battles, Fitz John Porter’s Union corps abandoned its position at Beaver Dam Creek and established a new defensive line behind Boatswain’s Swamp, just north of the Chickahominy River. Anxious to renew his assaults from the day before, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, sent the bulk of his force forward with the intention of driving them across the river. The Federals beat back successive waves of disjointed attacks, inflicting some of the heaviest casualties the war had yet seen. By dusk, however, Lee’s Confederates were more organized. With daylight fading, the reinforced Southerners assaulted Porter’s anemic defensive line and sent the Northerners fleeing toward the river. Only darkness prevented Porter’s corps from complete disaster. During the night, the Federals limped across the Chickahominy and burned the bridges behind them.
B+ Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): Once again, Lee tries the same strategy he used for the previous day’s battle at Mechanicsville (Beaver Dam Creek): to force the Federal right, turn it, and hopefully destroy it---and once again, poorly coordinated Confederate attacks prevent the success Lee hopes for. To do this, he needed Jackson to push around the isolated flank of the Federal army, which is mostly Porter’s V (Fifth) Corps, 27,000 strong. Porter’s three divisions, under Morell, Sykes, and McCall, are deployed behind Boatswain’s Creek, a tributary whose course is a swampy vale with heavy vegetation. McCall is held in reserve. Jackson is supposed to hit behind Porter’s flank, supported by D.H. Hill, whose whole force has now crossed to the north side of the Chickahominy, and A.P. Hill is supposed to drive at Porter’s line closer to the Chickahominy, supported by Longstreet’s divisions---a total of 57,000 men attacking about half of that number under Porter’s command. What happens instead comes partly from D.H. Hill’s advance, toward Old Cold Harbor, which he believes is beyond and even behind the Union flank; when he approaches Cold Harbor, he finds that Yankees from Sykes’ division are firmly in position in front of him. The Confederate attacks do not begin until after 2:00 PM.
A.P. Hill launches attacks again (as yesterday) without the coordinated support of his colleagues, and Northern artillery shreds his formations so that he can only hold his ground and exchange with the Yankees in an infantry firefight, hoping for Jackson to arrive. Longstreet launches some diversionary attacks on Porter’s left. Jackson is slow in getting to his position, which he finds is not the right place to attack, and so countermarches his troops to find a better position. When he finally engages the enemy, he feeds his brigades in piecemeal, Ewell’s troops finally going forward @ 4:00 PM, with Elzey’s and Trimble’s brigades in the fore; these are thrown back with losses.
Lee orders a more coordinated attack, and orders Jackson to pour in all his troops at once, with a renewal of A.P. Hill’s attacks, and with D.H. Hill feeling for the Union flank. Porter senses the coming Rebel assault, and asks for reinforcements; he receives brigades from Slocum’s VI Corps. After 7:00 PM, an hour before dusk, the Confederate attack goes forward: Jackson has Whiting’s division and Walker’s Stonewall Brigade in front. Whiting’s brigade of Texans (supported by Hampton’s Legion and Law’s Brigade), under Brig. Gen. John B. Hood, goes in with wild abandon, and takes heavy losses, but plows through the heavy woods and swamp, and pierces the Union line. In spite of inflicting heavy losses on the Rebels, Porter’s line begins to crumble on the left (where Longstreet sends in Wilcox and Pickett), the center (Hood’s attack), and the right (as D.H. Hill hits the Union flank).
As the Union infantry retreats, Porter’s artillery now has a clear field of fire, and are able to claw the advancing Rebels dreadfully with canister before the attack hits. The Yankees lose 14 guns to capture. The Union retreat is uneven: some regiments retreat in order, and some disintegrate and panic, leading to over a thousand being captured. Thus ends an incredibly bloody battle, considering the brief amount of time it took. Confederate Victory.
(There is evidence that when McClellan understands Lee’s plan, he considers attacking with the main part of his army the thin line Lee has left south of the Chickahominy and driving through the Rebel line straight into Richmond. When he discovers Jackson out on the Union right flank, however, he abandons all such ambitions and thinks strictly in defensive terms thereafter. Little Mac assumes that 100,000 Rebels are in front of Richmond, and he faces them with only 64,000. In fact, his 64,000, who remain idle at day, face only 30,000 Southerners in a thin line. Huger and Magruder succeed in inflating the Yankees’ fears and intelligence estimates.)
Losses: Killed Wounded Missing or Captured Total
Union 894 3,107 2,836 6,837
Confederate 1,483 6,402 108 7,993
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
C June 27, 1863 in Portland, Maine - Once in the harbor, Lt. ?? Reed and his crew captured the revenue cutter USS Caleb Cushing early on June 27. With both the USS Archer and the USS Caleb Cushing, Reed and planned to slip out past the harbor forts before the local Union forces knew what had happened. He then returned to set fire to the commercial shipping. Unfortunately, word had somehow gotten out as to what occurred and the Confederate raiders were forced to run from the Union forces assault and a pair of Union ships, the USS Forest City and USS Chesapeake.
Later that day, they were forced to set fire to the Caleb Cushing and Reed and his men were captured.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1863s.html
C Saturday, June 27, 1863: The Battle of Portland Harbor was an incident during the American Civil War, in June 1863, in the waters off Portland, Maine. Two civilian ships engaged two vessels under Confederate States Navy employment.
Around June 24, a Confederate raider named the Tacony, commanded by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN, was being pursued by the Union Navy. To thwart their pursuers, at about 2 AM on the 25th, the Confederates captured the Archer, a Maine fishing schooner out of Southport. After transferring their supplies and cargo onto Archer, the Confederates set fire to Tacony, hoping the Union Navy would believe the ship was destroyed.
On June 26, a raiding party entered the harbor at Portland, sailing past Portland Head Light. The rebels disguised themselves as fishermen and entered into Portland Harbor late in the evening. They planned to slip back out of the harbor and try to destroy the area's commercial shipping capability.
BATTLE: When the raiders left the port area on June 27, they proceeded to the federal wharf. Having the advantage of surprise, the crew seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing, whose namesake was a Massachusetts congressman, United States Attorney General and Minister to Spain. Their original intent was to seize a steamer called the sidewheel steamer Chesapeake, but its boilers were cold. Too much time would be needed to get the steam up in her, so they abandoned it for Cushing. They made their escape and fled out to sea.
News spread of the Confederate actions and the Army garrison at Fort Preble in nearby South Portland was informed of the rebel intrusion. They had been observed by several persons while taking over the cutter, and public fury was fanned by the incident. Along with 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake, whose steam was finally up. All of the civilians on board were issued muskets to defend against the Confederates. Forest City, a faster boat, caught up to Cushing and Archer first.
Cushing opened fire upon Forest City when it was within the 2 mi (3.2 km) range of Cushing. The captain of Forest City was afraid to pursue any further. Cushing, being a revenue cutter, had two secret compartments hidden in the captain's stateroom. Lieutenant Read had not discovered the cache of powder and ammunition that were stored there. If he had, the outcome could have been very different. Chesapeake, which had left port sometime after Forest City with Portland's Mayor Jacob McLellan in command, finally caught up and continued on toward Cushing. The wind was beginning to blow against the Confederate sailors and the steamers soon caught sight of Cushing. Read ordered Cushing torched so the munitions were destroyed by exploding in the cutter after it was abandoned by her twenty-four crewmen escaped in lifeboats. They surrendered to Mayor McLellan and were held as prisoners of war at Fort Preble. Archer was also soon captured and all the rebels were returned to Portland.
AFTERMATH
It was discovered that the Confederates were in possession of over $100,000 in bonds. These were to be paid after a treaty for peace was ratified between the North and the South.
Public anger against the Southerners was high, and additional troops to safeguard the prisoners were requested. They had to be spirited out of Portland during the night to prevent a riot from breaking in July, when they were removed to Boston Harbor, where they were then held at Fort Warren.
http://www.gutenberg.us/article/WHEBN [login to see] /Battle%20of%20Portland%20Harbor
Saturday, June 27, 1863: Tullahoma Campaign, [June 24 – July 3, 1863]. If he had withdrawn in the direction of Manchester, he might have used the successive defensive positions along that route to delay Rosecrans enough for Bragg to implement a successful counterattack, but he simply made Thomas's breakout more effective, leaving Bragg with no alternatives than to order Polk and Hardee to withdraw to Tullahoma on June 27.
John T. Wilder's Brigade reached Manchester at 8 a.m. on June 27 and his division occupied the town by noon. Rousseau and Brannon pushed their divisions toward Wartrace as Stewart withdrew. In the west, Granger and Stanley, still demonstrating before Guy's Gap, received orders to attempt to move forward. Stanley's cavalry easily pushed aside their Confederate counterparts and approached the breastworks at Shelbyville, now mostly abandoned after Polk's withdrawal. Some resistance remained and Col. Robert H. G. Minty personally led his "Saber Brigade" of Michigan cavalrymen in a mounted charge over the breastworks after the retreating Confederates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullahoma_Campaign
D Monday, June 27, 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Joseph E. Johnston, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Thomas
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186406
D+ Monday, June 27, 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman began his Atlanta Campaign in May of 1864, clashing with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee as it withdrew towards Atlanta in the face of Sherman's successive flanking maneuvers. During the month of June, several battles were fought around Marietta, Georgia, including Pine Mountain and Kolb's Farm led Johnston to establish a seven-mile long, formidably entrenched, arc shaped line beginning at Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain, a mere fifteen miles outside of Atlanta. With the roads in this vicinity all but impassable, Sherman could no longer flank his enemy. Frustrated, Sherman considered a course of action he had previously refused to enact: attack the enemy’s fortifications head-on. On June 24, he drew up an order for an assault on the 27th which called for Maj. Gen. James McPherson, whose army held the Union left near the Kennesaw Mountain, and Maj. Gen. George Thomas, who held the center, to select points of attack to break the enemy line while Gen. John Schofield maneuvered on the right to draw out Johnston’s line.
At 8:00 a.m. on June 27, over fifty cannons on McPherson's front opened fire on Kennesaw Mountain. Troops of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps started skirmishing in the dense undergrowth to prevent the Rebels from shifting forces to Little Kennesaw and Pigeon Hill. Three brigades under Maj. Gen. John A Logan's Fifteenth Corps moved forward, but despite overrunning some of the rifle pits fronting them and capturing a number of Rebels, they could not get within fifteen yards of the principal Confederate defenses. Most Federals became mired in the undergrowth and punishing musketry as they attempted to ascend the slope. Well-directed fire by Maj. Gen. Samuel French's artillery on Little Kennesaw and a Confederate counterattack eventually drove off the Yankees.
At the center of the Union line, the two armies were only 400 yards apart. Thomas chose portions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps to make the attack against the Rebels. Facing them was Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division, which had built abatis, driven sharp wooden stakes in the ground and strengthened its entrenchments with headlogs and Brig. Gen. George Maney's Tennessee brigade (under Maj. Gen. Frank Cheatham) whose position jutted forth in an inverted V salient on a rise now known as Cheatham's Hill. Federal artillery opened at 8:00 a.m., shelling the Rebel works for a quarter hour before advancing an hour later under heavy fire, stalling at the abatis around 45 yards from the enemy works. Some Federals got close to the enemy works. Union Colonel Daniel McCook, Jr. stood at the Rebel parapet urging his men on when he was shot in the chest. Reacting quickly, Col. Oscar Harmon of the One Hundred and Twenty Fifth Illinois took command of the brigade, but he was shot five minutes later, mortally wounded. On McCook's left, Brig. Gen. Charles Harker urged his men forward astride his white horse, before being mortally struck in the arm and chest. After 10:00 a.m., the Union attack became disorganized and the men fell back. Some men of Col. John Mitchell's brigade made it up the slope to one of Maney's entrenched salients where the lines became so close that the Tennesseans threw rocks at the advancing Federals. Eventually Mitchell's men had to retreat and find cover anywhere from twenty to a hundred yards from the Confederate works and dig in with their bayonets at what was later called the "Dead Angle."
By 11:30 that morning, the Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Although the survivors of the assaulting columns at Cheatham Hill spent the next five days in advanced works only thirty yards from the Confederate position, there was no more heavy-fighting at Kennesaw. Only on July 2nd when Sherman sent McPherson and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman's cavalry around the Confederate left did Johnston once again fall back to another defensive position at Smyrna.
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/kennesaw-mountain.html?tab=facts
FYI SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D MAJ Roland McDonald SSG Franklin BriantCPO William Glen (W.G.) Powell1stSgt Eugene Harless MSG Greg KellyLTC Thomas Tennant GySgt Jack Wallace LTC (Join to see)SPC (Join to see) SSG (Join to see) Sgt Axel Hasting Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SPC Jon O. SGT (Join to see) SSG Michael Noll SSG William Jones SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth
1863: New General of the Army of the Potomac. “Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, commander of the Army of the Potomac, is convinced that Lee’s army outnumbers his---proving that many were susceptible to McClellan’s disease---and wishes to incorporate the 10,000 men at Harper’s Ferry under Gen. French into his forces. After wiring Halleck on this topic, he waits until French receives a reply from Gen. Halleck, which tells French that he should not obey Hooker’s orders. In a fit of pique, Hooker tenders his resignation, which Halleck and Pres. Lincoln accept with alacrity. SANDY HOOK, June 27, 1863-1 p. m. (Received 3 p. m.). To Major General H. W. HALLECK, General-in-Chief: “My original instructions require me to cover Harper's Ferry and Washington. I have now imposed upon me, in addition, an enemy in my front of more than my number. I beg to be understood, respectfully, but firmly, that I am unable to comply with this condition with the means at my disposal, and earnestly request that I may at once be relieved from the position I occupy.” JOSEPH HOOKER,”
President Lincoln quickly gives the command to Gen. George G. Meade of Pennsylvania, effective immediately
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.
Friday, June 27, 1862: John Beauchamp Jones, of the Confederate War Department, hears the sounds of battle outside of Richmond, and voices the growing admiration most Southerners are feeling for Lee: “What genius! what audacity in Lee ! He has absolutely taken the greater portion of his army to the north side of the Chickahominy, leaving McClellan’s center and left wing on the south side, with apparently easy access to the city. This is (to the invaders) impenetrable strategy. The enemy believes Lee’s main forces are here, and will never think of advancing. We have so completely closed the avenues of intelligence that the enemy has not been able to get the slightest intimation of our strength or the dispositions of our forces.”
Friday, June 27, 1862: Judith White McGuire of Richmond, describes in her journal the effect of the Lee’s many thousand: “Yesterday was a day of intense excitement in the city and its surroundings. Early in the morning it was whispered about that some great movement was on foot. Large numbers of troops were seen under arms, evidently waiting for orders to march against the enemy. . . . I am told (for I did not witness it) that it was a scene of unsurpassed magnificence. The brilliant light of bombs bursting in the air and passing to the ground, the innumerable lesser lights, emitted by thousands and thousands of muskets, together with the roar of artillery and the rattling of small-arms, constituted a scene terrifically grand and imposing. What spell has bound our people? Is their trust in God, and in the valour of our troops, so great that they are unmoved by these terrible demonstrations of our powerful foe? It would seem so, for when the battle was over the crowd dispersed and retired to their respective homes with the seeming tranquility of persons who had been witnessing a panorama of transactions in a far-off country.”
Friday, June 27, 1862: Charles Francis Adams, Sr., U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, in a letter home on this date, offers observations on the cotton trade and its effect upon the enemy’s war effort: “The cotton problem in England is becoming more and more serious. The stock has got down to about two hundred and fifty thousand bales, and there is a demand for export which is reducing it faster than was anticipated. At present it is calculated that by November there will be none left. Provided always that the slaveholders should be so foolish as to persevere in destroying it and themselves. It has seemed to me all along that they were mere suicides, and I believe it more firmly every day.”
Pictures: 1862-06-27 battle of Gaines Mill seven days’ battles; 1861-06-27 Engagement at Mathias Point, U.S.S. Thomas Freeborn is on the left; 1862-06-27 the battle of Gaines Mill Union Cavalry Charge - Everett; 1861-06-27 Union troops who landed on the Virginia side of the Potomac at Mathias Point
A. Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia. Federal naval and army units attempt to land and capture Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia, which command the Potomac. The Federals are beaten off.
The USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance arrived in the area between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM; sources give conflicting times. The action began with a bombardment of the point in order to support the landing party. The Union force sent out skirmishers which drove off the Confederates. The Union landing party had brought replacement guns with them but had not yet unloaded them when some 400 to 500 Confederates appeared.
Ward who accompanied the original landing had returned to the Thomas Freeborn to direct more fire against the attacking Confederates. Meanwhile, Chaplin had withdrawn his shore part while the ships bombarded the Confederate force. Ward signaled Chaplin to land and prepare sand-bag breastworks.
The Confederate commander, Col. Daniel Ruggles, ordered his men to attack the Union position by moving through the woods to minimize observation from the river. By 5:00 Pm Chaplin’s men had completed the breastwork and moved to the boats to bring up the artillery. The Confederate forces counterattacked and the Union force which heavily outnumbered was forced to withdraw completely.
During the withdrawal Comdr. Ward was shot through the abdomen by a rifleman while siting a gun. He was dead within 45 minutes, the first Union naval officer to die in the Civil War. Four other Union sailors were wounded while the Confederates sustained no casualties.
Background: The Battle of Mathias Point in terms of action was a minor engagement but it did have important results for both sides. Mathias Point is on the Potomac River in King George County, Virginia near Maryland’s Popes Creek. On June 27, 1861 two Union ships from the blockading squadron sailed up the Potomac River with the goal of eliminating the Confederate shore batteries at the point.
The two ships were the USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance. They were assigned to the Potomac Flotilla with the assignment of patrolling the river to prevent it from being blocked by the Confederates. The Thomas Freeborn was a sidewheel steam tug that had originally been built for the relief of Fort Sumter. She was equipped with two 32-pounder guns. Commanded by Comdr. James H. Ward, she served as his flagship.
The USS Reliance was a wooden screw steamer that had been built in 1860 and acquired by the Navy Department in May 1861. The Reliance had fought in several engagements with other Confederate shore batteries before Mathias Point. She carried a 24-pounder howitzer and a 12-pounder howitzer.
The Union Navy saw the Mathias Point batteries as being capable of blocking river traffic on the Potomac River. It could also serve as a base for communications with Confederate sympathizers in Maryland and even raids into the state. The batteries were somewhat concealed by being sited on the wooded promontory. Comdr. Ward took his two ships and a party of marines and sailors under Lt. James C. Chaplin. Their plan was to eliminate the Confederate batteries, clear the trees and replace the batteries with Union ones.
Aftermath: The Confederate shore batteries at Mathias Point continued to harass Union shipping along the Potomac River they were withdrawn in March 1862 to the defenses protecting Richmond.
B. Friday, June 27, 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): In the early hours of June 27, 1862, the third of the Seven Days' battles, Fitz John Porter’s Union corps abandoned its position at Beaver Dam Creek and established a new defensive line behind Boatswain’s Swamp, just north of the Chickahominy River. Anxious to renew his assaults from the day before, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, sent the bulk of his force forward with the intention of driving them across the river. The Federals beat back successive waves of disjointed attacks, inflicting some of the heaviest casualties the war had yet seen. By dusk, however, Lee’s Confederates were more organized. With daylight fading, the reinforced Southerners assaulted Porter’s anemic defensive line and sent the Northerners fleeing toward the river. Only darkness prevented Porter’s corps from complete disaster. During the night, the Federals limped across the Chickahominy and burned the bridges behind them.
Once again, Lee tries the same strategy he used for the previous day’s battle at Mechanicsville (Beaver Dam Creek): to force the Federal right, turn it, and hopefully destroy it---and once again, poorly coordinated Confederate attacks prevent the success Lee hopes for. To do this, he needed Jackson to push around the isolated flank of the Federal army, which is mostly Porter’s V (Fifth) Corps, 27,000 strong. Porter’s three divisions, under Morell, Sykes, and McCall, are deployed behind Boatswain’s Creek, a tributary whose course is a swampy vale with heavy vegetation. McCall is held in reserve. Jackson is supposed to hit behind Porter’s flank, supported by D.H. Hill, whose whole force has now crossed to the north side of the Chickahominy, and A.P. Hill is supposed to drive at Porter’s line closer to the Chickahominy, supported by Longstreet’s divisions---a total of 57,000 men attacking about half of that number under Porter’s command. What happens instead comes partly from D.H. Hill’s advance, toward Old Cold Harbor, which he believes is beyond and even behind the Union flank; when he approaches Cold Harbor, he finds that Yankees from Sykes’ division are firmly in position in front of him. The Confederate attacks do not begin until after 2:00 PM.
A.P. Hill launches attacks again (as yesterday) without the coordinated support of his colleagues, and Northern artillery shreds his formations so that he can only hold his ground and exchange with the Yankees in an infantry firefight, hoping for Jackson to arrive. Longstreet launches some diversionary attacks on Porter’s left. Jackson is slow in getting to his position, which he finds is not the right place to attack, and so countermarches his troops to find a better position. When he finally engages the enemy, he feeds his brigades in piecemeal, Ewell’s troops finally going forward @ 4:00 PM, with Elzey’s and Trimble’s brigades in the fore; these are thrown back with losses.
Lee orders a more coordinated attack, and orders Jackson to pour in all his troops at once, with a renewal of A.P. Hill’s attacks, and with D.H. Hill feeling for the Union flank. Porter senses the coming Rebel assault, and asks for reinforcements; he receives brigades from Slocum’s VI Corps. After 7:00 PM, an hour before dusk, the Confederate attack goes forward: Jackson has Whiting’s division and Walker’s Stonewall Brigade in front. Whiting’s brigade of Texans (supported by Hampton’s Legion and Law’s Brigade), under Brig. Gen. John B. Hood, goes in with wild abandon, and takes heavy losses, but plows through the heavy woods and swamp, and pierces the Union line. In spite of inflicting heavy losses on the Rebels, Porter’s line begins to crumble on the left (where Longstreet sends in Wilcox and Pickett), the center (Hood’s attack), and the right (as D.H. Hill hits the Union flank).
As the Union infantry retreats, Porter’s artillery now has a clear field of fire, and are able to claw the advancing Rebels dreadfully with canister before the attack hits. The Yankees lose 14 guns to capture. The Union retreat is uneven: some regiments retreat in order, and some disintegrate and panic, leading to over a thousand being captured. Thus ends an incredibly bloody battle, considering the brief amount of time it took. Confederate Victory.
Aftermath: (There is evidence that when McClellan understands Lee’s plan, he considers attacking with the main part of his army the thin line Lee has left south of the Chickahominy and driving through the Rebel line straight into Richmond. When he discovers Jackson out on the Union right flank, however, he abandons all such ambitions and thinks strictly in defensive terms thereafter. Little Mac assumes that 100,000 Rebels are in front of Richmond, and he faces them with only 64,000. In fact, his 64,000, who remain idle at day, face only 30,000 Southerners in a thin line. Huger and Magruder succeed in inflating the Yankees’ fears and intelligence estimates.)
Losses: Killed Wounded Missing or Captured Total
Union 894 3,107 2,836 6,837
Confederate 1,483 6,402 108 7,993
C. Saturday, June 27, 1863: The Battle of Portland Harbor, Maine. Confederate raiders plan foiled. the raiders led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN left the port area and seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing. 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake and gave chase. The wind was against the confederate raiders and they torched the Cushing and escaped in lifeboats and were captured and treated as prisoners of war.
BATTLE: When the raiders left the port area on June 27, they proceeded to the federal wharf. Having the advantage of surprise, the crew seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing, whose namesake was a Massachusetts congressman, United States Attorney General and Minister to Spain. Their original intent was to seize a steamer called the sidewheel steamer Chesapeake, but its boilers were cold. Too much time would be needed to get the steam up in her, so they abandoned it for Cushing. They made their escape and fled out to sea.
News spread of the Confederate actions and the Army garrison at Fort Preble in nearby South Portland was informed of the rebel intrusion. They had been observed by several persons while taking over the cutter, and public fury was fanned by the incident. Along with 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake, whose steam was finally up. All of the civilians on board were issued muskets to defend against the Confederates. Forest City, a faster boat, caught up to Cushing and Archer first.
Cushing opened fire upon Forest City when it was within the 2 mi (3.2 km) range of Cushing. The captain of Forest City was afraid to pursue any further. Cushing, being a revenue cutter, had two secret compartments hidden in the captain's stateroom. Lieutenant Read had not discovered the cache of powder and ammunition that were stored there. If he had, the outcome could have been very different. Chesapeake, which had left port sometime after Forest City with Portland's Mayor Jacob McLellan in command, finally caught up and continued on toward Cushing. The wind was beginning to blow against the Confederate sailors and the steamers soon caught sight of Cushing. Read ordered Cushing torched so the munitions were destroyed by exploding in the cutter after it was abandoned by her twenty-four crewmen escaped in lifeboats. They surrendered to Mayor McLellan and were held as prisoners of war at Fort Preble. Archer was also soon captured and all the rebels were returned to Portland.
Background: Confederate naval raider’s led by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN abandon their own ship named the Tacony and capture the Archer, a Maine fishing schooner out of Southport. The rebels disguised themselves as fishermen and entered Portland Harbor late in the evening. They planned to slip back out of the harbor and try to destroy the area's commercial shipping capability.
D. Monday, June 27, 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Sherman began his Atlanta Campaign in May of 1864, clashing with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee as it withdrew towards Atlanta in the face of Sherman's successive flanking maneuvers. During the month of June, several battles were fought around Marietta, Georgia, including Pine Mountain and Kolb's Farm led Johnston to establish a seven-mile long, formidably entrenched, arc shaped line beginning at Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain, a mere fifteen miles outside of Atlanta. With the roads in this vicinity all but impassable, Sherman could no longer flank his enemy. Frustrated, Sherman considered a course of action he had previously refused to enact: attack the enemy’s fortifications head-on. On June 24, he drew up an order for an assault on the 27th which called for Maj. Gen. James McPherson, whose army held the Union left near the Kennesaw Mountain, and Maj. Gen. George Thomas, who held the center, to select points of attack to break the enemy line while Gen. John Schofield maneuvered on the right to draw out Johnston’s line.
At 8:00 a.m. on June 27, over fifty cannons on McPherson's front opened fire on Kennesaw Mountain. Troops of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps started skirmishing in the dense undergrowth to prevent the Rebels from shifting forces to Little Kennesaw and Pigeon Hill. Three brigades under Maj. Gen. John A Logan's Fifteenth Corps moved forward, but despite overrunning some of the rifle pits fronting them and capturing a number of Rebels, they could not get within fifteen yards of the principal Confederate defenses. Most Federals became mired in the undergrowth and punishing musketry as they attempted to ascend the slope. Well-directed fire by Maj. Gen. Samuel French's artillery on Little Kennesaw and a Confederate counterattack eventually drove off the Yankees.
At the center of the Union line, the two armies were only 400 yards apart. Thomas chose portions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps to make the attack against the Rebels. Facing them was Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division, which had built abatis, driven sharp wooden stakes in the ground and strengthened its entrenchments with headlogs and Brig. Gen. George Maney's Tennessee brigade (under Maj. Gen. Frank Cheatham) whose position jutted forth in an inverted V salient on a rise now known as Cheatham's Hill. Federal artillery opened at 8:00 a.m., shelling the Rebel works for a quarter hour before advancing an hour later under heavy fire, stalling at the abatis around 45 yards from the enemy works. Some Federals got close to the enemy works. Union Colonel Daniel McCook, Jr. stood at the Rebel parapet urging his men on when he was shot in the chest. Reacting quickly, Col. Oscar Harmon of the One Hundred and Twenty Fifth Illinois took command of the brigade, but he was shot five minutes later, mortally wounded. On McCook's left, Brig. Gen. Charles Harker urged his men forward astride his white horse, before being mortally struck in the arm and chest. After 10:00 a.m., the Union attack became disorganized and the men fell back. Some men of Col. John Mitchell's brigade made it up the slope to one of Maney's entrenched salients where the lines became so close that the Tennesseans threw rocks at the advancing Federals. Eventually Mitchell's men had to retreat and find cover anywhere from twenty to a hundred yards from the Confederate works and dig in with their bayonets at what was later called the "Dead Angle."
By 11:30 that morning, the Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Although the survivors of the assaulting columns at Cheatham Hill spent the next five days in advanced works only thirty yards from the Confederate position, there was no more heavy-fighting at Kennesaw. Only on July 2nd when Sherman sent McPherson and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman's cavalry around the Confederate left did Johnston once again fall back to another defensive position at Smyrna.
1. Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia Gideon Welles asked James Ward to develop a plan to recapture Fort Sumter. However, Ward’s plan was overruled by Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott. Ward then set about developing a Potomac River Flotilla to defend Washington D.C. and disrupt the flow of weapons and insurgents between Maryland and Virginia. The Potomac Flotilla was composed of an assortment of improvised vessels. Ward’s own flagship, Thomas Freeborn, was purchased by the government and then retrofit with a novel gun-carriage that Ward designed for river operations.
In June 1861, Ward learned that Confederates were constructing an artillery position on Mathias Point on the Virginia side of the Potomac. On June 27, Ward planned to land a Union force at Mathias Point to drive away the Rebels. His gunboats shelled the position, but Ward was shot by the Confederates and died. James H. Ward was the first Union Navy officer killed in the Civil War, and both the engagement at Mathias Point and his death were heavily covered in the press.
http://norwich.typepad.com/museum/2012/08/james-h-ward-first-us-navy-officer-killed-in-the-civil-war.html
2. Friday, June 27, 1862: Village Creek, Arkansas - On June 27, a Confederate force set up an ambush at Stewart's Plantation. The plantation was located about 8 miles from Village Creek. When a Union forage train neared, the Confederates sprang the trap. A number of Federals were casualties and a few wagons were captured.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1862s.html
3. Friday, June 27, 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill [US] Battle of First Cold Harbor [CS] Battle of the Chickahominy [Alternate
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
4. Friday, June 27, 1862: John Bell Hood [CS] and George Pickett [CS] breakthrough Fitz John Porter's [US] line, forcing Union troops south of the Chickahominy River and severing McClellan's supply line to Eltham's Landing (White House, West Point)
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186206
5. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Gen. McClellan writes to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton his assessment of the fight at Gaines Mill, sending it via telegraph about midnight: “. . . I have lost this battle, because my force was too small. I again repeat that I am not responsible for this, and I say it with the earnestness of a general, who feels in his heart, the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed to-day. I still hope to retrieve our fortunes, but to do this, the government must view the matter in the same earnest light that I do. You must send me very large reinforcements, and send them at once. . . . I only wish to say to the President, that I think he is wrong in regarding me as ungenerous, when I said that my force was too weak. I merely reiterated a truth, which to-day has been too plainly proved. If at this instant I could dispose of ten thousand fresh men, I could gain the victory to-morrow.
I feel too earnestly to-night, I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades, to feel otherwise than that the government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the game is lost.
If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other persons in Washington.
You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
6. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- John Beauchamp Jones, of the Confederate War Department, hears the sounds of battle outside of Richmond, and voices the growing admiration most Southerners are feeling for Lee: “What genius! what audacity in Lee ! He has absolutely taken the greater portion of his army to the north side of the Chickahominy, leaving McClellan’s center and left wing on the south side, with apparently easy access to the city. This is (to the invaders) impenetrable strategy. The enemy believes Lee’s main forces are here, and will never think of advancing. We have so completely closed the avenues of intelligence that the enemy has not been able to get the slightest intimation of our strength or the dispositions of our forces.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
7. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Judith White McGuire of Richmond, describes in her journal the effect of the Lee’s many thousand: “Yesterday was a day of intense excitement in the city and its surroundings. Early in the morning it was whispered about that some great movement was on foot. Large numbers of troops were seen under arms, evidently waiting for orders to march against the enemy. . . . I am told (for I did not witness it) that it was a scene of unsurpassed magnificence. The brilliant light of bombs bursting in the air and passing to the ground, the innumerable lesser lights, emitted by thousands and thousands of muskets, together with the roar of artillery and the rattling of small-arms, constituted a scene terrifically grand and imposing. What spell has bound our people? Is their trust in God, and in the valour of our troops, so great that they are unmoved by these terrible demonstrations of our powerful foe? It would seem so, for when the battle was over the crowd dispersed and retired to their respective homes with the seeming tranquility of persons who had been witnessing a panorama of transactions in a far-off country.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
8. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Charles Francis Adams, Sr., U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, in a letter home on this date, offers observations on the cotton trade and its effect upon the enemy’s war effort: “The cotton problem in England is becoming more and more serious. The stock has got down to about two hundred and fifty thousand bales, and there is a demand for export which is reducing it faster than was anticipated. At present it is calculated that by November there will be none left. Provided always that the slaveholders should be so foolish as to persevere in destroying it and themselves. It has seemed to me all along that they were mere suicides, and I believe it more firmly every day.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
9. Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes, on duty with his regiment, the 23rd Ohio in the mountainous regions of western Virginia, notes in his diary the forming of the Army of Virginia, with Gen. John Pope in command: “General Pope appointed to “the Army of Virginia” — being the combined forces of Fremont, Shields, Banks, and McDowell, now in the Valley of Virginia. Sorry to see Fremont passed over but glad the concentration under one man has taken place. General Pope is impulsive and hasty, but energetic, and, what is of most importance, patriotic and sound — perfectly sound. I look for good results. —“
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
10. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Siege of Vicksburg, Day 36
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
11. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Siege of Port Hudson, Day 31
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
12. Saturday, June 27, 1863: Henry Halleck issues an order making George Meade commander of the Army of the Potomac.
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186306
13. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- New General of the Army of the Potomac. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, commander of the Army of the Potomac, is convinced that Lee’s army outnumbers his---proving that many were susceptible to McClellan’s disease---and wishes to incorporate the 10,000 men at Harper’s Ferry under Gen. French into his forces. After wiring Halleck on this topic, he waits until French receives a reply from Gen. Halleck, which tells French that he should not obey Hooker’s orders. In a fit of pique, Hooker tenders his resignation, which Halleck and Pres. Lincoln accept with alacrity. SANDY HOOK, June 27, 1863-1 p. m. (Received 3 p. m.). To Major General H. W. HALLECK, General-in-Chief: “My original instructions require me to cover Harper's Ferry and Washington. I have now imposed upon me, in addition, an enemy in my front of more than my number. I beg to be understood, respectfully, but firmly, that I am unable to comply with this condition with the means at my disposal, and earnestly request that I may at once be relieved from the position I occupy.” JOSEPH HOOKER,
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
14. Lincoln quickly gives the command to Gen. George G. Meade of Pennsylvania, effective immediately.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
15. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Guerillas under Brig. Gen. John Imboden raid Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, taking supplies, horses, cattle, wagons, and household goods of all kinds, including a considerable coffle of negroes, whom the Confederates claim are runaways. The raiders even have the cheek to offer to sell some of the goods back to the owners who had just been pilfered of said goods. But the blacks were taken south into bondage, despite the fact that the townspeople could attest to many of them having been born and raised in Mercersburg and the surrounding area.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
16. Saturday, June 27, 1863 --- Maj. Gen. John McClernand sends a letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, soliciting his help in getting McClernand restored to command of his corps in Grant’s army. McClernand, among other complaints, seems to feel that Grant had no authority to do so---that “General Grant has assumed power to relieve me from the command.”
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1863
17.
A Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle at Mathias Point, Virginia. Federal naval and army units attempt to land and capture Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia, which command the Potomac. The Federals are beaten off.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1861
A+ Thursday, June 27, 1861: Naval Battle of Mathias Point: The Battle of Mathias Point in terms of action was a minor engagement but it did have important results for both sides. Mathias Point is on the Potomac River in King George County, Virginia near Maryland’s Popes Creek. On June 27, 1861 two Union ships from the blockading squadron sailed up the Potomac River with the goal of eliminating the Confederate shore batteries at the point.
USS Thomas Freeborn at Mathias PointThe two ships were the USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance. They were assigned to the Potomac Flotilla with the assignment of patrolling the river to prevent it from being blocked by the Confederates. The Thomas Freeborn was a sidewheel steam tug that had originally been built for the relief of Fort Sumter. She was equipped with two 32-pounder guns. Commanded by Comdr. James H. Ward, she served as his flagship.
The USS Reliance was a wooden screw steamer that had been built in 1860 and acquired by the Navy Department in May 1861. The Reliance had fought in several engagements with other Confederate shore batteries before Mathias Point. She carried a 24-pounder howitzer and a 12-pounder howitzer.
The Union Navy saw the Mathias Point batteries as being capable of blocking river traffic on the Potomac River. It could also serve as a base for communications with Confederate sympathizers in Maryland and even raids into the state. The batteries were somewhat concealed by being sited on the wooded promontory. Comdr. Ward took his two ships and a party of marines and sailors under Lt. James C. Chaplin. Their plan was to eliminate the Confederate batteries, clear the trees and replace the batteries with Union ones.
The two ships arrived in the area between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM; sources give conflicting times. The action began with a bombardment of the point in order to support the landing party. The Union force sent out skirmishers which drove off the Confederates. The Union landing party had brought replacement guns with them but had not yet unloaded them when some 400 to 500 Confederates appeared.
Ward who accompanied the original landing had returned to the Thomas Freeborn to direct more fire against the attacking Confederates. Meanwhile, Chaplin had withdrawn his shore part while the ships bombarded the Confederate force. Ward signaled Chaplin to land and prepare sand-bag breastworks.
The Confederate commander, Col. Daniel Ruggles, ordered his men to attack the Union position by moving through the woods to minimize observation from the river. By 5:00 Pm Chaplin’s men had completed the breastwork and moved to the boats to bring up the artillery. The Confederate forces counterattacked and the Union force which heavily outnumbered was forced to withdraw completely.
During the withdrawal Comdr. Ward was shot through the abdomen by a rifleman while siting a gun. He was dead within 45 minutes, the first Union naval officer to die in the Civil War. Four other Union sailors were wounded while the Confederates sustained no casualties.
The Confederate shore batteries at Mathias Point continued to harass Union shipping along the Potomac River they were withdrawn in March 1862 to the defenses protecting Richmond.
http://northagainstsouth.com/the-battle-of-mathias-point/
B Friday, June 27, 1862: Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): In the early hours of June 27, 1862, the third of the Seven Days' battles, Fitz John Porter’s Union corps abandoned its position at Beaver Dam Creek and established a new defensive line behind Boatswain’s Swamp, just north of the Chickahominy River. Anxious to renew his assaults from the day before, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, sent the bulk of his force forward with the intention of driving them across the river. The Federals beat back successive waves of disjointed attacks, inflicting some of the heaviest casualties the war had yet seen. By dusk, however, Lee’s Confederates were more organized. With daylight fading, the reinforced Southerners assaulted Porter’s anemic defensive line and sent the Northerners fleeing toward the river. Only darkness prevented Porter’s corps from complete disaster. During the night, the Federals limped across the Chickahominy and burned the bridges behind them.
B+ Friday, June 27, 1862 --- Battle of Gaines Mill (First Battle of Cold Harbor): Once again, Lee tries the same strategy he used for the previous day’s battle at Mechanicsville (Beaver Dam Creek): to force the Federal right, turn it, and hopefully destroy it---and once again, poorly coordinated Confederate attacks prevent the success Lee hopes for. To do this, he needed Jackson to push around the isolated flank of the Federal army, which is mostly Porter’s V (Fifth) Corps, 27,000 strong. Porter’s three divisions, under Morell, Sykes, and McCall, are deployed behind Boatswain’s Creek, a tributary whose course is a swampy vale with heavy vegetation. McCall is held in reserve. Jackson is supposed to hit behind Porter’s flank, supported by D.H. Hill, whose whole force has now crossed to the north side of the Chickahominy, and A.P. Hill is supposed to drive at Porter’s line closer to the Chickahominy, supported by Longstreet’s divisions---a total of 57,000 men attacking about half of that number under Porter’s command. What happens instead comes partly from D.H. Hill’s advance, toward Old Cold Harbor, which he believes is beyond and even behind the Union flank; when he approaches Cold Harbor, he finds that Yankees from Sykes’ division are firmly in position in front of him. The Confederate attacks do not begin until after 2:00 PM.
A.P. Hill launches attacks again (as yesterday) without the coordinated support of his colleagues, and Northern artillery shreds his formations so that he can only hold his ground and exchange with the Yankees in an infantry firefight, hoping for Jackson to arrive. Longstreet launches some diversionary attacks on Porter’s left. Jackson is slow in getting to his position, which he finds is not the right place to attack, and so countermarches his troops to find a better position. When he finally engages the enemy, he feeds his brigades in piecemeal, Ewell’s troops finally going forward @ 4:00 PM, with Elzey’s and Trimble’s brigades in the fore; these are thrown back with losses.
Lee orders a more coordinated attack, and orders Jackson to pour in all his troops at once, with a renewal of A.P. Hill’s attacks, and with D.H. Hill feeling for the Union flank. Porter senses the coming Rebel assault, and asks for reinforcements; he receives brigades from Slocum’s VI Corps. After 7:00 PM, an hour before dusk, the Confederate attack goes forward: Jackson has Whiting’s division and Walker’s Stonewall Brigade in front. Whiting’s brigade of Texans (supported by Hampton’s Legion and Law’s Brigade), under Brig. Gen. John B. Hood, goes in with wild abandon, and takes heavy losses, but plows through the heavy woods and swamp, and pierces the Union line. In spite of inflicting heavy losses on the Rebels, Porter’s line begins to crumble on the left (where Longstreet sends in Wilcox and Pickett), the center (Hood’s attack), and the right (as D.H. Hill hits the Union flank).
As the Union infantry retreats, Porter’s artillery now has a clear field of fire, and are able to claw the advancing Rebels dreadfully with canister before the attack hits. The Yankees lose 14 guns to capture. The Union retreat is uneven: some regiments retreat in order, and some disintegrate and panic, leading to over a thousand being captured. Thus ends an incredibly bloody battle, considering the brief amount of time it took. Confederate Victory.
(There is evidence that when McClellan understands Lee’s plan, he considers attacking with the main part of his army the thin line Lee has left south of the Chickahominy and driving through the Rebel line straight into Richmond. When he discovers Jackson out on the Union right flank, however, he abandons all such ambitions and thinks strictly in defensive terms thereafter. Little Mac assumes that 100,000 Rebels are in front of Richmond, and he faces them with only 64,000. In fact, his 64,000, who remain idle at day, face only 30,000 Southerners in a thin line. Huger and Magruder succeed in inflating the Yankees’ fears and intelligence estimates.)
Losses: Killed Wounded Missing or Captured Total
Union 894 3,107 2,836 6,837
Confederate 1,483 6,402 108 7,993
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/search?q=June+27%2C+1862
C June 27, 1863 in Portland, Maine - Once in the harbor, Lt. ?? Reed and his crew captured the revenue cutter USS Caleb Cushing early on June 27. With both the USS Archer and the USS Caleb Cushing, Reed and planned to slip out past the harbor forts before the local Union forces knew what had happened. He then returned to set fire to the commercial shipping. Unfortunately, word had somehow gotten out as to what occurred and the Confederate raiders were forced to run from the Union forces assault and a pair of Union ships, the USS Forest City and USS Chesapeake.
Later that day, they were forced to set fire to the Caleb Cushing and Reed and his men were captured.
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/1863s.html
C Saturday, June 27, 1863: The Battle of Portland Harbor was an incident during the American Civil War, in June 1863, in the waters off Portland, Maine. Two civilian ships engaged two vessels under Confederate States Navy employment.
Around June 24, a Confederate raider named the Tacony, commanded by Lieutenant Charles Read, CSN, was being pursued by the Union Navy. To thwart their pursuers, at about 2 AM on the 25th, the Confederates captured the Archer, a Maine fishing schooner out of Southport. After transferring their supplies and cargo onto Archer, the Confederates set fire to Tacony, hoping the Union Navy would believe the ship was destroyed.
On June 26, a raiding party entered the harbor at Portland, sailing past Portland Head Light. The rebels disguised themselves as fishermen and entered into Portland Harbor late in the evening. They planned to slip back out of the harbor and try to destroy the area's commercial shipping capability.
BATTLE: When the raiders left the port area on June 27, they proceeded to the federal wharf. Having the advantage of surprise, the crew seized a cutter belonging to the Revenue Service, the USRC Caleb Cushing, whose namesake was a Massachusetts congressman, United States Attorney General and Minister to Spain. Their original intent was to seize a steamer called the sidewheel steamer Chesapeake, but its boilers were cold. Too much time would be needed to get the steam up in her, so they abandoned it for Cushing. They made their escape and fled out to sea.
News spread of the Confederate actions and the Army garrison at Fort Preble in nearby South Portland was informed of the rebel intrusion. They had been observed by several persons while taking over the cutter, and public fury was fanned by the incident. Along with 30 soldiers from Fort Preble went a six-pound field piece and a 12-pound howitzer. The soldiers, accompanied by about 100 civilian volunteers, commandeered the steamer Forest City, a sidewheel excursion ship, and the Chesapeake, whose steam was finally up. All of the civilians on board were issued muskets to defend against the Confederates. Forest City, a faster boat, caught up to Cushing and Archer first.
Cushing opened fire upon Forest City when it was within the 2 mi (3.2 km) range of Cushing. The captain of Forest City was afraid to pursue any further. Cushing, being a revenue cutter, had two secret compartments hidden in the captain's stateroom. Lieutenant Read had not discovered the cache of powder and ammunition that were stored there. If he had, the outcome could have been very different. Chesapeake, which had left port sometime after Forest City with Portland's Mayor Jacob McLellan in command, finally caught up and continued on toward Cushing. The wind was beginning to blow against the Confederate sailors and the steamers soon caught sight of Cushing. Read ordered Cushing torched so the munitions were destroyed by exploding in the cutter after it was abandoned by her twenty-four crewmen escaped in lifeboats. They surrendered to Mayor McLellan and were held as prisoners of war at Fort Preble. Archer was also soon captured and all the rebels were returned to Portland.
AFTERMATH
It was discovered that the Confederates were in possession of over $100,000 in bonds. These were to be paid after a treaty for peace was ratified between the North and the South.
Public anger against the Southerners was high, and additional troops to safeguard the prisoners were requested. They had to be spirited out of Portland during the night to prevent a riot from breaking in July, when they were removed to Boston Harbor, where they were then held at Fort Warren.
http://www.gutenberg.us/article/WHEBN [login to see] /Battle%20of%20Portland%20Harbor
Saturday, June 27, 1863: Tullahoma Campaign, [June 24 – July 3, 1863]. If he had withdrawn in the direction of Manchester, he might have used the successive defensive positions along that route to delay Rosecrans enough for Bragg to implement a successful counterattack, but he simply made Thomas's breakout more effective, leaving Bragg with no alternatives than to order Polk and Hardee to withdraw to Tullahoma on June 27.
John T. Wilder's Brigade reached Manchester at 8 a.m. on June 27 and his division occupied the town by noon. Rousseau and Brannon pushed their divisions toward Wartrace as Stewart withdrew. In the west, Granger and Stanley, still demonstrating before Guy's Gap, received orders to attempt to move forward. Stanley's cavalry easily pushed aside their Confederate counterparts and approached the breastworks at Shelbyville, now mostly abandoned after Polk's withdrawal. Some resistance remained and Col. Robert H. G. Minty personally led his "Saber Brigade" of Michigan cavalrymen in a mounted charge over the breastworks after the retreating Confederates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullahoma_Campaign
D Monday, June 27, 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Joseph E. Johnston, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Thomas
http://blueandgraytrail.com/year/186406
D+ Monday, June 27, 1864: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman began his Atlanta Campaign in May of 1864, clashing with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee as it withdrew towards Atlanta in the face of Sherman's successive flanking maneuvers. During the month of June, several battles were fought around Marietta, Georgia, including Pine Mountain and Kolb's Farm led Johnston to establish a seven-mile long, formidably entrenched, arc shaped line beginning at Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain, a mere fifteen miles outside of Atlanta. With the roads in this vicinity all but impassable, Sherman could no longer flank his enemy. Frustrated, Sherman considered a course of action he had previously refused to enact: attack the enemy’s fortifications head-on. On June 24, he drew up an order for an assault on the 27th which called for Maj. Gen. James McPherson, whose army held the Union left near the Kennesaw Mountain, and Maj. Gen. George Thomas, who held the center, to select points of attack to break the enemy line while Gen. John Schofield maneuvered on the right to draw out Johnston’s line.
At 8:00 a.m. on June 27, over fifty cannons on McPherson's front opened fire on Kennesaw Mountain. Troops of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps started skirmishing in the dense undergrowth to prevent the Rebels from shifting forces to Little Kennesaw and Pigeon Hill. Three brigades under Maj. Gen. John A Logan's Fifteenth Corps moved forward, but despite overrunning some of the rifle pits fronting them and capturing a number of Rebels, they could not get within fifteen yards of the principal Confederate defenses. Most Federals became mired in the undergrowth and punishing musketry as they attempted to ascend the slope. Well-directed fire by Maj. Gen. Samuel French's artillery on Little Kennesaw and a Confederate counterattack eventually drove off the Yankees.
At the center of the Union line, the two armies were only 400 yards apart. Thomas chose portions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps to make the attack against the Rebels. Facing them was Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division, which had built abatis, driven sharp wooden stakes in the ground and strengthened its entrenchments with headlogs and Brig. Gen. George Maney's Tennessee brigade (under Maj. Gen. Frank Cheatham) whose position jutted forth in an inverted V salient on a rise now known as Cheatham's Hill. Federal artillery opened at 8:00 a.m., shelling the Rebel works for a quarter hour before advancing an hour later under heavy fire, stalling at the abatis around 45 yards from the enemy works. Some Federals got close to the enemy works. Union Colonel Daniel McCook, Jr. stood at the Rebel parapet urging his men on when he was shot in the chest. Reacting quickly, Col. Oscar Harmon of the One Hundred and Twenty Fifth Illinois took command of the brigade, but he was shot five minutes later, mortally wounded. On McCook's left, Brig. Gen. Charles Harker urged his men forward astride his white horse, before being mortally struck in the arm and chest. After 10:00 a.m., the Union attack became disorganized and the men fell back. Some men of Col. John Mitchell's brigade made it up the slope to one of Maney's entrenched salients where the lines became so close that the Tennesseans threw rocks at the advancing Federals. Eventually Mitchell's men had to retreat and find cover anywhere from twenty to a hundred yards from the Confederate works and dig in with their bayonets at what was later called the "Dead Angle."
By 11:30 that morning, the Union attack had failed. The frontal assault cost Sherman 3,000 men in just over three hours. Although the survivors of the assaulting columns at Cheatham Hill spent the next five days in advanced works only thirty yards from the Confederate position, there was no more heavy-fighting at Kennesaw. Only on July 2nd when Sherman sent McPherson and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman's cavalry around the Confederate left did Johnston once again fall back to another defensive position at Smyrna.
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/kennesaw-mountain.html?tab=facts
FYI SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D MAJ Roland McDonald SSG Franklin BriantCPO William Glen (W.G.) Powell1stSgt Eugene Harless MSG Greg KellyLTC Thomas Tennant GySgt Jack Wallace LTC (Join to see)SPC (Join to see) SSG (Join to see) Sgt Axel Hasting Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SPC Jon O. SGT (Join to see) SSG Michael Noll SSG William Jones SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth
James H. Ward, First U.S. Navy Officer Killed in the Civil War
(U.S. Naval Historical Center) James H. Ward (Class of 1823) is one of the Norwich alumni featured in our new Civil War exhibition. Ward's full dress hat and cotton vest are part of the Sullivan Museum's collection, and are currently...
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LTC Stephen F.
You are very welcoem my friend, brother-in-arms and brother-in-Christ SGT John " Mac " McConnell -
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Losing 3,000 men in just 3 hours! Such terrible losses. Nearly every American family lost a member to the fighting during the Civil War. This all occurred a mere 150 years ago.
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LTC Stephen F.
Thank you my friends SSgt Robert Marx and SGT Robert George for responding and sharing your thoughts on the carnage during the June 27, 1864 Civil War battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia.
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Excellent share in Civil War history on this day LTC Stephen F.; the Battle of Portland Harbor, Maine gets my vote today!
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