What was the most significant event on March 24 during the U.S. Civil War?

LTC Stephen F. always appreciate this valuable historical thread. I feel privilege to learn something new every day.

I was struck that in late march 1861 pro-slavery advocates were publishing editorials in northern newspapers. By 1862 the Civil War had taken a toll on north and south yet had a few more brutal years to go. Tennessee had born a disproportionate share of the fighting as General S.S. Johnson retreated south to Mississippi. He was destined to be the highest ranking General to die in battle during the course of the war. In 1863 in western Mississippi, the campaign to find an undefended route into Vicksburg’s defenses ended in failure. While this was good short-term news for the beleaguered citizens and CSA soldiers defending Vicksburg, that city was destined for disease and death within a year. Such are the fortunes of war.
Since RallyPoint truncates survey selection text I am posting events that were not included and then the full text of each survey choice below:
a. March 24, 1862: In Cincinnati, Wendell Phillips, a noted anti-slavery speaker and activist, visits the Opera House to deliver a speech. Cincinnati is mostly pro-Union, and since Phillips is also pro-secession—that is, Let the South Go—he is attacked by a crowd with rocks, eggs, and other missiles of political debate.
b. —In the on-going debate over the First Confiscation Bill in the U.S. Senate, Senator Saulsbury of Delaware voices his opposition to freeing any more negroes: "I will remark now only that if this bill passes it is to pass by the votes of Senators from the non-slaveholding States, gentlemen representing States that are not afflicted with the great curse of a free negro population. I propose this amendment: That the said persons liberated, within thirty days thereof, be transported to the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York." The vote was called on this scarcely serious measure: yeas 2, nays 31.
c. —William Yancey, recently returned from Europe as an envoy, has been unable to turn even one European country toward the Confederate cause. In an impromptu speech to a crowd at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans, Yancey states as his belief that Europe will not come to the South’s rescue, and that all European nations are hoping for the war to drag on as long as possible, in order to weaken or even collapse all of the American governments. He further encourages self-reliance in the face of the ever-strengthening Union blockade. He further acknowledges that cotton is not king at all, due to the glut in world supply.
d. —South of Kernstown, Virginia, Confederate troops fight a delaying action as they withdraw south on the Valley Pike, toward the crossing at Cedar Creek, where Jackson’s main force has returned. One young Virginia artilleryman, George Michael Neese, writes in his journal of the day’s action: At about nine o’clock they came in sight. We moved about a mile south of Newtown, went in battery and fired on their vanguard. . . . At this position we had a lively and stubborn artillery duel. We held our own until we saw that the Yankee army as a whole was advancing. Then we withdrew to the next hill and opened on them again, and so we skirmished with their artillery and devilled their advance from every hilltop until we arrived on the Shenandoah side of Cedar Creek. There we found Jackson’s infantry and wagon train in camp, but were preparing to move up the Valley. The Yanks charged one of our guns to-day, but found that the fire was a little too warmish and dangerous to accomplish the capture of a live Rebel gun. The Yanks have no relish for canister.
e. —Capt. William Thompson Lusk, of the 2nd New York Volunteer Infantry, writes home to his mother, defending Gen. George McClellan to his detractors, and then considering the chances for peace: My dearest Mother, it will be a sweet thing for us all to see peace once more restored, and I do not doubt that no one prays more earnestly for it than yourself. I cannot but feel that a Higher Power has guided us of late to victory and do not fear for the result, yet bloody battles must be fought in which we must all partake, before the olive-branch is possible. I hardly think that the impatient ones at home, who are clamorous as to the inactivity and want of efficiency of our army, will have in the end any reason to complain that blood enough has not been shed to compensate them for the millions they have expended on it.
f. —Major Rutherford B. Hayes of the Union Army, writes in a letter home: An odd laughable incident occurred to Joe the other day. You know his fondness for children. He always talks to them and generally manages to get them on his knee. Stopping at a farm-house he began to make advances towards a little three-year old boy who could scarcely talk plain enough to be understood. The doctor said, "Come, my fine little fellow. I want to talk to you." The urchin with a jerk turned away saying something the doctor did not comprehend. On a second approach the doctor made it out "Go to Hell, you dam Yankee!" This from the little codger was funny enough. . . .
g. —Lt. Charles Wright Wills, of the 7th Illinois Cavalry, writes in his journal about riding in a patrol going after Jeff Thompson’s semi-regular Rebel guerillas in southeastern Missouri: When we first saw these pickets they were tearing up a culvert. We hurried up and after each side fired four or five rounds they ran. No one hurt here, although the distance was not more than 60 yards. Andy Hulit, my sergeant major and myself were the advance guard, but I have no carbine, and did not get to shoot, but this didn’t seem to make any difference to them for they threw buckshot round me quite promiscuously. Well, we fixed up that bridge and pressed on, but they tore down so many bridges that we could go but slowly. Just before the fight I had dropped back a dozen files to get out of building any more bridges, and when our boys saw the secesh [a supporter of the Confederacy during the United States Civil War], they had just finished destroying another. The horses couldn’t cross it, but the boys dismounted and hurrying across on foot, made them take to the swamp in water waist deep, where they hid themselves behind logs, vines and a kind of high grass that grows in bunches as large as a currant bush. When they had concealed themselves to their notion, they commenced firing at us, and of the first four of our boys over the bridge (Andy Hulit led them), three were down, wounded in a minute. We then charged (on foot) right into the brush and water, some of the boys up to their armpits, and made them scoot. They did not number over 20 but their advantage was enormous. We dropped two of them certain, and— I don’t think any more. . . . We drove the Rebels clear off, and captured two horses, and all their blankets, overcoats etc. About 15 miles out we came to Little River. While the major was examining the bridge, we saw a half dozen men running through a swamp on the other side. Over the bridge we went, and into the mud and water after them. We got them all. I captured a couple in a thicket. Andy Hulit came up a few minutes after and we had work to keep a lot of boys from shooting them, while we were taking them back to the river. Well, that was a pretty rough trip and I don’t hanker after another like it, although the excitement is rather pleasant too. But being set up for a mark on a road where there is not a sign of a chance to dodge, and having the marksman completely concealed from you, and this other fix of letting them throw shells at you when your carbine won’t carry to them, sitting on horseback too, I wish it understood I’m opposed to and protest against, although I never think so until I get back to camp.
http://civilwarsesquicentdaily-wolfshield.blogspot.com/2012/03/march-24-1862.html
1. March 24, 1861 New York Herald publishes an editorial from a pro-slavery advocate, against William Lloyd Garrison and the newly formed Lincoln administration, who does not mince words about the evils of abolitionism: “For the first time in the history of the country, abolitionism pure and simple has found an honorable recognition at the hands of the administration. The abolitionists of the North – the enemies of the country and the advocates of disunion – have, for the first time, been elevated to places of honor and station … there are two or three of the ultra-stripe whose services to the dominant party should not be forgotten. There is Garrison, who has cursed the Union a thousand and one times, at least, and who, moreover has furnished no small share of the ideas upon which the republican party was built up …”
http://civilwarbaptists.com/thisdayinhistory/1861-march-24/
2. March 24, 1862 CSA General Albert Sidney Johnston had various remaining military units scattered throughout his territory and he retreated south from Murfreesboro, Tennessee to Corinth, Mississippi to avoid being cut off. Johnston himself retreated with the force under his personal command, the Army of Central Kentucky, from the vicinity of Nashville. With P.G.T. Beauregard's help, Johnston decided to concentrate forces with those formerly under Polk and now already under Beauregard's command at the strategically located railroad crossroads of Corinth, Mississippi, which he reached by a circuitous route. Johnston kept the Union forces, now under the overall command of the ponderous Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, confused and hesitant to move, allowing Johnston to reach his objective undetected. This delay allowed Jefferson Davis finally to send reinforcements from the garrisons of coastal cities and another highly rated but prickly general, Braxton Bragg, to help organize the western forces. Bragg at least calmed the nerves of Beauregard and Polk who had become agitated by their apparent dire situation in the face of numerically superior forces before the arrival of Johnston on March 24, 1862. Johnston's army of 17,000 men gave the Confederates a combined force of about 40,000 to 44,669 men at Corinth, Mississippi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Sidney_Johnston
3. March 24, 1863 A small skirmish at Black Bayou, Mississippi marked the end of General William Tecumseh Sherman's attempt to find an unguarded water route into Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Both the Union and Confederate high commands then realized that if Vicksburg were going to fall it would be at the hands of a combined land and naval effort. The batteries that overlooked the Mississippi River at Vicksburg were powerful, but all the land accesses were open. The Confederates decided to construct a line of defense to guard the city's landward approaches and control the roads and railroad access to Vicksburg. Due to a series of sharp narrow ridges, fronted by deep steep ravines, Vicksburg was a natural fortress. Major Samuel Lockett, chief engineer of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, made it even stronger by the construction of field fortifications. The line, as constructed, consisted of nine major forts connected by a continuous line of trenches and rifle pits. The line formed a huge semicircle around Vicksburg, the flanks of which rested on the river above and below the city. It would be manned by a garrison of 30,000 troops, mount 172 big guns, and pose the major challenge to Union domination of the river.
Late that same year, a two-pronged Federal advance on Vicksburg met with disaster when Major General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union Army of the Tennessee, divided his force in two for an advance on Vicksburg. One column, under Grant's personal command, marched overland from Grand Junction, Tennessee, into north Mississippi, while the other column, under Major General William T Sherman, made a rapid push down the Mississippi River and attempted to seize Vicksburg.
As Grant's column pushed south through Holly Springs and Oxford toward Grenada, his ever-lengthening supply and communications line became dangerously exposed and fell prey to raiding Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest. His advance base at Holly Springs also fell victim to raiding cavalry under Earl Van Dorn, which compelled Grant to pull back to Memphis. This regression enabled Confederate forces, utilizing interior rail lines, to rush to Vicksburg, arriving in time to thwart Sherman's strike just northeast of the city along the banks of Chickasaw Bayou. In reporting the action, Sherman simply wrote, "I reached Vicksburg at the time appointed, landed, assaulted and failed."
Checked on the overland route, Grant seized upon Federal naval supremacy on the inland waters to transfer his army to Milliken's Bend and Young's Point, Louisiana, on the Mississippi River just north of and opposite Vicksburg. During the winter months, Federal forces stockpiled tremendous quantities of rations, clothing, medicine, ammunition, and countless other items for the spring campaign aimed at Vicksburg. Grant also orchestrated a series of ill-fated bayou expeditions, the object of which was to reach the rear of Vicksburg.
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/vicksburg/vicksburg-history-articles/vicksburgwinshcelhg.html
4. March 24, 1865 Abraham Lincoln leaves Washington for Ulysses S. Grant's headquarters in City Point, Virginia. City Point (now Hopewell), located in central Virginia at the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers, was the site of Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant's field headquarters during the Petersburg Campaign at the end of the American Civil War.
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) CSM Charles Hayden SFC William Swartz Jr SGM Steve Wettstein SP6 Clifford Ward PO1 John Miller PO2 William Allen Crowder SSgt Alex Robinson SGT Randal Groover SrA Christopher Wright SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SPC Corbin Sayi SPC (Join to see) SGT Forrest Stewart

Always good information LTC Stephen F.. Personally I like their grooming standards. How come we cant do that today? ;-)