John Lincoln “Johnny” Clem (1851-1937) Born in Newark, Ohio, 13 Aug. 1851, Clem ran away from home in May 1861 to join the army and found the army was not interested in 9-year-old boys. When he applied to the commander of the 3d Ohio Regiment, the officer said he “wasn’t enlisting infants,” and turned him…
When Grant broke his lines around Petersburg on April 2nd and Lee put his army into retreat, his plan was to keep ahead of the Federals and join Joseph Johnston’s army in North Carolina. He was very low on supplies, so he would have to resupply his army along the way. He pushed his men…
July 13, 1864, At the Battle of the Crater, the Union’s ingenious attempt to break the Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia, by blowing up a tunnel that had been dug under the Rebel trenches fails. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly planned Yankee attack wasted the effort and the…
On July 6, 1865 the convicted assassins of President Abraham Lincoln, Payne, David Herold, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt, languish in their cells at the Washington Arsenal in Washington, DC. They have been sentenced to die, but they do not know when. At midday their uncertainty is dispelled as they are informed that the next…
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest .. Suffers his biggest defeat when Union General Andrew J. Smith routs his force in Tupelo, Mississippi. The battle came just a month after the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, Mississippi, in which Forrest engineered a brilliant victory over a larger Union force from Memphis that was designed to keep him…
Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and 272 of his troops are killed in an assault on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. Shaw was commander of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, perhaps the most famous regiment of African-American troops during the war. Fort Wagner stood on Morris Island, guarding the approach to Charleston harbor. It was…
The day is July 17, 1864, Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaces General Joseph Johnston with John Bell Hood as commander of the Army of Tennessee. Davis, impatient with Johnston’s defensive strategy in the Atlanta campaign, felt that Hood stood a better chance of saving Atlanta from the forces of Union General William T. Sherman. “Lieut.…
Dec 12, 1806: Cherokee leader and Confederate General Stand Watie is born On this day in 1806, Confederate General Stand Watie is born near Rome, Georgia. Watie, a Cherokee Indian, survived the tribe’s Trail of Tears in the 1830s and became the only Native American to achieve the rank of general during the Civil War.…
Alice Shirley A resident of Wexford Lodge, born in Vicksburg to a family of Northern stock, Alice and her brothers kept their Union sympathies to themselves when their state seceded. Federal troops later besieged their home, Wexford Lodge, which fell within the front lines. With their home riddled with shot and shell, the family was…
Gerhard (or Gerrit) Roosen (1612-1711) was a Mennonite bishop in northern Germany. He is famous today mostly for the catechism he published when he was 90 years old, the Christliches Gemütsgespräch or “Christian Spiritual Conversation on Saving Faith and the Acknowledging of the Truth Which Is After Godliness in Hope of Eternal Life (Titus 1:1, 2), in Questions and Answers…
