Rose O’Neal Greenhow
October 1864
By Phil Kohn
Phil Kohn can be reached at USCW160@yahoo.com
Former Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow is returning from England with secret dispatches for the Confederate government and $2,000 in gold aboard the British blockade runner Condor on October 1, 1864. (After her release from Federal detention in 1863, she had been sent to Europe as a diplomatic courier by President Jefferson Davis to build support for the Confederacy among aristocrats in England and France.) Being pursued by the gunboat USS Niphon, Condor runs aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, near Wilmington, North Carolina. Seeking to avoid capture and seizure of the dispatches, Greenhow tries to escape in a small boat. A wave swamps the craft, which capsizes, drowning Greenhow, who is weighted down by the gold, which had been sewn into her clothing. In Alabama, Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men continue raiding the supply lines of Maj. Gen. William Sherman. They skirmish with Union troops at Athens and Huntsville.
Four days of continuous fighting at Peebles’ Farm, southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, come to an end on October 2. The Confederates try to keep the Federals from extending their lines, but at the end of the action, Union lines are three miles longer. To the southwest, 3,600 Union troops, including about 400 black soldiers, attack Saltville, Virginia, but are repulsed. Some U.S. reports allege that the Confederates massacred numbers of wounded black soldiers left behind on the battlefield. In Florida, a Federal expedition from Pensacola is turned back by Confederates at Marianna, in the Panhandle. Gen. Pierre Beauregard is given overall command of the two Confederate armies in the west, commanded by Gen. John Bell Hood and Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor. Beauregard is to direct the overall strategy and coordinate the activities of the two armies but is not to interfere with their field operations.
In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Confederate cavalry strikes at Brig. Gen Philip Sheridan’s Union force at Harrisonburg on October 3. In Missouri, the Confederate troops of Maj. Gen. Sterling Price engage Federal soldiers in towns west of St. Louis. To meet this danger, Union officials reinforce the garrison at St. Louis by redeploying troops earmarked to be sent to Maj. Gen. George Thomas, now in Nashville, Tennessee, positioned there by Maj. Gen. William Sherman to direct defenses in case of a Confederate invasion of Tennessee.
On October 4, Gen. John Bell Hood moves his troops from Palmetto, Georgia, to the rear of Sherman’s army in Atlanta. Hood’s Confederates seize Acworth, Georgia, and begin moving northward along the railroad that runs to Chattanooga, Tennessee, cutting Sherman’s supply line. In Missouri, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, unwilling to engage the heavily reinforced Union garrison at St. Louis, turns his troops to the west and away from the city.
The next day, October 5, Gen. Hood’s troops attack the Union garrison at Allatoona Pass, Georgia, but are driven off. Maj. Gen. William Sherman, realizing that Hood’s moves are not mere raids, leaves one corps behind and begins moving in pursuit of Hood, who slides his troops to the west.
Maj. Gen. Forrest and his Confederates continue to harass Union forces in Sherman’s rear, engaging with Federal troops on October 6 at Florence, Alabama.
On October 7, Brig. Gen. Sheridan informs Lt. Gen. Grant that, in accordance with his orders, his men have burned 2,000 barns filled with wheat, hay and farm equipment, destroyed over 70 flour mills, driven off over 4,000 head of cattle and killed 3,000 sheep in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He adds that, when he is through, the area between Winchester and Staunton “will have little in it for man or beast.” At Bahia, in eastern Brazil, the gunboat USS Wachusett traps and captures the Confederate raider CSS Florida, which is in port for repairs, refitting and recoaling. At 3:00 a.m., with half of the Confederate vessel’s crew — including its captain — ashore and sleeping, Wachusett sails in, rams Florida, sends over a boarding party that overcomes Florida’s partial crew and tows its prize out of the harbor. On its way out, Wachusett is fired upon by Brazilian artillery from a fort overlooking the harbor and pursued by Brazilian navy vessels. Even towing Florida, Wachusett manages to outrun its pursuers and gets away. In the melee, the Confederates suffer five killed, nine wounded and 70 captured. Three Union sailors are wounded in the action.
Secretly purchased in England by Confederate agents, Sea King, a full-rigged sailing ship with auxiliary steam power, sails from Liverpool on October 8, ostensibly on a trading voyage to Bombay, India. Later the same day, the British supply steamer Laurel also departs Liverpool, carrying Confederate naval personnel, naval guns, ammunition and ship’s stores, headed for Madeira, a Portuguese-owned archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, some 250 miles north of the Azores and 320 miles west of Morocco.
On October 9 in Virginia, Brig. Gen. Philip Sheridan, having withstood several strikes by Confederate cavalry, goes on the offensive. He sends Union cavalry led by Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt against Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederate horsemen. After suffering 57 casualties and losing 300 men captured, the Southerners flee southward up the Shenandoah Valley. In Missouri, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s Confederates — still heading northwest away from St. Louis — capture the town of Boonville, a strategic target sitting astride the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
A Federal expedition on October 10 attempts to capture Eastport, Mississippi, in the extreme northeastern corner of the state, to protect against a possible move westward by Gen. Hood’s Confederates and to use as a jumping-off point for actions against the cavalry of Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Federal troops are ferried up the Tennessee River in three transports, accompanied by the tinclad gunboat USS Undine and the convoy/escort vessel USS Key West. As their troops are disembarking, the flotilla comes under fire from hidden Confederate shore batteries. After 30 minutes of intense bombardment, Undine and two of the transports are badly damaged and all the vessels quickly depart, stranding the troops they have landed, who are left to their own devices at making it back to Federal lines (which most manage to do).
In Georgia, Hood, having moved west at Allatoona, turns to the north on October 12 and hits Resaca, Georgia. The next day, his troops take Dalton. With Sherman close behind and gaining, however, Hood turns his men southwestward towards Alabama.
On October 13, Confederate Col. John Singleton Mosby and his partisan rangers derail a passenger train near Kearneysville, West Virginia, about 26 miles northeast of Winchester, Virginia. They “relieve” two U.S. Army paymasters who are aboard of $173,000 and then burn the train before making their escape.
In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, sporadic skirmishing occurs between the forces of Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan and Lt. Gen. Jubal Early on October 14 at various points along Cedar Creek. In Missouri, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price calls upon the citizenry to help him reclaim the state. There is fighting near the towns of Danville and Glasgow, Missouri.
Brig. Gen. Jo Shelby, commanding Sterling Price’s Confederate cavalry, captures Glasgow, Missouri, on October 15, forcing the surrender of the 400-man Union garrison. They later capture Sedalia, Missouri, around 43 miles to the southwest, when the 700-man Union garrison there flees.
In Virginia, Brig. Gen. Phil Sheridan posts his men at Cedar Creek, near Middletown, on October 16, and departs for Washington, D.C., to brief President Lincoln and Lt. Gen. U.S. Grant on his Shenandoah Valley operations. In Missouri, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price and his Confederates, capture the town of Ridgely, about 30 miles north of Kansas City, as they continue northwestward along the Missouri River.
As Confederate troops under Maj. Gen. Sterling Price continue their trek northwestward in Missouri on October 17, they find Union forces converging on them from three directions: Soldiers under Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis, commanding the Department of Kansas, are approaching from the north; a cavalry force led by Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasanton is following in their rear; and cavalry commanded by Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Smith is coming up from the south. In Georgia, Gen. John Bell Hood ends the raiding on Maj. Gen. William Sherman’s supply lines and moves his army towards Gadsden, Alabama. Hood hopes that by moving the 90 miles or so to the southwest, to Gadsden, and then heading north into Tennessee, he can draw Sherman into following him and thereby relieve the pressure on Georgia.
Lt. Gen. Jubal Early on October 18 — learning that Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan has left his Union troops at Cedar Creek, near Middletown, Virginia, and departed for Washington — plans an all-out attack against the Federals for the next morning.
On October 19, hidden by morning fog and mountainous terrain, three divisions of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederates attack the camps of Sheridan’s sleeping troops at Cedar Creek, driving the Federals out of their tents and forcing them to flee in utter disarray. Sheridan, returning from Washington, runs into Union stragglers heading northward. Turning them around, he gallops to the battlefront, arriving around mid-morning, rallying and reorganizing his confused troops. Meanwhile, the Confederate offensive slows to a halt as Southern soldiers fall out of formation to loot the overrun Union camps. Realizing the lack of a Confederate follow-up to their surprise attack, Sheridan orders a counterattack later in the afternoon that pushes the Southerners off the battlefield, forcing Early and his men to retreat to Staunton, Virginia, farther up the Valley. In the North, the war comes to New England: Lt. Bennett Young leads 21 Confederate soldiers on a raid from Philipsburg, Québec Province, Canada, into St. Albans, Vermont, located around 15 miles south of the border. (Young, a member of the 8th Kentucky Cavalry, had been captured and imprisoned, but escaped and fled to Canada. There, he met with Confederate agents and developed his plan to raid across the border as a means of enriching the Confederate Treasury and possibly forcing the Union to move troops to the northern border.) In St. Albans, Young’s group robs three banks of $200,000, but resistance from residents, led by Capt. George Conger, visiting the city on leave from the 1st Vermont Infantry, prevents them from burning the town as they had planned. Within half an hour, the raiders are back in Canada. Under pressure from the U.S., Canadian police round up and arrest 13 of the group. When the U.S. demands extradition, a Canadian court rules that since the raiders were soldiers acting under orders, Canada, officially neutral, cannot extradite them, and — to the outrage of the U.S. — releases the men from custody. Canada does recover and return to the U.S. $88,000 of the amount taken in the raid, but the rest of the money is never found. Off the Madeira Islands, the British supply ship Laurel and the secretly Confederate-owned, full-rigged British ship Sea King — both of which left Liverpool, England, separately on October 8 — rendezvous. Laurel transfers to Sea King its cargo of naval guns, ammunition, ship’s stores, supplies, Confederate sailors and marines, and Lt. James Waddell, CSN. Waddell oversees the conversion of Sea King from a trading vessel to an armed cruiser. When the vessel’s transformation is complete, Waddell lowers the British Union Jack, raises the Confederate naval ensign and takes command of Sea King, now re-named and newly commissioned as the raider CSS Shenandoah. Waddell’s orders are “to seek out and utterly destroy” Union commerce in areas yet undisturbed. Shenandoah heads for the Indian Ocean and beyond.
President Lincoln on October 20 establishes Thanksgiving as a national holiday, to be observed on the last Thursday of November. In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, elements of Brig. Gen. Sheridan’s force engage Confederate rear guards as Lt. Gen. Early leads his men southward towards Staunton.
Confederates and Federals clash in a small engagement at the Little Blue River, southeast of Independence, Missouri, on October 21. Union casualties number around 20, while Confederate losses are at least 34.
In Alabama, Gen. John Bell Hood’s Confederates are in Gadsden, preparing to head northward into Tennessee. His opponent, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, has his force in Gaylesville, just west (and across the state line) from Rome, Georgia. Sherman is confident that he can protect both Atlanta and Chattanooga from this position. In Missouri, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, with around 8,000 Confederates under his command at this point, decides that his best chance for victory is to attack the three Union forces approaching him individually before they can unite. He orders Brig. Gen. Jo Shelby’s cavalry to attack the Federal troops led by Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis in front of him, while cavalry under Brig. Gen. John Marmaduke fends off Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasanton’s Union cavalry in his rear. Shelby’s troopers attack, find an exposed flank and force Curtis’s men to withdraw almost 20 miles to the west, to Westport, Missouri, where they form defensive lines.
On October 23, Brig. Gen. Shelby again attacks Maj. Gen. Curtis’s force, in the Battle of Westport (now a part of Kansas City), Missouri. The fighting is furious, lasting for hours. Finally, the Federals repulse the assault. They then launch a powerful counterattack. While Shelby’s men are frantically fighting this offensive off, Maj. Gen. Pleasanton’s Federals break through Brig. Gen. Marmaduke’s rear guard, forcing them from the field. Now Shelby’s troops find themselves being attacked from the front and the rear and must break off the fight and hastily withdraw. With almost 30,000 combatants (21,000 U.S., 8,000 C.S.), the battle is numerically the largest fought west of the Mississippi River. Casualties number around 1,500 on each side, but the losses are devastating to the much smaller Confederate force. It marks the end of Sterling Price’s campaign (the last that will take place west of the Mississippi) and represents the final serious threat to Federal control of Missouri.
From Westport, Missouri, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s depleted army on October 24 begins retreating southward along the Kansas-Missouri border with Federal cavalry in pursuit.
Federal cavalry pursuing Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s Confederates as they retreat from Missouri catch up with them at Marais des Cygnes, Kansas, on October 25. In the ensuing fight, before the Confederates can once again escape, the Federals capture two generals (Brig. Gen. John Marmaduke and Brig. Gen. William Cabell), four colonels and 1,000 men, as well as 10 artillery pieces.
At Richmond, Missouri, about 40 miles northeast of Kansas City, a detachment of 150 experienced, specially selected Federal troops led by Lt. Col. Samuel P. Cox on October 26 ambush and kill Confederate guerrilla William “Bloody Bill” Anderson — perpetrator of the Centralia (Missouri) Massacre (on September 27, 1864) — and several of his men. Anderson’s second-in-command, Archie Clement (postwar, an outlaw and bank-robber), takes over the leadership of the group, but by November, the gang has splintered, with some of them heading to Texas, while most travel to western Kentucky to link up with (for many of them, their former commander) William Quantrill, who is conducting raids there. Clement’s reduced band, which includes brothers Frank and Jesse James, continues its guerilla tactics in Missouri through the end of the war. In Alabama, Gen. Hood’s Confederate Army of Tennessee arrives at Decatur and finds that the place is occupied by Union soldiers. After some artillery fire at Federal positions, Hood moves his men westward toward Tuscumbia.
On October 27, some 17,000 U.S. troops attack Confederate lines southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, at the Boydton Plank Road. The attempted breakthrough fails due to strong defensive leadership by Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill, but the Federals once again stretch their lines westward; they now extend 35 curving miles from the north end of Richmond to southwest of Petersburg. On the same day, the iron-clad ram CSS Albemarle, anchored in the Roanoke River to protect Plymouth, North Carolina, is blown up and sunk in a night raid by 15 U.S. Navy sailors led by Lt. William Cushing. Only Cushing and one sailor make it back to Union lines, the others being killed or captured. For his success, Cushing is promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander.
In Missouri, Federal troops under Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis once again catch up with and attack the retreating Confederates of Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, on October 28, at Newtonia, Kansas. After several hours of fighting, both sides withdraw, claiming victory. (Most historians consider the battle a Union victory.) While numbers vary according to source, Union casualties are in the vicinity of 250 killed and wounded; Confederate killed and wounded are around 400. From this point on, Price’s troops continue to straggle southward, through Kansas, into the Indian Territory and, finally, into Texas. Of the 12,500 men that Price had at the start of his campaign, only some 3,500 remain at the end. At Gaylesville, Alabama, Union Maj. Gen. Sherman decides that he will leave the defense of Tennessee to Maj. Gen. George Thomas, at Nashville. Sherman will return to Atlanta, to make preparations for an advance from there to the coast.
On October 29, Confederate troopers under the command of Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest are in Tennessee en route to join Gen. Hood’s army — presently at Tuscumbia, Alabama — for Hood’s intended invasion of Tennessee. On the way, Forrest’s men capture the Federal civilian steamboat Mazeppa on the Tennessee River near Fort Henry. The vessel’s cargo includes: 1,000 barrels of flour, 80 cook stoves, dozens of bales of hay, 9,000 pairs of shoes and 1,000 sacks of grain, hardtack and other supplies.
The next day, October 30, Forrest’s men badly damage and capture the tin-clad gunboat USS Undine and the transport vessels USS Venus and USS Cheeseman. Gen. John Bell Hood begins moving his Army of Tennessee across the Tennessee River and seizes Florence, Alabama, about six miles northeast of Tuscumbia. In anticipation of Hood’s invasion, Maj. Gen. George Thomas had already moved his Federal troops some 130 miles westward from Chattanooga to Pulaski, Tennessee, located roughly 50 miles northeast of Florence, Alabama.
Nevada becomes the 36th state of the Union by proclamation of President Lincoln on October 31. Firmly Republican, the new state will be able to give three electoral votes to Lincoln in the coming election. On the same day, with CSS Albemarle sunk and no longer protecting Plymouth, North Carolina, U.S. troops seize the city, ending a six-month Confederate occupation there.
