April 1, 1862 APRIL FOOL'S!

April 1, 1862:  ---THE BATTLE OF CORINTH, Mississippi.  Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, in a bid to surprise the gathering Confederate force at Corinth (before they try to attack his army at Shiloh), marches 30 miles in 32 hours, drives in the Rebel pickets, and throws his divisions into line of battle.  The Rebels are caught by surprise, but Gen. Beauregard quickly forms a fortified line of artillery while Gen. Johnston directs the wavering lines of infantry.  As Grant advances his line in the wake of the fleeing Rebels, he outmarches his artillery.  When he comes up against Beauregard’s line, and orders an assault by McClernand’s and Hurlbut’s divisions.  This attack ends in disaster.  Grant order’s Sherman’s division forward, with Prentiss in support.  Sherman briefly breaks the Southern line, but rebel guns have done great damage to the advancing Federals.  Sherman himself is killed, and Gen. Prentiss captured.  Grant spurs forward to rally his troops, and is killed by an artillery round.  The Union army retreats in a rout, and Gen. Hardee’s infantry and Forrest’s gray cavalry harasses them all the way back to Pittsburg Landing.  By April 4, Johnston will have the Federals, now under the command of Lew Wallace, bottled up in the elbow of Owl Creek, where they surrender.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.  R.I.P.

---The Confederate Navy has been experimenting with hot air balloons, as the Union Army has been using on the Peninsula.  But Professor Skylark Byrd and Commander Gabriel Angell demonstrate the first successful heavier-than-air aircraft, on a flat beach near Norfolk, Virginia.  The aircraft, named the Calhoun, powered by a steam engine, flies over Hampton Roads and drops artillery shells on the Union camps near Fort Monroe.  The Federals scatter in a panic. 

---Confederate invasion of California: Six transports, loaded with nearly 1,500 Confederate soldiers, sail into Monterey Bay, and capture the town.  There, they meet two more regiments of Californians who have formed and trained to fight for the Confederacy.  As they march north, they meet Unionist militia near Santa Cruz and, in a sharp fight, send the Unionists into a retreat all the back to San Francisco.  As the sun sets, in San Francisco Bay, two ironclad sloops (CSS Austin and CSS Raleigh), two schooner (CSS Rapidan and CSS Cape Fear), a captured clipper (now the CSS Chesapeake), and the commerce raider CSS Florida---all flying Confederate ensigns---sail into the bay’s waters, and land marines on the docks.

---Canada declares war on the United States, and three armies (consisting of British regulars and Canadian militia) cross the borders on this date.  One army crosses into Vermont heading to St. Albans, another is amphibiously floated from Toronto across Lake Erie to Sandusky, Ohio, where they land unopposed and march inland.  Another army crosses the border between Ontario and Minnesota, with the purpose of joining with the Sioux in a planned uprising along the Minnesota River Valley. 

---Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, with a brigade of Confederate cavalry, dashes northward from Culpepper Court House, riding by back roads behind Union lines.  On the night before, they ride across the Long Bridge into Washington, D.C., catching the Union pickets completely by surprise, at 11:00 PM, and ride up 14^th Street to Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House.  The Rebels capture the White House guards without a shot.  Gen. Stuart and his staff walk into the President’s study, where Lincoln is writing letters.  The President surrenders, and signs a prepared Cease Fire treaty.  The Rebels put the President in a carriage as a prisoner (pending a formal peace treaty), with guards, and his secretary John Hay, and ride back into Virginia.  The Civil War is over.

---Ironically, at the same time, Pres. Jefferson Davis announces to reporters that he has Negro ancestors, and then resigns in disgrace from the Presidency.

---Sen. William Yancey of the Confederate Senate, introduces a bill to free all of the slaves in the Confederacy, arguing that “we can rob the Yankees of their last weapon against us.”  When news of Lincoln’s capture reaches Richmond, Yancey withdraws the bill.