May 16, 1862

May 16, 1862: Eastern Theater, Shendoah Valley Campaign - Gen. Lee sends orders to Stonewall Jackson and the Army of the Valley to incorporate Ewell’s division under his command and to advance north to engage Gen. Banks’ Union forces near Strasburg. There is evidence that Banks is planning to send troops east to assist McClellan, and Lee wants to be sure that McClellan–who is knocking at Richmond’s door–does not get reinforced.

—In New Orleans, Gen. Butler, in command of the occupying U.S. forces, orders that Confederate money will no longer be used as a medium of exchange. Butler also orders the New Orleans Bee to be closed down, as a newspaper loyal to the enemy, and the New Orleans Delta to be taken over by the Federal government.

—Katherine Prescott Wormeley, a Union woman volunteering as a nurse at an Army hospital down in Virginia, relates in her journal an incident that happened while she was caring for wounded men all laid out on the deck of a ship heading to Washington:

Getting them all washed, as I say, is a droll piece of work. Some are indifferent to the absurd luxury of soap and water, and some are so fussy. Some poor faces we must wash ourselves, and that softly and slowly. I started along each row with two tin basins and two bits of soap, my arm being the towel-horse. Now, you are not to suppose that each man had a basinful of clean water all to himself. However, I thought three to a basin was enough, or four, if they did n’t wash too hard. But an old corporal taught me better. "Stop, marm!" said he, as I was turning back with the dirty water to get fresh; "that water will do for several of us yet. Bless you! I make my coffee of worse than that."

—Josiah Marshall Favill, a young Union officer at Port Royal, South Carolina, remark in his journal a humorous anecdote on the local insect life:

In the meantime, we have been occupying ourselves in the study of natural history, particularly with the pine tick, an insect abounding in these parts; it has a spiral proboscis by which it screws itself fast to the fleshy part of one’s body, without attracting attention or causing any pain, and then quietly proceeds to gorge itself with blood, until it swells to the size of a large coffee berry, and looks almost exactly like one in color and shape. It is at this stage that you begin to feel an itching, and looking for the cause, find half a dozen or more of these ugly black-looking berries sticking on your legs; naturally, you yank them off without hesitancy, but are astonished to find the itching increases, and the inflammation and swelling continues spreading. Upon a close inspection, one finds that on pulling the creature off, his proboscis was left behind, imbedded deeply in the flesh, and this is the cause, or seems to be, of all the trouble. The remedy is to boldly cut out the offending head; there is, however, a scientific method of removing them, when first discovered, and that is, simply to unscrew them; seizing them carefully between the thumb and forefinger, you gently turn to the left, and are surprised to find they come out easily, and completely, exactly like a screw.