May 2, 1862

May 2, 1862: The Richmond Daily Dispatch, ruminating over the significant Southern losses in the past few months—especially that of New Orleans—bolsters Southern pride in the use of small arms, but mourns the lack of skill in the use of shore batteries and river defenses:
It cannot be denied that, with one or two exceptions, the gunnery of our shore batteries most have been most miserably managed from the very beginning of this war. We never heard of better marksmen than we are with small arms, nor of more indifferent shots from big guns. All this is, of course, the want of practice, but, whatever the cause, the ships have had it all their own way with the shore batteries. The ships during this war seem to have made up for all their losses in former wars, and to have visited upon the Confederate shore batteries all the pummelings they have received from shore batteries from the beginning of the world. . . . If we cannot so obstruct and defend the James river as to keep the Yankees out of Richmond, we are beneath the Chinese in resources and valor. They obstructed and defended the approaches to their capital in such a way that the powerful English fleet not only failed to pass them, but was almost annihilated. Shame, shame, shame, if we permit these Yankees to accomplish an achievement over us which even Great Britain was not able to accomplish over the Chinese! The scandal and shame of such a transaction would be more ruinous even than a defeat. . . . There must be . . . no second edition of New Orleans, here, and at the doors of this capital we must prepare to explode the ridiculous notion of gunboat invincibility, or prepare to become ourselves the laughing stock of the world.

—Gen. Beauregard, with his army of Shiloh veterans, the Army of the Mississippi, issues a proclamation to his soldiers promising that they would defend Corinth from Yankee depredations: "We are about to meet once more in the shock of battle the invaders of our soil, the despoilers of our homes, the disturbers of our family ties. . . . Face to face, hand to hand, we are to decide whether we are to be freemen or the vile slaves of those who are free only in name, and who but yesterday were vanquished, although in largely superior numbers, in their own encampments on the ever-memorable field of Shiloh." Still under the delusion that Shiloh was a Confederate victory, Beauregard commands about 46,000 men at Corinth, having been reinforced by Van Dorn’s erstwhile Army of the West (fresh from defeat at Pea Ridge in March). Significantly, however, the Union combined armies of Grant, Buell, and Pope, under field command of Gen. Halleck, was still camped at Shiloh, and had not budged one inch toward following up the Rebel retreat from that battle.

—Captain William Thompson Lusk, of the 24^th Massachusetts Infantry, stationed at the Union base at Port Royal, South Carolina, writes home about Spring in the South and the rigors of army life:

Beaufort, S. C. May 2d, 1862.

My dear Mother:
May has opened charmingly in Beaufort. The air is warm but not oppressive. We are luxuriating in green peas, strawberries, blackberries, all the early vegetables, and the fig trees, loaded with fruit, will soon supply us with an abundance of green figs. Fish are supplied by the rivers in great plenty. Indeed we are well supplied with all sorts of good things, so we have little of which we can complain, except inaction. It is now fifteen days since a mail has reached us from the North. . . . A sailing vessel occasionally brings us a newspaper from the North. Otherwise we would be quite separated from the rest of mankind, and would be compelled to consider the North as having regularly seceded from us.

I have received the beautiful flag you sent me. I gave it to the boys of the Company, who were delighted. The other companies are quite envious. Thanks, dear Mother, a thousand times, for the expression of your love. . . .