May 3, 1862

May 3, 1862: Eastern Theater, Peninsula Campaign - Siege of Yorktown. Gen. McClellan, still unaware that only Johnston’s 57,000 men are facing him at Yorktown, sets tomorrow, May 4, as the date for the devastating bombardment to begin, now that he has all of his siege artillery in prepared and fortified positions. He and the engineers of the Army of the Potomac have spend almost exactly a month in siege operations and construction of the works, since the fortified Yorktown is the only "dry" road to Richmond, the Warwick River slanting across nearly the whole width of the peninsula. (See map.) Gen. Johnston, writing to Gen. Lee concerning the initial Union movements against Yorktown, and how Gen. Magruder paraded his men around and around by a break in the forest screen to convince the Yanks that he had many more troops, says, "No one but McClellan would have hesitated to attack."

—This evening, Gen. Joseph Johnston gives orders to his troops to pull out of Yorktown entrenchments—all 26 brigades and 36 field batteries—a nearly impossible task for 57,000 to do without alerting the opposing army. Reports by runaway "contrabands" affirm that the Rebels are pulling out and heading away up the Peninsula, but McClellan refuses to believe it, because Allen Pinkerton’s spies have reported nearly 200,000 Rebels in the trenches before them. In the evening, Confederate artillery opens fire in a bombardment all along the line, to mask with withdrawal of the infantry. The Southern troops leave quietly in the late hours of the night, leaving the fortifications all across the Peninsula empty.

—George Templeton Strong, a New York lawyer engaged in the U.S. Sanitary Commission and its causes, has made a trip to Virginia with other USSC officials to inspect the army camps and to visit. On April 30k, he and his group set out on the steamer Daniel Webster down the Potomac and up the York River, close to the fortified lines between Federal and Confederate forces there. They land, and the next morning are up exploring the camps and witnessing hospital conditions that are appalling: "Men are lying on bare hospital floors and perishing of tyhpoid who could be saved if they had a blanket or a bed, or appropriate food. . . . " Strong goes closer to the front lines for a look:
I ascended a high tree by a very edubious ladder and had a veiw of Yorktown and rebel batteries about a mile off. They were throwing shell every three minutes or thereabouts, but their practice was bad. They shells burst in the air generally about forty-five degrees up. Only one did well, and that burst in a wood on our left, where it no doubt damaged the forest growth of Virginia but accomplished nothing more. McClellan’s staff in the best of spirits, confident of success. They say our batteries when tghey open will be heavier than those arraed against Sebastopol [Crimean War], and that one of them, No. 1 on York River, on our extreme right, will be the heaviest ever mounted.

—Part of Halleck’s large expeditionary force strikes tents and marches 8 miles toward Corinth. There is some skirmishing along the way between Rebel pickets and the Union vedettes.

—Tennessee: Near Crump’s Landing, local planters ask Gen. Lew Wallace of the Union Army to help them protect their cotton. Confederate orders are that all cotton be burned in order to deprive the Yankees of any profit. The planters, however, are more in the mood to sell it to the Yankees, and so ask Wallace’s help to keep their own army from torching the precious fiber.