July 20, 1862

July 20, 1862: Gen. Braxton Bragg, with the Confederate Army of Mississippi, has marched out of Tupelo, Mississippi and headed for northern Alabama, where he intends to organize his army for an invasion northward. Left in northern Mississippi are Confederate troops under Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn, threatening Corinth, which is under the watchful eye of Gen. William S. Rosecrans, who now commands the Union Army of the Mississippi, formerly Pope’s command.

—Gen. Gideon Pillow, of the Confederate Army, writes home to his brother about the North’s prospects and problems with getting volunteers, and prophesies the eventual use of black troops in the Yankee army:
The Northern Gov’t is alarmed— the people there are not volunteering as they expected. I am satisfied they will ultimately adopt the policy of seizing our Negro men wherever they can be had—with the aid of their Army—that they will arm these Negroes and place them in their Army. I am not afraid of these Negroes in the Field, but all Negroes so taken off will be lost forever to us. That this Policy is certain to be adopted in the future I entertain in no sort of doubt. I think our only safety for our men is to bring them to the Interior of the South. . . .

—C.J. Hardaway, a Union soldier with McClellan’s army at Harrison’s Landing, Virginia, writes home to his mother, and reveals a soldier’s impressions of the battles lately fought contrasted with the public’s impressions:
Dear Mother

I received your kind letter and tea all sound night before last. The letter was first rate and so is the tea and it has done me a good deal of good so quick it is worth ten times what it cost to get it here. . . . The descriptions of the battles in that are the nearest the truth of any paper that I have seen yet. The most of the corespondents [sic] will lie so that they spoil the whole thing as near as I can find out there was not a great many of them on the field when the late battles were fought they thinking it was safer to stay a good distance in the rear a good many of them jumped aboard the boats and I guess they have not stoped [sic] yet. Everything here now is very quiet and I hope it will continue so for some time at least long enough for the army to get over the efects [sic] of the late disasters. I should think from the way the papers talk that they were not getting volunteers verry [sic] fast. I guess the people have found out that there is no fun in being a soldier when they get where they have to fight. Have you begun haying yet? I think I would like to be there and work in the field a little while some fine day about this season of the year. . . .

—Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest of the Confederate Cavalry, having captured Murfreesboro, Tennessee on his raid, and driving away the small garrison, is a cause of great concern to Gen. Buell, whose Army of the Ohio is moving slowly westward to take Chattanooga. Buell reluctantly diverts some of his troops under Brig. Gen. William Sooy Smith to re-take Murfreesboro. Forrest, in the meantime, pushes on to capture Lebanon, Tennessee.

—A yet-unknown Lieutenant John S. Mosby of the 1^st Virginia Cavalry, awaiting a train to take him to Gen. Jackson, is captured by Yankees of the 2^nd New York Cavalry, led by the then-unknown Judson Kilpatrick. Mosby is taken to Washington, D.C., where is he is soon paroled.

—Sarah Morgan of Baton Rouge writes in her diary of the disorder in the streets (and in her heart) as a threat of a Confederate attack on the Union-held town stirs the army and populace into a panic:
If I was a man — oh, would n’t I be in Richmond with the boys! . . . What is the use of all these worthless women, in war times? If they attack, I shall don the breeches, and join the assailants, and fight, though I think they would be hopeless fools to attempt to capture a town they could not hold for ten minutes under the gunboats. How do breeches and coats feel, I wonder? I am actually afraid of them. I kept a suit of Jimmy’s hanging in the armoir for six weeks waiting for the Yankees to come, thinking fright would give me courage to try it (what a seeming paradox!), but I never succeeded. Lilly one day insisted on my trying it, and I advanced so far as to lay it on the bed, and then carried my bird out — I was ashamed to let even my canary see me; — but when I took a second look, my courage deserted me, and there ended my first and last attempt at disguise. I have heard so many girls boast of having worn men’s clothes; I wonder where they get the courage.

—August Belmont, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, writes to Thurlow Weed, a noted and influential operator in New York City, in an attempt to affect policy. After bemoaning the lack of recruiting and the lack of pursuing the war vigorously, Belmont still wistfully hopes for a negotiated peace:
What frightens me more than the disasters in the field, is the apathy and distrust which I grieve to say I meet at every step, even from men of standing, and hitherto of undoubted loyalty to the Union. . . . It may appear almost hopeless to attempt to bring the South back to the Union by negotiation. Men and women alike, in that distracted portion of our country, have become frantic and exasperated by the teachings of unprincipled leaders and the miseries of civil war. Still, I cannot bring myself to the belief that the door to a reconciliation between the two sections is irrevocably and forever shut. The losses and sufferings which have befallen us have been felt tenfold in the revolted States, and the thinking men of the South must see that a continuation of the war must end in the utter destruction of their property and institutions. The frightful carnage of many a battle-field must have convinced each section of the bravery of its opponents, and how much better it would be to have them as friends than foes.

While I am convinced that the President would be willing to see the South in the lawful possession of all its Constitutional rights, I have not lost all hope, that with these rights guaranteed, a re-union of the two sections might be accomplished. In any event, it seems to me that an attempt at negotiation should be made, and that the time for it has not entirely passed away.