July 4, 1862 - Independence Day

July 4, 1862:  Naval action on the James River:  Lieutenant T.H. Stevens, commander of the U.S.S. Maratanza, sorties up the James River and encounters the C.S.S. Teaser, a gunboat armed with a 32-pounder gun, in addition to a 57-pounder rifled gun, and a 12-pounder gun.  After the exchange of several shots, the Yankee vessel fired a shell that pierced the Teaser’s boiler, after which its crew abandons it in haste.  Stevens captures the Teaser, as well as an observation balloon. 

The deck of the captured CSS Teaser shown damaged by shell fire

---John Hunt Morgan, a Kentuckian in the Confederate Cavalry, had been building a reputation as a bold and innovative commander.  Having raised a regiment of troops at his own expense, he became colonel in command of the 2^nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment in the Confederate army.  More recently, his reputation drew a large battalion of Georgia mounted partisan rangers, and two troops of Texan riders, to join him, forming a light brigade.  He trained his men in cavalry tactics that were unconventional, eschewing sabers in favor of rifles.  Most of his recruits have trained in the infantry, and Morgan uses them as mounted infantry.  In time, Basil Duke is made commander of the 2^nd Kentucky as Morgan assumed the duties of brigade commander.  He also acquires two light 12-pounder howitzers.  On this date, Morgan and his 876 men and two guns start out from Knoxville, embarking on his first major raid.  Their goal is the populated and fertile central bluegrass country of central Kentucky, especially Lexington.

Morgan's Lexington Rifles in camp

---Private Oliver Willcox Norton of the Union army writes home with a detailed account of his experience in the Battle of Gaines Mill, showing the tendency of his rifle to be more prone to getting wounded than his body:

The order was given to face about. We did so and tried to form in line, but while the line was forming, a bullet laid low the head, the stay, the trust of our regiment—our brave colonel, and before we knew what had happened the major shared his fate. We were then without a field officer, but the boys bore up bravely. . . . Those in the rear of us received the order but the aide sent to us was shot before he reached us and so we got no orders. Henry and Denison were shot about the same time as the colonel. I left them together under a tree. I returned to the fight, and our boys were dropping on all sides of me. I was blazing away at the rascals not ten rods off when a ball struck my gun just above the lower band as I was capping it, and cut it in two. The ball flew in pieces and part went by my head to the right and three pieces struck just below my left collar bone. The deepest one was not over half an inch, and stopping to open my coat I pulled them out and snatched a gun from Ames in Company H as he fell dead. Before I had fired this at all a ball clipped off a piece of the stock, and an instant after, another struck the seam of my canteen and entered my left groin. I pulled it out, and, more maddened than ever, I rushed in again. A few minutes after, another ball took six inches off the muzzle of this gun. I snatched another from a wounded man under a tree, and, as I was loading kneeling by the side of the road, a ball cut my rammer in two as I was turning it over my head. Another gun was easier got than a rammer so I threw that away and picked up a fourth one. Here in the road a buckshot struck me in the left eyebrow, making the third slight scratch I received in the action. It exceeded all I ever dreamed of, it was almost a miracle. Then came the retreat across the river; rebels on three sides of us left no choice but to run or be killed or be taken prisoners. We left our all in the hollow by the creek and crossed the river to Smith’s division. The bridge was torn up and when I came to the river I threw my cartridge box on my shoulder and waded through. It was a little more than waist deep. I stayed that night with some Sherman boys in Elder Drake’s company in the Forty-ninth New York.

Sunday night we lay in a cornfield in the rain, without tent or blanket. Monday we went down on the James river, lying behind batteries to support them. Tuesday the same—six days exposed to a constant fire of shot and shell, till almost night, when we went to the front and engaged in another fierce conflict with the enemy. Going on to the field, I picked up a tent and slung it across my shoulder. The folds of that stopped a ball that would have passed through me. I picked it out, put it in my pocket, and, after firing sixty rounds of my own and a number of a wounded comrade’s cartridges, I came off the field unhurt, and ready, but not anxious, for another fight.

*Across the nation, Americans on both sides consider the meanings of the war on this, the Birthday of the United States:

---A Seneca County, New York newspaper, on this occasion of the nation’s founding, publishes this editorial with a decided Copperhead slant:

The recurrence of the birthday of our National Independence has heretofore been the occasion for universal congratulation and rejoicing. How different the scene in 1862! Instead of Peace, Union, and Prosperity, we have Civil War, Disunion and all their concomitant evils. Instead of National rejoicing, the land is filled with mourning. Upon every breeze is borne the the sad, silent messenger of death. Hearts are bleeding all over the land at the loss of loved ones, stricken down in this most cruel and unnatural, war. What a day for rejoicing! And for what can we rejoice? Our common interests are gone, sacrificed for the sake of our jealousies and passions. Fanaticism and madness rule the hour, and our beloved country seems to be fast drifting toward anarchy and ruin.

. . . We are a guilty nation, proud, wicked, and vain-glorious. If we have not sought war, we are at least guilty of hastening it upon our fellow-countrymen. To avoid all of its horrors we should acknowledge our wrongs and retrace our steps. Our common history must be read and studied anew, and we must again dwell on the glorious deeds of a common ancestry, while a thick and oblivious veil must be drawn over the awful and tragic events of our recent history. The blessings and glories of the past must be rehearsed. . . . One hope – one heart – one future – one magnificent destiny! Inspired by these feelings and actuated by these sentiments only, can Peace be restored and our People again made happy and prosperous. Until then all national rejoicing is mere mockery.

---Henry Adams, son of the U.S. Ambassador in London, Charles Francis Adam, Sr., writes to his brother Charles, Jr., a cavalry officer in the Union army, expressing the anxieties they feel for the cause of the Union from the London point of view:

The truth is we are suffering now under one of those periodical returns of anxiety and despondency that I have often written of. . . . but meanwhile we are haunted by stories about McClellan and by the strange want of life that seems justly or not to characterize our military and naval motions. You at Charleston seem to be an exception to the rule of stagnation which leaves us everywhere on the defensive even when attacking. A little dash does so much to raise one’s spirits, and now our poor men only sicken in marshes. I think of it all as little as I can.

He adds observations about how the cotton shortage is affecting the working class in England---without saying how such a situation may turn British sympathies toward the South:

The suffering among the operatives in Lancashire is very great and is increasing in a scale that makes people very uncomfortable though as yet they keep quiet about it. Cotton is going up to extraordinary prices; in a few days only it advanced three cents a pound and is still rising. Prices for cotton goods are merely nominal and vary according to the opinions of the holders, so that the whole trade is now pure speculation. Mills are closing in every direction.

 

---His father, Ambassador Charles Francis Adams, Sr., writes also to Charles, Jr.:

This detestable war is not of our own choosing, and out of it must grow consequences important to the welfare of coming generations, . . . I had hoped that the progress of General McClellan would have spared us much of this trouble. But it is plain that he has much of the Fabian policy in his composition which threatens to draw the war into greater length. Of course we must be content to take a great deal on trust. Thus far the results have been all that we had a reasonable right to expect. Let us hope that the delay is not without its great purposes. My belief is unshaken that the end of this conflict is to topple down the edifice of slavery. Perhaps we are not yet ready to come up to that work, and the madness of the resistance is the instrument in the hands of Divine Providence to drive us to it. It may be so. I must hold my soul in patience, and pray for courage and resignation.

This is the 4th of July. Eighty-six years ago our ancestors staked themselves in a contest of a far more dangerous and desperate character. The only fault they committed was in omitting to make it more general and complete. . . . I am not a friend of the violent policy of the ultras who seem to me to have no guide but their own theories. This great movement must be left in a degree to develope itself, and human power must be applied solely to shape the consequences so far as possible to the best uses.

---William C. Horton, of the U.S. Navy, assigned to the U.S.S. Hartford under Flag Officer Farragut on the Mississippi, tells of the fleet’s run past the guns of Vicksburg, and how they celebrated the Fourth of July:

During the night the mortars were moved up to easy range, and on the 28th, before daylight, the mortars opened in earnest. The whole fleet now moved up to the attack. Our ships were before the city, while the shells from the mortars were being hurled right over our heads, and, as battery after battery was unmasked from every conceivable position, the ridge of the bluff was one sheet of fire. The big ships sent in their broadsides, the mortars scores of shell, and all combined to make up a grand display and terrible conflict. After nearly two hours of hard fighting, our ships had nearly all passed the city, out of range, and the firing ceased.

On looking around I found the Hartford riddled from stem to stern; first a hole through her bow, then two through the side, one below water, then another through the bulwarks, another through the stern and cabin, and another through the smoke-pipe, &c., &c., the main topsail-yard cut in twain, and the rigging terribly cut fore and aft.

Our casualties in killed and wounded were light. . . . The afternoon was devoted to burying the dead and communicating with the ram fleet belonging .to Commodore Davis’s division. From our anchorage we’ could see across the point of land to General Williams’s camp and the transports below, and we immediately established communication with them. Here we spent the Fourth of July, which was celebrated by the booming of cannon from both fleets, and a volley of shells to the rebels. . . .

---Young Sarah Morgan of Baton Rouge writes of her feelings about the future of the nation---sure of her Confederate loyalties and yet uncertain about the vicious nature of the division between North and South:

For a few days before his arrival here, we saw a leading article in the leading Union paper of New Orleans, threatening us with the arming of the slaves for our extermination if England interfered, in the same language almost as Butler used when here; three days ago the same paper ridiculed the idea, and said such a brutal, inhuman thing was never for a moment thought of, it was too absurd. And so the world goes! We all turn somersaults occasionally.

And yet, I would rather we would achieve our independence alone, if possible. It would be so much more glorious. And then I would hate to see England conquer the North, even if for our sake; my love for the old Union is still too great to be willing to see it so humiliated. If England would just make Lincoln come to his senses, and put an end to all this confiscation which is sweeping over everything, make him agree to let us alone and behave himself, that will be quite enough. But what a task! . . .