August 5, 1862

August 5, 1862:  On the way downriver to aid Breckinridge on the attack on Baton Rouge, due to engine trouble, the CSS Arkansas, near Baton Rouge, runs aground while under attack from the ironclad USS Essex.  Her skipper Commander Isaac Stevens orders her abandoned and burned.  The Arkansas drifts downstream until the fire reached the magazine and she explodes. 

---Gulf Theater, Battle of Baton Rouge, Louisiana:  Gen. John C. Breckinridge orders his forces forward, and their initial attacks drive the Federals under Gen. Thomas Williams back into the town.  At the head of a counterattack, Gen. Williams is killed outright.  As the Rebels push the Federals all the way back against the waterfront, they listen in vain for the guns of the Arkansas.  Instead, Federal naval guns and a few well-placed batteries on land begin to rake the Confederate troops, already severely depleted by casualties and exhaustion.  Breckinridge orders a retreat from the city, turning a tactical victory into a strategic retreat.  Breckinridge’s troops march to Port Hudson to begin preparing its defenses, upstream from Baton Rouge.  Union Victory.

Losses:  Union – 383       Confederate – 456

---John Henry Brown, a portrait painter in Philadelphia, writes in his journal:

Still too warm for painting.

The President has called for three hundred thousand more soldiers by draft. It has created great excitement. I confess it gives me some uneasiness. I believe that a days march, under such a Sun as we now have, would kill me, besides I have no heart for this War, nor money to get a substitute. Things look worse for the Union now, than at any time during the War.

---At Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Gen. James S. Wadsworth of the Army arrests the editors and publishers of the Patriot and Union, for distributing posters and flyers designed to discourage and thwart the recruitment effort.