February 7, 1863

February 7, 1863

–Near Williamsburg, Virginia, a squadron of the 5^th Pennsylvania Cavalry is ambushed by the Rebels, when "twenty saddles were emptied the first volley". Other riders were wounded and de-horsed when they ran into wire stretched across the road, as the Rebel cavalry bore down upon them. The Union riders were missing over 35 men, either killed or captured.

Cavalry on a raid

–Three steamers, blockade runners dashing in from Nassau, run through the Federal cordon at Charleston, South Carolina, loaded with valuable cargoes.


–The President and Mrs. Lincoln host a reception at the White House, at which many distinguished guests appear, according to the New York Herald.


–Captain Charles Wright Wills, an officer in the 103^rd Illinois Infantry Regiment, writes with some emotion in his journal about the Copperheads (Northerners who oppose the war and sympathize with the South) back in Illinois, and the Chicago Times, a disloyal newspaper, and the harm that they cause:
Camp 103d Illinois Infantry, Jackson, Tenn.,
February 7, ’63

There was a dose of medicine administered to the command in this district yesterday that will certainly be productive of good. I already feel that it has indued me with fresh vigor and really made me quite young again. "The sale or introduction of the Chicago Times in this district is hereby forbidden until further orders." By order of Brig. Gen’l. J. C. Sullivan. That same d__d old skeesicks has been protecting secesh property here in the strictest manner, and I’d never thought it possible for him to do as good a thing. It will do an immensity of good to the army, and if the President will only suppress the paper and several others of the same stripe, and hang about 200 prominent copperhead scoundrels in the North, we may then hope that the army will once more be something like its former self. Just as true as there is a God, if I was provost marshal in Fulton County [Ill.], with my company for a guard, I’d hang at least ten men whose names I have. I know I’d be wrong, and would have no right to do so, but the good I’d do the Union troops would amply repay me for getting my own neck stretched.