April 19, 1863

April 19, 1863

---Pres. Abraham Lincoln takes a steamer to Aquia Creek, Virginia, to meet with Gen. Hooker and discuss war plans.  Gen. Stoneman’s cavalry is still stuck at the crossings of the Rappahannock, and Hooker’s plans on hold, at the moment.

 

--- Grierson’s Raid:  Early this morning, Grierson’s columns ride into the town of Pontotoc, surprising the town’s garrison and routing it.  The stores and supplies of the town fall into their hands.  So far, the Union raiders have pushed over 70 miles into Mississippi without any serious opposition.

 

---Gen. John McClernand, at New Carthage, Louisiana, sends an urgent message to Gen. Grant for a dozen river transports, with which he promises an end to the war in the Gulf States, by enabling him to capture Grand Gulf, on the Mississippi shore of the river:

GENERAL: My present movement, if properly sustained, ought, and I believe will, eventuate in the extinguishment of the rebellion in the Gulf States, and limit it in the East.

Please give me a dozen good transport. They are necessary to enable me to move my forces rapidly, and to strike the enemy before he can fortify. . . . Without them, delay and approaching hot weather may ensue to jeopardize everything; without them, Grand Gulf may become another Vicksburg or Port Hudson. The loss of a few transports in running the blockade are not worthy to count anything in the opposing scale.

 

---George Templeton Strong writes in his journal about England and its sympathies:

We drift fast toward war with England, but I think we shall not reach that point.  The shop-keepers who own England want to do us all the harm they can and to give all possible aid and comfort to out slave-breeding and woman-flogging adversary, for England has degenerated into a trader, manufacturer, and banker. . . . It’s fearful to think that the sympathies of England---the England of Shakespeare and Hooker, Cowper, Milton, Somers, Erskine, and others . . . are guided more by mere considerations of profit and loss.