Jan. 14, 1862

Jan. 14, 1862: Gen. Samuel Curtis, in command of 12,000 Union troops known as the Army of Southwest Missouri, is ordered by Gen. Halleck to advance southward to Springfield, Missouri to drive Gen. Sterling Price and his Confederates out of the state.

–Also under Halleck’s orders, from Paducah, Kentucky, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant begins his advance southward–that is, upstream–on both the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers with over 20,000 troops and river gunboats from the Navy, in what originates as a diversion to press the Confederate forces in several places at once, as was Pres. Lincoln’s desire.

–George Michael Neese, a Confederate artilleryman campaigning in the wintry snows of Virginia with Stonewall Jackson, writes in his journal: "That little old faded cap that General Jackson wears may shelter a brain that is filled with skeletons of strategic maneuvers, war maps, and battle-field plans, but if he thinks that we are India-rubber and can keep on courting Death with impunity, by marching in the snow with wet feet all day, and then be snowed under at night, he will find that by the time the robins sing again half of his command will be in the hospital or answering roll call in some other clime."

Neese adds: "This morning when I got up I crawled from under four inches of snow on my blanket, and this was the third time we were snowed under in the last two weeks. We marched in the snow all day, and this evening I stood barefooted in the snow, on a little plank however, wringing the water not only out of my socks, but shoes too. My shoes are Confed. and the leather is only half tanned. I wrung them out this evening like an old heavy dish rag, and now they look like dog-feed. Looking at my dog-feed shoes sitting by the campfire is what causes the pessimistic reflections to troop through my brain."