Jan. 30, 1862

Jan. 30, 2012: On this date, the Richmond Daily Dispatch, having learned that the commander of Federal troops at the Battle of Mill Springs, George Thomas, is a Virginian, offers this grim pronouncement on Southerners who fight for the North: "The man in the North who sympathizes with the South may still be faithful to his own section, and is probably its most intelligent friend. It is not his home that is invaded, nor any of his interests that are assailed. But we have no words to express our detestation and scorn of the Southern citizen who can side with the North against his own section in a war upon the land which gave him birth, upon its firesides and altars, upon its women and children. Must not the blood that is shed, the blood of his brethren and countrymen, stain his guilty soul and haunt his evil imagination like the blood of murder! Out upon the wretches!"

–Due to orders from Gen. McClellan and Pres. Lincoln, Gen. Halleck orders Gen. Grant (with whom he is barely on speaking terms) to take what troops he has and to attack Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, in cooperation with Flag Officer Andrew Foote’s gunboat flotilla.

–On this date, the USS Monitor is launched at John Ericsson’s shipyard at Greenpoint, Long Island. Asst. Sec. of the Navy Gustavus Fox has warned the administration that the Rebel conversion of the USS Merrimac into an ironclad vessel at Norfolk is going apace, and the Monitor is meant to counter that threat.