March 1, 1862: Columbus, Kentucky. On this date, Gen. Beauregard, now in command
over Gen. Leonidas Polk’s troops stationed at the fortress-like Columbus,
Kentucky, orders Polk to begin evacuating Columbus lest he be cut off from the
rest of the Confederacy. Polk begins the withdrawal today. Beauregard intends to make
Island No. 10, at a strategic bend in the Mississippi, a fortified anchor for his new left
flank---with the right flank at Corinth, Mississippi—in order to hold western
Tennessee.
---In a sharp skirmish several miles of New Madrid, Missouri, Gen. John Pope’s Army of the Mississippi (Federal) attacks a smaller force under Gen. Jeff Thompson, the irrepressible “swamp fox” of the Rebel cause in southeastern Missouri. Thompson has four small-bore rifled cannon with him, and he loses three of them to the Yankees as Pope closes in on the Confederate forces at New Madrid.
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