Woodbury Historical Tours

The Battle of Mine Creek 156 years ago "It went against us" ===============... This color illustration from volume three of Samuel Reader's autobiography depicts the Battle of Mine Creek, an engagement between Union and Confederate forces that took place in Kansas on October 25, 1864, during the Civil War. The Battle of Mine Creek was one of the largest cavalry engagements of the Civil War and contributed to a Confederate retreat. After the battle Union forces continued their pursuit of Price's Confederates through Missouri, Arkansas and into Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The Confederates never again threatened Kansas. Following Price's retreat the Confederate effort west of the Mississippi River was minimal. The battle was one of the last significant engagements fought in the west. The Civil War ended in April 1865. The title "It went against us" quotes a Confederate summary of the battle. This original color illustration appears between pages 98-99 of volume three of Samuel Reader's autobiography (unit 206900). =============== Creator: Reader, Samuel James, 1836-1914 Date: October 25, 1864 Kansas Historical Society https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/742 Read more on Mine Creek, and how to visit the site today, from the KHS: https://www.kshs.org//mine-creek-battle-october-25-1/18168 American Battlefield Trust resources on Mine Creek (including battle maps): https://www.battlefields.org/l/civil-war/battles/mine-creek

The Battle of Westport OTD in 1864 "The Battle of Westport, fought October 21-23, 1864, was the last full-scale action of the Civil War in Missouri and west of the Mississippi. This major battle, the largest engagement west of the Mississippi River, marked the climactic end of a decade of war and turbulence along the Missouri and Kansas border." (Monnett Battle of Westport Fund: https://tinyurl.com/y27f2kh9) ... ========== As the war turned against the Confederacy in late 1864, Confederate Major General Sterling Price led his cavalry forces on an epic raid into Missouri, hoping to install secessionist Thomas Reynolds as state governor in Jefferson City and to establish the Confederate state government’s legitimacy. Presumably, the loss of a border state would impede President Lincoln’s chances for reelection the following month and give the Confederacy an opportunity to negotiate a peaceful settlement. At the Battle of Westport, however, Price’s Raid came to an inglorious climax. It was the largest battle fought west of the Mississippi River, and the decisive defeat of Price’s Army of Missouri at Westport (within the borders of modern Kansas City, Missouri) ended any Confederate hopes for a positive outcome from the campaign. ========== Kansas City Public Library (read the full entry on Westport by Terry Beckenbaugh, U. S. Air Force Command and Staff College, at https://tinyurl.com/yysd2q9p Painting: Mural of the Battle of Westport on display at the Missouri State Capitol. Painted by Newell Convers Wyeth. Self-guided walking and auto battlefield tours: https://www.battleofwestport.org/Tours.htm

The Battle of Ball's Bluff OTD 159 years ago This early-war clash of arms near Washington D.C. was a disaster for the U.S. troops, and saw the death of the only sitting United States senator to be killed in battle (Edward Dickinson Baker, now buried in the Presidio of San Francisco). ==========... The rebels held the town of Leesburg, Virginia, forty miles upriver from Washington. Hoping to dislodge them, McClellan ordered General Charles P. Stone to make a slight demonstration from the Maryland side of the river while other Union regiments marched upriver on the Virginia side to threaten the Confederate flank. Stone assigned the mission to Colonel Edward Baker, a former Illinois politician and old friend of Lincoln, who had named his second son after him. Baker sent most of his brigade across the river, where it ran into a Confederate brigade posted in the woods at the top of a hundred-foot bank called Ball’s Bluff. With no previous combat experience, Baker and his men took poorly chosen positions. After some lively skirmishing, in which Baker was killed, the Confederates drove the Yankees in disorder down the bank and into the river, where some of those who escaped bullets were drowned. More than half of Baker’s 1,700 men were killed, wounded, or captured. This humiliating disaster evoked from Lincoln tears of grief for Baker’s death and provoked among Republicans an angry search for a scapegoat. When Congress met in December it established a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to investigate the causes for defeat at Ball’s Bluff and Bull Run. ========== McPherson, James M.. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States Book 6) (p. 362). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. See more

76 years ago today "A paper flier issued by the Allied Forces during World War II for Filipinos after the return of General Douglas MacArthur and the Filipino President, Sergio Osmena, in 1944. The flier was probably airdropped on the Philippines soon after General MacArthur and President Osmena landed in October, 1944."

It looks a little chilly today at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Image captures from the Last Stand Hill and Deep Ravine Trail webcams (view continuously updated webcam views here: https://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm)

The Battle of Bristoe Station 157 years ago today summary from American Battlefield Trust (and photo gallery at link below):... ==================== In early October 1863, the Union army withdrew from its central Virginia pursuit of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, 90 days after the Gettysburg campaign. Lee and the Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George G. Meade maintained close contact with each other as Meade moved north towards Centreville. On October 14th, Lieut. Gen. A.P. Hill’s corps stumbled upon two corps of the retreating Union army at Bristoe Station and attacked without proper reconnaissance. Union soldiers of Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren's Second Corps, posted behind an embankment of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad four miles west of Manassas, ambushed two brigades of Brig. Gen. Henry Heth’s division and captured a battery of artillery. Confederate Brig. Gen. Carnot Posey was mortally wounded in a counterattack. Hill reinforced his line but could make little headway against the determined Yankee defenders. After their victory, the Federals continued the withdrawal eastward to Centreville unmolested. Lee’s offensive sputtered to a premature halt. After minor skirmishing near Manassas and Centreville, the Confederates retired slowly to Rappahannock River destroying the Orange & Alexandria Railroad as they went. At Bristoe Station, Hill lost standing in the eyes of Lee, who angrily ordered him to bury his dead and "say no more about it." ==================== See more

USS Saint Louis (Baron De Kalb) This day in 1861 (October 12) saw the launch of the USS Saint Louis, one of seven City-Class ironclad gunboats delivered by James Eads on the Mississippi River, to bolster Union forces in the American Civil War. The Saint Louis participated in many actions on the western rivers, including the capture of forts Henry and Donelson, and the Battle of Memphis. She was transferred to the navy in 1862, and renamed the Baron de Kalb (since the navy a...lready had a commissioned vessel named Saint Louis). The Baron De Kalb was sunk by a mine in the Yazoo River, Mississippi, on July 13, 1863, just nine days after the surrender of Vicksburg.

Santa Rosa Island One of the early engagements of the Civil War occurred at Santa Rosa Island, near Pensacola, on October 9, 1861 (159 years ago today). Following a US attack on Confederates at the Pensacola Navy Yard in September, Southern forces launched an attack on the Union troops on Santa Rosa Island. Striking in the early morning hours, the attackers had some initial success, but were ultimately repelled. Read more about it at this NPS page: https://www.nps.gov/articles/battle-santarosa.htm

The Battle of Perryville, the largest fought in the Bluegrass State during the American Civil War, occurred 158 years ago on this date. Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site preserves a pristine portion of the battlefield, and museum collection. https://www.perryvillebattlefield.org/

Bear Paw Battlefield The Bear Paw Battlefield is the location of the final battle of the Nez Perce Flight of 1877. It was here on October 5th, 1877, after an 1,100 mile journey and only forty miles short of the Canadian border, that the Nez Perce laid down arms. Following this five-day battle and siege Chief Joseph gave his immortal speech, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." Nez Perce National Historical Park [NPS photo]

Chief Joseph Surrenders On October 5, 1877, Chief Joseph, exhausted and disheartened, surrendered in the Bears Paw Mountains of Montana, forty miles south of Canada. Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain was born in 1840 in the Wallowa Valley of what is now northeastern Oregon. He took the name of his father, (Old) Chief Joseph, or Joseph the Elder. When his father died in 1871, Joseph, or Joseph the Younger, was elected his father’s successor. He continued his father’s efforts t...Continue reading

The (Second) Battle of Corinth October 3-4, 1862 158 years ago After the Battle of Shiloh in the spring of 1862, the victorious Federals lay siege to the critical crossroads town of Corinth, Mississippi, eventually driving Confederates from their defenses. ... "The Confederates were not willing to allow the enemy to keep Corinth and her railroads, however. After a summer of relative inactivity, the Southerners, now under General Earl Van Dorn, attacked the city in October 1862, hoping to drive General William S. Rosecrans’ Union soldiers out of town and retake the lost railroads. In a bloody battle on October 3-4, 1862, fighting raged all around Corinth to the north and west, and at times right into the very heart of downtown. Confederates penetrated several forts along the periphery of the town, including Battery Powell and Battery Robinett, and broke through the center all the way into downtown, where fighting raged around the railroad crossing and the nearby Tishomingo Hotel. Union soldiers retook their positions in a counterattack and drove off the Confederates, but at the cost of thousands of dead and wounded on each side. The buildings and citizens of Corinth, those who remained, were once again inundated with dead and wounded soldiers." by Tomothy B. Smith, "Corinth in the Civil War: At the Crossroads of History" Read the full essay here: https://tinyurl.com/y3s8kbs6

"The Saltville massacre was not an isolated incident. The Confederate practice of murdering wounded or captured black soldiers was reportedly widespread, most infamously at Fort Pillow and Poison Spring. Persistent revisionist attempts to diminish or rationalize the Confederacy’s brutality toward black troops, like efforts to glorify the Southern cause, defend the Confederate flag and deny that the secession was first and foremost motivated by the desire to preserve slavery, are at best disingenuous and more likely intended to perpetrate racist mythology." David E. Brown (http://5thuscc.net/massacr.htm)