Tagged: Civil War

On December 20, 1862, Confederate troops under General Earl Van Dorn raided Ulysses Grant's supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi. Van Dorn’s forces fell on the Union supply depot, driving the defenders away after capturing fifteen hundred Federals.  

The Confederates then destroyed approximately one and one half million dollars of military supplies. Van Dorn’s Confederates remained in the area a few more days, cutting rail and telegraph lines, before fleeing in the face of pursuing Union cavalry.

Even as Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalry was successfully harassing Ulysses Grant’s supply lines, Grant’s army was formally reorganized for the drive against Confederate held Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. 

William Tecumseh* Sherman was given the Fifteenth Corps, Stephen Hurlbut was assigned the Sixteenth Corps, and John McClernand was assigned the Thirteenth Corps.  The latter appointment ended any separate command for McClernand, who had been appointed by Lincoln as head of a second Union army to operate against Vicksburg. 

On Friday, December 19, 1862 a caucus of prominent Republican Senators, including Charles Sumner, demanded that Lincoln remove Secretary of State William Seward because of Seward’s alleged indifference to the existing war. 

The actions of these senators inferred that Lincoln was not in charge of the executive branch of government, a perspective unfortunately cultivated by Secretary Seward himself since he wanted the nation to believe that he, not Lincoln, was in charge. 

Union General Ulysses Grant from his headquarters on Wednesday, December 17, 1862 issued his very controversial, General Order no. 11, expelling all those of the Hebrew faith from his area of military command.  Illegal speculation, especially in cotton, was widespread along the Mississippi River, and Grant apparently equated those of the Jewish faith with the peddlers and speculators that plagued his camps.