Friday Oct 11 1861
FEDERAL FORCES FIND FURTHER FIGHTS

Miscellaneous personnel changes and reassignments were made today as the first summer of the war was evaluated. Gen. William T. Sherman took over the Department of the Cumberland from Gen. Robert Anderson, who had never really recovered after the surrender of Ft. Sumter, finally suffering a nervous breakdown. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was appointed head of the Department of Western Virginia. This was of tremendous political importance as the area was overwhelmingly Union in support, and would eventually secede from the Secessionists in Richmond. Finally, Gen. O. M. Mitchel was assigned to lead an expedition into the Unionist area of eastern Tennessee. Mitchel was not much of a military man: his previous occupations had been astronomer and popular lecturer on science.



Saturday Oct. 11 1862
MEDIA MAKES MILITARY MESSGES MOBILE

Captain Raphael Semmes, Confederate terror of the seas, took yet another prize out in the North Atlantic today. The CSS Alabama took on the Manchester off the coast of Nova Scotia, and in a competition between an armed warship and an unarmed cargo vessel, the outcome was pretty much as you would suspect. Interestingly, Captain Semmes noted in his log the fact that his victim was carrying fresh newspapers out of New York. “I learned from them where all the enemy’s gun boats were, and what they were doing,” he said. “Perhaps this was the only war in which the newspapers ever explained, beforehand, all the movements of armies and fleets, to the enemy.” It would not be the last such war.

Stuart hits Pennsylvania:

Confederate cavalry leader General J.E.B. Stuart loots Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on a daring raid in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam.

Stuart left Virginia on October 9 with 1,800 cavalrymen. At the time, the Union Army of the Potomac was still camped in western Maryland. Its commander, George McClellan, was reluctant to pursue General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back across the Potomac after Antietam on September 17.

Stuart was trying to gather information on McClellan's army and harass his supply lines. As the Rebels rode through Maryland, they captured any male travelers they saw in order to keep their activities secret, though Stuart refused to detain women. On the evening of October 10, the Confederate troopers entered Chambersburg. About half of the supplies for the Union army came through the rail center, and Stuart planned to destroy a railway bridge in the town. Local officials fled, and there were no Federal troops to be found when Stuart's men rode in on the evening of October 10. On the morning of October 11, they began cutting telegraph lines, seizing horses and any supplies they could carry, and destroying everything else. The railway bridge proved to be more than the Rebels could handle. Attempts to destroy the steel structure failed, and Stuart ordered his men to turn back to Virginia by the afternoon of October 11.

Stuart's men headed back through Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he learned that a Federal cavalry force was waiting for him at Frederick, 20 miles south. Stuart used backroads and wove between two Union forces before crossing the Potomac River on October 12. The three-day raid covered nearly 130 miles, netted 1,200 horses, and captured 30 local officials to be exchanged for Confederate civil prisoners. Stuart also destroyed many machine shops at the rail center in Chambersburg. His force suffered just one man wounded and two missing.




Sunday Oct. 11 1863
POLITICAL PROSPECTS PROVE PROBLEMATICAL

There were a large number of election contests decided today, and they were watched with at least as much attention in the South as the North. The off-year races were for governorships of the great industrial states, and in most the contests were clearly between “peace” candidates and those who supported fighting to restore the Union. In state after state the peace candidates went down to defeat. Clement Vallandigham lost to War Democrat John Brough in Ohio, although Vallandigham had the added handicap of having to campaign from Canada, since he had been exiled from the US for his antiwar views. Another winner was Andrew Curtin in Pennsylvania, a staunch Union supporter. Those in the South who had hoped for a wave of anti-war sentiment to sweep the North were bitterly disappointed.



Tuesday Oct. 11 1864
POLITICAL PROBLEMS PROCEDING PROMPTLY

Surely, they thought in Richmond, surely this would be the year it would sink in to the voters of the North. After Manassas, after Chancellorsville, after Gettysburg....after all the blood and slaughter and disease and death, surely they would decide that it was not worth fighting any longer to keep a part of the country that wanted to leave. Actually Lincoln in Washington was deeply afraid that the voters might think exactly that way. The elections were today for some governorships as well as the House and one-third of the Senate. Lincoln stayed half the night in the telegraph room of the War Department waiting for the results to come in. Again, the last hope of the South was dashed: support for Republicans was far stronger than had been expected, as Oliver Morton won the governor’s office in Indiana, and Republican gains were made in the House and Senate both. The war would not end by negotiation.