Chronological History of the American Civil War

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homes. His intent was to create what a later day would call a “free-fire zone,” where anyone found would be assumed to be a Confederate and shot on sight. Wednesday, August 26, 1863 : Union troops today made major progress against Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina harbor. The fortress itself was still holding out, but Union troops occupied the rifle pits in front of them. However, any further movement forward was severely hampered when it became clear that the battery had been surrounded by “sub-surface torpedo mines” activated by foot pressure. General Beauregard (CSA) believed that the fall of Battery Wagner was inevitable and planned for its evacuation. Thursday, August 27, 1863 : At Fort Bowie, the Arizona Territory, as Indians on horseback on the road from Tucson, surround and run off with the entire stock of Union horses. John T. Ford leases the First Baptist Church on 10th St. in Washington, and turns it into a theater. Built in 1833, the church had been vacant since 1859, when the church united with the nearby Fourth Baptist Church. The theater had opened in March 1862, but a fire in December of that year forced more than $10,000 in new renovations. Today, it finally reopens as Ford's New Theater. Friday, August 28, 1863 : No major battles occurred on this day, but that, as usual, did not mean that cleanup was not still going on from the last one, nor preparations for the next. Confederate naval Lt. George W. Gift paid a visit to the shipyard above Mobile Bay, Alabama, to observe the progress in construction of the two vessels Tennessee and Nashville . The Tennessee was nice enough, but Gift was in awe of the immense Nashville . “She is tremendous!” he wrote. “The wardroom...is six staterooms and a pantry long, and about as broad between the rooms as the whole Chattahoochee. Her engines are tremendous, and it requires all her width, fifty feet, to place her boilers. The Tennessee is insignificant alongside her.” Saturday, August 29, 1863 : Major General William S. Rosecrans (U.S.) and his Army of the Cumberland begins the Chickamauga Campaign, heading east for passes in Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. Five Confederate seamen drown during the initial trial run of the experimental submarine, C.S.S. H.L. Hunley , Charleston Harbor, Charleston, South Carolina. A Union mutiny at Camp Hubbard, Thibodaux, Louisiana, when the 2nd Rhode Island Cavalry received orders to consolidate with the 1st Louisiana Cavalry. The order was read to them by Lt. Hall (U.S.). The Rhode Island soldiers refused to comply with the order, and the 1st Louisiana's commander, Colonel Harai Robinson, ordered the arrest of the two ringleaders of the mutiny, and appointed Lt. Hall to carry out the summary execution of the two prisoners. After the firing squads fired their weapons, Lt. Hall used his pistol to administer the coup de grace to one of the executed men. In Bolivar, Tennessee, John Houston Bills of The Pillars, an early settler, planter and diarist wrote: “This my 63rd anniversary - my health yet good, my action a little stiff, but no pains or giving way of the Machinery of Life. The horrors of Civil War yet upon us, many of my servants have run away & most of those left has as well be gone, they being totally demoralized & ungovernable.” Sunday, August 30, 1863 : Fighting continues from Bayou Meto, Arkansas to Leesburg, Virginia, but the constant Union bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina's harbor was taking it's toll. The Confederates dig their cannons out from under the rubble in their batteries and start transferring them to Charleston, South Carolina. One Confederate battery from Fort Moultrie in the harbor fired on a small steamer that was supposed to be getting reinforcements to the Yankees. It held reinforcements, all right... but they were fellow Southerners. The ship was sunk.