1817 – The “Peace Establishment Act” reduced the Marine Corps to 50 officers and 942 enlisted.
1847 – Marines and Sailors from the USS Portsmouth landed and captured San Lycas, Mexico.
1860 – The first Pony Express mail simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, carried by Henry Wallace riding west and John Roff riding east. During the 1,800-mile journey, the riders changed horses dozens of times, and on April 13 the westbound packet arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days. Operating on a semiweekly basis for nearly two years, the route followed a pioneer trail across the present-day states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada to California, carrying mail as well as some small freight for the young Wells Fargo Company. The Pony Express Company, a private enterprise, charged $5 for every half-ounce of mail. Although short-lived and unprofitable, the mail service captivated the American imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland mail service. The Pony Express also contributed to the economy of the towns on its route and served the mail-service needs of the American West in the days before the telegraph or an efficient transcontinental railroad. Pony Express mail service was discontinued in October 1861.
1865 – The Rebel capital of Richmond falls to the Union, the most significant sign that the Confederacy is nearing its final days. For ten months, General Ulysses S. Grant had tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate the city. After Lee made a desperate attack against Fort Stedman along the Union line on March 25, Grant prepared for a major offensive. He struck at Five Forks on April 1, crushing the end of Lee’s line southwest of Petersburg. On April 2, the Yankees struck all along the Petersburg line, and the Confederates collapsed. On the evening of April 2, the Confederate government fled the city with the army right behind. Now, on the morning of April 3, blue-coated troops entered the capital. Richmond was the holy grail of the Union war effort, the object of four years of campaigning. Tens of thousands of Yankee lives were lost trying to get it, and nearly as many Confederate lives lost trying to defend it. Now, the Yankees came to take possession of their prize. One resident, Mary Fontaine, wrote, “I saw them unfurl a tiny flag, and I sank on my knees, and the bitter, bitter tears came in a torrent.” As the Federals rode in, another wrote that the city’s black residents were “completely crazed, they danced and shouted, men hugged each other, and women kissed.” Among the first forces into the capital were black troopers from the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, and the next day President Abraham Lincoln visited the city. For the residents of Richmond, these were symbols of a world turned upside down. It was, one reporter noted, “…too awful to remember, if it were possible to be erased, but that cannot be.”
1865 – Battle at Namozine Church, Virginia (Appomattox Campaign).
1865 – Fifty of the sixty Midshipmen at the Confederate Naval Academy, under the command of Lieutenant William H. Parker, escorted the archives of the government and the specie and bullion of the treasury from Richmond to Danville.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/april-3/
