1847 – Naval Forces begin 5 day battle to capture several towns in Mexico.
1847 – Marines captured LaPaz, California, during the Mexican War.
1860 – 1st Pony Express reached Sacramento, Calif.
1861 – After a thirty-three hour bombardment by Confederate cannon, Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor surrenders. The first engagement of the war ended in Rebel victory. The surrender concluded a standoff that began with South Carolina’s secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. When President Lincoln sent word to Charleston in early April that he planned to send food to the beleaguered garrison, the Confederates took action. They opened fire on Sumter in the predawn of April 12. Over the next day, nearly 4,000 rounds were hurled toward the black silhouette of Fort Sumter. Inside Sumter was its commander, Major Robert Anderson, 9 officers, 68 enlisted men, 8 musicians, and 43 construction workers who were still putting the finishing touches on the fort. Captain Abner Doubleday, the man often inaccurately credited with inventing the game of baseball, returned fire nearly two hours after the barrage began. By the morning of April 13, the garrison in Sumter was in dire straits. The soldiers had sustained only minor injuries, but they could not hold out much longer. The fort was badly damaged, and the Confederate’s shots were becoming more precise. Around noon, the flagstaff was shot away. Louis Wigfall, a former U.S. senator from Texas, rowed out without permission to see if the garrison was trying to surrender. Anderson decided that further resistance was futile, and he ran a white flag up a makeshift flagpole. The first engagement of the war was over, and the only casualty had been a Confederate horse. The Union force was allowed to leave for the north; before leaving, the soldiers fired a 100-gun salute. During the salute, one soldier was killed and another mortally wounded by a prematurely exploding cartridge. The Civil War had officially begun.
1862 – In the Washington area volunteers led by Sarah J. Evans paid homage to the graves of Civil War soldiers. Villagers in Waterloo, NY, held their 1st Memorial Day service on May 5, 1866. In 1966 Pres. Johnson gave Waterloo, NY, the distinction of holding the 1st Memorial Day.
1863 – Battle of Irish Bend, LA (Ft. Bisland).
1863 – Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled in NY became the 1st orthopedic hospital.
1865 – Union forces under Gen. Sherman began their devastating march through Georgia. Sherman’s troops took Raleigh, NC.
1873 – In the Colfax Massacre in Grant Parish, Louisiana, 60 blacks were killed. The dispute over the government of Louisiana continued to escalate. Republican officers of Grants Parrish were holed up in the city of Colfax. Blacks from the surrounding area feared an attack, so they entrenched themselves in front of the court house. A huge white mob attacked. The day was a massacre, as somewhere between 60 and 100 local blacks were killed even as they tried to surrender. The white mob suffered only 3 casualties. The battle for the courthouse of Colfax, Louisiana has been renamed the Colfax Massacre. All of the blacks in the area and governor Kellogg were spared only because the President ordered the federal troops to intercede and stop the white mob before they moved to another area, killing all the blacks and their white sympathizers. The New Orleans Times’ headline the next day read, “War at Last!!” They also warned other white sympathizers to beware. The majority of the white people in Louisiana supported the “Colfax Massacre,” and the systematic annihilation of blacks and the white sympathizer governments.
1885 – Marines guarded the rail line to Panama City.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/april-13/
