1814 – USS Peacock captures HMS Epervier.
1856 – During the Tule River War Yokut Indians repelled a second attack by the ‘Petticoat Rangers,’ a band of civilian Indian fighters-some wearing body armor-at Four Creeks, California. The Yokuts lived along the shores of Tulare Lake in the Central Valley, which disappeared by 1900 due to water diversion and farming.
1861 – The Maryland House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.
1861 – U.S.S. United States ordered commissioned as the first ship in the Virginia navy by Major General Rob¬ert E. Lee, Commander in Chief Military Forces of Virginia.
1862 – 100,000 federal troops prepared to march into Corinth, Miss.
1862 – Expedition under Lieutenant Alexander C. Rhind in U.S.S. E. B. Hale landed and destroyed Confederate battery at Grimball’s, Dawho River, South Carolina, and exchanged fire with field pieces near Slann’s Bluff.
1862 – Union troops officially take possession of New Orleans, completing the occupation that had begun four days earlier. The capture of this vital southern city was a huge blow to the Confederacy. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico. In early 1862, the Confederates concentrated their forces in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee to stave off the Yankee invasion. Many of these troops fought at Shiloh on April 6 and 7. Eight Rebel gunboats were dispatched up the great river to stop a Union flotilla above Memphis, leaving only 3,000 militia, two uncompleted ironclads, and a few steamboats to defend New Orleans. The most imposing obstacles for the Union were two forts, Jackson and St. Phillip. In the middle of the night of April 24, Admiral David Farragut led a fleet of 24 gunboats, 19 mortar boats, and 15,000 soldiers large fleet of ships in a daring run past the forts. Now, the River was open to New Orleans except for the rag-tag Confederate fleet. The mighty Union armada plowed right through, sinking eight ships. At New Orleans, Confederate General Mansfield Lovell surveyed his tiny force and realized that resistance was futile. If he resisted, Lovell told Mayor John Monroe, Farragut would bombard the city and inflict severe damage and casualties. Lovell pulled his troops out of New Orleans and the Yankees began arriving on April 25. The troops could not land until Forts Jackson and St. Phillip were secured. They surrendered on April 29, and now New Orleans had no protection. Crowds cursed the Yankees as all Confederate flags in the city were lowered and stars and stripes were raised in their place. The Confederacy lost a major city, and the lower Mississippi soon became a Union highway for 400 miles to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
1863 – May Union Army and Navy expedition feigned an attack on Confederate batteries at Haynes’ Bluff on the Yazoo River. The force consisted of U.S.S. Tyler, Choctaw, DeKalb, Signal, Romeo, Linden, Petrel, Black Hawk, and 3 mortar boats under Lieutenant Commander Breese and 10 large transports carrying troops under command of Major General W. T. Sherman. The feint was made to prevent Confederates from reinforcing Grand Gulf. On the 29th the expedition proceeded as far as Chickasaw Bayou. As the force departed on the morning of the 30th, Petrel, remained at Old River on station; the remaining vessels moved up the Yazoo with Choctaw and DeKalb opening fire on the main works at Drumgould’s Bluff and Tyler and Black Hawk opening on the fieldworks and batteries. Though instructed not to conduct an actual assault, the feint was so vigorously prosecuted that Choctaw, Lieutenant Commander Ramsay, was struck 53 times by Confederate guns. The soldiers were landed and “marched up toward Haynes’ Bluff on the only roadway, the levee, making quite a display, and threatening one also.” Naval gunfire supported the soldiers throughout the demonstration, which lasted through 1 May. The evening of the 1st, the expedition returned to the mouth of the Yazoo. Porter reported to Secretary Welles: ”The plan succeeded admirably, though the vessels were more exposed than the occasion called for; still as they met with no casualties, with the exception of the hulls, it mattered but little.”
1864 – Major General Taylor, CSA, seeking to take full advantage of the vulnerable position of Rear Admiral Porter’s gunboats above the Alexandria rapids sought “to convert one of the captured transports into a fire ship to burn the fleet now crowded above the upper falls.” This date, however, Union Army and Navy commanders accepted a daring plan proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey to raise the water level of the Red River and enable the vessels to pass the treacherous rapids. Bailey’s proposal was to construct a large dam of logs and debris across the river to back up water level to a minimum depth of seven feet. The dams would be broken and the ships would ride the crest of the rushing waters to safety. Work on the dam commenced early the next day. Porter later wrote: “This proposition looked like madness, and the best engineers ridiculed it, but Colonel Bailey was so sanguine of success that I requested General Banks to have it done . . . two or three regiments of Maine men were set to work felling trees. . . . every man seemed to be working with a vigor seldom seen equalled. . . . These falls are about a mile in length, filled with rugged rocks, over which at the present stage of water it seemed to be impossible to make a channel.”
1864 – An expedition up the Rappahannock River including boats from U.S.S. Yankee, Acting Lieutenant Edward Hooker, and U.S.S. Fuchsia, assisted by U.S.S. Freeborn and Tulip, engaged Confederate cavalry and destroyed a camp under construction at Carter’s Creek, Virginia.
1865 – Acting Master W. C. Coulson, commanding U.S.S. Moose on the Cumberland River, led a surprise attack on a Confederate raiding party, numbering about 200 troops from Brigadier General Abraham Buford’s command. The raiders under the command of a Major Hopkins, were crossing the Cumberland River to sack and burn Eddyville, Kentucky. Coulson sank two troop laden boats with battery gunfire and then put a landing party ashore which engaged the remaining Con-federates. The landing force dispersed the detachment after killing or wounding 20 men, taking 6 captives, and capturing 22 horses.
1898 – U.S. warships engage Spanish gunboats and shore batteries at Cienfuegos, Cuba.
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