Today marks the beginning of a great victory, by some accounts, for the United States. Off the coast of North Carolina, U.S. Brig. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside and 7,500 soldiers, having sailed from Fort Monroe near the Virginia coast, land on the ocean-side beach of Roanoke Island. Preparing for battle today, the following morning Union…
Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, near Campbellsville, Kentucky in Taylor County, today becomes a victim of the Civil War. The previous September, John Hunt Morgan, attempting to smuggle clothing to the Confederate Army, had been detained in the church building by the Union Taylor County Home Guards. Now a Confederate Cavalryman, today Morgan and a small…
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, growing impatient with Gen. George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, orders the general to launch offensive operations no later than February 22. Thus far, McClellan has exercised too much caution, in the estimation of Lincoln and many northerners. Meanwhile, on New York’s East River, the Union ironclad Monitor…