Posted on 05/25/2021 5:26:09 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
WASHINGTON, Friday, May 24.
As I telegraphed last night, the Zouaves were ordered to enter Alexandria this morning. In accordance with this order, the command was embarked on the steamers Baltimore and Mount Vernon. About 5 o'clock they reached Alexandria. Just before reaching the wharf the commander of the Pawnee sent a flag of truce to the rebel forces giving them one hour in which to withdraw from the town. The Baltimore and Mount Vernon then made fast to the wharf. As the steamers approached the rebel sentinels fired their guns in the air and retreated back upon the main body, said to have been about five hundred strong. Simultaneously with the landing of the Zouaves the first Michigan Regiment entered Alexandria by the road leading from Long Bridge, and proceeded direct to the railroad depot, of which they took possession, capturing a troop of rebel cavalry numbering one hundred, with their horses and equipments.
The Zouaves landed in good order in double quick time, each company forming in company order on the street facing the river. Company E, Capt. LEVERIDGE, was the first to disembark. Capt. LEVERIDGE's Company was at once detailed to destroy the Railroad track leading to Richmond, which service they promptly performed. After detailing Company E, Col. ELLSWORTH directed the Adjutant to form the Regiment, and then with his Aid, Lieut. WINSER, and a file of men, started for the Telegraph office for the purpose of cutting the wires.
Col. ELLSWORTH and his detachment proceeded in double quick time up the street. They had proceeded three blocks, when the attention of Colonel ELLSWORTH was attracted by a large secession flag flying from the Marshall House, kept by J.W. JACKSON.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Much is made on these threads of British recognition of Confederates as "belligerents" in the Civil War.
It resulted in important secret support for Confederates in the forms of weapons & ships built & sold.
But vastly more important was the British recognition of the Union blockade, especially at a time when it was virtually unenforced.
The blockade ended cotton exports to Europe, a major blow to the Confederate cause.
This brief report from Syracuse, NY, covers an assembly of Northern Presbyterians where "the best feeling prevails."
Work on their Home Missionary plan will have an important consequence in my family's history.
As we have learned from London Times correspondent William H. Russell's writing, there is a wide assumption in the south that the end of cotton exports will quickly cause Great Britain to come to her senses and recognize and support the new Confederacy. As a determined neutral, Russell doesn't attempt to change minds, but he notes in his diary that the assumption is unrealistic.
Perhaps the details behind this teaser will emerge as our story unfolds.
Here, the South greatly miscalculated. British and French warehouses were storing over a million bales of cotton from the bumper 1860/61 crop. This is the cotton that kept British and French manufactures in business through 1862. The self imposed cotton embargo by Davis had little effect.
By early 1863 the European manufactures were facing cotton shortages and curtailing production. But the political situation had changed and any hope of British/French intervention to restore the flow of cotton was lost forever. By 1864, captured cotton sold by the U.S. Government, and cotton from India, Egypt and South America had eased the cotton shortage somewhat for the European manufacturers.
Ha!
It's a long, long story, beginning before the Civil War, running through the First World War and well beyond.
Right "now" one of my great-grandfathers is a 20 year old unmarried farmer living with his family near Quincy, Illinois.
They are fresh off the boat from Europe and speak very little, if any, English.
They are naturally abolitionists, but they have no "dog in the fight" and indeed, it's said they left their Old Country precisely to dodge the draft into yet another senseless European war.
So my great grandfather and his younger brother will not rush off to war, but will eventually be drawn to volunteer, at just around the time of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Like I said, it's a long story... ! ;-)
I've got time and patience.
I just wish I knew more about my own family history during this era. The earliest Deardorffs I have records for were in Lancaster Co. PA in the late 18th century. From there they gradually moved west, first to Ohio, then Indiana, up by the lake, until by the end of the war they were being born, married and buried in Kansas. In the 1860s they must have been scattered all over the midwest. or as they call it "now," the northwest. So, unless they were all determined pacifists, I probably have several ancestors who served in the Union army. My Mormon aunt who collected the genealogy apparently wasn't interested in that aspect of family history, for she left me not a word about it.
The clouded crystal ball.
Maybe...
You may know that Lancaster County, PA, is the epicenter for Pennsylvania "Dutch" Mennonites -- all pacifists.
About half my ancestors are from that group and never served.
The other half were their Presbyterian neighbors and did serve, beginning in the Revolutionary War.
You may remember that Dwight Eisenhower's family were Pennsylvania "Dutch" Mennonites and he became Presbyterian while serving in the Army.
Anyway, if your ancestors retained some of their "Dutch" heritage, they may well have tried to avoid military service, even to the point of legally dodging the civil war draft.
Which historian was it who said the Union fought with one hand tied behind its back?
Many Northerners did not serve.
My aunt didn't mention religious affiliations, either. By the time my particular branch of the family got to eastern Oregon (where my aunt met the Mormon cattleman she married), they had lost any remaining trace of their Mennonite heritage, as far as I can tell. They were loosely connected with a Protestant church called Assembly of God, or something like that. I don't recall my grandparents ever mentioning church.
Which historian was it who said the Union fought with one hand tied behind its back?
Shelby Foote said that in the Ken Burns documentary, but he may have been quoting someone from earlier.
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