A Moment in Military History (1 Viewer)

[Chungas Revenge]

Brigadier-General Edmund Winston Pettus
Born July 6, 1821
Died July 27, 1907
Buried Live Oak Cemetery
Selma, Alabama


Brigadier-General Edmund Winston Pettus was born in Limestone county, Ala., July 6, 1821. His father was John Pettus, a planter, and his mother a daughter of Capt. Anthony Winston. By the death of his father, which occurred in his infancy, he was left to the sole care of his mother, a lady of great mental force. After a course of study at Clinton college, Tennessee, he prepared himself for the profession of law; was admitted to the bar in 1842, when he located in Gainesville. Being in the same year elected district solicitor, he held the office until 1851, when he removed to Pickens county. In 1853 Governor Collier appointed him to the same office to fill a vacancy. He was elected a judge of the circuit court in 1855, and held this position until January, 1858, when he removed to Cahaba. Upon the secession of Alabama he was sent as a commissioner to Mississippi. In the spring of 1861, he in company with Isham W. Garrott raised the Twentieth regiment of infantry, and at its organization Garrott was elected colonel and Pettus, major. On October 8th he was made lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. He was with his regiment under Kirby Smith in east Tennessee in the summer, fall and winter of 1862, and then, going to Mississippi with Tracy's brigade, was in the gallant fight made against Grant at Port Gibson, May 1st. There the five left companies of the Twentieth, under his command, obstinately resisted every effort of the enemy to dislodge them, until flanked. In a daring attempt to bring off Captain Pratt and a portion of his company from their advanced position, which they yielded with great reluctance, he was cut off and captured, but soon had the good fortune to rejoin his command. At Baker's Creek, May 16th, his gallantry was mentioned by S. D. Lee, the new brigade commander. During the siege of Vicksburg he won additional laurels. At the time of the Federal assault of May 22d, a small body of the enemy obtained a lodgment in a redoubt on S. D. Lee's line, and it was necessary to drive them out. The work was so constructed that the Federals were perfectly protected, and the only means of dislodging them was to retake the angle by a desperate charge, and either kill or compel the surrender of the Federal party by the use of hand-grenades. A call for volunteers for this purpose was made, General Stevenson reported, "and promptly responded to by Lieut.-Col. E. W. Pettus, and about forty men of Waul's Texas legion. A more gallant feat than this charge has not illustrated our arms during the war." In the face of a concentrated fire of shot, shell and musketry, the little detachment, Pettus at the head, musket in hand, rushed upon the work, and almost before their heroism could be realized had captured the Federal flag, and the enemy soon surrendered. After the death of Colonel Garrott, Pettus commanded the regiment, and was surrendered with it, but was exchanged later in the year 1863. On September 18th he was commissioned brigadier-general, and assigned to succeed S. D. Lee and the lamented Tracy in the command of the heroic brigade distinguished at Port Gibson, Baker's Creek and Vicksburg. He and his gallant brigade were in the front of the fight at the opening of the Georgia campaign of 1864, holding their position on Rocky Face ridge, May 8th, against a bloody assault. At New Hope church again they fought in the front line under fire, and at Powder Springs, the battles around Atlanta and Jonesboro, wherever Stevenson's division was engaged. During the battle on Lookout Mountain he led the Twentieth, Thirty-first and Forty-sixth regiments to the relief of Moore and Walthall, and, said General Stevenson, in his general orders of November 27th: "It was Pettus' brigade which first checked an enemy flushed with victory on Lookout Mountain, and held him at bay until ordered to retire. On the next day, on the fight of Missionary Ridge, the whole division (Brown's, Cumming's and Pettus' brigades) fought with a courage which merited and won success." Whatever the issue with other commands, he said, the men of his division could look back to Missionary Ridge with the pride of soldiers entitled to the admiration of their country. In November he led his brigade into Tennessee, and his men were the first to cross Duck river, thrown across in squads, in a single boat, and making "a most gallant charge on the rifle-pits of the enemy, driving a much superior force, and capturing the pits." Both the brigade and its commander were commended by Gen S. D. Lee for their gallantry at Nashville, and the heroism with which they fought as the rear guard to the Harpeth river. According to General Clayton, his division and Pettus' brigade, supported by the Thirty-ninth Georgia, were in line at Nashville after all the rest of the army was in "entire rout." Again Pettus' men stood like a rock at the Harpeth river. In the campaign in the Carolinas, in 1865, he led his brigade in the battles of Kinston and Bentonville. In the last-named battle he was severely wounded. When the war had ended he made his home at Selma, and resumed the practice of law, becoming distinguished in the profession. He was elected to the United States Senate, as the successor of James L. Pugh, for a term beginning March 4, 1897.

 

[Helipilot]

Very interesting and a good read. I really like history so thanks for posting.

 

[Chungas Revenge]

Gotta' watch out for those WV girls..

1862 – Confederate spy Marie Isabella “Belle” Boyd is arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. It was the first of three arrests for this skilled spy who provided crucial information to the Confederates during the war. The Virginian-born Boyd was just 17 when the war began. She was from a prominent slaveholding family in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1861, she shot and killed a Union solider for insulting her mother and threatening to search their house. Union officers investigated and decided the shooting was justified. Soon after the shooting incident, Boyd began spying for the Confederacy. She used her charms to engage Union soldiers and officers in conversations and acquire information about Federal military affairs. Suspecting her of spying, Union officers banished Boyd further south in the Shenandoah, to Front Royal Virginia, in March 1862. Just two months later, Boyd personally delivered crucial information to General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson during his campaign in the Valley that allowed the Confederates to defeat General Nathaniel Banks’s forces at the Battle of Winchester. In another incident, Boyd turned two chivalrous Union cavalrymen who had escorted her back home across Union lines over to Confederate pickets as prisoners of war. Boyd was detained on several occasions, and on July 29 she was placed in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. But her incarceration was evidently of limited hardship. She was given many special considerations, and she became engaged to a fellow prisoner. Upon her release one month later, she was given a trousseau by the prison’s superintendent and shipped under a flag of truce to Richmond. Boyd was arrested again in 1863 and held for three months. After this second imprisonment, she became a courier of secret messages to Great Britain. In 1864, her ship was captured off the coast of North Carolina, and the ship and crew were taken to New York. Captain Samuel Hardinge commanded the Union ship that captured Boyd’s vessel, and the two were seen shopping together in New York. He followed her to London, and they were married soon after. Boyd was widowed soon after the end of the war, but the union produced one child. Still just 21, Boyd parlayed her spying experiences into a book and an acting career. She died in Wisconsin in 1900.

 

[Chungas Revenge]

1863 – The Shoshone chief Pocatello signs the Treaty of Box Elder, bringing peace to the emigrant trails of southern Idaho and northern Utah. Pocatello was a Bannock Shoshone, one of the two major Shoshone tribes that dominated modern-day southern Idaho. Once a large and very powerful people, the Shoshone lost thousands to a smallpox epidemic in 1781. The fierce Blackfoot Indians took further advantage of the badly weakened Shoshone to push them off the plains and into the mountains. The first representatives of a people who would soon prove even more dangerous than the Blackfoot arrived in August 1805: The expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Anxious to establish good relations with the Americans in hopes of someday obtaining guns to fight the dreaded Blackfoot, the Shoshone welcomed Lewis and Clark and gave them the horses they needed to cross the Rocky Mountains. However, by the time Pocatello had become a chief 50 years later, the Shoshone realized the white people were more of a threat than the Blackfoot. By 1857, Pocatello was a young chief who controlled an extensive territory around present-day Pocatello, Idaho. Pocatello was greatly alarmed by the growing number of Mormons who were traveling north from Salt Lake City and settling in Shoshone territory. The Indians and Mormons increasingly clashed, with both sides committing brutal and unjustified murders. Pocatello was determined to resist the white settlement. He led several attacks on the Mormons, killing or wounding several of them and stealing their horses. In 1863, the U.S. government sent Colonel Patrick Connor and a company of soldiers into the region to protect American telegraph lines and, secondarily, the Mormon settlers. That May, Connor set out to track down Pocatello and his followers, but the Shoshone chief managed to evade the soldiers. On his own initiative, Pocatello then proposed a peace agreement. If the Mormons provided the Shoshone with compensation for lost game and land, Pocatello promised to cease his attacks. The Mormons accepted his terms. On this day in 1863, Pocatello signed his “X” on the Treaty of Box Elder and the overt hostilities ended. As the Anglo settlers in the region grew more numerous and gained the support of the U.S. government, the Shoshone were confined to a reservation within their traditional territory. Pocatello died on the reservation in 1884. The nearby Idaho city of Pocatello was named for him

 

[Chungas Revenge]

In 1756 approximately 60 members of the South Carolina militia organized the Charles Town Artillery Company which was chartered on this date by the colonial government. By being chartered the men in the unit, all volunteers, agreed to undergo additional drilling over that normally expected by members of the enrolled militia. The charter also allowed the company to draw guns, powder and other supplies from the colony’s arms stores.

 

[Chungas Revenge]

1964 – North Vietnamese torpedo boats attack the destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731). The American ship had been cruising around the Tonkin Gulf monitoring radio and radar signals following an attack by South Vietnamese PT boats on North Vietnamese facilities on Hon Me and Hon Nhieu Islands (off the North Vietnamese coast) under Oplan 34A. U.S. crews interpreted one North Vietnamese message as indicating that they were preparing “military operations,” which the Maddox’s Captain John Herrick assumed meant some sort of retaliatory attack. His superiors ordered him to remain in the area. Early that afternoon, three North Vietnamese patrol boats began to chase the Maddox. About 3 p.m., Captain Herrick ordered his crew to commence firing as the North Vietnamese boats came within 10,000 yards of his ship; at the same time he radioed the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga for air support. The North Vietnamese boats each fired one torpedo at the Maddox, but two missed and the third failed to explode. U.S. gunfire hit one of the North Vietnamese boats, and then three U.S. Crusader jets proceeded to strafe them. Within 20 minutes, Maddox gunners sunk one of the boats and two were crippled; only one bullet hit the Maddox and there were no U.S. casualties. The Maddox was ordered to withdraw and await further instructions. In Washington, President Lyndon B. Johnson, alarmed by this situation, at first rejected any reprisals against North Vietnam. In his first use of the “hot line” to Russia, Johnson informed Khrushchev that he had no desire to extend the conflict. In the first U.S. diplomatic note ever sent to Hanoi, Johnson warned that “grave consequences would inevitably result from any further unprovoked offensive military action” against U.S. ships “on the high seas.” Meanwhile, the U.S. military command took several critical actions. U.S. combat troops were placed on alert and additional fighter-bombers were sent to South Vietnam and Thailand. The carrier USS Constellation was ordered to the South China Sea to join the USS Ticonderoga. Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, commander of the Pacific Fleet, ordered a second destroyer, the USS C. Turner Joy, to join the Maddox on station and to make daylight approaches to within eight miles of North Vietnam’s coast and four miles of its islands to “assert the right of freedom of the seas.”

 

[Chungas Revenge]

1812 – During the War of 1812, American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit and his army to the British without a fight. Hull, a 59-year-old veteran of the American Revolution, had lost hope of defending the settlement after seeing the large English and Indian force gathering outside Detroit’s walls. The general was also preoccupied with the presence of his daughter and grandchildren inside the fort. Of Hull’s 2,000-man army, most were militiamen, and British General Isaac Brock allowed them to return to their homes on the frontier. The regular U.S. Army troops were taken as prisoners to Canada. With the capture of Fort Detroit, Michigan Territory was declared a part of Great Britain and Shawnee chief Tecumseh was able to increase his raids against American positions in the frontier area. Hull’s surrender was a severe blow to American morale. In September 1813, U.S. General William Henry Harrison, the future president, recaptured Detroit. In 1814, William Hull was court-martialed for cowardice and neglect of duty in surrendering the fort, and sentenced to die. Because of his service in the revolution, however, President James Madison remitted the sentence.

 

[Chungas Revenge]

USMC established today.

On November 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia passed a resolution stating that "two Battalions of Marines be raised" for service as landing forces with the fleet. This resolution established the Continental Marines and marked the birth date of the United States Marine Corps.