U.S. Civil War-The Battle of Fort Pierce(Aug. 19Th): This was a short battle, and the last one of note before the Confederates' next major assault in the West. Fort Pierce was wrecked, and 70 surviving Union soldiers and their commander, junior Lt. Colonel Joseph Craydon, captured.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of San Diego(Sept. 2nd-11th): The most significant offensive of the Western Front of the Civil War, and would be the deadliest. Having managed to gain some extra supplies and reinforcements at the last minute, C.S. Generals Vallandigham and Humphreys were able to move out from Ft. Pierce on the 27th and make a run for San Diego thru the then largely uninhabited Cuyamaca Mountains area. However, though, because Lt. General Robert Patterson had warned of just such a possible attack, some preparations were made ahead of time, which would prove to be quite favorable to the Union. Vallandigham's men attacked first, as he ordered them to swarm Fort Travis, just outside of El Cajon, late on the morning of the 2nd. The first Union response came at around 3:00 p.m. when 500 men under Lt. Colonel David Johnson, subordinated to Colonel John Taylor, arrived to assist in the defense of the fort. The fort was overwhelmed, however, and Johnson's surviving men were forced to retreat back to the west. This would repeat several times until the Confederates were centered just 10 miles to the northeast of San Diego by the 5th. However, though, a saving grace for the Union came that very day in the form of 2,500 men lead by U.S. General Christopher “Kit” Carson from Los Angeles, including with extra supplies for the other Union troops as well. From then on, everything would go downhill for the Confederates. The most vital turning point came on the 7th when Union Col. Taylor's men were able to ambush the Confederates led by C.S. Colonel Jeremiah Worley, utterly obliterating them; Col. Worley himself sustained mortal wounds and would die the next afternoon. The rebels' morale slowly began to fall apart, and by the afternoon of the 11th, they had evacuated the area entirely, retreating back to Fort Pierce.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of Coyote Creek(Sept. 18Th): This Baja California battle took place a week after the defeat at San Diego. 500 Confederates led by Colonel William Fike, under General Andrew Humphreys, were ambushed by a group of Union volunteers and some Native American allies. The Confederates were defeated, and Col. Fike surrendered to the Unionists.
U.S. Civil War-The Raid on Rowlett Creek-(Sept. 24th): One of the bloodiest incidents in East Texas during the war. Just about 11 miles due northwest of Rockwall, a small Union garrison of about 4 dozen soldiers, of roughly half volunteers, half regulars, was brutally attacked by members of the Sons of Tom Green about 40 minutes after noon, killing thirty of them. They then engaged in an impromptu terror raid up and down Rowlett Creek; although it lasted just a few hours, they killed a dozen civilians, including a black freedman and one of his sons, before a few deputies from the Dallas & Collin County Sheriff's Offices and members of the state militia drove them off, just after sundown.
U.S. Civil War-The Buenaventura Massacre-(Sept. 26th): Members of another pro-Confederate mercenary group, the Devil Dogs, headed up by David S. Terry, a Mexican War veteran and failed lawyer from Arkansas, and assisted by the El Paso branch of the Army of Gadsden, and about 200 auxiliary Confederates under Sgt. Thomas Bingham, engaged in pursuit of a group of Mexican fighters & some Natives, who had attacked a camp just outside of El Paso a couple days prior, and killed a Confederate Lt. Colonel, as they fled through eastern Sonora, and south thru the border & into Rio Bravoan Chihuahua, until they reached the town of San Buenaventura. Sgt. Bingham demanded to speak with the mayor of the town, who showed up promptly. Bingham then asked him if he had seen the men they were looking for. The mayor informed him that he had not, and then asked him to leave. Bingham, however, soon discovered that they had indeed been there. A furious David Terry later assassinated the mayor and ordered his own men to start ransacking the town. He also ordered that a hundred hostages be taken as punishment for the mayor's deception.....or nearly a tenth of the town's whole population, and to begin shooting them, one every two minutes. But just as three quarters of the hostages had been killed, just before sundown, members of the Rio Bravoan military arrived on site, catching the ransackers completely off guard, and causing them to hurry out of town. And when one captured adjutant of Bingham's admitted his nation's complicity in this attack, it was the final straw for the Rio Bravoan government; three days later, they declared war on the Confederate States on behalf of the Union.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of San Angelo(Oct. 18th-19th): The battle that cut the Confederate occupation in half and led to the collapse of the Western front. Occupied since October of the prior year, San Angelo, then a town of about 2,500 residents, had once been a small town that wasn't all that important in the scheme of things, compared to other West Texas communities such as El Paso or San Antonio. It did, however, have the South Pacific Railroad running thru town, which would prove to play a role in what was to come. The small Confederate troop of about 1,200 was led by Lt. Colonel Edmund Smith of the Army of Kentucky, demoted after the failure at Mt. Carmel in December, and was not aware of the trouble that lay ahead. On the afternoon of the 18th, two Union cavalry divisions, headelld up by Lt. Colonel Joseph Allen, arrived just outside of town and several of them attacked some of the Confederate sentries, killing twenty of them, crippling Smith's early warning network. But this was just a preview for the real act. Late that afternoon, a Union detachment of about 1,600 men boarded a commandeered train in the town of Granbury, East Texas, about 170 miles away. The train made a stop near Castleberry[about five miles northeast of the real world Coleman, TX], at about 9 p.m., before their disembarkation at around 5 the next morning. They arrived just outside San Angelo not long after sunrise, and waited for the Rebels to stir. And when the first Confederates spotted them, the Yankees opened fire. This was a truly nasty surprise to C.S. Lt. Colonel Smith and his men as they hadn't expected a full-blown battle so early in the day.
The battle lasted for just over ten hours, and when it ended, had clearly been a humiliation for the Confederates: not only had they been caught off guard, but had also been outgunned and outmanuevered, with 300 losses compared to 180 men for the Union. Lt. Colonel Smith surrendered, and was imprisoned in Rock Island, Ill., for the remaining duration of the war.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of Clarksville(Nov. 2nd-4th): This important battle resulted in the collapse of most of the Middle Tenn. Confederate resistance. Union Lt. General William Mahone, now well known for his successes in Virginia and East Tennessee, had been transferred to Bowling Green, Ky., from Richmond, the month prior and had been tasked with driving C.S. General Jubal Early out of the Clarksville area to help the Union take control of more of the Tennessee River, so they could re-take Nashville, and re-install the Union government of that state.
Mahone's force of about 5,000 men was backed up by Colonels Frank Wolford, of the Kentucky 3rd Army, and William C. Oliver, of the Illinois 7th Army, with 2,500 men each. Advancing to the southeast from their position on the south bank of the Little West Fork, they reached Clarksville at about 3:30 p.m. on the afternoon of the 2nd. Only 20 minutes passed, however, before the Confederates fired on the Yankees and the battle had begun.
During the first half of the battle, most of the fighting was done across the Red River[not to be confused with the one in OTL N. Dakota or the TX/Okla. river; this is a tributary of the Cumberland River], including with cannons; a few Union cannonshots on the 2nd managed to land just outside of town, including one that injured a few Confederates on the sidelines.
But the worst fighting began at around 10 or 11 a.m. on the 3rd as the Confederate line began to collapse, and the Unionists were able to make it over the Red River, and began to advance into town. From then on, the C.S. line began to collapse, and by noon on the 4th, General Early had lost about 1,500 men; He soon decided to cut his losses and flee to the South, with some of the survivors. One of his Colonels, Julius McCormick, had died, and the other, Wade Hampton, the former two-time South Carolina congressman, surrendered to Mahone and his men.
U.S. Civil War-The Raid on Santa Fe(Nov. 7Th): The Devil Dogs terrorized the western half of the Union State of New Mexico during much of Nov., 1873; this was one of their worst atrocities. David S. Terry, the leader, was in hiding in Utah at the moment, so to lead up this raid, was Andrew Jackson Green, a son of the late Thomas J. Green. Green's two dozen men, all on horseback, decided to make the state capital of Santa Fe, then a small town of only 4,500, their target. This raid, like so many others, was also racially motivated; only this time, the Hispanophone population was the main target. The attack really only took place between 4 and 5 p.m., but resulted in the murders of ten people, including an Anglo from Illinois who died trying to protect his family; his wife was a Mestizo Mexican.
Luckily, the local militias were able to intervene in short order before any more damage could be done; four of the Devil Dogs were killed by gunfire and several others were captured.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of Blountville(Nov. 10Th): Short battle that probably would have remained obscure were it not for the wounding of Union Lt. General William Brownlow; his injuries eventually resulted in his death from complications in February of the following year.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of Jackson, Tenn.(Nov. 14Th-15th): This West Tennessee battle actually had little direct effect on the town it was named after; most of the actual fighting took place in between the forks of a local stream by the name of Brown's Creek. Union General William T. Sherman's 16,000 men were able to overwhelm a force of 4,000 led by C.S. Colonel James Bilbo, who fell back to Jackson, and then back to Wolf Creek, on direct orders from the C.S. War Department, to join Generals Joseph E. Johnston, Milledge Bonham, and William Davis in the Memphis area, for an anticipated significant Union offensive against that city.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of Elizabeth City(Nov. 18Th): Notable for the death of Colonel John Martin, former Kansas congressman, of wounds sustained late in the fighting, on the morning of the 19th.
U.S. Civil War-The Battle of Memphis(Nov. 22Nd-27th): The last major engagement between the Unionists and the Confederates in 1873. Union Generals William T. Sherman and Samuel Pomeroy consolidated their forces near the Wolf River area on the 20th and planned out their move towards the port city of Memphis; they would begin moving out on the 21st, and by the end of that day, were now just 10 miles east of the city.
Memphis, at this time, was a growing port city of almost 40,000 people, that had been thriving on Mississippi River trading[Although this is actually slightly lower than it's real world population at that time]. Nearly 40,000 Confederate troops were stationed in and around the city, as this was an important port for the Confederacy, and one they couldn't afford to lose.
The Union forces arrived just outside the city on the late morning of the 22nd. The 26,000 men under Sherman and Pomeroy had a dozen artillery companies, and one hundred and twenty cavalrymen, amongst their ranks, and many of them were skilled veterans of prior battles, whereas the C.S. force was mostly comprised of men who had only recently been conscripted; this would prove to be favorable to the Union later on.
The initial fighting took place near a large plantation owned by a Mr. Wickham, about 5 miles east of the city proper, when the forward troops of C.S. Colonel Edmond Rhett, serving under General Johnston, opened fire on the advancing forces of U.S. Colonel William Oliver, placed under Sherman's command, who promptly responded. These Confederates beat a hasty retreat back to Memphis on the 23rd not long after Colonel Rhett was killed by sniper fire. The Unionists followed and a couple of hours later, encountered a larger force headed up by Colonels Samuel Maxey and Evander McNair just outside the city limits.
The fighting that followed from then on would be nothing short of intense; the Unionists had a great deal of trouble advancing any further, for the next couple of days, due to the rather stiff resistance put up by the Confederates. To try to turn the tables, General Sherman, on the 24th, ordered that his artillerymen begin bombarding the C.S. forces, and certain buildings within the city of Memphis, if possible, including known gunpowder stores and other military structures to be used by the Confederates. This tactic seemed to be ineffective at first, but as more artillery bombardments continued, the C.S. defenses began to falter, and they fell further back into Memphis, proper.
The battle continued for two more days. until Nov. 27th. And on that day, a Unionist cannonball destroyed a particularly large gunpowder store in the area, killing several dozen Confederate men, including Colonel William Preston, and two other officers. But it didn't end there; that gunpowder store just happened to be next to some storage for munitions, and a whiskey store, both of which were also subsequently destroyed. And by the time the Unionists realized the magnitude of what had just happened, a fire had begun to spread rapidly in that corner of the city. Many of the surviving Confederates began to flee, and the fighting stopped within two hours. Union General Sherman ordered his men to evacuate as many civilians and wounded Confederates out of the city as possible, and Gen. Pomeroy ordered his own men to assist Sherman's efforts.
The city of Memphis would burn for 2 more days, but General Sherman's efforts to save lives minimized casualties, compared to what could have been. And with the loss of Memphis, and the destruction of it's port, came yet another heavy blow to the Confederate cause.
U.S. Civil War-Ambush at Gatlin Gulch(Dec. 26th): Andrew Humphreys was caught almost totally off guard when he and some of his remaining men were ambushed at Gatlin Gulch, not far from El Paso. The ambush was so damaging that Humphreys decided to cut his losses and head out east, abandoning his subordinates in El Paso; three days later, they would all surrender.
