Dabney through Deer Park Road, Alabama

DABNEY, Robert Lewis, clergyman, born in Louisa County, Virginia, 5 March, 1820. He studied at Hampden Sidney College, and was graduated at the University of Virginia in 1842. After teaching for two years, he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, was licensed to preach in l840. He was ordained by the Lexington Presbytery in July, 1847, and became pastor of Tinkling Spring Church in Augusta County, Virginia, where he remained for six years. In 1853 he accepted the professorship of church history in Union Seminary, Virginia, and remained until 1883, except during the Civil War, when he was actively engaged in the Confederate service as chaplain of the 18th Virginia Regiment, and afterward as chief of staff to General Thomas J. Jackson. In 1883 he was elected to the chair of moral philosophy in the University of Texas. The degree of D.D. was conferred on him by Hampden Sidney College in 1853, and that of LL.D. by the Southwestern Presbyterian University, Tennessee, in 1877, and simultaneously by Hampden Sidney College. Besides being a voluminous contributor to periodical literature, Dr. Dabney has published "Life of Reverend Dr. F. S. Sampson" (Richmond, 1854); "Life of General T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson" (London, 1864); "Sacred Rhetoric" (Richmond, 1866); "Defence of Virginia and the South " (New York, 1868); " Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered " (1876); "A Course of Systematic and Polemic Theology" (St. Louis, 1878); and " The Christian Sabbath " (Philadelphia, 1881) Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 51.


DABNEY, Virginias, author, born at Elmington, Gloucester County, Virginia, 15 February, 1835. He was graduated at the University of Virginia in 1855, and practised law. But he had abandoned this profession for literature when the Civil War began in 1861. He became a staff officer in the Confederate Army, and served through the war. He has published "The Story of Don Miff, as told by his Friend, John Bouche Whacker, a Symphony of Life" (Philadelphia, 1886). This book reached its fourth edition in six months. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 51.


DABNEY'S FERRY, VIRGINIA, March 27, 1864. 1st Brigade. 1st Cavalry Division, Army of the Potomac. In the campaign from the Rapidan to the James the brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General George A. Custer, reached Dabney's ferry on the Pamunkey at midnight on the 26th. The ferry was held by Butler's Confederate cavalry, but at daylight on the 27th Lieutenant-Colonel Stagg, with the 1st Michigan, was sent over the river and after a sharp fight succeeded in dislodging the enemy. A pontoon bridge was then laid and the whole division crossed, with Custer's brigade in advance, and drove the enemy toward Hanovertown.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 336.


DABNEY'S MILL, VIRGINIA, February 5-7, 1865. (See Hatcher's Run, same date.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 336.


DADE COUNTY, MISSOURI, July 24, 1863. Scouts of the Missouri Militia. A band of guerrillas which had just captured 15 negroes was attacked by a band of scouts. The affair resulted in the killing of 1 Confederate, the wounding of 3, the release of the negroes, and the capture of 10 horses, 5 saddles and 2 Colt's navy revolvers. One of the Federal scouts was wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 336.


DAHLGREN, John Adolph, naval officer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 13 November, 1809; died in Washington, D. C, 12 July, 1870. His father, Bernard Ulric Dahlgren, was Swedish consul at Philadelphia till his death in 1824 The great object of the son's early ambition was to enter the Navy of the United States, and he received his midshipman's warrant on 1 February, 1826, making his first cruise in the " Macedonian," of the Brazil Squadron, in 1827-'9. He was attached to the sloop " Ontario," of the Mediterranean Squadron, in 1830-'2, and made passed midshipman in the latter year, and in 1834, owing to his mathematical proficiency, detailed for duty on the U.S. Coast Survey. In this year he wrote a series of letters on naval topics to the Philadelphia "National Gazette," signed "Blue-Jacket." He was commissioned lieutenant in 1837, and in the same year his hitherto exceptionally fine sight became so impaired by incessant labor as to threaten entire loss of vision, and an absolute rest was needed. During this period of enforced inaction Lieutenant Dahlgren resided on a farm. In 1842 he resumed duty, and in 1843 went to the Mediterranean in the frigate "Cumberland," returning late in 1845 to the United States, the cruise having been shortened by the prospect of a war with Mexico. In January, 1847, Lieutenant Dahlgren was assigned to ordnance duty at Washington, although he desired, and made an effort to obtain, active duty at sea. Then began those labors as an ordnance officer which for sixteen years demanded the most extraordinary energy, and which finally made Dahlgren chief of ordnance, and gave him the world's recognition as a man of science and inventive genius. He saw almost at once the defects in gunnery then existing, and soon offered the remedy in the style of cannon known by his name, which for so many years constituted the naval armament of the United States. It was proposed by him in 1850, and the first gun according to his design was cast in May of that year. These guns are of iron, cast solid, and cooled from the exterior. They are distinguished by great thickness at the breech, rapidly diminishing from the trunnions to the muzzle, and were the first practical application of results obtained by experimental determination of pressures at different points along the bore. They are chiefly smooth-bores of nine and eleven-inch calibre; but Dahlgren also invented a rifled cannon, and introduced boat-howitzers with iron carriages, which were unsurpassed for combined lightness and accuracy. Under the sole direction of Lieutenant Dahlgren, the Ordnance Department at Washington acquired the most extensive additions, including the foundry for cannon, gun-carriage shops, the experimental battery, and equipment of all kinds. He was made commander in 1855, and, in order to introduce innovations that completely revolutionized the armament of the U.S. Navy, and to remove objections particularly to his eleven-inch gun, which was then considered too heavy for use at sea, he was permitted to equip the sloop-of-war "Plymouth entirely as he wished. The experimental cruise of this vessel lasted from 1857 till 1859. He was on ordnance duty at the Washington Navy-yard in 1860-'l, and on 22 April, 1861, after the resignation of Franklin Buchanan, who entered the Confederate Service, was given command of the yard, which was not only of great importance on account of naval resources, but also as the key of the defences of Washington on the left. Commander Dahlgren hastened to secure the only route left to the capital by the Potomac River, and, when Alexandria was seized, he moved down the left wing of the column under Colonel Ellsworth. He was appointed chief of the Ordnance Bureau on 18 July, 1862, and shortly afterward promoted to be captain, his commission being antedated to 16 July. On 7 February, 1863, he was made a rear-admiral, receiving at the same time the thanks of Congress, and ten years additional on the active list, which, however, he did not live to enjoy. In July, 1863, he was ordered to relieve Admiral Dupont in the command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. In July, August, and September of that year he co-operated with the land forces under General Gillmore in various attacks on the defences of Charleston, and succeeded, by silencing Fort Sumter and the batteries on Morris Island, in obtaining for the monitors a safe anchorage inside the bar, thus putting a stop to blockade-running. His failure to take Charleston provoked some hostile criticism, but his operations had the continuous approval of the Navy Department. He led a successful expedition up St. John's River in February, 1864, to aid in throwing a military force into Florida, co-operated with Sherman in the capture of Savannah, on 23 December, and entered Charleston with General Schimelpfennig on its evacuation in February, 1865. In 1866 he was given command of the South Pacific Squadron. He was again chief of the Ordnance Bureau in 1868-'70, and a few months before his death was relieved at his own request and appointed to the command of the Washington Navy-yard. His death was the result of heart-disease. Admiral Dahlgren was a man of great personal bravery, dignified in manner, and of exemplary character. He published many scientific works on ordnance, which have been used as textbooks in the U.S. Navy. They include "Thirty-two-pounder Practice for Rangers" (1850): " System of Boat-Armament in the U. S. Navy " (1852: French translation, 1855); "Naval Percussion Locks and Primers" (1852); "Ordnance Memoranda " (1853); "Shells and Shell-Guns," explaining his own system (1856); and various reports on ordnance, armored vessels, and coast defences. After his death appeared "Notes on Maritime and International Law," with a preface by his widow, indicating the plan of an uncompleted work (Boston, 1877). See "Memoir of John A. Dahlgren," by his widow (Boston, 1882).—His son, Ulric, born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1842; died near King and Queen's Court-House, Virginia, 4 March, 1864, removed to Washington with his father in 1848. In the intervals of study he spent his time in the U.S. Navy-yard, where he became familiar with the construction and use of artillery, and was taught by the sailors to swim and row. He began the study of civil engineering in 1858, and in 1860 began also to study law in Philadelphia; but, at the beginning of the Civil War, he returned to Washington, and just after the first battle of Bull Run was sent by his father to place and take charge of a naval battery on Maryland Heights. He then became aide to General Sigel, and served through Fremont's mountain campaign and through Pope's campaign, acting as Sigel's chief of artillery at the second battle of Bull Run. In November, 1862, he attacked Fredericksburg at the head of Sigel's body-guard of 57 men, and held the town for three hours, returning with 31 prisoners, and for his gallantry was detailed as special aide on General Burnside's staff. He was afterward on General Hooker's staff, distinguished himself at Chancellorsville, and as aide to General Meade performed much dangerous and important service in the Gettysburg Campaign at the head of a hundred picked men. On the retreat of the enemy from Gettysburg he led the charge into Hagerstown, and was severely wounded in the foot. His leg was amputated, and for a time his life was in danger; but he recovered, was promoted to colonel for his gallantry, and, though obliged to walk on crutches, returned at once to active service. He lost his life in a raid planned by him, in concert with General Kilpatrick, to release the Union prisoners at Libby prison and Belle Isle. A memoir of him, written by his father, was revised and published by his stepmother (Philadelphia, 1872).— Admiral Dahlgren's second wife, Madeleine Vinton, born in Gallipolis, Ohio, about 1835, is a daughter of Samuel F. Vinton, for over twenty years a leader of the Whig Party. At an early age she married Daniel Convers Goddard, of Zanesville, who died, leaving t wo children. She married Admiral Dahlgren on 2 August, 1865, and has three children of this marriage. As early as 1859 she published sketches and poems under the pen-name of " Corinne." In 1870-'3 she actively opposed the movement for female suffrage, and drew up a petition to Congress, which was extensively signed, asking that the right to vote should not be extended to women. The literary Society of Washington, of which she was one of the founders, held its meetings in her house for six years, and she was elected its vice-president. She was for some time president of " The Ladies' Catholic Missionary Society of Washington," and has built the chapel of "St. Joseph's of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in South Mountain, Maryland Mrs. Dahlgren's works include "Idealities" (Philadelphia, 1859); "Thoughts on Female Suffrage" (Washington, 1871); "South Sea Sketches " (Boston, 1881); "Etiquette of Social Life in Washington " (Philadelphia, 1881); "South Mountain Magic" (1882); "A Washington Winter" and " Memoirs of John A. Dahlgren" (1882); and "The Lost Name " and " Lights and Shadows of a Life " (Boston, 1886). She has translated from the French, Montalembert's "Pius IX" and De Chambrun's "Executive Power" (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1874), the preface to the latter being written by James A. Garfield, and from the Spanish, Donoso Cortes's " Catholicism. Liberalism, and Socialism," for which she received the thanks of Pius IX. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 53-54.


DAILY, Samuel Gordon, 1823-1866, abolitionist.  Member of the Nebraska Territorial House of Representatives.  U.S. Congressman.


DAKIN, Thomas Spencer, merchant, born in Orange County, New York, in 1831; died in Brooklyn, 13 May, 1878. He was the eldest of four children, and, until he was seventeen years of age, worked on his father's farm. He then walked, about seventy-five miles, to New York, and began life as an office-boy. In 1858 he established the firm of Thomas S. Dakin & Company, commission agents, continuing it until 1861, when he engaged in the oil trade, and became the head of the firm of Dakin & Gulick. In 1870 he retired from business. He was elected captain in the 13th Regiment, Brooklyn, in 1862, and served in the Virginia Campaign as a member of the staff of General Crook, who then commanded the 5th Brigade. After the war he became major-general of militia, and was widely known as a member of the American rifle team. He especially practised shooting at long range, and took part in the first international contest at Creedmoor in September, 1874, when the Irish team, under Major Leech, was defeated by the American team. In the following year the Americans again defeated the Irish team at Dolly Mount, Ireland, when General Dakin made the remarkable score of 165 in a possible 180. He was afterward elected a member of the legion of honor of France. In the international match in 1876, when the Americans defeated teams from Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and Canada, their success was mainly due to the instructions of General Dakin. In the first day's shooting he made the highest score, 203. He also took part in the Irish-American return match of the same year, when his score was again the highest, reaching 208. He was the only rifleman that shot in every international contest held either in this country or in Europe. He was a director in the National and several other rifle associations. In 1876 he was the Democratic nominee for Congressman in the third Congressional District, but was defeated by a small majority  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 56.


DALE, William Johnson, physician, born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, 5 September, 1815. His grandfather, William Johnson, fought at Bunker Hill; his paternal grandfather, Ebenezer, at Lexington; and his father, Ebenezer, was a surgeon in the war of 1812. He was graduated at Harvard in 1837, at its normal school in 1840, and began practice in Boston. In June, 1861, he was commissioned surgeon-general of Massachusetts, holding the rank of colonel, and in December of that year was appointed acting assistant surgeon of the U. S. Army, which place he retained till the close of the war. He was on duty in Boston, Massachusetts, during the Civil War, and had general supervision of all matters connected with the medical staff and the care and treatment of the sick and wounded that were sent home. In October, 1868, he was raised to the rank of brigadier-general, in connection with his appointment as surgeon-general of Massachusetts. In recognition of his services, the U. S. authorities gave his name to a general hospital established at Worcester, Massachusetts, opened in September, 1863. He is a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and was its anniversary chairman. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 57.


DALEY'S FERRY, CALIFORNIA, June 7, 1862. Guard from 2nd California Infantry. A war party of about 30 Indians fired from the brush on Daley's house or hotel at the ferry about 4 p. m. Daley abandoned his place, leaving the two soldiers on guard to conduct his family to the boat, which was safely done only after both soldiers were wounded. The Indians fired upon the boat, killing the mother of Mrs. Daly. After getting back to the shore one of the party man. aged to get to Areata whence help was sent. Dallas, Arkansas, January 28, 1864.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 336.


DALLAS, George Mifflin, statesman, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 10 July, 1792; died there, 31 December, 1864, was graduated with first-class honors at Princeton in 1810, and then studied law in his father's office, being admitted to the bar in 1813. The same year be received the appointment of private secretary to Albert Gallatin, and accompanied that gentleman on his mission to Russia, to negotiate a treaty of peace with England. On his return to this country, in the following year, he assisted his father for some months in his duties as secretary of the treasury, and then began the practice of law in New York City, and was solicitor of the U. S. Bank. In 1817 he was appointed deputy attorney-general for Philadelphia County. Taking an active part in politics, and supporting the candidacy of General Jackson for the presidency in 1824 and 1828, Mr. Dallas was in 1829 elected mayor, and, on the elevation of General Jackson to the presidency, in 1829 was appointed U. S. Attorney for that district. He retained this office till 1831, when he was elected to the U. S. Senate in the place of Isaac D. Barnard, who had resigned. He took a prominent part in the debates of that body until the expiration of his term, in 1833, when he declined a re-election, returned to the practice of the law, and filled the office of Attorney-General of Pennsylvania from 1833 till 1835. In 1837 President Van Buren appointed him minister to Russia, which post he retained till October, 1839, when he was recalled, at his own request, and again resumed legal practice, George M. Dallas and James Buchanan were for many years rival leaders of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, and aspirants for the presidency of the United States. In May, 1844, the Democratic Convention at Baltimore nominated him for vice-president of the United States on the ticket with James K. Polk for president. The Democratic candidates were elected by an electoral vote of 170 out of 275. The questions of the time were the tariff and the annexation of Texas. Mr. Polk's election caused the admission of Texas to the Union just before the close of Mr. Tyler's term of office, but the subject of the tariff was left for the new administration. The appointment of his rival Buchanan, as secretary of state, left Mr. Dallas without influence on the policy of the administration; but the tie in the Senate on the free-trade tariff of 1846, and its adoption by his casting vote, gave him prominence. A bill that levied duties on imports for the purpose of revenue only, abandoning the protective policy, was passed by the House of Representatives in 1846, but when it reached the Senate that body was evenly divided, on that the decision rested with the vice-president. In giving his vote Mr. Dallas said that, though the bill was defective, he believed that proof had been furnished that a majority of the people desired a change, to a great extent, in principle, if not fundamentally; but in giving the casting vote for a low tariff he violated pledges made to the protectionists of Pennsylvania that had secured the vote of the state for his party in the presidential election. His term expired in 1849. In 1856 Mr. Dallas succeeded Mr. Buchanan as minister to Great Britain, and continued in that post from 4 February, 1856, until the appointment by President Lincoln of Charles F. Adams, who relieved him on 16 May, 1861. At the very beginning of his diplomatic service in England he was called to act upon the Central American question, and the request made by the United States to the British government that Sir John Crampton, the British minister to the United States, should be recalled. Both these delicate questions were managed by Mr. Dallas in a conciliatory spirit, but without any sacrifice of national dignity, and both were settled amicably. At the close of his diplomatic career Mr. Dallas returned to private life and took no further part in public affairs except to express condemnation of secession. Many of his speeches were published, among them "An Essay on the Expediency of erecting any Monument to Washington except that involved in the Preservation of the Union" (1811); "A Vindication of President Monroe for authorizing General Jackson to pursue the Hostile Indians into Florida" (1819); "Speech in the Senate on Nullification and the Tariff" (1831); "Eulogy on Andrew Jackson" (1845); "Speech on giving his Casting Vote on the Tariff of 1846 " (1846); "Vindication of the Vice-President's Casting Vote in a Series of Letters" (1846); "Speech to the Citizens of Pittsburg on the War, Slavery, and the Tariff " (1847); "Speech to the Citizens of Philadelphia on the Necessity of maintaining the Union, the Constitution, and the Compromise" (1850). A "Series of Letters from London," written while he was minister there, in 1856-'60, was edited and published by his daughter Julia (Philadelphia, 1869  lieutenant-general in 1782, and was made a baronet in 1783. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 59.


DALLAS, GEORGIA, May 24, 1864. 2nd Cavalry Division, Army of the Cumberland. On this date the division, commanded by Brigadier-General Kenner Garrard, was encamped on Pumpkin Vine creek, about 3 miles from Dallas. In a reconnaissance toward the town he was attacked by Bate's division of Hardee's corps, but after a sharp skirmish succeeded in driving the Confederates back toward Dallas. No casualties reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 337.


DALLAS, GEORGIA, May 25 to June 5, 1864. Armies of the Cumberland, Tennessee and Ohio. On May 24 General Sherman learned through a captured despatch that General Johnston was forming his line along the south side of Pumpkin Vine creek from Dallas to Allatoona, and at once began the disposition of his forces to either give Johnston battle or force him from his position. Johnston's line covered the roads leading from Dallas to Acworth, Marietta and Atlanta, his center being near New Hope Church, 4 miles northeast of Dallas. It occupied the wooded summits of a number of ridges, with open valleys in front, over which the Union forces would have to advance to attack. The natural position was one capable of easy defense and every available minute was spent in strengthening it by formidable intrenchments. Sherman began his advance on the morning of the 25th. On the right was General McPherson's Army of the Tennessee near Van Wert, 16 miles northwest of Dallas, and moving against that place by the Rome road. In the center was the Army of the Cumberland under General Thomas, advancing on several roads from Burnt Hickory, some 5 or 6 miles northeast of Dallas. It consisted of the 4th, 14th and 20th army corps, respectively commanded by Generals Howard, Palmer and Hooker. Butterfield's division of Hooker's corps, preceded by McCook's cavalry, moved on the road leading to Golgotha; Geary's division advanced on the direct road to Dallas, and Williams' on the right. Palmer's and Howard's corps made a detour to the right to strike the Van Wert road 3 or 4 miles from Dallas, thus forming a junction with McPherson. General Schofield, with the Army of the Ohio, was ordered to remain near Burnt Hickory during the day, the only activity on that part of the line being reconnaissances by Stoneman's cavalry on the roads to the left and front. Geary's division reached Pumpkin Vine creek at Owen's mill to find the bridge on fire. While the men were extinguishing the flames they were fired on from the hill in front. Part of Hooker's cavalry escort forded the creek, deployed and drove off an outpost of some 25 cavalrymen. The bridge was then soon repaired, the division crossed over and moved in the direction of New Hope Church, the 7th Ohio being deployed as skirmishers. About a mile and a half from the bridge this regiment encountered the enemy in force. Candy's brigade, which was in advance, was deployed in line of battle, advanced at the double-quick and the enemy was forced back for some distance. The skirmish line was then strengthened and extended by the addition of the 28th Pennsylvania, and the rest of the division pressed forward in close support, again forcing the Confederates ack for about half a mile and capturing a few prisoners. From these it was learned that the force in front was Hood's entire corps, and that Hardee was not far off in the direction of Dallas. As the division was several miles from the nearest supporting troops. Hooker ordered Geary to take position on a ridge and throw up barricades for defense. Hooker had already sent orders to the other two divisions of the corps to move to Geary's support. They arrived about 4 p. m. and massed their troops, with Williams on the right and Butterfield on the left and rear of Geary. An attack was now ordered to be made in columns by brigades, Williams leading, next, and Geary, who had already been engaged for over four hours was held as a reserve. Hooker's columns thus arranged assaulted Hood's position repeatedly and endeavored to gain possession of the roads at New Hope Church. Confederate reinforcements were pouring in, however, and although Hood was forced back to the church his intrenchments there proved too strong to be carried. In the midst of a terrific thunderstorm the fight raged until dark, when the dead and wounded were gathered up and Hooker's forces retired to the ridge in their rear. When Sherman heard the firing, soon after Geary crossed the creek at Owen's mill, he rode to the front and upon learning the situation ordered Howard to bring up his corps to the support of Hooker. Newton's division arrived about 6 o'clock and took position on the left of Butterfield. By morning the whole corps, with the exception of Baird's division, which had been left at Burnt Hickory to guard the trains, was on the field and extended the line still farther to the left. At 5 o'clock that afternoon Schofield received orders to proceed to the front. Leaving Hovey's division to guard the trains the other two divisions moved forward via Burnt Hickory and Owen's mill. While riding forward in the darkness to learn the position of troops already on the field and to receive further orders, Schofield was severely hurt by his horse falling into a ditch and the command of the corps was transferred to Brigadier-General J. D. Cox. The corps reached the field at daybreak and went into position on the extreme left, covering the Dallas and Allatoona road. In the meantime McPherson had pushed forward with commendable vigor direct on Dallas and the morning of the 26th found him confronting Hardee. Logan's (15th) corps formed the right, extending across the Atlanta road; Dodge, with the 16th corps, was on Logan's left; and on the left of Dodge was Davis' division of Palmer's corps, which was on the way from Rome to join its command. Beyond Logan's right the country was picketed by Garrard's division of cavalry, thus guarding against the flank being turned by the enemy. Sharp skirmishing was kept up along the whole line during the 26th, the hottest part of it being in the neighborhood of the church. Each man on the skirmish line protected himself as he could by a shallow pit, a few fence rails or a friendly log, knowing that he could not be relieved until after dark, and the sharpshooters on both sides were constantly on the alert for opportunities to pick off some mounted officer who might happen to expose himself imprudently. During the day McCook's cavalry, which was operating on the left, had a skirmish with part of Wheeler's, in which McCook captured about 50 prisoners. This skirmish, with the information gleaned from some of the prisoners, led Sherman to believe that Wheeler's was the only force holding the region east of Johnston's right. The skirmishing along the lines had developed the fact that the Federals were superior in numbers and Sherman decided to withdraw part of his forces from the intrenchments for the purposes of turning the Confederate right. The Army of the Ohio was in possession of the road to Allatoona and by extending his line along that route Sherman hoped to reestablish communications with the railroad, while at the same time he could gain a position from which he could operate on Johnston's flank. Accordingly Thomas was ordered to withdraw Wood's division of Howard's corps, unite it with Johnson's division of Palmer's, which had been in reserve, and with these two divisions and a brigade from the Army of the Ohio make the flank movement. The movement was placed in charge of Howard, who made a reconnaissance at the place designated by Sherman and found the enemy was in a position to bring a cross-fire of both infantry and artillery upon the approaches to it. The troops were then moved farther to the left and massed in a field concealed from the Confederates by the intervening woods. At 1 1 a. m. on the 27th Wood moved about a mile farther to the left, when Howard thought the enemy's flank was reached, and the command wheeled to the right, McLean's brigade of the Army of the Ohio being deployed on Wood's right. McLean pushed forward his skirmishers and developed a considerable force of the enemy intrenched in front. The skirmishers were withdrawn and again Howard moved a mile to the left. About 5 p. m. another effort was made to turn the flank. The entire command moved forward, drove in the enemy's skirmishers and vigorously assaulted the main line. Colonel Scribner, commanding Johnson's advance brigade, was fired into from across the creek near Pickett's mill, and halted long enough to throw a detachment across the stream to protect his flank. This delay came at an inopportune moment, as it gave the enemy an opportunity to push forward his reserves on Wood's left, forcing it back and bringing his line into position where an enfilading fire could be brought to bear upon it. Wood withdrew under this fire and formed his troops on a ridge farther to the right, Johnson forming his to the left and rear. In this affair, known as the battle of Pickett's mill, the Union loss in killed, wounded and missing was about 1,400. That of the enemy was not ascertained. Although the flank movement had failed, ;i position was secured near Pickett's mill that afterwards proved to be of great importance. During the attempt to turn the enemy's flank the divisions of Newton and Stanley kept up a strong demonstration in their fronts by way of a diversion, and repulsed one assault on their lines with heavy loss to the Confederates. Skirmishing was kept up along the lines, but there was no more hard fighting until the afternoon of the 28th, when McPherson was ordered to close to the left on Thomas in front of New Hope Church, and allow Davis to join his command, Sherman's object being to extend his line still more to the left. Johnston suspected that Sherman was withdrawing his right from in front of Dallas and ordered Hardee to threaten McPherson's lines to see if they held. Hardee sent forward Bate's division, which made a sudden and daring attack in front of the town. McPherson's men had erected good breastworks and Bate met with a bloody and decisive repulse. About the same time Armstrong's brigade of Confederate cavalry tried to pass through the space between Logan and McPherson, but was met with such a withering fire of artillery and musketry that he was forced to give up the attempt and retreat with heavy loss. The two armies now lay in front of each other without any important action on either side until June 1, when Sherman succeeded in moving his whole line to the left about 5 miles, occupying the roads to Allatoona and Acworth. Stoneman's cavalry was then moved rapidly into Allatoona at the east end of the pass and Garrard's cavalry around by the rear to the west end. These movements were made without opposition and on the 4th the entire Union army was withdrawn to the railroad near Acworth, leaving Johnston in his intrenched position at New Hope Church. The Confederate commander did not remain there long, however, for on the night of the 4th he fell back to a new line across the railroad before Marietta and Kennesaw mountain.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 337-339.


DALLAS, GEORGIA, October 7, 1864. 2nd Cavalry Division, Army of the Cumberland. The cavalry division received orders on this day to gain the cross-roads at New Hope Church to obtain information of the enemy. When within 2 miles of the church Armstrong's Confederate brigade was encountered and driven to within one mile of Dallas. A Confederate brigadier-general and a colonel were captured. No other casualties were reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 339-340.


DALLAS, MISSOURI, September 2, 186r. 11th Missouri Volunteers.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 340.


DALLAS, MISSOURI, August 24, 1862. (See Crooked Creek, same date.) Dallas, North Carolina, April 19, 1865. Stoneman's Raid.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 340.


DALTON, Edward Barry, physician, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, 21 September, 1834; died in Santa Barbara, California, 13 May, 1872.  He was graduated at Harvard in 1855, and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1858. Dr. Dalton then settled in New York, and was resident physician of St. Luke's Hospital when the Civil War began. He at once volunteered as a surgeon, and served from April, 1861, till May, 1865. At first he was a medical officer in the U.S. Navy, after which he was commissioned surgeon of the 36th New York Volunteers, and subsequently surgeon of U. S. Volunteers, serving as medical inspector of the 6th Army Corps, and as medical director of the Department of Virginia. In March, 1864, he was transferred to the Army of the Potomac, where he remained throughout the campaign of that year, from the Wilderness to City Point, having charge of all the wounded, and establishing and moving the hospitals. At City Point he was made chief medical officer of the depot field-hospitals, Army of the Potomac, till the final campaign in March and April, 1865, when he accompanied the troops as medical director of the 9th Army Corps. After his discharge he was successively appointed brevet lieutenant-colonel and colonel of volunteers. In March, 1866, he was appointed sanitary superintendent of the New York Metropolitan Board of Health, in which office he remained until his resignation in January, 1869. In 1869 he originated the present city ambulance system for the transportation of the sick and injured. His health had then begun to fail, and, after trying various resorts, he finally visited California, where he died from consumption. He published papers on "The Disorder known as Bronzed Skin, or Disease of the Supra-renal Capsules" (1860); "The Metropolitan Board of Health" (1868); and "Reports of the Sanitary Superintendent, of the Metropolitan Board of Health " from 1866 till 1869. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 60.


DALTON, Thomas, 1794-1883, free African American, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Leader, Massachusetts General Colored Association.  Leader, New England Anti-Slavery Society.  Wife was Lucy Dalton.  Organized anti-slavery conventions with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.


DALTON, GEORGIA, January 22, 1864. 28th Kentucky Mounted Infantry and 4th Michigan Cavalry. During a scout from Rossville Colonel William P. Boone, with 431 men and 15 officers of these two regiments, attacked the camp of 300 Confederate home guards near Dalton. The enemy was routed and fled in the direction of Dalton, where a considerable Confederate force was posted. The camp and equipage was destroyed. No casualties were reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 340.


DALTON, GEORGIA, February 23-26, 1864. Demonstration by Major-General John M. Palmer. About the middle of February Major-General George H. Thomas, commanding the Department of the Cumberland, received information that General J. E. Johnston had weakened his forces in the vicinity of Dalton to send reinforcements to Polk and Longstreet. On Sunday, the 21st, in order to determine the truth of these reports, he directed General Palmer to take his corps (the 14th) and Cruft's division of the 4th corps and make a demonstration towards Dalton, develop the enemy's strength and gain possession of the town if possible. Enyart's brigade of Cruft's division was left to cover the roads about Red Clay and Matthies' brigade of the 15th corps, Colonel W. A. Dickerman commanding, was assigned to Cruft instead. His command then consisted of Dickerman's, Champion's and Grose's infantry brigades and detachments of the 4th Michigan and 4th Ohio cavalry, respectively commanded by Captains W. West Van Antwerp and P. H. Warner. Palmer's three divisions were commanded by Brigadier- Generals R. W. Johnson, J. C. Davis and Absalom Baird. The 2nd brigade, 2nd cavalry division, under Colonel Eli Long, and three regiments of unassigned cavalry were with the 14th corps and five light batteries accompanied the expedition. On the 22nd the enemy's cavalry pickets were driven from the roads about Varnell's station and 3 prisoners captured by Grose and Van Antwerp, and the next day Long attacked a Confederate camp less than 4 miles from Dalton, capturing 12 prisoners. On the morning of the 24th Baird's division was south of Taylor's ridge, near Ringgold; Johnson and Davis were in advance toward Tunnel Hill; Long, supported by Grose's brigade, was at Varnell's station, and the remainder of Cruft's division was at Lee's house, on the road leading from Red Clay to Tunnel Hill. The advance was made in three columns. After the right and left had moved out some distance the center column pushed forward, but was soon met by an accurate, long-range fire from a battery of Parrott guns and held in check until the right and left columns flanked the battery and forced it to retire. Davis then threw Morgan's brigade to a hill about half a mile north of the tunnel, from which the enemy's skirmishers were driven down the ridge towards Buzzard Roost. By the time this had been done Davis rode forward and ordered his skirmishers to occupy a range of hills in front. The Confederates were quickly driven from these hills, after which the skirmish line was pushed forward toward Buzzard Roost gap, where the enemy was found strongly posted and the skirmishers were checked by a sharp fire of both musketry and artillery. Johnson's division now came to Davis' support, but the day was so far advanced that further operations were postponed until the next morning and the two commands went into bivouac. About noon Grose left Lee's house, crossed over to the east side of Rocky Face ridge and then turned south towards Dalton. At 2:30 he came up with Long's cavalry at the junction of the Dalton road and the road leading to Buzzard Roost gap, and the two commands moved forward to feel the enemy. Near Glaize's house, about 3 miles from Dalton, Long encountered a strong force of Confederate infantry in position on the railroad below the gap and after a spirited skirmish, in which Grose's men joined, the enemy was driven to the cover of his rifle-pits. This part of the reconnaissance developed the fact that the enemy was prepared to make a vigorous resistance to the occupancy of Dalton. At 3 a. m. on the 25th Baird left Tunnel Hill, and at the same hour Cruft left Lee's house, both under instructions to join Grose and Long on the Dalton road and then move down the eastern side of Rocky Face ridge in an endeavor to force the enemy out of his position in the gap by threatening his right and rear, while Davis and Johnson attacked him in front. Notwithstanding a heavy mist, which obscured the sight, Davis began skirmishing with the enemy at an early hour, and the firing was kept up with considerable vigor all the forenoon. On the east side of the ridge Palmer arrived about 8 a. m. and took command. Baird's division was thrown to the right of the line of attack; Cruft formed his division with Grose on the right, Champion on the left and Dickerman in the center, the cavalry being thrown out to cover the left flank. During the formation of the line the artillery was brought into action to develop the enemy's position, and shortly after 11 o'clock Palmer ordered an advance. The line moved forward for about a mile, when the enemy was found strongly posted on a wooded ridge. This position was carried by Grose and Champion in a brisk fight, the Confederates falling back to another ridge. The artillery was then planted on the first ridge and opened on the enemy, who replied vigorously, but Cruft held his position there for the remainder of the day. About 3 p. m. Champion made an assault on the Confederate right, but it was not wholly successful. The enemy threatened all the afternoon, but did not make any attack, the fighting being confined to skirmishing and artillery firing on both sides. When Davis heard the sound of Baird's and Cruft's artillery in the morning he directed Morgan and McCook, commanding his 1st and 3d brigades, to push forward a heavy line of skirmishers to keep the Confederates from massing against the Union troops east of the ridge. At 3 p. m., the time that Champion made his attack, he heard the increased firing, which led him to believe that only a strong skirmish line was in his front, while the main body had been concentrated against Baird and Cruft. To ascertain the real situation the skirmish lines were strengthened and advanced, while the batteries of Harris and Hotchkiss opened fire on the rifle-pits. For some time the enemy did not deign to reply, but the steady and well directed fire of the batteries and the advance of the skirmish line finally brought a response that completely disclosed his position. In this part of the action Morgan's brigade suffered by being exposed to an enfilading artillery fire and a direct fire of infantry in front. Johnson's division had been held in reserve during the day, but toward evening the brigades of King and Hambright relieved Davis' skirmishers, and the close of the day was marked by a well matched contest between the sharpshooters on both sides, which continued until after dark. By this time it had been effectually demonstrated that Johnston had not weakened his force and the order was given for the Union troops to retire to their former positions. Some slight skirmishing occurred on the 26th as Palmer withdrew, but it was not attended by any important results. The Federal loss during the entire reconnaissance was 43 killed, 267 wounded and 35 missing. Impartial returns give Confederate casualties amounting to 167 in killed and wounded, but as only two commands reported, the total loss was doubtless much heavier. (This action is also called Crow's Valley.) Dalton, Georgia, May 13, 1864. 3d Brigade, 1st Division, 4th Army Corps. During the advance on Atlanta the 3d brigade was given the lead when it was learned that the enemy had retreated from the Union front. Three miles out of Dalton it came up with the Confederate rear-guard, and skirmishing commenced. The enemy was driven to and through Dalton and about 3 miles south of the town, on the Resaca road, made a stand upon a high wooded hill. As the pursuing column approached the Confederates opened with artillery. A Union battery was placed in position and an artillery duel was kept up for some time across a large open farm with a low valley between the opposing forces. The 9th and 36th Indiana were then ordered into line, and, supported by the 84th Illinois advanced across the valley at the double-quick and drove the enemy from his barricades. The casualties were slight.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 340-342.


DALTON, GEORGIA, August 14-15, 1864. Detachments of 2nd Missouri Infantry, Convalescents and 7th Kentucky Cavalry. About 4 p. m. of Sunday, August 14, General Joseph Wheeler with 5,000 of his force approached Dalton and demanded a surrender. Colonel Bernard Laiboldt, commanding the post, immediately refused and firing was at once commenced by the Confederate artillery. After 2 hours the Union skirmishers were driven back to the earthworks erected on a hill east of the railroad depot and commanding the town. A charge on this barricade was repulsed and the skirmishers again thrown out. An artillery fire was kept up all night, without much effect, the skirmishing in the meantime being lively, and about daylight the head of the enemy's column was seen to move toward Tunnel Hill, whence firing was heard in a short time. The garrison then charged and drove the remainder of the enemy out of sight. The loss of the Federal force was 15 killed, 12 wounded and 23 missing; the Confederate casualties were not reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 342.


DALTON, GEORGIA, October 13, 1864. 44th U. S. Colored Infantry, and Detachments of 57th Illinois Infantry, 7th Kentucky Cavalry and 20th Ohio Battery. The garrison at Dalton. comprising about 750 men, was attacked by a force of 10,000 men under Major-General J. B. Hood. When the Confederates approached the city they sent a summons to surrender, which was refused. Hood then began skirmishing while he posted his artillery of 30 pieces and deployed his troops to surround the town. Colonel Lewis Johnson, commanding the post, then sent 3 officers under flag of truce to Hood and arranged terms of surrender. Nine of the enemy were killed and 20 wounded in the skirmishing.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 342.


DALTON, GEORGIA, November 30, 1864. U. S. Troops under Colonel J. B. Culver. The pickets on the Spring Place road were attacked by a force of 200 Confederates. After the enemy had captured 1 scout they were repulsed. No losses were reported. Dalton, Georgia, December 5, 1864. Colonel J. B. Culver of the 13th Michigan infantry, commanding the post at Dalton, reported that a squad of guerrillas attacked the water-tank not far from that place at 1 a. m., the guard of 9 men running away. The Confederates then went to the railroad bridge, captured the 30 men guarding it, cut the telegraph wire and left. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 342.


DALTON, GEORGIA, March 13-14, 1865. Colonel H. F. Sickles, commanding the post at Dalton, reported on the 13th: "About 4 this p. m. the guerrillas captured 5 railroad hands one mile from my line on the Cleveland road. I mounted all the mules and horses I had and sent them after the guerrillas. Killed 2 of the cusses, captured 1. I am sorry they did not kill him also. What shall I do with him?" The next day Sickles sent out a small detachment of the 147th Illinois infantry under Major Bush, which met 70 mounted Confederates and engaged them, killing and wounding several, capturing 1 and scattering the rest. One man on the Union side was slightly wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 343.


DAM. An impediment formed of stones, gravel, and earth, by which a stream of water is made to overflow and inundate the adjacent ground. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, pp. 213).


DAM NO. 1, VIRGINIA, April 16, 1862. (See Lee's Mill, same date.) Dam No. 4, Virginia, December 11, 1861. 12th Indiana Volunteers. In the operations on the Upper Potomac the pickets of this regiment exchanged shots with those of the enemy. No detailed report of the affair was made, nor no casualties given. Dam No. 5, Virginia, December 8, 1861. Major-General N. P. Banks, reporting from Frederick, Maryland, says: "The firing Saturday was at Dam No. 5, near Clear Spring. No damage done. Rebels driven back with loss of some men." Dandridge, Tennessee, December 23, 1863. 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. A company of the 15th Pennsylvania attacked the advance guard of a Confederate force moving from Morristown to Dandridge and captured 4 men. The Union force was in turn attacked by the Confederate reserve and driven back to camp near the foot of Flat gap, skirmishing with the enemy all the way. No losses were reported. The affair was an incident of the Knoxville campaign.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 343.


DAMAGE. The costs of repairs of damage done to arms, equipments, or implements, in the use of the armies of the United States, shall be deducted from the pay of any officer or soldier in whose care or use the said arms, equipments or implements were when the said damages occurred: Provided, the damage was occasioned by the abuse or negligence of said officer or soldier. Every officer commanding a regiment, corps, garrison, or detachment, to make once every two months, or oftener if required, a written report to the colonel of ordnance stating all damages to arms so belonging to his command, and naming the officers and soldiers by whose negligence or abuse the damages were occasioned; (Act Feb. 8, 1815.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 213-214).


DANA, Charles Anderson, 1819-1897, New Hampshire, newspaper editor, author, government official, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader.  Proprietor and managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune.  As editor, he had the Tribune actively advocate for the anti-slavery cause.  The Tribune became one of the leading newspapers promoting anti-slavery.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 64-65; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 49; Wilson, J. H., Life of Charles A. Dana. New York, 1907).

DANA, Charles Anderson, editor, born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, 8 August, 1819; died near Glen Cove, Long Island, 17 October, 1897. He was a descendant of Richard, progenitor of most of the Danas in the United States. His boyhood was spent in Buffalo, New York, where he worked in a store until he was eighteen years old. At that age he first studied the Latin grammar, and prepared himself for college, entering Harvard in 1839, but after two years a serious trouble with his eyesight compelled him to leave. He received an honorable dismissal, and was afterward given his bachelor's and master's degrees. In 1842 he became a member of the Brook Farm Association for agriculture and education, being associated with George and Sophia Ripley, George William Curtis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Parker, William Henry Channing, John Sullivan Dwight, Margaret Fuller, and other philosophers more or less directly concerned in the remarkable attempt to realize at Roxbury a high ideal of social and intellectual life. One of the survivors of Brook Farm speaks of Mr. Dana as the only man of affairs connected with that Unitarian, humanitarian, and socialistic experiment. His earliest newspaper experience was gained in the management of the “Harbinger,” which was devoted to social reform and general literature. After about two years of editorial work on Elizur Wright's Boston “Chromotype,” a daily newspaper, Mr. Dana joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” in 1847. The next year he spent eight months in Europe, and after his return he became one of the proprietors and the managing editor of the “Tribune,” a post which he held until 1 April, 1862. The extraordinary influence and circulation attained by that newspaper during the ten years preceding the Civil War was in a degree due to the development of Mr. Dana's genius for journalism. This remark applies not only to the making of the “Tribune” as a newspaper, but also to the management of its staff of writers, and to the steadiness of its policy as the leading organ of anti-slavery sentiment. The great struggle of the “Tribune” under Greeley and Dana was not so much for the overthrow of slavery where it already existed as against the further spread of the institution over unoccupied territory, and the acquisition of slave-holding countries outside of the Union. It was not less firm in its resistance of the designs of the slave-holding interest than wise in its attitude toward the extremists and impracticables at the north. In the “Tribune's” opposition to the attempt to break down the Missouri compromise and to carry slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and in the development and organization of that popular sentiment which gave birth to the Republican Party and led to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Mr. Dana bore no unimportant part. Writing of the political situation in 1854, Henry Wilson says, in his “Rise and Fall of the Slave Power”: “At the outset, Mr. Greeley was hopeless and seemed disinclined to enter the contest. He told his associates that he would not restrain them, but, as for himself, he had no heart for the strife. They were more hopeful; and Richard Hildreth, the historian, Charles A. Dana, the veteran journalist, James S. Pike, and other able writers, opened and continued a powerful opposition in its columns, and did very much to rally and reassure the friends of freedom and to nerve them for the fight,” In 1861 Mr. Dana went to Albany to advance the cause of Mr. Greeley as a candidate for the U. S. Senate, and nearly succeeded in nominating him. The caucus was about equally divided between Mr. Greeley's friends and those of Mr. Evarts, while Ira Harris had a few votes which held the balance of power, and, at the instigation of Thurlow Weed, the supporters of Mr. Evarts went over to Judge Harris. During the first year of the war the ideas of Mr. Greeley and those of Mr. Dana in regard to the proper conduct of military operations were somewhat at variance; and this disagreement resulted in the resignation of Mr. Dana, after fifteen years' service on the “Tribune.” He was at once employed by Secretary Stanton in special work of importance for the War Department, and in 1863 was appointed assistant Secretary of War, which office he held until after the surrender of Lee. His duties as the representative of the civil authority at the scene of military operations brought him into close personal relations with Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln, who were accustomed to depend much upon his accurate perception and just estimates of men and measures for information of the actual state of affairs at the front. At the time when General Grant's character and probable usefulness were unknown quantities, Mr. Dana's confidence in Grant's military ability probably did much to defeat the powerful effort then making to break down the rising commander. Of this critical period General Sherman remarks in his “Memoirs”: “One day early in April, 1868, I was up at Grant's headquarters [at Vicksburg], and we talked over all these things with absolute freedom. Charles A. Dana, assistant Secretary of War, was there, and Wilson, Rawlins, Frank Blair, McPherson, etc. We all knew, what was notorious, that General McClernand was intriguing against General Grant, in hopes to regain command of the whole expedition, and that others were raising clamor against Grant in the newspapers of the north. Even Mr. Lincoln and General Halleck seemed to be shaken; but at no instant did we (his personal friends) slacken in our loyalty to him.” Mr. Dana was in the saddle at the front much of the time during the campaigns of northern Mississippi and Vicksburg, the rescue of Chattanooga, and the marches and battles of Virginia in 1864 and 1865. After the war his services were sought by the proprietors of the Chicago “Republican,” a new daily, which failed through causes not within the editor's control. Returning to New York, he organized in 1867 the stock company that now owns the “Sun” newspaper, and became its editor. The first number of the “Sun” issued by Mr. Dana appeared on 27 January, 1868, and for nearly twenty years he was actively and continuously engaged in the management of that successful journal, and solely responsible for its conduct. He made the “Sun” a Democratic newspaper, independent and outspoken in the expression of its opinions respecting the affairs of either party. His criticisms of civil maladministration during General Grant's terms as president led to a notable attempt on the part of that administration, in July, 1873, to take him from New York on a charge of libel, to be tried without a jury in a Washington police court. Application was made to the U. S. District Court in New York for a warrant of removal; but in a memorable decision Judge Blatchford, now a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, refused the warrant, holding the proposed form of trial to be unconstitutional. Perhaps to a greater extent than in the case of any other conspicuous journalist, Mr. Dana's personality was identified in the public mind with the newspaper that he edited. He has recorded no theories of journalism other than those of common sense and human interest. He was impatient of prolixity, cant, and the conventional standards of news importance. Mr. Dana's first book was a volume of stories translated from the German, entitled “The Black Ant” (New York and Leipsic, 1848). In 1855 he planned and edited, with George Ripley, the “New American Cyclopædia.” The original edition was completed in 1863. It has since been thoroughly revised and issued in a new edition under the title of “The American Cyclopædia” (16 vols., New York, 1873-'6). With General James H. Wilson he wrote a “Life of Ulysses S. Grant” (Springfield, 1868). His “Household Book of Poetry, a collection of the best minor poems of the English language,” was first published in 1857, and has passed through many editions, the latest, thoroughly revised, being that of 1884. His “Reminiscences of the Civil War” appeared in 1898, after his death, in “McClure's Magazine.” Appleton’s 1900 pp. 64-65.


DANA, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh, nephew of Samuel Luther and James Freeman, soldier, born in Fort Sullivan, Eastport, Maine, 15 April, 1822. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1842, and, after being appointed in the 7th Infantry as second lieutenant, served on garrison duty in the southwest. During the Mexican War he served with distinction, and was present at many of the important engagements, being severely wounded in storming the intrenchments at the battle of Cerro Gordo. He became captain on the staff and assistant quartermaster in March, 1848, and until 1855 served in garrison duty, principally in Minnesota. From 1855 till 1861 he was a banker in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was brigadier-general of the militia from 1857 till 1861. During the Civil War he accompanied the 1st Minnesota Infantry as colonel to the front, becoming brigadier-general of volunteers in February, 1862, and attached to the Army of the Potomac. He served in the battles before Richmond, and at Antietam commanded a brigade in General John Sedgwick's Division  of General Edwin V. Sumner's Corps, and was severely wounded. He was commissioned major-general of volunteers in November, 1862, and was in command of the defences of Philadelphia during the invasion of Pennsylvania by the Confederate Army in 1863. Afterward he joined the Army of the Gulf, and commanded the expedition by sea to the Rio Grande, landing at Brazos Santiago, and driving the Confederate forces as far as Laredo, Texas. He then successively commanded the 13th Army Corps, the District of Vicksburg, the 16th Army Corps, the Districts of West Tennessee and Vicksburg, and finally the Department of the Mississippi. In Mav, 1865, he resigned from the army and engaged in mining operations in the western states. From 1866 till 1871 he was general agent of the American-Russian Commercial Company of San Francisco, in Alaska and Washington, after which he became superintendent of railroads in Illinois, and in 1878 of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quiney Railroad. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 68


DANDRIDGE, TENNESSEE, December 24, 1863. (See Hay's Ferry.)


DANDRIDGE, TENNESSEE, January 1, 14, and May 19, 1864. Dandridge, Tennessee, January 16-17, 1864. 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions, Army of the Cumberland, and 1st Cavalry Division, Army of the Ohio. On the 16th. the enemy being in close proximity to Dandridge, Colonel Wolford's division of the Army of the Ohio was ordered to make a reconnaissance on the Bend of Chucky road while the other two divisions advanced on the Bull's Gap road to Kimbrough's cross-roads, 9 miles from Dandridge. The whole Confederate force of cavalry had massed on the Bend of Chucky road and pressed Wolford heavily, Garrard's division being checked at the same time by a division of infantry at the cross-roads. Garrard was ordered to return after dark and his division was placed in position on the Bull's Gap road, with Wolford's division on the right and McCook's on the left. At 4 p. m. the next day the Confederates drove in one regiment of infantry, picketing on the extreme right, and attacked McCook with great fury. Garrard was at the time engaging the entire force of the enemy's cavalry and three brigades of his infantry. The fighting was desperate along the entire Union line. The Federals charged repeatedly and drove the enemy from several positions, not falling back to the line held in the afternoon until after dark. Later the whole command took up the march for Strawberry plains. The Federal losses were 8 killed, 58 wounded and 17 missing; the Confederate casualties amounted to about 150 killed, wounded and missing.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 343.


DANDRIDGE'S MILL, TENNESSEE, December 13, 1863. 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The pickets of this regiment were attacked at Dandridge's mill at 11 a. m. by a small scouting party of Confederates sent out from their cargo near Bull's gap. The Federal reserve pursued the enemy and captured 6, belonging to Armstrong's division, with their horses and arms. No casualties were reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p.


DANE, Nathan, 1752-1835, jurist, anti-slavery activist, delegate to the Continental Congress, 1785-1788, Massachusetts, framed Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (Appletons, 1888, Vol. II, p. 72; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 63; Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 158n; ; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 76)

DANE, Nathan, jurist, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 27 Dec., 1752; died in Beverly, Massachusetts, 15 Feb., 1835. He was graduated at Harvard in 1778, and, after studying law, was admitted to its practice and settled in Beverly. His acquirements made him a safe and able counsellor, and with his large and diversified experience he became one of the most prominent lawyers of New England. He entered at once into political life, and from 1782 till 1785 was a member of the Massachusetts legislature. In 1785 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, and was continued as such by re-election until 1788. During his career in the national legislature he rendered much efficient service by his work on committees, and was the framer of the celebrated ordinance passed by Congress in 1787 for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio. It was adopted without a single alteration, and contains the emphatic statement “that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” He also incorporated in this ordinance a prohibition against all laws impairing the obligation of contracts, which the convention that formed the constitution of the United States a few months afterward extended to all the states of the Union by making it a part of that constitution. In 1790 he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, and again elected in 1794 and 1796. He was appointed judge of the court of common pleas for Essex County in 1794, but, after taking the oath of office, almost immediately resigned, and in 1795 was appointed a commissioner to revise the laws of the state. In 1811 he was delegated to revise and publish the charters that had been granted in Massachusetts, and in 1812 was selected to make a new publication of the statutes. During the same year he was chosen a presidential elector. He was a delegate to the Hartford Convention in 1814, and also to the Massachusetts constitutional Convention in 1820, but declined serving on account of deafness. For fifty years he devoted his Sundays to theological studies, excepting during the hours of public worship, reading generally the Scriptures in their original languages. In 1829 he gave $10,000, which he increased by $5,000 in 1831, for the foundation of the Dane professorship of law in Harvard law-school, requesting that his friend, Judge Joseph Story, should occupy the chair, which he did until his death. He published “A General Abridgment and Digest of American Law” (9 vols., Boston, 1823-‘9), and “Appendix” (1830). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 72.


DANFORTH, Joshua Nobel, Reverend, 1798-1861, clergyman.  Agent for the American Colonization Society in New York and New England, 1834-1838.  He established a headquarters office in Boston.  He organized numerous auxiliaries and recruited notable members, such as Herman Humphrey, President of Amherst College, and noted historian, George Bancroft.  His assistants were Reverend Charles Walker and Reverend Cyril Pearl.  (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 73; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 196-197, 201-202, 204, 209-210, 227)

DANFORTH, Joshua Noble, clergyman, born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1 April, 1798; died in New Castle, Del, 14 Nov., 1861. He was graduated at Williams in 1818, and spent two years at the Princeton theological seminary. After being ordained by the New Brunswick presbytery, on 30 Nov., 1825, he was installed pastor of the church in New Castle, Del., where he remained until 1828, when he accepted a call to Washington. In 1832-'4 he was agent of the American colonization Society, from 1834 till 1838 pastor of the Congregational Church in Lee, Massachusetts, and then for fifteen years in charge of the 2d Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, Va. In 1860 he again accepted an agency for the American colonization Society. Dr. Danforth received in 1855 the degree of D. D. from Delaware College. He contributed largely to the religious and secular press, and wrote “Gleanings and Groupings from a Pastor's Portfolio” (New York, 1852).  Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. II, p. 73.


DANGERFIELD, Newby, free African American man with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, 1859 (see entry for John Brown).


DANIEL, John Moncure, editor, born in Stafford County, Virginia, 24 October, 1825; died in Richmond, Virginia, 30 March, 1865. His father was the son of an eminent surgeon in the U. S. Army, who married a daughter of Thomas Stone, of Maryland, signer of the Declaration of Independence. John Moncure was educated mainly by his father, and studied law with Judge Lomax in Fredericksburg, Virginia, but did not complete his studies, his father's death rendering it necessary to earn a support for himself and aid his brothers. In 1845 he went to Richmond, where he obtained the place of librarian in a small public library, which, though it brought little money, supplied opportunity for indulging his passion for reading. The first exhibition of his prowess as a writer was on an agricultural monthly, "The Southern Planter," to which he attracted so much notice that he was invited to a place on the staff of a new Democratic newspaper (1847), the "Richmond Examiner," which speedily became the leading paper of the south. The brilliant invective of the paper led to his fighting several duels. Mr. Daniel’s " Democratic " principles were of the philosophical European school, and he was enabled to harmonize his pro-slavery radicalism with these by the adoption of Carlyle's theory (in "The Nigger Question "), which he interpreted as meaning that Negroes were not to be considered as men in the same sense as whites. He was heretical in religious opinions, and his columns bore witness to much admiration for Emerson and Theodore Parker. He even published Parker's famous sermon on Webster in his paper. The literary character of the "Examiner was very high. Mr. Daniel was a friend of. Edgar A. Poe, whom he aided with money, and of whom he wrote a remarkable sketch in the "Southern Literary Messenger." Some of Poe's poems were revised for this paper. Mr. Daniel was perhaps the earliest, apostle of the secessionists in Virginia, In 1853 he was appointed by President Buchanan minister to the court of Victor Emanuel, and while there he took high ground in demanding the same immunities for an Italian naturalized in the United States and visiting Sardinia as for any other American, and was indignant that Mr. Marcy did not support him in threatening a rupture of diplomatic relations. He caused some scandal by escorting to a royal ball at Turin (on occasion of the betrothal of Prince Napoleon and Princess Clotilde) the Countess Marie de Solms (afterward Madame Katazzi), who had not been invited. This matter was the subject of a curious correspondence between Cavour and his minister at Washington. Garibaldi requested Daniel to annex Nice to the American republic, which Daniel declined on the ground that it was contrary to the Monroe Doctrine. His social relations at Turin were for a time rendered unpleasant through the imprudent publication by a friend in Richmond  if a private letter in which he ridiculed the habitual of the court, the letter having found its way to Turin. Nevertheless. Daniel passed more than seven agreeable years abroad. At the beginning of the Civil War he hastened home, and served on the staff of General A. P. Hill. His arm being shattered, he resumed editorship of the Richmond "Examiner." He attacked Jefferson Davis and Mr. Elmore (Confederate Treasurer) with great severity, was challenged in 1864 by the latter, and met him in a duel, where he was unable to point his pistol on account of his wounded arm. He was shot in the leg in this duel. He predicted the collapse of the Confederacy, and died three days before it occurred. Frederick S. Daniel has printed privately a volume containing his brother's leading articles during the war, with a memoir. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 74-75.


DANIEL, Raleigh Travers, jurist, born in Stafford County, Virginia, 15 October, 1805; died in Richmond, 16 August, 1877. His father was an eminent physician, his mother a daughter of Thomas Stone, signer of the Declaration of Independence. His early education was acquired from John Lewis, who kept a classical school in Spottsylvania County, and was perhaps the test teacher of Latin and Greek in that region. At the age  of seventeen he entered the office of his uncle, Judge P. V. Daniel (afterward of the U. S. Supreme Court), at Richmond, and, after a careful training for the profession of law, took a high position at the bar. In the early part of his career he was appointed commonwealth's attorney for Henrico County, in which Richmond is situated, and held that office until 1852. Though belonging to a democratic family, he was the leader of the Whig Party in Richmond while yet a young man, and was repeatedly elected to represent that city in the legislature. He was the favorite orator of his party in Virginia, always chairman of its state committee, and on its electoral ticket; and in the presidential canvasses of 1840 and 1844 he confronted the democratic champions in every part of the state. Such was the admiration felt for him by his opponents that, in 1847 a democratic assembly elected him one of the three members of the governor's council. By seniority he became lieutenant-governor of the state. He was a strong Union man so long as that sentiment was possible in his state; but when the war came he considered service to his state the paramount duty. When Richmond was occupied by the national forces Mr. Daniel was removed by General Schofield from the office of city attorney. When the autonomy of the state was restored in 1868, he devoted himself to the work of organizing the conservative party, which triumphed in the election of Gilbert C. Walker as governor. In 1872 he was elected attorney-general of Virginia, and in this office showed such capacity for mastering the novel questions and difficulties that had followed the confusion of affairs that at the next convention he was re-nominated by acclamation. He was elected by an overwhelming majority, on 11 August, 1877, but died from a hemorrhage four days later. His culture, eloquence, and social qualities are still remembered in every part of Virginia, where no man of his political opinions had ever been so popular. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 75.


DANIEL, William, jurist, born in Cumberland County, Virginia, in 1770; died in Lynchburg, Virginia, 20 November, 1839. He was a member of the Virginia house of delegates, and gained reputation as an orator by his defence of the "Resolutions of '98" He became circuit judge and ex-officio member of the, old general court of Virginia. His judicial opinions are high authority, and some of his sayings are proverbial in his neighborhood.—His son, William, jurist, born in Winchester, Virginia, 26 November, 1800; died in Lynchburg, Virginia, 28 March, 1873, was educated at Hampden Sidney College and at the University of Virginia, and while yet a youth was a lawyer of large practice and wide reputation for eloquence. He was elected to the Virginia house of delegates before he was of age. He was an elector on the Polk ticket in 1844. He was a judge of the supreme court of appeals of Virginia from 1847 till 1865. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 75.


DANIEL, John Warwick, senator, born in Lynchburg, Virginia, 5 September, 1842, received a classical education, and in May, 1861, volunteered in the Confederate Army, in which he served throughout the war, rising to be major and adjutant-general of Early's Division in the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1865-'6 he studied law at the University of Virginia, and soon after entering upon practice gained a high reputation as an advocate. He has published "Attachments" (1869) and “Negotiable Instruments" (1876). He was elected to the state house of delegates in 1869. and to the state senate in 1875 and 1879. In 1876 he was an elector-at-large on the Tilden and Hendricks ticket. He was nominated for governor, in 1881, by the debt-paying democracy, and resigned from the state senate to accept the nomination, but was defeated by William E. Cameron, the readjuster candidate. On 4 November, 1884, he was elected a representative in Congress, and on 15 December 1885, was chosen U. S. Senator to succeed William Mahone, whose term expires 3 March, 1887. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 75-76.


DANIEL, William, candidate for the vice-presidency, born on Deal's Island, Somerset County, Maryland, 24 January, 1826. He was graduated at. Dickinson College in 1848, and admitted to the bar in 1851. He was elected to the legislature in 1853, and introduced a bill similar to the Maine liquor law, was re-elected on the temperance issue by the American Party, and on the completion of his term sent to the state senate in 1857 as a supporter of local option. After the first session he resigned, and removed to Baltimore. He became an earnest anti-slavery Republican, and in 1864 was a member of the State Constitutional Convention for the emancipation of the slaves. He was chosen president of the Maryland Temperance Alliance on its organization in 1872, and continued in that post in subsequent years. Through the efforts of that society and the energy and eloquence of its president, the Maryland option law was enacted, and adopted by thirteen counties of the twenty-three composing the state. On 14 July, 1884, the alliance joined the National Prohibition Party. Mr. Daniel appeared at the head of the Maryland delegation in the Prohibitionist Convention in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, acted as temporary chairman of the convention, and was nominated by it for vice-president of the United States. The St. John and Daniel ticket received 150,369 ballots, or l-49 per cent, of the total popular vote. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 76.


DANIEL E. MILLER, C. S. S., May 19, 1862. (See Hornersville, Missouri)


DANIELS, Edward, 1828-1916, Boston, Massachusetts, geologist, educator, abolitionist, Union officer in the Civil War.


DANNELLY'S MILLS, Alabama, March 23-24, 1864. and Brigade, 1st Division, 16th Army Corps. On both these days the Union pickets were attacked by the enemy, but each time the latter was repulsed. One man on the Federal side was wounded. The Confederate casualties were not learned.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANNELLY'S MILLS, Alabama, March 24, 1865. 1st Division, 13th Army Corps. The rear-guard of the 1st division, while working the train over a bad piece of road, was attacked by a band of guerrillas, and 8 teamsters were captured by the Confederates.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DAN SMITH'S RANCH, Texas, May 13, 1865. Twenty or 30 Indians attempted to run off the stock at this place on the morning of May 13, 1865. The troops fought them all morning. No casualties were reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANVILLE, ARKANSAS, March 28, 1864. 2nd Kansas Cavalry.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANVILLE, KENTUCKY, August 26, 1862. Harrodsburg and Danville Home Guards.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANVILLE, KENTUCKY, October 11, 1862. 19th Brigade, Army of the Ohio. In a movement to reconnoiter the position of the enemy at Danville a general engagement ensued in which the artillery and cavalry were both used. The Confederates were driven from their position at the fair grounds and back through the town, the Federals pursuing for about 2 miles. The casualties of the Union force, which was commanded by Col William B. Hazen, were 4 slightly wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANVILLE, KENTUCKY, March 24-26, 1863. 1st and 9th Kentucky Cavalry. A Confederate force took Danville at 4 p. m. on the 24th. Colonel Frank Wolford with the 1st Kentucky cavalry made a gallant stand but was driven back by greatly superior numbers. On the evening of the 26th 80 men of the 9th Kentucky cavalry made a dash into the town, driving in the enemy's pickets and capturing their guns. There is no report of casualties. Danville, Kentucky, March 28, 1863. Detachment of 9th Kentucky Cavalry. Brigadier-General Mahlon D. Manson, in a despatch to Brigadier- General J. T. Boyle, states that 100 men of the 9th Kentucky cavalry took Danville in the evening, killing 1 man and wounding 15. Danville, Kentucky, January 29, 1865. Captain William L. Gross, assistant superintendent of military telegraph, reported from Danville under date of January 29: "Thirty-five guerrillas, under Captain Clarke, all dressed in Federal uniform, entered Danville this morning. They robbed some of the citizens and one boot store and left on the Perryville pike at 11:15 a. m. They claimed at first to be Federal troops, Fourth Missouri cavalry, but there is no doubt they are guerrillas in disguise.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, November 14-15, 1863. Danville, Missouri, October 14, 1864. This affair was the attack of a band of bushwhackers. They burned the business part of the town, killed 5 citizens and wounded 1.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANVILLE CROSS ROADS, KENTUCKY, October 9-10, 1862. 19th Brigade, Army of the Ohio. Confederate General Wheeler, in reporting the operations of his cavalry during the pursuit of the Confederates from Perryville to London, says: "On the morning of the 9th I received orders to hold the enemy in check until our army had withdrawn from the field and then follow on toward Danville, retarding the enemy as much as possible. In complying with this order we frequently engaged the enemy that day and the day following." One of the skirmishes occurred at the point known as Danville Cross-roads, and, although no Federal report can be found of such an action, it is highly probable that the Union troops there engaged was Hazen's brigade, as that command followed the Danville road in the pursuit.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 344.


DANVILLE ROAD, ALABAMA, July 28, 1864. Cavalry Scouting from U. S. Forces at Decatur. A small party of Federal cavalry surprised a detachment of Confederate cavalry on the Danville road 4 miles from Decatur. The result was the capture of 4 men, with their guns and horses, and the wounding of 2 more of the enemy. The Federal loss was 1 man slightly wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p.


DARBYTOWN, VIRGINIA, July 27, 1864. (See Deep Bottom, same date.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 344-345.


DARBYTOWN ROAD, VIRGINIA, October 7, 1864. 10th Army Corps and Kautz's Cavalry Division. After the capture of Fort Harrison on September 29, the 10th corps, Major-General David B. Birney commanding, intrenched at Laurel Hill church on the New Market road, while Brigadier-General A. V. Kautz, with 1,700 cavalry and two batteries, held the Darbytown road at the old line of the enemy's works on the Johnson farm. Kautz's position was such that he could at any time threaten Richmond, and the Confederate general accordingly took steps to dislodge him. During the night of October 6 the greater part of Field's and Hoke's divisions was massed on the Darbytown road, and at daylight on the 7th the brigades of Anderson and Bratton attacked Kautz in front, while Gary's cavalry, supported by Lane's brigade, moved down the Charles City road to attack him on the right. Gary's rear attack was a partial success, though Kautz managed to extricate his command with the loss of 8 guns and crossed over to the New Market road, where he rallied his men under the protection of the 10th corps, which was just moving out to his assistance. About 8 o'clock Bratton's brigade emerged from the woods and attacked Terry's division, which was on Birney's right, the object evidently being to turn the flank. Battery D, 1st U. S. artillery, opened a terrific fire on the assailants and drove them back to the cover of the timber. Anticipating another assault from the same direction, Lieutenant- Colonel Jackson, chief of artillery of the corps, placed two other batteries in position to meet it. After an hour or so the Union pickets were driven in and the Confederates again appeared, opening fire with a battery of 12-pounders and soon afterwards with 6 rifled guns. The Union batteries replied with such deadly effect that Hoke's division was kept from moving forward to participate in the assault, and by quickly changing the position of some of his guns Jackson succeeded in silencing the Confederate artillery. By this time Terry had his division in position to act on the offensive and easily repulsed the attack, inflicting a heavy loss on the enemy. Kautz reported his loss 18 killed, 54 wounded and 202 missing. Birney's loss was comparatively slight. On the Confederate side General Gregg, commanding the celebrated Texas brigade, was killed and Gen Bratton was severely wounded. No detailed report of the Confederate loss can be found.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 345.


DARBYTOWN ROAD, VIRGINIA, October 13, 1864. 10th Army Corps and Kautz's Cavalry. At 4 a. m. the 10th corps, Major-General A. H. Terry commanding, moved from camp by the road leading to Johnson's farm on the Darbytown road, while the cavalry and artillery took the road leading from the Four-mile Church toward the same point. By sunrise the infantry was in position, Ames' division on the right of the road and Birney's on the left. Kautz formed his cavalry on the right of Ames, extending the line to the Charles City road. Thus formed skirmishers were thrown forward and the whole force advanced until it encountered the enemy behind a line of works, with abatis along the greater part of the front. The heavy skirmish line made no perceptible impression on the enemy's position. About 2 p. m. Pond's brigade made a daring though unsuccessful assault at a point where there was no abatis, and shortly afterward the entire Union force was withdrawn. The Federal loss was 36 killed, 358 wounded and 43 missing. The Confederate loss was not learned.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 345.


DARDANELLE, ARKANSAS, September 9, 1863. Detachment of 2nd Kansas Cavalry and 2nd Indiana Battery. Colonel William F. Cloud with 200 men of the 2nd Kas. cavalry and a section of artillery attacked a brigade of Confederates under Colonel Stirman at Dardanelle. After 2 or 3 hours' fighting the enemy retreated in confusion down the river, many of them being drowned in attempting to swim across. The Confederate total loss was 10 or 15 drowned and 21 taken prisoners. Some 200 head of cattle, several hundred bushels of wheat and a quantity of flour were also taken by the Union troops.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 345-346.


DARDANELLE, ARKANSAS, January 14, 1864. Detachment of Dismounted Men of Cavalry Division, 7th Army Corps. Major James D. Jenks occupied Dardanelle with his command about 10 a. m. At 2 p. m. a Confederate force under Colonels Brooks, Stirman and Newton attacked the place, compelling Jenks to withdraw to the stockade. After 4 hours of hard fighting the Confederates retired, completely whipped. The Federal loss was 1 killed, 15 wounded, and 2 missing; the enemy's casualties were about 80 killed and wounded. Jenks' force consisted of 276 men.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 346.


Dardanelle, Arkansas, May 10, 1864. 6th Kansas Cavalry. A Confederate account states that General J. O. Shelby made a dash on Dardanelle on this date, captured the garrison and a large amount of stores. The official records of the war contain no reference to the affair.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 346.


DARDANELLE, ARKANSAS, May 17, 1864. During the operations north of the Arkansas river, Brigadier-General J. O. Shelby commanding the Confederate forces, started on the night of the 16th to invest Dardanelle, his plan being to surprise the town at daylight. The scheme was frustrated by his advance encountering the Federal vedettes. The latter were driven back into the town, which was at once charged by the enemy. The garrison offered no resistance, but fled, many being drowned in their attempt to swim the river. The only report of the affair is that of Shelby, from which it is impossible to learn what Union forces participated. Dardanelle, Arkansas, August 30 1864. Detachment of 3d Arkansas Cavalry. Lieutenant-Colonel Irving W. Fuller, in a despatch from Lewisburg on August 31, says: "Lieutenant King, 3d Arkansas cavalry, with 40 men, attacked Captain Franc's rebel force from Dardanelle yesterday, and captured 30 stand small-arms and 30 horses and saddles, killing 1 man and wounding several others."  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 346.


DARDANELLE, ARKANSAS, November 29, 1864. Steamer Alamo and Detachment of the 40th Iowa Infantry. The steamer, guarded by 43 men of the 40th Louisiana, under command of Lieutenant Fry, was ascending the Arkansas river to Fort Smith. When about 2 miles above Dardanelle some 300 of General Newton's Confederate cavalry suddenly appeared on the high ground on the south side of the river, dismounted and commenced firing. They followed the vessel for 6 miles, keeping up an incessant fire, but the Iowa men. protected by sacks of grain, returned the fire with coolness and deliberation. Upon reaching a bar that was difficult to cross. Fry ordered the boat to be landed on the north shore. The Confederates now demanded a surrender, but it was refused and the firing continued for about an hour, when it ceased. The enemy camped opposite the boat for the night, but early the next morning withdrew. Although the boat was riddled with bullets no one was hurt. The Confederates lost 2 killed. Darien, Georgia, June 11, 1863. According to Confederate reports, two Federal gunboats ascended the Altamaha river and shelled the town of Darien on this date, after which they landed about 200 negro troops, under white officers, and set fire to the town, totally destroying it except a church and two or three small buildings. They then captured a pilot-boat with about 60 bales of cotton on board, and dropped back down the river. Union reports do not mention the incident.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 346.


DARGAN, Edmund Strother, 1805-1879, legislator, jurist. (American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 103; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 74)


DARGAN, Edmund Spawn, jurist, born in Montgomery County, North Carolina 15 April, 1805; died in Mobile, Alabama, in November, 1879. He was the son of a Baptist minister of Irish descent, at whose death he was left without means. By his own exertions he obtained a fair knowledge of English, Latin, and Greek, although he was at work on a farm until he was twenty-three years old. He read law, was admitted to the bar in 1829, went to Alabama, and taught three months in Washington, Autauga County. Here he was elected a justice of the peace, and filled the office for several years, meanwhile engaging in the practice of law. In 1833 he moved to Montgomery, and in 1841 was elected to the bench of the circuit court of the Mobile District, and moved to Mobile. He resigned the office of judge in 1842, and in 1844 was elected to the state senate. He was also mayor of Mobile the same year. He resigned from the Senate the following year, and was elected to Congress, serving from 1 December, 1845, till 3 March, 1847. On the question of the northwestern boundary of Oregon he made an able speech, and offered some valuable amendments to the resolution of notice. He was the first proposer of the line of adjustment finally adopted on the settlement of the question with the British government. He declined a renomination, and in 1847 was elected to fill a vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court of Alabama. In July, 1849, by the resignation of Justice Collier, he became chief justice, which office he resigned in December, 1852, and resumed the practice of law in Mobile. In 1861 he was a delegate to the State Convention, and voted for the ordinance of secession. He also served for one term as a representative in the Confederate Congress. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 77.


DARKESVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA, September 7, 1862. 12th Illinois Cavalry, 65th Illinois Infantry, 2nd Illinois Artillery. The vedettes at the Federal outposts near Martinsburg were driven in early in the morning and a squad of 17 men under Lieutenant Logan was sent out to reconnoiter the enemy's position and strength. This squad was surrounded but succeeded in cutting its way out. When the news of the encounter reached the Federal camp, Colonel Arno Voss, commanding the post at Martinsburg, sent out reinforcements from the 65th Illinois infantry, the 12th Illinois cavalry and the Battery M, 2nd Illinois When this column arrived near the scene of action it formed in line of battle and charged. The Confederates fired one volley and then retreated in confusion through Darkesville and Bunker Hill, the Federal cavalry pursuing. The enemy's losses were 25 killed and 41 captured, while the Union force lost 13 killed and wounded and 1 captured.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DARKESVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA, December 11, 1862. Detachment of 1st New York Cavalry. Four miles from Martinsburg the Confederate advance picket was met by about 30 men of the 1st New York cavalry, under Lieutenant R. G. Prendergast, and forced back upon their reserve, which was charged and routed by the Federal cavalry, 13 prisoners being taken. Pursuit was made by Prendergast through Darkesville and beyond, where the enemy rallied and formed, but were again charged and dispersed. Prendergast followed to Bunker Hill, where a larger force of the enemy was drawn up, and the pursuit was then abandoned. No casualties were suffered by Prendergast's command.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DARKESVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA, July 3, 1864. Detachment of Cavalry and Reserve Division. Army of West Virginia. This was a skirmish between the cavalry of the opposing forces during the operations in the Shenandoah Valley. It was simultaneous with a Confederate attack on Leetown. The result of the Darkesville engagement was the falling back of the Union force to Martinsburg. The casualties were not reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DARKESVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA, July 19, 1864. Portion of the Army of West Virginia.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DAVENPORT, Henry Kallock, naval officer, born in Savannah, Georgia, 10 December, 1820; died in Franzensbad, Bohemia, 18 August, 1872. He entered the U.S. Navy as midshipman in February, 1838, and served on various vessels until 1844, when he was made passed midshipman and attached to the U.S. Coast Survey. Later he sailed on the "Columbia," and from 1849 till 1853 was connected with the mail-steamship service. After being promoted to lieutenant in December, 1852, he spent some time on sea duty in various squadrons, being present at the capture of the Barrier forts, Canton River, in 1856, and later on shore duty at the U. S. Observatory in Washington. During the Civil War he was attached to the "Cumberland." and was present at the engagement off Hatteras Inlet. From 1861 till 1864 commanded the steamer "Hetzel," and was engaged in the naval fight on James River in 1861, in the battle of Roanoke Island, at Newbern, and was senior officer in command of the sounds of North Carolina in 1862-'4, during which time he was in several battles and expeditions in these waters, covering the flanks of the army. He became commander in July, 1862, and from 1864 till 1866 served in the Pacific Squadron, commanding the Lancaster" and "Powhatan." In 1868 he was promoted captain, and, after being engaged in navigation duty in Washington Navy-yard during 1867-'70, was given command of the "Congress”, of the European squadron. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 82-83.


DAVENPORT CHURCH, VIRGINIA, December 4, 1864. 2nd Division Cavalry Corps. A picket reserve near Davenport Church was attacked at 2 a. m. by a dismounted force of 30 Confederates. Of the 25 men comprising the Federal reserve 1 was killed, 9 wounded and 5 captured. Some 12 horses were taken by the attacking party.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DAVENPORT FORD, VIRGINIA, May 10, 1864. 5th U. S. Cavalry. While the main body of the Army of the Potomac was operating in the vicinity of Spottsylvania Court House, General Sheridan's cavalry was sent to threaten Lee's communications with Richmond. On the morning of the 10th the 5th regular cavalry under Captain A. K. Arnold, was sent to hold Davenport ford (or bridge) on the North Anna river, in order to prevent the enemy from attacking the flank of Merritt's reserve brigade, and then join the rear of the brigade. The Confederates crossed the river at some blind fords and cut Arnold off from the main body, but he succeeded in cutting his way through with slight loss in killed and wounded and only a few of his men captured. Arnold was commended for his skill and bravery in extricating his regiment from an extremely precarious situation.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DAVID'S FERRY, LOUISIANA, May 1, 1864. U. S. Transport Emma. While passing David's ferry with a few troops on board, the Emma was attacked by a portion of Major's cavalry. After a chase of 2 miles she was boarded and captured by the Confederates, the crew were sent to the rear as prisoners and the vessel was burned.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DAVID'S FERRY, LOUISIANA, May 4-5, 1864. (See Alexandria, Louisiana, April 26 to May 13.) The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 347.


DAVIDSON, John Wynn, soldier, born in Fairfax County, Virginia, 18 August, 1824; died in St. Paul, Minnesota, 26 June, 1881. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1845, assigned to the 1st Dragoons, and accompanied General Kearny to California in 1846, in charge of a howitzer battery. During the Mexican War he served in the Army of the West, being present at the combats of San Pasqual, San Bernardo, San Gabriel, and Mesa. He was a scout in 1850, and was at the action of Clear Lake, 17 May, and at Russian River, 17 June, under Captain Nathaniel Lyon. From this time till the Civil War he continued on frontier and garrison duty. He fought the battle of Cieneguilla, New Mexico, on 30 March, 1854, against the Apache and Utah Indians, losing three fourths of his command, and, being himself wounded. He was promoted to captain on 20 January, 1855, to major on 14 November, 1861, and, after serving in defence of Washington, was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers on 3 February, 1862. In the Virginia Peninsular campaign of 1862 he commanded a brigade in General Smith's Division , and received two brevets for gallant conduct—that of lieutenant-colonel for the battle of Gaines's Mills, and that of colonel for Golding's Farm. He was also engaged at Lee's Mills, Mechanicsville, Savage Station, and Glendale. He commanded the St. Louis District of Missouri from 6 August, till 13 November, 1862, the Army of Southeast Missouri till 28 February, 1863, and the St. Louis District again till 6 June, co-operating with General Steele in his Little Rock Expedition and directing the movements of troops against Pilot Knob and Fredericktown, and in the pursuit of the enemy during Marmaduke's raid into Missouri. He led a cavalry division from June till September, commanded in the actions at Brownsville, Bayou Metre, and Ashley's Mills, Arkansas, and took part in the capture of Little Rock. He was made chief of cavalry of the Military Division west of the Mississippi on 26 June, 1864, and on 24 November led a cavalry expedition from Baton Rouge to Pascagoula. He was brevetted brigadier-general in the regular army on 13 March, 1865, for the capture of Little Rock, and major-general for his services during the war. He was made lieutenant-colonel of the 10th U.S. Cavalry  on 1 December, 1866, was acting inspector-general of the Department of the Missouri from November, 1866, till December, 1867.  He was mid professor of military science in Kansas agricultural College from 1868 till 1871. He then commanded various posts in Idaho and Texas, and, in 1877-'8, the District of Upper Brazos, Texas. On 20 March, 1879, he was made colonel of the 2d U.S. Cavalry. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 87.


DAVIDSON'S FERRY, Tennessee, November 2-3, 1864. (See Johnsonville.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIES, Thomas Alfred, soldier, born in St. Lawrence County, New York, in December, 1809, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1829, and assigned to the 1st Infantry. After serving on frontier duty, he resigned on 31 October, 1831, and was employed on the Croton Aqueduct as a civil engineer till 1833, when he became a merchant in New York City, but was again employed on the aqueduct in 1840-'l. He re-entered the national service on 15 May, 1861, as colonel of the 16th New York Regiment, was at the battle of Bull Run, and in the defenses of Alexandria from November, 1861, till 7 March. 1862, when he was made brigadier-general of volunteers. He was engaged in the siege of Corinth in April and May, 1862, the battle of Corinth on 3-4 October, and commanded the District of Columbus, Kentucky, in 1862-'3, that of Holla, Missouri, in 1863-'4, that of North Kansas in 1864-'5, and that of Wisconsin from April till June, 1865. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers on 11 July, 1865, and shortly afterward returned to New York City. He has published "Cosmogony: or Mysteries of Creation," an analysis of the natural facts stated in the Hebraic account of creation (New York, 1858); "Adam and Ha-Adam" (1859); "Genesis Disclosed" (1860); "Answer to Hugh Miller and Theoretical Geologists" (1861); "How to make Money, and How to Keep It" (1866); and " Appeal of a Layman to the Committee on the Revision of the English Version of the Holy Scriptures, to have Adam and Ha-Adam restored to the English Genesis where left out by former Translators" (1875). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 90-91.


DAVIES, Henry Eugene, lawyer, born in New York City, 2 July, 1836, was educated at Harvard, Williams, and Columbia, where he was graduated in 1857. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began practice. He entered the army in April, 1861, as a captain in the 5th New York Volunteers, became major in the 2d New York Cavalry in July, and subsequently its colonel. He was made a brigadier-general of volunteers on 16 September. 1863, and served with distinction in the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac till the close of the war. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers, 1 October, 1864, given his full commission on 4 May. 1865, and commanded the middle District of Alabama till his resignation on 1 January. 1866. He was public administrator of New York City in 1866-'9, assistant district attorney of the Southern District of New York in 1870-'2, and since 1873 has been engaged in law practice. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 91.


DAVIS, Benjamin Franklin, soldier, born in Alabama in 1832; died at Beverly Ford, Virginia, 9 June, 1863. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1854, and distinguished himself in both the infantry and cavalry service in New Mexico. In 1862 he became colonel of the 8th New York Cavalry . He was instantly killed while commanding a brigade at Beverly Ford, Virginia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 93.


DAVIS, Cushman Kellogg, senator, born in Henderson, Jefferson County, New York, 16 June, 1838. He moved with his parents, when a child, to Waukesha, Wisconsin, attended Carroll College in that town, and was graduated at Michigan University in 1857. He then studied law, and in 1859 began practice at Waukesha. He became a 2d lieutenant in the 28th Wisconsin Regiment in 1861, and served as assistant adjutant general during most of the Civil War on the staff of General Willis A. Gorman. He was compelled to leave the army in 1864 by an attack of typhoid fever, and in 1865 went to Minnesota and resumed the practice of his profession at St. Paul. He was elected to the Minnesota legislature in 1866, was U. S. District Attorney for Minnesota in 1867-71, and in 1873 was elected governor of the state on the Republican ticket, serving one term, and declining a re-nomination. He was an unsuccessful candidate for U. S. Senator in 1875, and again in 1881, but on 18 January, 1887, was elected to the office. Michigan University gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1886. He has delivered many lectures, of which the best known is "Modern Feudalism" (1870), and has published " The Law in Shakespeare " Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 94.


DAVIS, Daniel, lawyer, born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, 8 May, 1762; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 27 October, 1835. He settled in Portland (then called Falmouth) in 1782, and held offices in Massachusetts, of which Maine was then a part. In 1804 he moved to Boston, and in 1832 to Cambridge. He was U. S. Attorney for Maine in 1796-1801, and solicitor-general of Massachusetts in 1800-'32. He was author of several legal works, the principal ones being " Criminal Justice " (Boston, 2d ed., 1828) and "Precedents of Indictments" (Boston, 1831). —His son, Charles Henry, naval officer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 16 January, 1807; died in Washington, D. C., 18 February, 1877. He entered the U. S. Navy as a midshipman in 1823, and was attached to the frigate " United States,” of the Pacific Squadron, in 1827-8. In March, 1829, he became passed midshipman, and was ordered to the "Ontario," of the Mediterranean Squadron. He received his commission as lieutenant in March, 1834, and, after serving in 1837-'8 on the " Vincennes," of the Pacific Squadron, and in 1840-'l on the "Independence, of the Brazil Squadron, was on special duty from 1842 till 1856, being engaged first on ordnance duty and then as assistant in the U.S. Coast Survey. During 1846-'9 he was occupied in a survey of the waters about Nantucket, in the course of which he discovered the "new south shoal" and several smaller shoals directly in the track of vessels sailing between New York and Europe, and of coasting vessels from Boston. These discoveries were thought to account for several wrecks and accidents before unexplained, and called forth the special acknowledgments of insurance companies and merchants, He became commander in June, 1854, and was given the " St. Marys," in the Pacific Squadron, during 1857-'9, after which he was appointed superintendent of the "American Nautical Almanac." He had filled this place in 1849-56, and the existence of the "Almanac" was largely due to his efforts. In November, 1861, he became captain, and during that year was a member of the board of officers convened for the purpose of making a thorough investigation of the southern coast and harbors, their access and defences. The information thus acquired led to the organization of the expedition against Port Royal, South Carolina, in which Captain Davis was chief of staff and fleet-officer. In May, 1862, he was appointed flag-officer of the Mississippi Flotilla, succeeding Andrew H. Foote in that capacity. Soon after his arrival, the Confederate fleet lying below Fort Pillow, consisting of eight iron-clad steamers, four of which were fitted up as rams, steamed up for an engagement. The flotilla was quickly put in motion to receive them, and, after an action lasting about an hour, three of the Confederate gun-boats were disabled, and the fleet retreated under the guns of Fort Pillow. Subsequently (5 June) the fort was abandoned. Three days later the flotilla moved down the river near Memphis, and again engaged the Confederate fleet. A running fight ensued, in which all the Confederate vessels were either captured or destroyed, except the "Van Horn." After the engagement Captain Davis received the surrender of Memphis, then joined Admiral Farragut and was engaged in operations around Vicksburg, and in expeditions up the Yazoo River. He was commissioned commodore in July, 1862, and became chief of the Bureau of Navigation in Washington, and was made rear-admiral, to date from February, 1863. In 1865 he was appointed superintendent of the Naval Observatory in Washington, and in 1867 commanded the South Atlantic Squadron. He returned to Washington in 1869, and, after being  made a member of the Light-House Board, became commander of the Norfolk Navy-yard, but later resumed his old place of superintendent of the Naval Observatory. He was a member of numerous scientific societies, and in February, 1877, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Admiral Davis, during his connection with the coast survey, was led to investigate the laws of tidal action, and published a "Memoir upon the Geological Action of the Tidal and other Currents of the Ocean," in the "Memoirs of the American Academy" (Boston, 1849), and " The Law of Deposit of the Flood Tide; its Dynamical Action and Office." being vol. iii. of the "Smithsonian Contributions" (Washington, 1852). He contributed various translations and articles on mathematical astronomy and geodesy to periodicals, and was the author of an English translation of Gauss's " Theria Motus Corponim Coelestium " (Boston, 1858).—His son. Charles Henry, naval officer, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 28 August, 1845, was graduated at the U. S. Naval Academy in 1864, and served in the Mediterranean Squadron till 1867. meanwhile becoming ensign and master in 1866. From 1867 till 1870 he was on the "Guerriere" in the South Atlantic Squadron, and from 1872 till 1874 on the Pacific. He received his commission as lieutenant in March, 1868, and became a lieutenant-commander in December of the same year. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 94-95.


DAVIS, David, jurist, born in Cecil County, Maryland, 8 March, 1815, died in Bloomington, Illinois, 20 June, 1888. He was graduated at Kenyon College, Ohio, in 1832, studied law in Massachusetts, and went through a course at the law-school of New Haven, moved to Illinois in 1835, and was admitted to the bar, after which he settled in Bloomington. He was elected to the state legislature in 1844, was a member of the convention that formed the state constitution in 1847, elected judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit of the state in 1848, re-elected in 1855, and again in 1861, resigning in October, 1862, He was an intimate friend of Abraham Lincoln, and rode the circuit with him every year, he was a delegate at large to the Chicago Convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln for the presidency in 1860, accompanied him on his journey to Washington, and in October, 1862, was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. After President Lincoln's assassination Judge Davis was an administrator of his estate. In 1870 he held, with the minority of the Supreme Court, that the Acts of Congress making government notes a legal tender in payment of debts were constitutional. In February, 1872, the National Convention of the Labor Reform Party nominated him as its candidate for president, on a platform that declared, among other things, in favor of a national currency "based on the faith and resources of the nation, and interchangeable with 3-65-per-cent bonds of the government, and demanded the establishment of an eight-hour law throughout the country, and the payment of the national debt without mortgaging the property of the people to enrich capitalists. In answer to the letter informing him of the nomination, Judge Davis said: "Be pleased to thank the convention for the unexpected honor which they have conferred upon me. The chief magistracy of the republic should neither I sought nor declined by any American citizen." His name was also used before the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati the same year, and received 92 votes on the first ballot. After the regular nominations had been made, he determined to retire from the contest, and so announced in a final answer to the labor reformers. He resigned his seat on the supreme bench to take his place in the U. S. Senate on 4 March, 1877, having been elected by the votes of independents and Democrats to succeed John A. Logan. He was rated in the Senate as an independent, but acted more commonly with the Democrats. After the death of President Garfield in 1881 Judge Davis was chosen President of the Senate. He resigned his seat in 1883, and retired to his home in Bloomington, where he resided quietly till his death. The degree of LL. D., was conferred on him by Williams College, Beloit College, and the Wesleyan University at Bloomington. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 95.


DAVIS, Garrett, senator, born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, 10 September, 1801; died in Paris, Kentucky, 22 September, 1872. He received an academic education, and was employed as a writer in the County and Circuit courts of his district. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1823. He was elected to the state legislature in 1833, and twice re-elected. He was a member of the state constitutional convention from 1839 till 1847, when he became a representative in Congress from Kentucky, but declined a re-election, devoting himself to agriculture. He was elected U. S. Senator for Kentucky in 1861 for the term ending in 1867, and served on the Committees on Foreign Relations, on Territories, Claims, and Pensions. In 1864 he was appointed a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. In January, 1867, he was re-elected to the Senate for the term ending in 1873. He was of small physique, but endowed with wonderful endurance. His speeches were characterized by sarcasm and fierce invective, as well as laborious research. Early in life he became the friend of Henry Clay, possessing his confidence and high regard. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 96.


DAVIS, Henry Winter, 1817-1865, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd District of Maryland, 1854, 1856, 1858, 1863-1865.  Anti-slavery activist in Congress.  Supported enlistment of African Americans in Union Army.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 97-98; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 119; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 198; Congressional Globe)

DAVIS, Henry Winter, statesman, born in Annapolis, Maryland. 16 August, 1817; died in Baltimore, 30 December, 1865. His father, Reverend Henry Lyon Davis, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was the president of St. John's College, at Annapolis, and rector of St. Ann's Parish. He lost both offices on account of his Federal politics, and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, leaving his son with Elizabeth Brown Winter, an aunt, who possessed a noble character, and was rigid in her system of training children. The boy afterward went to Wilmington, and was instructed under his father's supervision. In 1827 the family returned to Maryland and settled in Anne Arundel County. Here Henry Winter became much attached to field sports, and gave little promise of scholarly attainments. He roamed all about the country, always attended by one of his father's slaves, with an old fowling-piece upon his shoulder, burning much powder and returning with a small amount of game. The insight into slavery that he thus gained affected him strongly. He said, in after years: "My familiar association with the slaves, while a boy, gave me great insight into their feelings and views. They spoke with freedom before a boy what they would have repressed before a man. They were far from indifferent to their condition; they felt wronged, and sighed for freedom. They were attached to my father, and loved me, yet they habitually spoke of the day when God would deliver them." He was educated in Alexandria, and at Kenyon College, where he was graduated in 1837. His father died in that year, leaving a few slaves to be divided between himself and his sister, but he would not allow them to be sold, although he might have pursued his studies with ease and comfort. Rather than do this he obtained a tutorship, and, notwithstanding these arduous tasks, read the course of law in the University of Virginia, which he entered in 1839. The expenses of his legal studies were defrayed with the proceeds of some land that his aunt had sold for the purpose. He began practice in Alexandria, Virginia, but first attained celebrity in the Episcopal Convention of Maryland by his defence of Dr. H. V. D. Johns against the accusation of Bishop Whittingham for having violated the canon of the Episcopal Church in consenting to officiate in the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1850 he moved to Baltimore, where he held a high social and professional position. He was a prominent Whig, and known as the brilliant orator and controversialist of the Scott canvass in 1852. He was elected a member of Congress for the 3d District of Maryland (part of Baltimore) in 1854, and re-elected in 1856, serving on the Committee of Ways and Means. After the dissolution of the Whig Party he joined the American or Know-nothing Party. He was re-elected to Congress in 1858, and in 1859 voted for Mr. Pennington, the Republican candidate for speaker, thus drawing upon himself much abuse and reproach. The legislature of Maryland "decorated him with its censure," as he expressed it on the floor of the house; but he declared to his constituents that, if they would not allow their representative to exercise his private judgment as to what were the best interests of the state, "You may send a slave to Congress, but you cannot send me." After the attack on the 6th Massachusetts Regiment in Baltimore in 1861, Mr. Davis published a card announcing himself as an "unconditional union" candidate for Congress, and conducted his canvass almost alone, amid a storm of reproach and abuse, being defeated, but receiving about 6,000 votes. When Mr. Lincoln was nominated in 1860, Mr. Davis was offered the nomination for vice-president, but declined it; and when the question of his appointment to the cabinet was agitated, he urged the selection of John A. Gilmer in his stead. He was again in Congress in 1863-'5, and served as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Although representing a slave state, Mr. Davis was conspicuous for unswerving fidelity to the Union and advocacy of emancipation. He heartily supported the administration, but deprecated the assumption of extraordinary powers by the executive, and denounced Congress as cowardly for not authorizing by statute what it expected that department to do. He early favored the enlistment of Negroes in the army, and said, "The best deed of emancipation is a musket on the shoulder." In the summer of 1865 he made a speech in Chicago in favor of Negro suffrage. Mr. Davis was denounced by politicians as impractical. He used to say that he who compromised a moral principle was a scoundrel, but that he who would not compromise a political measure was a fool, Mr. Davis possessed an unusually fine library, and was gifted with a good memory and a brilliant mind, which was united with many personal advantages. Inheriting force and scholarship from his father, he had received also a share of his mother's milder qualities, which won many friends, although, to the public, he seemed stern and dictatorial. At his death Congress set apart a day for the commemoration of his public services, an honor never before paid to an ex-member of Congress. He published a book entitled the " War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century" (Baltimore, 1853). His collected speeches, together with a eulogy by his colleague, John A. J. Cresswell, were published in New York in 1867. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 97-98.


DAVIS, Jefferson, statesman, born in that part of Christian County, Kentucky, which now forms Todd County, 3 June, 1808; died in New Orleans, 6 December, 1889. His father, Samuel Davis, had served in the Revolution, and, when Jefferson was an infant, moved with his family to a place near Woodville, Wilkinson County, Mississippi Young Davis entered Transylvania College, Kentucky, but left in 1824, on his appointment by President Monroe to the U. S. Military Academy. On his graduation, in 1828, he was assigned to the 1st U.S. Infantry, and served on the frontier, taking part in the Black Hawk war of 1831-'2. He was promoted to first lieutenant of dragoons on 4 March, 1833, but, after more service against the Indians, abruptly resigned on 30 June, 1835, and having married at one of the family homes, the daughter of Zachary Taylor, then a colonel in the army, settled near Vicksburg, Mississippi, and became a cotton-planter. Here he pursued a life of study and retirement till 1843, when he entered politics in the midst of an exciting gubernatorial canvass. He was chosen an elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket in 1844, made a reputation as a popular speaker, and in 1845 was sent to Congress, taking his seat in December of that year. He at once took an active part in debate, speaking on the tariff, the Oregon question, and military matters, especially with reference to the preparations for war with Mexico. On 6 February, 1846, in a speech on the Oregon question, he spoke of the “love of union in our hearts,” and, speaking of the battles of the Revolution, said: “They form a monument to the common glory of our common country.”

In June, 1846, he resigned his seat in the house to become colonel of the 1st Mississippi Volunteer Rifles, which had unanimously elected him to that office. Having joined his regiment at New Orleans, he led it to re-enforce General Taylor on the Rio Grande. At Monterey he charged on Fort Leneria without bayonets, led his command through the streets nearly to the Grand Plaza through a storm of shot, and afterward served on the commission for arranging the surrender of the place. At Buena Vista his regiment was charged by a Mexican brigade of lancers, greatly its superior in numbers, in a last desperate effort to break the American lines. Colonel Davis formed his men in the shape of a letter V, open toward the enemy, and thus, by exposing his foes to a covering fire, utterly routed them, though he was unsupported. He was severely wounded, but remained in the saddle till the close of the fight, and was complimented for coolness and gallantry in the commander-in-chief's despatch of 6 March, 1847. His regiment was ordered home on the expiration of its term of enlistment, and on 17 May, 1847, Colonel Davis was appointed by President Polk a brigadier-general, but declined the commission on the ground that a militia appointment by the Federal executive was unconstitutional. He was appointed by the governor of Mississippi to fill a vacancy in the U. S. Senate in August, 1847, and in January, 1848, the legislature unanimously elected him senator, and re-elected him in 1850 for a full term. He was made chairman of the Senate committee on Military Affairs, and here, as in the house, was active in the discussions on the various phases of the slavery question and the important work of the session, including the fugitive-slave law, and the other compromise measures of 1850. Mr. Davis proposed the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, and continued a zealous advocate of state rights. He was the unsuccessful state-rights or “resistance” candidate for governor of his state in 1851, though by his personal popularity he reduced the Union majority from 7,500 to 999. He had resigned his seat in the Senate to take part in the canvass, and, after a year of retirement, actively supported Franklin Pierce in the presidential contest of 1852. After the election of General Pierce, Mr. Davis received the portfolio of war in his cabinet, and administered it with great credit. Among other changes, he proposed the use of camels in the service on the western plains, introduced an improved system of infantry tactics, iron gun-carriages, rifled muskets and pistols, and the use of the Minié ball. Four regiments were added to the army, the defences on the sea-coast and frontier were strengthened, and, as a result of experiments, heavy guns were cast hollow, and a larger grain of powder was adopted. While in the Senate, Mr. Davis had advocated the construction of a Pacific Railway as a military necessity, and a means of preserving the Pacific Coast to the Union, and he was now put in charge of the organization and equipment of the surveying parties sent out to examine the various routes proposed. He also had charge of the appropriation for the extension of the capitol. Mr. Davis left the cabinet at the close of President Pierce's term in 1857, and in the same year entered the Senate again. He opposed the French spoliation bill, advocated the southern route for the Pacific Railroad, and opposed the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” often encountering Stephen A. Douglas in debate on this question. After the settlement of the Kansas contest by the passage of the Kansas Conference Bill, in which he had taken a chief part, he wrote to the people of his state that it was “the triumph of all for which we contended.” Mr. Davis was the recognized Democratic leader in the 36th Congress. He had made a tour of the eastern states in 1858, making speeches at Boston, Portland, Maine, New York, and other places, and in 1859, in reply to an invitation to attend the Webster birthday festival in Boston, wrote a letter denouncing “partisans who avow the purpose of obliterating the landmarks of our fathers,” and containing strong Union sentiments. He had been frequently mentioned as a Democratic candidate for the presidency, and received many votes in the convention of 1860, though his friends announced that he did not desire the nomination. Before Congress met, in the autumn of 1860, Mr. Davis was summoned to Washington by members of President Buchanan's cabinet to suggest some modifications of the forthcoming message to Congress. The suggestions were made, and were adopted. In the ensuing session Mr. Davis made, on 10 December, 1860, a speech in which he carefully distinguished between independence, which the states had achieved at great cost, and the Union, which had cost “little time, little money, and no blood,” taking his old state-rights position. He was appointed on the Senate committee of thirteen to examine and report on the condition of the country, and, although at first excused at his own request, finally consented to serve, accepting the appointment in a speech in which he avowed his willingness to make any sacrifice to avert the impending struggle. The committee, after remaining in session several days, reported, on 31 December, their inability to come to any satisfactory conclusion. On 10 January, 1861, Mr. Davis made another speech on the state of the country, asserting the right of secession, denying that of coercion, and urging the withdrawal of the garrison from Fort Sumter. Mississippi had seceded on 9 January, and on 24 January, having been officially informed of the fact, Mr. Davis withdrew from the Senate and went to his home, having taken leave of his associates in a speech in which he defended the cause of the south, and, in closing, begged pardon of all whom he had ever offended.

Before he reached home he had been appointed by the convention commander-in-chief of the Army of Mississippi, with the rank of major-general; but on 18 February, 1861, he exchanged this office for that of President of the Confederate States, to which the provisional Congress at Montgomery had elected him on 9 February He selected for his cabinet Robert Toombs, of Georgia, as Secretary of State; Leroy P. Walker, of Alabama, Secretary of War; Charles G. Memminger, of South Carolina, Secretary of the Treasury; Stephen R. Mallory, of Florida, Secretary of the Navy; Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, Attorney-General; and John H. Reagan, of Texas, Postmaster-General. The last three continued in the cabinet as long as the Confederate government maintained its existence. Toombs, Walker, and Memminger were succeeded by others. In his inaugural address Mr. Davis asserted that “necessity, not choice,” had led to the secession of the southern states; that the true policy of the south, an agricultural country, was peace; and that “the constituent parts, but not the system,” of the government had been changed. The attack on Fort Sumter, on 13 April, precipitated the war, and Mr. Davis, in his first message to the provisional Confederate Congress, on 29 April, after a review of events (from the formation of the United States Constitution till 1861), which, in his judgment, had led to the contest, commended this act, while avowing a desire to prevent the shedding of blood. The message also condemned, as illegal and absurd, President Lincoln's proclamation calling for troops, and that announcing a blockade of southern ports, and ended with the famous words, “All we ask is, to be let alone,” followed by a promise to resist subjugation to the direst extremity. Shortly after the change of the Confederate capital from Montgomery to Richmond, which he had strongly advised, Mr. Davis removed thither, and was met on his way with many marks of popular favor, every railway station swarming with men, women, and children, who greeted him with waving handkerchiefs. Soon after his arrival the fine residence of James A. Seddon was bought and put at Mr. Davis's disposal by citizens of Richmond. His first days in the new capital were spent in reviewing troops and in speech-making. He exhorted his hearers to remember the dignity of the contest, and “to smite the smiter with manly arms, as our fathers did before us,” and declared his willingness to lay down his civil office and take command of the army, should the extremity of the cause ever warrant such action. Before his arrival in Virginia an army of about 30,000 men had been raised, and as fast as new troops arrived their officers were assigned to a rank in the Confederate service, regulated by that which they had formerly held in the U. S. Army. On 20 July, Mr. Davis sent his second message to the Provisional Congress, then in session at Richmond. In this message he complained of barbarities committed by National troops, and again asserted the impossibility of subduing the south. On the morning succeeding the delivery of this message he set out for Manassas, where a contest was thought to be impending, and arrived there in time to witness the close of the battle of Bull Run, reaching the field when victory had been assured to the Confederates.

The battle of Bull Run was followed by a period of inaction, and Mr. Davis was blamed by many for this policy, as well as for his “failure to organize the troops of the several states into brigades and divisions formed of the soldiers of each,” as the law directed. In answer to these complaints, he has urged the length of time necessary to organize “the terrible machine, a disciplined army,” and protested that, as far as in him lay, he favored an advance and endeavored to comply with the legal plan of army organization. The question of the treatment of Confederate prisoners by the National authorities soon demanded his attention. On 17 April, 1861, two days after Mr. Lincoln's call for troops, Mr. Davis had issued a proclamation inviting applications for letters of marque and reprisal. The “Savannah,” a private vessel commissioned in accordance with this offer, was captured off Charleston, and her officers and crew were tried for piracy in New York and sentenced to death. Later the captain and crew of the privateer “Jefferson Davis” were similarly convicted in Philadelphia. Thereupon, in November, 1861, Mr. Davis ordered retaliatory measures to be taken, and fourteen Union prisoners were selected by lot and held as hostages for the safety of the condemned men. The latter were ultimately put on the footing of prisoners of war by order of the National government, and subsequently a cartel was adopted for the exchange of prisoners, which remained in force till its suspension in 1864, caused by disagreement as to the status of Negro soldiers. In November, 1861, a presidential election was held in the Confederacy, and Mr. Davis was chosen president for six years without opposition. In his message to the Provisional Congress at its last session, 18 November, 1861, he briefly sketched the situation at the close of the first year of the war, alluding to the Confederate successes, the contest for the possession of Kentucky and Missouri, and to the “Trent” affair. (See Wilkes, Charles.) He urged the construction of another railway line through the Confederacy, asserted the improvement of the south in military means and financial condition, and the inefficiency of the blockade, and said: “If it were indeed a rebellion in which we were engaged, we might find ample vindication for the course we have adopted in the scenes which are now being enacted in the United States.” The first Congress under the permanent constitution met in Richmond, on 18 February, 1863, and Mr. Davis was inaugurated on 23 February The Confederacy had just met with its first serious reverses in the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson; but in his inaugural, after a vindication of the right of secession, Mr. Davis indulged in many favorable hopes. “The final result in our favor,” said he, “is not doubtful. Our foes must sink under the immense load of debt which they have incurred. . . . In the heart of a people resolved to be free, these disasters tend but to stimulate to increased resistance.” In his short messages of 35 February and 15 August he suggested various measures for the improvement of the Confederate forces. The result of the reverses in the early months of the year, to which had now been added the capture of New Orleans, began to show itself in a growing opposition to Mr. Davis's administration, which up to this time had seemed all but universally popular, and this opposition increased in force up to the latest days of the war. One of the first acts of the Congress was to pass a sweeping conscription law, to which Mr. Davis reluctantly assented. This was stoutly resisted in some quarters, and led to a spirited correspondence between Mr. Davis and Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, who disputed the constitutionality of the measure. Congress also authorized the suspension of the habeas corpus act for ten miles around Richmond, and the formation of a military police, for the alleged reason that the government was continually in danger from the presence in Richmond of National spies, and the consequent plots and intrigues. Mr. Davis was present with General Lee at the battle of Fair Oaks on 31 May, and, after the wounding of General Joseph E. Johnston in that engagement, assigned Lee to the command of the Army of Northern Virginia, having previously, on 13 March, charged him, “under the direction of the president, with the conduct of military operations.” During a visit to the army in the western department, in December, 1862, Mr. Davis, in an address to the Mississippi legislature, defended the conscription law and declared that “in all respects, the Confederacy was better prepared for war than it was a year previous.”

The Proclamation of Emancipation by President Lincoln, to take effect 1 January, 1863, called out from Mr. Davis a retaliatory proclamation, dated 23 December, 1862, in which, after reciting, among other acts, the hanging of William B. Mumford for tearing down the United States flag at New Orleans, after the city was captured by the National forces, General Benjamin F. Butler was declared a felon, and it was ordered that all commissioned officers serving under him, as well as any found serving in company with slaves, should be treated as “robbers and criminals deserving death.” These threats, however, were not generally executed, though supported by the legislation of the Congress. In his message of January, 1863, Mr. Davis announced his intention of turning over National prisoners for prosecution in state courts, as abettors of servile insurrection; but this proposition was rejected by Congress, and provision made for their trial by military tribunals. The two long messages sent by Mr. Davis to Congress in 1863 consist largely of discussions of the position of foreign powers, especially Great Britain, with reference to the war. The one dated 7 December announces the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and urges “the compulsory reduction of the currency to the amount required by the business of the country,” together with other measures for improving the finances, which had become hopelessly depreciated. They had never been on a sound basis, and the currency had declined in value till it was nearly worthless. In April, 1863, in compliance with a request of the Confederate Congress, Mr. Davis had issued an address to the people of the south, in which he drew the happiest conclusions as to the success of the Confederacy, from the way in which, in the face of obstacles, it had already organized and disciplined armies. “At no previous period of the war,” said he, “have our forces been so numerous, so well organized, and so thoroughly disciplined, armed, and equipped as at present.”

The disasters of July—at Gettysburg and Vicksburg—coming in the face of this assertion, and the state of the currency just mentioned, emboldened the opposition party in all parts of the Confederacy fiercely to assail the administration. Mr. Davis was held responsible for the advance into Pennsylvania, and accused of partiality in appointing Pemberton to command in the west. Charles C. Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury, resigned, and his place was filled by George A. Trenholm; but the new secretary was unable to stop the depreciation of the currency. The lack of coin in the country, the inability of the people to bear more taxation, and the spirit of speculation fostered by the enormous issues of paper money, hastened the financial ruin of the Confederacy. Food, too, was scarce. Kentucky and Tennessee, whence had come most of the meat supplies, were lost to the Confederacy, and the army was on half-rations. At this time there was a clamor against the commissary-general, Colonel Northrop. A committee of the Confederate Congress investigated the matter and exonerated him; but the opponents of the administration have continued to hold him, and Mr. Davis through him, responsible for the scarcity of food in the Confederacy, and therefore, indirectly, for much of the sufferings of Union prisoners during the war. The exchange of prisoners had been interrupted for some time by the refusal of the Confederate government to recognize Negroes as National soldiers, and after many futile attempts to come to an understanding with the National government, “We offered,” says Mr. Davis (“Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” vol. ii., p. 601), “to the United States government their sick and wounded, without requiring any equivalents.”

The year 1864 opened with Confederate successes in Florida, the southwest, and North Carolina; and Mr. Davis, in his message of 2 May, said: “The armies in northern Virginia and Tennessee still oppose, with unshaken front, a formidable barrier to the progress of the invader.” That progress, however, was not long to be stayed. By an order issued on 17 July, 1864, Mr. Davis removed General Joseph E. Johnston from the command of the army opposed to General Sherman in Georgia. The cause and alleged injustice of this removal have not yet ceased to be subjects for controversy, it being asserted by Mr. Davis's opponents that personal reasons influenced him against an officer with whom he had never been very friendly, while his supporters, denying this, fully justify the act. The reasons given in Adjt.-General Cooper's brief despatch were, that General Johnston had “failed to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta, and expressed no confidence that he could defeat or repel him.” In answer to which General Johnston wrote: “I assert that Sherman's army is much stronger, compared with that of Tennessee, than Grant's compared with that of northern Virginia. Yet the enemy has been compelled to advance much more slowly to the vicinity of Atlanta than to that of Richmond and Petersburg, and penetrated much deeper into Virginia than into Georgia.” General John B. Hood, successor of General Johnston, was obliged to evacuate Atlanta on 1 September Mr. Davis then visited Georgia and endeavored to raise the spirits of the people there, and to restore harmony between the Confederate and state governments. Governor Brown, who had opposed the conscription act, continued to be hostile to the administration, notwithstanding an interview with Mr. Davis in which the latter tried to convince him that his complaints were unjust. He reviewed and addressed Hood's army on 18 September, and afterward, in speeches made in Macon, Augusta, and elsewhere, strove to inspire the people with the spirit of renewed resistance, and to persuade them that an honorable peace was impossible. As is evident from the tone of these and other speeches, the peace Party in the south was daily gaining strength. Besides those who really desired peace, there were others who hoped that a rejected attempt to treat with the National government might fire the south with indignation. As early as 30 December, 1863, Governor Zebulon B. Vance, of North Carolina, had written to Mr. Davis urging negotiation. The latter, in his answer, dated 8 January, 1864, cited previous unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the authorities at Washington, and concluded that another would be undesirable. In January, 1865, however, after an interview with Francis P. Blair, Sr., who had gone to Richmond, unofficially, in the hope of bringing about peace, Mr. Davis agreed to send three commissioners to confer with the National government. The result was an unsatisfactory meeting on a steamer in Hampton Roads. On the return of the commissioners public meetings were held, at which there seemed to be a return of the enthusiasm of the early days of the war. Peace with the independence of the south was now seen to be impossible, and the horrors of subjugation by the north were painted in gloomy colors by the speakers. Mr. Davis, always an able and impressive speaker, made what has been called the most remarkable speech of his life. But this outburst of enthusiasm was only temporary. The evacuation of Atlanta had been followed by Sherman's march to the sea, and Hood's disastrous campaign in Tennessee. General Hood himself said, in speaking of it, when taking leave of his army in January, 1865: “I alone am responsible for its conception.” These reverses, however, with Grant's steady advance on Richmond, and, above all, the re-election of President Lincoln, had produced a growing conviction in the south that defeat was inevitable. The Confederate Congress that met in November, 1864, was outspoken in opposition to the administration, and in January, 1865, the Virginia delegation urged a change in the cabinet, expressing their want of confidence in its members. As a consequence of this, James A. Seddon, then Secretary of War, sent in his resignation.    

In his last message to Congress, dated 13 March, 1865, Mr. Davis, while acknowledging the peril of the Confederacy, asserted that it had ample means of meeting the emergency. On Sunday, 2 April, 1865, while seated in his pew in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, he was handed a telegram from General Lee, announcing the latter's speedy withdrawal from Petersburg, and the consequent necessity for the evacuation of the capital. That evening, accompanied by his personal staff, members of the cabinet, and others, he left by train for Danville. On his arrival there he issued, on 5 April, a proclamation of which he afterward admitted that, “viewed by the light of subsequent events, it may fairly be said it was over-sanguine.” In it he said: “Relieved from the necessity of guarding particular points, our army will be free to move from point to point, to strike the enemy in detail far from his base.” Danville was abandoned in less than a week, and after a conference at Greensboro, North Carolina, with Gens. Johnston and Beauregard, in which his hopes of continuing the war met with little encouragement, he went to Charlotte, where he heard of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. His wife had preceded him with a small escort, and it was just after he had overtaken her, while encamped near Irwinsville, Georgia, that the whole party were captured, on 10 May, by a body of cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel Pritchard. He was taken to Fort Monroe, and kept in confinement for two years.





On 21 September, 1865, the U. S. Senate called on the president for information on the subject of his trial, and in response reports were submitted from the Secretary of War and the attorney-general, their substance being that Virginia was the proper place for the trial, and that it was not yet possible peacefully to hold a U. S. court in that state. On 12 October, in reply to a letter from President Johnson, Chief-Justice Chase said that he was unwilling to hold court in a district still under martial law. On 10 April, 1866, the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives reported that there was no reason why the trial should not be proceeded with, and that it was the duty of the government to investigate, without delay, the facts connected with Lincoln's assassination. On 8 May, 1866, Mr. Davis was indicted for treason by a grand jury in the U. S. Court for the District of Virginia, sitting at Norfolk under Judge Underwood, the charge of complicity in the assassination of the president having been dropped. On 5 June, at a session of the court held in Richmond, James T. Brady, one of Mr. Davis's counsel, urged that the trial be held without delay; but the government declined to proceed on the indictment, urging the importance of the trial and the necessity of preparation for it. The court refused to admit the prisoner to bail. On 13 May, 1867, he was brought before the court at Richmond on a writ of habeas corpus, and admitted to bail in the amount of $100,000, the first name on his bail-bond being that of Horace Greeley. Mr. Davis's release gave much satisfaction to the southern people. The interest taken in him during his imprisonment, and their prevalent idea that he was to suffer as a representative of the south, rather than for sins of his own, and was “a nation's prisoner,” had made him more popular there than he had been since the first days of the war. After an enthusiastic reception at Richmond he went to New York, then to Canada, and in the summer of 1868 visited England, a Liverpool firm having offered to take him as a partner, without capital.
This offer, after investigation, was declined, and, having visited France, he returned to this country, he was never brought to trial, a nolle prosequi being entered by the government in his case in December, 1868, and he was also included in the general amnesty of that month. After his discharge he became president of a life insurance company at Memphis, Tennessee In 1879 Mrs. Dorsey, of Beauvoir, Mississippi, bequeathed to him her estate, where he ever afterward resided, giving much of his time to literary pursuits. In June, 1871, in a speech at a public reception in Atlanta, Georgia, he said that he still adhered to the principle of state sovereignty, was confident of its final triumph, and was “not of those who ‘accept the situation.’ ” In 1876, when a bill was before the House of Representatives to remove all the political disabilities that had been imposed on those who took part in the insurrection, James G. Blaine offered an amendment excepting Jefferson Davis, and supported it by a speech in which he accused Mr. Davis of being “the author of the gigantic murders and crimes at Andersonville.” Senator Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, spoke in reply, defending Mr. Davis from this charge. Again, in 1879, Mr. Davis was specially excepted in a bill to pension veterans of the Mexican War, the adoption of an amendment to that effect being largely the result of a speech by Zachariah Chandler. In October, 1884, at a meeting of Frank P. Blair post, of the Grand Army of the Republic, in St. Louis, General William T. Sherman asserted that he had seen letters and papers showing that Mr. Davis had abandoned his state-rights doctrines during the war, and had become practically a dictator in the south. Mr. Davis, in a letter to a newspaper, denied the charge, and General Sherman then filed with the war department at Washington papers that, in his view, substantiated it. On 28 April, 1886, Mr. Davis spoke at the dedication of a monument to Confederate soldiers at Montgomery, Alabama, and was enthusiastically received. The engraving on the preceding page is a view of his early home in Mississippi.

Two biographies of Mr. Davis have been written, both by southern authors, which illustrate the extremes of southern opinion. That by Frank H. Alfriend (New York, 1868) represents those who are friendly to Mr. Davis, while that by Edward A. Pollard, with the sub-title “Secret History of the Confederacy” (Philadelphia, 1869), holds him responsible for all the disasters of the war. Mr. Pollard, who was an editor of the Richmond “Examiner,” a paper hostile to the administration, concedes that Mr. Davis was thoroughly devoted to the cause of the south, and had indomitable pluck, but accuses him of vanity, gross favoritism, and incompetency. In addition to these works, see Dr. Craven's “Prison Life of Jefferson Davis” (New York, 1866). Mr. Davis himself had published “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government” (2 vols., New York, 1881).—His brother, Joseph Emory, lawyer, born near Augusta, Georgia, 10 December, 1784; died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 18 September, 1870, was the oldest of the ten children of Samuel Davis, and in 1796 moved with his father to Kentucky. He was placed in a mercantile house at an early age, studied law in Russellville and in Wilkinson County, whither he accompanied his father in 1811, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and practised in Pinckneyville, and afterward in Greenville, rising to high rank in the profession. He was the delegate from Jefferson County in the convention that organized the state government in 1817, and took a prominent part in framing the constitution. In 1820 he moved to Natchez, and formed a co partnership with Thomas B. Reed, then the leader of the Mississippi bar. In 1827 he decided to retire from the profession in which he had won success by his learning, argumentative powers, and oratorical ability, in order to become a planter. In this occupation he was also very successful, and at the beginning of the Civil War he possessed one of the finest plantations on the Mississippi River. During the war he was driven from his home with his family, and endured many hardships. He returned to Vicksburg at its close, and, after a controversy with the officers of the Freedmen's bureau, regained possession of his estate, but continued to reside in the city of Vicksburg. Mr. Davis was noted for his benevolence, and many youths of both sexes were indebted to him for a liberal education. Appleton’s, 1900 pp. 98-102.


DAVIS, Jefferson C., soldier, born in Clark County, Indiana, 2 March, 1828; died in Chicago, Illinois, 30 November, 1879. His ancestors were noted in the Indian wars of Kentucky. At the age of eighteen, while pursuing his studies in the Clark County, Indiana, seminary, he heard of the declaration of war with Mexico, and enlisted in Colonel Lane's Indiana Regiment. For gallant conduct at Buena Vista he was on 17 June, 1848, made second lieutenant of the 1st Artillery . He became first lieutenant in 1852, took charge of the garrison in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in 1858, and was there during the bombardment in April, 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War. In May, 1861, he was promoted to a captaincy and given leave of absence to raise the 22d Indiana Volunteers, of which regiment he became colonel, and was afterward given a brigade by General Frémont, with whom he served in Missouri. He also commanded a brigade under Gens. Hunter and Pope. For services rendered at Milford, Missouri, on 18 December, 1861, where he aided in capturing a superior force of the enemy, with a large quantity of military supplies, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers. At the battle of Pea Ridge he commanded one of the four divisions of General Curtis's army. He participated in the siege of Corinth, and, after the evacuation of that place by the Confederate forces, was assigned to the Army of the Tennessee. On 29 September, 1862, he chanced to meet in Louisville General William Nelson, from whom he claimed to have received treatment unduly harsh and severe. An altercation ensued, and in a moment of resentment he shot Nelson, instantly killing him. He was arrested, and held for a time, but no trial was ordered, and he was released and assigned to duty at Covington, Kentucky He led his old division of the 20th Army Corps into the fight at Stone River, and for his bravery was recommended by General Rosecrans for major-general. In 1864 he commanded the 14th Corps of Sherman's army in the Atlanta Campaign and in the march through Georgia. In 1865 a brevet major-generalship was given him, and he was made colonel of the 23d U.S. Infantry, 23 July, 1866. He afterward went to the Pacific Coast, and commanded the U. S. troops in Alaska, and in 1873, after the murder of General Canby by the Modoc Indians in northern California, took command of the forces operating against them, and compelled them to surrender. Appleton’s 1900 pp. 103-104.


DAVIS, John, 1787-1854, Northborough, Massachusetts, lawyer, statesman, four-term U.S. Congressman, Governor of Massachusetts, U.S. Senator, 1835-1841.  Opposed the war with Mexico and introduction of slavery in U.S. territories.  Supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the Compromise Acts of 1850.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 103-104; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p.133)

DAVIS, John, statesman, born in Northborough, Massachusetts, 13 January, 1787; died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 19 April, 1854. he was graduated at Yale with honor in 1812, studied and, was admitted to the bar in 1815, and practised with success in Worcester. He was elected to Congress as a Whig in 1824, and reelected for the four succeeding terms, sitting from December, 1825, till January, 1834, and taking a leading part as a protectionist in opposing Henry Clay's compromise tariff bill of 1833, and in all transactions relating to finance and commerce. He resigned his seat on being elected governor of Massachusetts. At the conclusion of his term as governor he was sent to the U. S. Senate, and served from 7 December, 1835, till January, 1841, when he resigned to accept the governorship a second time. In the Senate he was a strong opponent of the administrations of Jackson and Van Buren, and took a conspicuous part in the debates as an advocate of protection for American industry, replying to the free-trade arguments of southern statesmen in speeches that were considered extremely clear expositions of the protective theories. A declaration in one of his speeches, that James Buchanan was in favor of reducing the wages of American workingmen to ten cents a day, was the origin of the epithet "ten-cent Jimmy," which was applied to that statesman by his political opponents for several years. A short speech against the sub-treasury, delivered in 1840, was printed during the presidential canvass of that year as an electioneering pamphlet, of which more than a million copies were distributed. he was again elected U.S. Senator, and served from 24 March, 1845, till 3 March, 1853, but declined a re-election, and died suddenly at his home. He protested vigorously against the war with Mexico. In the controversy that followed, over the introduction of slavery into the U. S. territories, he earnestly advocated its exclusion. The Wilmot Proviso received his support, but the compromise acts of 1830 encountered his decided opposition. He enjoyed the respect and confidence of his constituents in an unusual degree, and established a reputation for high principles that gained for him the popular appellation of "honest John Davis."—His wife, who was a sister of George Bancroft, the historian, died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 24 January, 1872, at the age of eighty years.— his son, Hasbrouck, soldier, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, 19 April, 1827; drowned at sea, 19 October, 1870, was graduated at Williams in 1845, and afterward studied in Germany. He taught in the Worcester high-school for a year, and was settled as pastor of the Unitarian Society in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1849. He afterward studied law, was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1854, and went to Chicago in 1855. He was mustered into the United States service in 1862 as lieutenant- colonel of the 11th Illinois Cavalry . He served with conspicuous gallantry in Stoneman's pursuit of the Confederates after their retreat from Yorktown in April, 1862, and in the autumn distinguished himself at Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry, where he was in command of the Union cavalry, and led them, on the night of 14 September, 1862, through the enemy's lines to Greencastle, Pennsylvania, capturing an ammunition-train on the way. He was promoted colonel, 5 January 1864, and at the close of the war was brevetted brigadier-general. After returning to Chicago, he was elected city attorney. He was lost on the steamer "Cambria" in the voyage to Europe.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp.  103-104.


DAVIS, John Lee, naval officer, born in Carlisle, Sullivan County, Indiana, 3 September, 1825. He entered the U. S. Naval service as a midshipman on 9 January, 1841, was warranted passed midshipman on 10 August, 1847, and, while serving as acting lieutenant, commanding one of the boats of the "Preble," of the East India Squadron, he boarded a piratical Chinese junk off Macao in November, 1849, with another officer and sixteen men, and captured the vessel and crew. He was commissioned lieutenant on 15 September, 1855, was attached to the Gulf Squadron in 1861, and, as executive officer of the "Water Witch," took part in engagements with the Confederate ram "Manassas" at the head of the Mississippi passes and the Squadron near Pilot Town on the same day, 12 October, 1861. He was commissioned lieutenant-commander on 16 July, 1862, and attacked Fort, McAllister on 19 November, when his vessel was pierced by a solid shot below water. The leak was stopped temporarily, and after the action the vessel was taken on shore and patched at the falling of the tide. He again engaged the fort on 22 January and 1 February, 1863, and on 28 February, when the privateer "Nashville" was destroyed. On 19 March he sank the blockade-running steamer " Georgiana" when she attempted to enter Charleston Harbor. He was transferred to the command of the iron-clad "Montauk," and took part in the engagements with Forts Sumter, Gregg. Moultrie, and Battery Bee. in the beginning of September, 1863, and in the attacks on Fort Sumter on 5, 9, and 10 November, and that on Fort Moultrie on 16 November, 1863. In 1864-'5 he commanded the steamer "Sassacus." of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which towed the powder-boat "Louisiana" from Norfolk to Fort Fisher in December, and engaged that fort on 24 and 25 December, 1864, 13 and 14 January, 1865; Fort Anderson, in Cape Fear River, on 18 February; and Fort Strong on 20 and 21 February, on which last day the vessel was struck under the water-line, but the leak was kept under till dark, and then effectually stopped. He was commissioned commander on 25 July, 1866, promoted captain on 14 February, 1873, and was a member of the Light-House Board in 1876, and of the board of inspection in 1882. He was promoted commodore on 4 February, 1882, commanded the Asiatic Station in 1883-'6, and on 30 October, 1885, received his commission as rear-admiral, and was in November, 1886, relieved of his command of the Asiatic Squadron and placed on the retired list. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 105.


DAVIS, John W., statesman, born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 17 July, 1799; died in Carlisle, Indiana, 22 August 1859. He received a classical education, studied medicine, and was graduated at the Baltimore Medical College in 1821, removing in 1823 to Carlisle. Indiana. He was for several years a member of the Indiana House of Representatives, being chosen speaker in 1832. In 1834 he was appointed a commissioner to negotiate a treaty with the Indians. He was elected to Congress by the Democrats, and served from 7 December, 1835, till' 3 March, 1837, was re-elected and again served from 1839 till 1841, and from 1848 till 1847. During his last term he was Speaker of the House of Representatives, having been elected 1 December, 1845. He was U. S. Commissioner to China in 1848-'50, and governor of Oregon in 1853-'4. He presided over the convention held at Baltimore in 1852 that nominated Franklin Pierce for the presidency, Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 105.


DAVIS, Nelson Henry, soldier, born in Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, 20 September, 1821. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1846, and assigned to the 3d U.S. Infantry. He served in the war with Mexico, received the brevet of 1st lieutenant for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, and was also at the siege of Vera Cruz, the battle of Cerro Gordo, and the capture of the city of Mexico. He was promoted 1st lieutenant 8 June, 1849, and then served on the frontier, being engaged in several actions while on the Sierra Nevada Expedition of 1849-'50, and taking part in the Rogue River Expedition of 1853. He was made captain on 3 March, 1855, was at the battle of Bull Run, and from 4 September to 12 November, 1861, was colonel of the 7th Massachusetts Volunteers. He then became major and assistant inspector-general, and served with the Army of the Potomac till the autumn of 1863, receiving the brevet of lieutenant colonel for gallantry at Gettysburg. He was then transferred to New Mexico, was brevetted colonel 27 June, 1865, for his services against the Apache Indians, and also received the brevet of brigadier general for his services in the Civil War. He was inspector-general of the District of New Mexico in 1868, of the Department of Missouri in 1868-'72, was on a tour of inspection till 1876, and then became inspector-general of the Division of the Atlantic. He was commissioned brigadier-general on 11 March, 1885, and retired on 20 September Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p 106.


DAVIS, Paulina Kellogg Wright, 1813-1876, abolitionist, feminist, women’s rights activist, reformer.  Davis was married to abolitionist Francis Wright.  They served on the executive committee of the Central New York Anti-Slavery Society.  Their house was attacked by an angry mob for their anti-slavery activities.  After the death of her husband, she re-married, to anti-slavery Democrat Thomas Davis, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1852.  In May 1850, in Boston, Davis and other women’s rights activists planned and organized the first national women’s rights Convention.  (American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 214-216; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 216; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 106; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 141)

DAVIS, Paulina (WRIGHT), reformer, born in Bloomfield, New York, 7 August, 1813; died in Providence, Rhode Island, 24 August, 1876. She married Francis Wright, of Utica, New York, in 1833, and after his death became in 1849 the wife of Thomas Davis, of Providence, Rhode Island, who was a member of Congress in 1853-'5. For thirty-five years she labored zealously to promote the rights of women, established “The Una,” the first woman-suffrage paper, wrote a history of woman-suffrage reform, and gave lectures in the principal cities of the United States. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 214-216.


DAVIS, Thomas, 1806-1895, North Providence, Rhode Island, manufacturer, Member of U.S. House of Representatives, 1853-1855, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1848-52.  Disapproved of the Missouri Compromise.


DAVIS, Thomas T., 1810-1872, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1862 and 1864 from Syracuse, New York.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 97; Congressional Globe)


DAVIS, Thomas T., lawyer, born in Middlebury, Vermont, 82 August, 1810; died in Syracuse, New York, 2 May," 1872, was graduated at Hamilton College in 183l. He studied law, and was admitted to the Bar of Syracuse in 1833. He was counsel for the principal manufacturing establishments of that city, and took an active interest in railroad and mining enterprises. In 1862 he was elected to Congress, and re-elected in 1864 After that date he resided in Syracuse, devoting himself to his law practice. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 97.


DAVIS, Werter Renick, , clergyman, born in Circleville, Ohio, 1 April, 1815, was educated at Kenyon College, and received the degree of M. D. from the College of Medicine and Surgery in Cincinnati. Subsequently he became a minister in the Methodist Church, and entered the Ohio conference in 1835. He then filled various pastorates in West Virginia and Ohio until 1853. when he was transferred to the Missouri Conference and stationed at St. Louis. In 1854 he became professor of natural sciences in McKendree College, where he remained until 1858, acting as president during his last year at that institution. He was then elected president of Baker University, but afterward resigned, and for fourteen consecutive years was appointed to a presiding eldership. During the Civil War he went to the front as chaplain of the 12th Kansas Infantry, and then was commissioned lieutenant-colonel to raise and organize the 16th Kansas Cavalry  in 1862, of which he became colonel, and continued in command of that regiment until the close of the war. Dr. Davis was a member of the first state legislature of Kansas, and also held the office of superintendent of public instruction in Douglas County. He was a member of the general conferences of 1868, 1872, and 1880, and a delegate to the Ecumenical Methodist Conference in London, and to the Centennial Conference held in Baltimore. Maryland. in 1884. He edited, in 1859, "The Kansas Message," the first paper published in Baldwin City, and has published several sermons. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 96.


DAVIS' BEND, LOUISIANA, June 29, 1864. Davisboro, Georgia, November 28, 1864, 2nd Division, 20th Army Corps. While the troops of the 2nd division were engaged in destroying a portion of the railroad track near Davisboro, they were attacked by a portion of Ferguson's brigade of Confederate cavalry. The enemy kept up a desultory fire for an hour and a half, but were finally driven off by the skirmishers of the division. The casualties on the Union side were 1 wounded and 4 captured; on the Confederate, 3 killed and a number wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIS' BRIDGE, TENNESSEE, September 25, 1862. 11th Illinois and Detachment of Captain Ford's Cavalry. A scouting party, comprising 200 men of 11th Illinois cavalry and 70 of Ford's company, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel John McDermott, was surprised by 200 guerrillas at Davis' bridge on the Hatchie river between Pocahontas and Chevvalla. The Federals had just unsaddled and were preparing to bivouac when the attack was made. After fighting stubbornly for some time about 100 of the men managed to cut their way out, leaving a number dead and wounded. Davis' Bridge, Tennessee, October 1, 1862.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIS' BRIDGE, TENNESSEE, October 5, 1862. (See Hatchie Bridge.)


DAVIS CROSS-ROADS, GEORGIA, September 11, 1863. 14th Army Corps. General Negley, commanding the corps, placed 10 pieces of artillery on the ridge behind Davis' house to check the advance of Buckner, who was moving northward on the Chattanooga road, and then began moving his supply train back to Bailey's cross-roads. Part of Baird's division was deployed as skirmishers and two companies of the 19th Illinois infantry took a position behind a stone fence, from which they were able to temporarily check the Confederate advance. Buckner then took a position on the south side of Chickamauga creek and opened fire with his artillery at a distance of 400 yards, driving the Federals from the ridge. Negley ordered his men to fall back to Bailey's cross-roads and during the night Buckner retired in the direction of Dug gap.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIS' GAP, ALABAMA, July 12, 1862. 1st Ohio Cavalry. While Company I, 1st Ohio cavalry, under Captain South Carolina Writer, was awaiting the arrival of a body of infantry at Davis' gap, the pickets were fired upon by a combined force of guerrillas and Confederate infantry. The Federal troops fell back to the cover of some log outbuildings and for some time checked the advance of the enemy. Finding that he was being surrounded, Writer ordered a retreat. By following a by-road he joined the infantry, his command being fired upon several times on the way by guerrillas. One Federal soldier was wounded and 5 were missing. The enemy lost 2 killed and 2 wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIS' GAP, ALABAMA, September 1, 1863.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIS' HOUSE, GEORGIA, September 11, 1863. (See Davis' Cross-roads.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIS' HOUSE, VIRGINIA, August 31, 1864. Pickets of 5th Army Corps. About 10 a. m. the enemy drove in the Federal outlying pickets at the signal station in the vicinity of Davis' house, capturing 8 men, wounding 3 and killing 1. The Confederate force, numbering 150, then retired.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 348.


DAVIS MILL, MISSISSIPPI, December 21, 1862. Detachments of 25th Indiana Infantry and 5th Ohio cavalry. About noon of Sunday, December 21, a Confederate cavalry force under Van Dorn attacked the command of Colonel William H. Morgan, consisting of two companies of cavalry and six of infantry, at Davis' mill. The Federal troops were all drawn up in line of battle behind an earthwork commanding the approach from the bridge. Three times the enemy attempted to cross the bridge, but were each time repulsed with loss. Finding themselves unable to dislodge the Union troops, the Confederates attempted to fire the bridge, but the effort was frustrated. About 2 p. m. the enemy withdrew, leaving 22 dead, 30 wounded and 20 prisoners in the hands of the Federals, whose loss was but 3 wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 348-349.


DAVIS' MILL, MISSISSIPPI, June 11, 1864. 1st Brigade, Infantry Division, Expedition into Mississippi. While repairing the bridge at Davis' mill, which had been partially destroyed by the Confederates, the brigade was fired upon by the enemy and 3 men were wounded. Soon after another attack in front was repulsed, the negro troops in the rear meantime dispersing a party of 150 of Buford's cavalry. When the column again advanced it was fired into, but no execution was done.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 349.


DAVIS' MILL, TENNESSEE, March 14, 1863.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 349.


DAVIS' MILL, TENNESSEE, March 24, 1863. Detachments of 2nd Iowa and 6th Illinois Cavalry. Lieutenant-Colonel Reuben Loomis of the 6th Illinois cavalry, reporting from LaGrange under date of March 24, says: "This evening I was informed that the 2nd Iowa pickets, standing on the road running southeast from this place, had been attacked by a party of guerrillas, and 2 of them were captured. I instantly took about 50 men and went in pursuit. We traveled about 15 miles double-quick, came upon them, killed 3, recaptured our men, and took 3 prisoners."  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 349.


DAVIS' MILL, TENNESSEE, April 5, 1863. Major-General Gordon Granger, reporting from Franklin, Tennessee, says: "The rebels attempted to surround a company on picket at Davis' Mill at daylight this morning. All escaped and have got in except 8."  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 349.


DAVIS' PLANTATION, MISSISSIPPI, February 5, 1864. Sherman's Meridian Expedition. General William T. Sherman began his march toward Meridian on the 3d, moving to the Big Black river in two columns. General Hurlbut's column crossed the river at Messinger's ferry and met the enemy on the 5th at Joe Davis' plantation. The skirmishing lasted all day, with slight loss on both sides, the Confederates being gradually forced back, and Hurlbut moved on toward Jackson.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 349.


DAWES, Henry Laurens, 1816-1903, Massachusetts, judge, U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts.  Served in Congress 1857-1873. U.S. Senator 1875-1893.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 107; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 149; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 250; Congressional Globe)

DAWES, Henry Laurens, statesman, born in Cummington, Massachusetts, 30 October, 1816. He was graduated at Yale in 1839, became a teacher, and edited the Greenfield “Gazette,” and subsequently the Adams “Transcript.” He was admitted to the bar in 1842, and served in the legislature from 1848 till 1850, when he became a member of the state senate. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1853, and attorney for the western District of Massachusetts, continuing until 1857, when he was elected to Congress, and served as a member of the committee on Revolutionary Claims. He remained in Congress by successive re-elections until 1878. In 1866 he was a delegate to the Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, and in 1875 he succeeded Charles Sumner in the Senate, and was re-elected in 1881 and 1887. He has been chairman of the committee on ways and means, has served on committee on public buildings and grounds, and inaugurated the measure by which the completion of the Washington monument was undertaken. He is the author of many tariff measures, and assisted in the construction of the wool and woollen tariff of 1868, which was the basis of all wool and woollens from that time until 1883. He is also a member of the committees on Approbations, Civil service, Fisheries, Revolutionary claims, and Indian and Naval Affairs. He was appointed on a special committee to investigate the Indian disturbances in the Indian territory, upon which he made a valuable report. The entire system of Indian education due to legislation was created by Mr. Dawes. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 107.


DAWSON, Samuel Kennedy, soldier, born in Pennsylvania about 1818. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1839, and assigned as second lieutenant to the 1st Artillery . He served on the northern frontier at Plattsburg, New York, during the Canada border disturbances of 1839, and on the Maine frontier, pending the "disputed territory" controversy in 1840. During the war with Mexico he was present at the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Cerro Gordo, and took part in the siege of Vera Cruz. He was promoted to be first lieutenant, 18 June, 1840, brevet captain, 18 April, 1847, captain, 31 March, 1853, and major of the 19th U.S. Infantry, 14 May, 1861. Captain Dawson took part in the campaigns against the Seminoles, 1851-'6, and was attached to the party engaged in the pursuit of Cortinas's Mexican marauders in 1859. During the Civil War he was present at the bombardment of Fort Pickens, in 1861, and served in the Tennessee Campaign of 1863, being severely wounded at the battle of Chickamauga, for which he was promoted to be brevet colonel, and subsequently brevet brigadier-general, for gallant and meritorious services during the war. He was commissioned colonel of the 19th U.S. Infantry, 28 July, 1866. In 1865 and 1866 he commanded a detachment of the 15th U.S. Infantry at Mobile, mid the entire regiment at Macon. Georgia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 110.


DAY, Hannibal, soldier, born in Vermont about 1802.  He is the son of Dr. Sylvester Day, assistant surgeon. U. S. Army. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1823, and made second lieutenant in the 2d Infantry. On 4 April, 1832, he was commissioned first lieutenant, and in the fame year took part in the Black Hawk Expedition, but was not on duty at the seat of war. He also served in the Florida wars in 1838-'9 and 1841-2, and in the war with Mexico in 1846-'7. He was commissioned captain, 7 July, 1838, major, 23 February, 1852, lieutenant-colonel, 25 February, 1861, and colonel, 7 January, 1862. He commanded a brigade of the 5th Corps in the Pennsylvania Campaign in 1863, taking part in the battle of Gettysburg. He was retired from active duty, “on his own application after forty consecutive years of service,” 1 August, 1863, and employed on military commissions and courts-martial from 25 July, 1864. On 13 March, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general for long service. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 111.


DAY, William Howard, 1825-1900, African American anti-slavery advocate, writer, orator, printer.  Husband of abolitionist Lucy Stanton Sessions, who published the abolitionist newspaper, Aliened American. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 10, p. 154)


DAY'S GAP, ALABAMA, April 29, 1863. (See Streight's Raid.) Dayton, Missouri, December 23, 1861, and April 27, 1864. Dayton, Missouri, August 10, 1863. 1st Missouri State Militia Cavalry. In the advance of this regiment on a march to Harrisonville, Company H had a brisk skirmish with bushwhackers at Dayton, in which 2 of the enemy were killed and 1 wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 349.


DAYTON, William Lewis, 1807-1864, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Senator.  Member of the Free Soil Whig Party.  Opposed slavery and its expansion into the new territories.  Opposed the Fugitive Slave bill of 1850.  Supported the admission of California as a free state and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.  First vice presidential nominee of Republican Party in 1856, on the ticket with John C. Frémont.  Lost the election to James Buchanan.  (Goodell, 1852, p. 570; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 59; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 113; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 166; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 280)

DAYTON, William Lewis, statesman, born in Baskingridge, New Jersey, 17 February, 1807; died in Paris, France, 1 December, 1864. He was graduated at Princeton in 1825, and received the degree of LL. D. from that college in 1857. He studied law in Litchfield, Connecticut, and was admitted to the bar in 1830, beginning his practice in Trenton, New Jersey In 1837 he was elected to the State Council (as the Senate was then called), being made chairman of the judiciary committee, the supreme court of the state in 1838, and in 1842, he became associate judge of was appointed to fill a vacancy in the U. S. Senate. His appointment was confirmed by the legislature in 1845, and he was also elected for the whole term. In the Senate debates on the Oregon question, the tariff, annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War, he took the position of a Free-Soil Whig. He was the friend and adviser of President Taylor, and opposed the Fugitive-Slave Bill, but advocated the admission of California as a free state, and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1856 he was nominated by the newly formed Republican Party for vice-president. In March, 1857, he was made attorney-general for the state of New Jersey, and held that office until 1861, when President Lincoln appointed him minister to France, where he remained until his death.—His son, William Lewis, who was graduated at Princeton in 1858, and practised law in Trenton, was appointed by President Arthur minister to the Netherlands. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 280.


DEARING, James, soldier, born in Campbell County, Virginia, 25 April, 1840; died in Lynchburg in April, 1865. He was a great-grandson of Colonel Charles Lynch, of Revolutionary fame, who gave his name to the summary method of administering justice now known as "Lynch Law," through his rough-and-ready way of treating the tories. He was graduated at Hanover, Virginia, Academy, and was appointed a cadet in the U. S. Military Academy, but resigned in 1861, to join the Confederate Army when Virginia passed the ordinance of secession. He was successively lieutenant of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, captain of Latham's battery, major and commander of Denny's Artillery  Battalion, and colonel of a cavalry regiment from North Carolina, and was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general for gallantry at the battle of Plymouth. He participated in the principal engagements between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. On the retreat of the Confederate forces from Petersburg to Appomattox Court-House, he was mortally wounded near Farmville in a singular encounter with Brigadier-General Theodore Read, of the National Army. The two generals met, on 5 April, at the head of their forces, on opposite sides of the Appomattox, at High Bridge, and a duel with pistols ensued. General Rend was shot dead, but General Dearing lingered until a few days after the surrender of Lee, when he died in the Old City Hotel at Lynchburg, Virginia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 117-118.


DEAD ANGLE OR (DEAD GROUND) is any angle or piece of ground which cannot be seen, and which therefore cannot be defended from behind the parapet of the fortification. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 214).


DEAD BUFFALO LAKE, DAKOTA, TERRITORY, July 26, 1863. 1st Minnesota Mounted Rangers, 3d Minnesota Battery, 6th and 7th Minnesota Infantry. During the expedition against the Sioux Indians the command went into camp on the shore of Dead Buffalo lake. Very soon afterward bands of Indians made their appearance, threatening an attack. An engagement at long range ensued, the Indians being driven off by the artillery. Meanwhile another force of the red men attempted a flank movement on the left of the camp, but the effort was frustrated. Farther to the left were herded the mules of the expedition. Having been foiled in the other two attempts the Indians made a dash upon the corral. A rapid movement on the part of the Rangers resulted in the driving back of the enemy, who fled in precipitation, leaving a number dead upon the prairie.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 349.


DEAD MAN'S FORK, DAKOTA TERRITORY, June 17, 1865. Detachments of 11th, Indiana 16th Kansas, 11th Ohio and 2nd California Cavalry. While this command was in pursuit of a band of outlaw Indians it was attacked by a large number of red men. The soldiers were at their breakfast at Dead Man's fork when the alarm was given and had no time to saddle and mount. The attack was repulsed with little difficulty, but the horses in the meantime had become frightened and broken away in the direction of the Indians, who surrounded about 100 of them and drove them into the mountains. The casualties in the fight were 2 soldiers wounded and 4 Indians killed.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 349-350.


DEATH. Sentence of death may be rendered by a general court-martial for the following crimes only: 1. Beginning, exciting, causing or joining in, any mutiny or sedition in any troop or company in the service of the United States, or in any party, post, detachment, or guard; (ART. 7.) 2. Being present at any mutiny or sedition and not using the utmost endeavors to suppress the same, or coming to the knowledge of any intended mutiny and not giving without delay information to the commanding officer; (ART. 8.) 3. Striking his superior officer, or drawing or lifting up any weapon, or offering any violence against him, he being in the execution of his office, on any pretence whatsoever; or disobeying any lawful command of his superior officer; (ART. 9.) 4. Desertion in time of war; (ART. 20 modified by Act May 28, 1830.) 5. Advising or persuading an officer or soldier to desert the service; (ART. 23.) 6. Any sentinel found sleeping on his post, or leaving it before being regularly relieved; (ART. 46.) 7. Any officer occasioning false alarms in camp, garrison, or quarters, by discharging fire-arms, drawing of swords, beating of drums, or by any other means whatsoever; (ART. 49.) 8. Doing violence to any person who brings provisions or other necessaries to the camp, garrison, or quarters of the forces of the United States employed in any parts out of the said States; (ART. 51.) 9. Misbehavior before the enemy, running away or shameful abandonment of any fort, post, or guard, which he may be commanded to defend, or speaking words inducing others to do the like; or casting away arms and ammunition, or quitting his post or colors to plunder and pillage; (AT. 52.) 10. Making known the watch-word to any person not entitled to receive it, or giving a parole or watch-word different from that received; (ART. 53.) 11. Forcing a safe-guard in foreign parts; (ART. 55.) 12. Relieving the enemy with money, victuals or ammunition; or knowingly harboring or protecting an enemy; (ART. 56.) 13. Holding correspondence with, or giving intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly; (ART. 57.) 14. Compelling their commanding officer to give up to the enemy or abandon any garrison, fortress, or post; (ART. 59.) Every sentence of death in time of peace (in time of war it may be carried into execution by the officer ordering the court, or by the commanding officer) must, before being carried into execution, be laid before the President of the United States for his confirmation or disapproval and orders in the case; and no one can be sentenced to suffer death, except by the concurrence of two- thirds of the members of the court-martial, nor except in cases expressly mentioned; (ARTS. 65 and 87.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, pp. 214-215).


DEATONSVILLE, VIRGINIA, April 6, 1865. (See Sailor's Creek.) Decatur, Alabama, August 7, 1862. Convalescent Soldiers. This affair was an attack by 250 Confederate cavalry on the convalescent train between Decatur and Tuscumbia. Of the 200 Federals in the train 125 were captured, 2 were killed and 2 wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DE BAPTISTE, George, 1814-1875, free African American abolitionist, businessman.  Aided fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad in Madison, Indiana, as well as Ohio and Kentucky areas.  Became active in abolition movement in the Detroit area. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 538; American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 306)


DEBLAI is the quantity of earth excavated from the ditch to form the remblai. Under ordinary circumstances the one is equal to the other, but not always; as, from the nature of the soil, earth may have to be brought to supply the remblai. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 215).


DEBT. All nori-commissioned officers, artificers, privates, and musicians enlisted in the actual service of the United States are exempted, during their term of service, from all personal arrests for any debt or contract; (Act March 3, 1799.) No non-commissioned officer, musician, or private shall be arrested or subject to arrest, or be taken in execution for any debt under the sum of twenty dollars, contracted before enlistment, nor for any debt contracted after enlistment; (Act March 16, 1802.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 215).


DE BOLT Rezin A., jurist, born in Fairfield County, Ohio, 20 January, 1828. He received a common-school education and worked on a farm till his seventeenth year, when he was apprenticed to a tanner. After serving his time he followed his trade for a few years, but in the meantime studied law, and was admitted to the bar in February, 1856. He moved to Trenton, Grundy County, Missouri, in 1858, and began the practice of law. He was appointed school commissioner of Grundy County in 1859, and re-elected to the same office in 1860, serving until the beginning of the Civil War. He entered the National service in 1861 as captain in the 33d Missouri Infantry, was captured at the battle of Shiloh, 6 April, 1862, and held as prisoner until the following October. In 1863 he resigned his commission on account of impaired health, and resumed his profession, but in 1864 re-entered the army as major in the 44th Missouri Infantry, and was mustered out of service in August, 1865. He was elected judge of the circuit court for the 11th District of Missouri in November, 1863, which office he held until his election as a representative from Missouri in the 44th Congress, closing his Congressional career in 1877. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 119.


DE BOW, James Dunwoody Brownson (de bo), statistician, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 10 July, 1820; died in Elizabeth, New Jersey, 27 February, 1867. He was employed in a commercial house for seven years, was graduated at Charleston College in 1843, and in the following year was admitted to the bar. He had a predilection for statistical science and literature, and before adopting the legal profession and contributor to the "Southern Quarterly Review," of which he became editor in 1844. His elaborate article on ' Oregon and the Oregon Question" attracted wide attention in the United States and Europe, appeared in French, and was the occasion of a debate in the French chamber of deputies. In 1845 Mr. De Bow withdrew from its editorship and moved to New Orleans, where "De Bow's Commercial Review" was established by him, and attained immediate success. In 1848 he became professor of political economy and commercial statistics in the University of Louisiana, and was one of the founders of the Louisiana Historical Society, since merged into the Academy of science. He left the university about 1850 to assume charge of the census bureau of Louisiana, holding the office three years, during which time he collected a vast mass of statistical matter relating to the population and products of the state, and the commerce of New Orleans. President Pierce appointed him superintendent of the census in 1853, and he performed the duties of this office two years, continuing to edit his "Review." He devoted himself almost wholly to political economy, writing extensively on commercial statistics and finance, and contributing articles on American topics to the eighth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." He delivered various addresses before literary, agricultural, and commercial associations. Apart from his literary pursuits he was one of the most industrious men of his time, and, notwithstanding his delicate organization and frequent ill health, his public lecturing and executive duties were apparently unabated. He was active in enterprises for the material and intellectual interests of the south, and was a member of every southern commercial convention subsequent to that of Memphis in 1845, and was president of the Knoxville Convention of 1857. During the Civil War his "Review" was necessarily suspended, though his voice and pen were employed in advocacy of the Confederacy, previous to which he had uttered bitter denunciations against the northern states and their institutions. After the overthrow of the Confederacy his views changed, he admitted the superiority of the free-labor system of the northwest to the slave-labor system of the south, and urged the legislatures of the southern states to encourage immigration. His "Review" was first resumed in New York City, and subsequently in Nashville, Tennessee. He was author of an "Encyclopaedia of the Trade and Commerce of the United States" (2 vols., 1853), and "The Industrial Resources and Statistics of the Southwest," compiled from his "Review" (3 vols., New York, 1853). He collected and prepared for the press, in 1854, a greater part of the material for the three volumes of the quarto edition, and compiled the octavo volume entitled "Statistical View of the United States," being a compendium of the Seventh Census (that of 1850), of which 150,000 copies were ordered by Congress (Washington, 1854). He was also author of "The Southern States, their Agriculture, Commerce, etc." (1856), and edited a work on mortality statistics. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 119.


DE CAMP, John, naval officer, born in New Jersey in 1812; died in Burlington, New Jersey, 25 June, 1875. He was appointed to the U.S. Navy from Florida in October, 1827, and served on the sloop "Vandalia," of the Brazil Squadron, in 1820-'30. He was promoted to passed midshipman in 1833, was in the West India Squadron till 1837, and commissioned lieutenant in 1838, and served on the frigate "Constitution" along the coast of Africa in 1854. He was commissioned commander in 1855, and served in the U.S. Navy-yard, New York, U.S.  Light-House Inspector, and as commander of the store-ship " Relief." He commanded the steam sloop "Iroquois" at the attack upon Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and the capture of New Orleans (April, 1862), and participated in various actions on the Mississippi, including Vicksburg, while in command of the "Wissahickon." He was commissioned captain in 1862, and was in the South Atlantic Squadron in 1863-'4. He was promoted to the rank of commodore in 1866, commanded the receiving ship "Potomac" in 1868-'9, and was retired in 1870 with the rank of rear-admiral. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 119-120.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, March 7, 1864 . Troops of the Army of the Tennessee, commanded by General Dodge.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, April 13, 1864. Scouts from 9th Illinois Infantry. Captain Samuel T. Hughes with two companies of mounted infantry drove back into the mountains a company of Confederate scouts and pickets. No casualties were reported by either side.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, April 18, 1864. Detachment of 4th Division, 16th Army Corps. Major Fairfield encountered a Confederate picket on the Courtland road, just out of Decatur, and pushed them until they showed a force too strong for him to successfully engage. Major Kuhn went out with reinforcements and with Fairfield pursued the enemy 5 miles. No casualties were reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, April 24, 1864. Scouts of 4th Division, 16th Army Corps. About 100 Confederates drove in the scouts to Decatur about sunset, but were in turn driven back to their own line. One of the Federal scouts was severely wounded. Decatur, Alabama, April 30, 1864. Detachment of the Army of the Tennessee. Major-General James B. McPherson in his report to General Sherman says: "The enemy appeared before Decatur this morning with quite a force, and opened on the place with four pieces of artillery. A brigade went out and drove them off. Colonel Phillips is following them. We lost a few men killed and wounded."  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, May 8, 1864. 7th Illinois Infantry. Colonel Richard Rowett with the 7th Illinois infantry met Roddey's Confederate force, 5,000 strong, near Decatur, and after a 2 hours' fight was compelled to fall back to Florence. No casualties were reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, May 26-27, 1864. 1st, 3d and 4th Ohio Cavalry, and 3d Brigade, 4th Division, 16th Corps.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, August 6, 1864. (See Somerville Road.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, August 18, 1864. This affair was an incident of an expedition from Decatur to Moulton. The skirmish really occurred at Antioch Church, a few miles out from Decatur on the Somerville and Moulton road. (See Antioch Church.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 350.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, October 26-29, U. S. Troops of the District of Northern Alabama. About noon of the 26th the advance of Hood's Confederate force then operating in Georgia and north Alabama appeared in front of Decatur, after driving in a Federal scouting party. Late in the afternoon an attack was made on the garrison, but without effect. The 27th was spent by the enemy in intrenching his position. Brisk skirmishing was carried on by the opposing forces all day but no artillery was used. That night under cover of darkness the Confederates in strong force drove in the Union pickets and established a line of rifle-pits within 500 yards of the town. At daylight it was evident that the enemy must be dislodged from that position, as he could cover the guns in the Federal works and render them useless. Accordingly Captain William C. Moore, with detachments of the 18th Michigan, the 102nd Ohio and the 13th Wisconsin infantry, moved out on the extreme right, deployed his men under cover of the river bank, moved quietly up to the open ground and then with a yell charged the flank and rear of the rifle-pits. The Confederates became panic-stricken and fled, only to be met by a galling fire of musketry and artillery from the Union lines. Moore pursued closely until near the Confederate main line, where he halted and commenced retreating, his force having been reduced one-half to guard prisoners. The enemy failed to follow him. While the rifle-pits were being dug on the front during the night the Confederates had posted :i battery of 8 guns on their right. When the fog lifted in the morning Brigadier-General R. S. Granger, commanding the Union forces, sent a section of the ist Tennessee battery to the other side of the river with instructions to enfilade this battery. After the successful sortie of Captain Moore the 14th U. S. colored infantry under Colonel Doolittle charged the battery under cover of the firing of the ist Tennessee and the gunboat Stone River. The result was the capture of 14 prisoners and the spiking of 2 guns. The enemy returned in force and Doolittle was compelled to retire, which he did in good order. During the 28th heavy firing occurred all along the line, but neither force assaulted. The Stone River ran the Confederate battery and took a position above where it could play upon the enemy with its long-range guns. On the morning of the 29th it was apparent that the Confederate force was retreating and the 14th U. S. colored infantry was sent out to reconnoiter. On their return they reported a strong rear-guard the only part of the enemy's force left. At 4 p. m. Granger ordered an attack on the last line of rifle-pits, which resulted in the withdrawal of the last of the Confederates. The Federal loss in killed, wounded and prisoners was 113; that of the enemy in killed, wounded and prisoners was much heavier, probably about 1,000.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 350-351.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, December 27-28, 1864 . Troops of Provisional Detachment, Department of the Etowah. This command, under Brigadier-General James B. Steedman, was landed 3 miles above Decatur and immediately pushed out in the direction of that place. A party of Confederates attempted to check the crossing of the troops at a lagoon, but was driven off by the Federal advance. Next day the cavalry, comprising the 15th Pennsylvania and detachments of the 2nd Tennessee, 10th, 12th and 13th Indiana, about 650 men, encountered the enemy 6 miles from the river, attacked and routed him. capturing a section of 6-pounder brass guns. The casualties of these two affairs were not reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 351.


DECATUR, ALABAMA, March 3, 1865.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 351.


DECATUR, GEORGIA, July 22, 1864. (See Atlanta.) Decatur, Georgia, September 28, 1864. Detachment of Army of the Ohio. Brigadier-General Jacob D. Cox, reporting to Major-General Sherman, says: "An escort for a train had a skirmish yesterday with about 200 rebel cavalry five miles out on the Covington road. The rebels were driven off, losing 3 killed and a few wounded. We had 1 killed and 3 wounded."  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 351.


DECATUR, TENNESSEE, July 15, 1862. Detachment of 1st Ohio Cavalry.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 351.


DECATUR, MISSISSIPPI, February 12, 1864. 3d Division, 16th Army Corps, and 25th Indiana Infantry. As an incident of the Meridian expedition the Confederate cavalry attacked the train of Smith's division. The 25th Indiana infantry was called to reinforce the guard and repulsed the enemy without loss.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 351.


DECATUR COUNTY, TENNESSEE, June 21, 1864. Decherd, Tennessee, June 29. 1863. 1st Brigade, 4th Division, 14th Army Corps. During the middle Tennessee campaign the ist brigade approached Decherd about 8 p. m. and attacked the garrison stationed in a stockade. A stiff resistance was offered for a time, but the enemy, numbering 80 men, was soon dislodged from his position and forced to take shelter in a strip of1 timber. The Federal howitzers again drove the Confederates out and the Union command was able to proceed with its work of destroying the railroad. Later in the evening six regiments of Confederate infantry approached, and after skirmishing with their advance pickets the Union force withdrew. The casualties were not reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 351.


DECEASED OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS. The major of the regiment or, in his absence, the second in command, secures the effects of an officer, and transmits an inventory to the department of war, that his executor or administrators may receive the same; (ART. 94.) In the case of a soldier, the commanding officer of the troop or company, in presence of two other officers, takes an account of the effects he died possessed of, and transmits the same to the department of war, which said effects are to be accounted for and paid to the representatives of such deceased non-commissioned officer or soldier; (ART. 95.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 215).


DECISIONS. On courts-martial the majority of votes decides all questions as to the admission or rejection of evidence, and on other points involving law or custom. If equally divided, the doubt is in favor of the prisoner; (HOUGH'S Military Law Authorities.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 215).


DEEP BOTTOM, VIRGINIA, July 27-29, 1864. 2nd Army Corps, 1st Division of the 10th Corps, 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions, Army of the Potomac, and Kautz's Cavalry, Army of the James. Deep Bottom is a lowland on the north side of the James river, about 12 miles below Richmond, and is directly opposite Jones' neck, the most northerly point of the Bermuda Hundred peninsula. Near the center of the lowland Four-mile creek flows into the James from the north. A short distance from the mouth this stream receives the waters of Bailey's run, which was crossed by the New Market, Long Bridge and Darbytown roads. On July 25 General Grant conceived the idea of sending Hancock, with the 2nd corps, and Sheridan, with Torbert's and Gregg's cavalry divisions, to Deep Bottom, where Sheridan was to be joined by Kautz. The movement was to be made secretly and, after crossing the James, Hancock was to move up to Chaffin's bluff to support the cavalry, which was to make a dash on Richmond and enter the city if the prospects were favorable, otherwise Sheridan was to direct his attention to the destruction of the railroads entering Richmond. Grant hoped by this movement to reduce the Confederate strength at Petersburg so that the lines there could be carried upon the springing of Burnside's mine. (See Petersburg.) Two pontoon bridges had been thrown across the James, one a short distance above the mouth of Four-mile creek and the other about the same distance below. These bridges were held by Foster's division of the 10th corps. Opposite the upper bridge a considerable force of the enemy was intrenched, and Hancock therefore decided to cross at the lower bridge, with a view of turning the flank of this force, while Foster engaged the Confederates in front. About 4 p. m. on the 26th Hancock withdrew his command from the intrenchments in front of Petersburg, moved well to the rear to avoid being seen by the enemy, and by daylight on the 27th the whole corps was on the north side of the James, massed behind a belt of timber along the east side of Four-mile creek. The command then began its march toward Chaffin's bluff, some 5 miles up the river, Barlow's division having the advance. A small Confederate force was encountered on the cast side of Bailey's run, but it was quickly driven back by Miles' brigade and a battery of four 20-pounder Parrott guns was captured. Upon arriving at the bridge over Bailey's creek on the New Market road the Confederates were found posted on the opposite bank in well constructed works, with several pieces of artillery in position to command the crossing. This force consisted of the divisions of Wilcox and Kershaw, which had been brought over from Petersburg before Grant determined upon the movement to the north side of the James, and whose presence there was unknown to the Federal commander. Meantime the cavalry had crossed the James immediately behind the 2nd corps and had moved by way of Strawberry plains to the Darbytown road. When it was discovered that the enemy held the west side of Bailey's run in force, Gibbon's division was assigned to the duty of holding the advanced position on the New Market road, while Barlow and Mott were pushed forward up the creek to the Long Bridge road, forming a junction with the cavalry near the forks of the Central or Darbytown road. A reconnaissance of the Confederate position failed to discover the flank, as the line extended to Fussell's mill, where the Darbytown road crossed Bailey's creek, and where the enemy's left was refused. Sheridan, by a spirited charge, had driven the enemy from a ridge near the Central road, which position he held until the following day. During the day the Confederates were reinforced by Heth's division. About the middle of the afternoon Grant visited Hancock's line and found the situation very different from what he had expected. He stated that he did not "see much that can be done," but suggested that it might be well to try to "roll up the enemy's left toward Chaffin's bluff, and thus release our cavalry." Accordingly Foster was directed to make a vigorous demonstration in his immediate front early on the morning of the 28th, in order to attract as large a force of the enemy as possible to that point, and other preparations were made to carry out Grant's suggestion. Before these preparations were complete it was noticed that the enemy was moving toward the Federal right, and about 10 a. m. Kershaw made a desperate effort to dislodge Sheridan. The skirmish line was forced back to the crest of the ridge, behind which lay the main body of the cavalry, dismounted and armed with repeating carbines. When Kershaw's men arrived within easy range the whole line arose and opened fire with such vigor that the Confederates were thrown into confusion. Then the cry of "Charge!" "Charge!" was heard along the Union lines and without waiting for the word of command the men rushed forward, firing as they advanced, turning a momentary defeat into a complete rout. About 250 prisoners and 2 stands of colors were captured and Kershaw's shattered line retired behind the works. Hancock heard the firing when the attack on Sheridan commenced and sent Gibbon to the support of the cavalry, but Kershaw had been repulsed before Gibbon reached the scene of action. Gibbon then held the approaches to the Long Bridge road while the cavalry was withdrawn to the New Market road. In withdrawing Gregg's division had a sharp fight with a detachment of the enemy's infantry and lost 1 piece of artillery. Learning that the Confederates were moving toward Malvern Hill, Hancock disposed his forces to prevent the enemy from cutting him off from the pontoons and held his new line until after dark on the 29th, when he was ordered to return to the south side of the James. The Union loss during the movement was about 300 in killed and wounded. That of the enemy was much heavier.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 352-353.


DEEP BOTTOM, VIRGINIA, August 1, 1864. Detachment of 10th Connecticut Infantry. About 5 p. m. the Confederates advanced a strong line against part of the picket line held by three companies of the l0th Connecticut. The attack resulted in the driving back of the vedettes upon the main picket line, which was then deployed as skirmishers and checked the enemy's advance. Twice the Confederates attempted to break the Federal line, but the picket reserve had in the meantime come up, and both charges were repulsed. The Union loss was 1 killed and 2 wounded; the enemy's casualties, although not reported, were undoubtedly heavier.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 353.


DEEP BOTTOM, VIRGINIA, August 13-20, 1864. 2nd and 10th Army Corps and Gregg's Cavalry Division. Early in August General Grant received information from various sources that led him to believe Lee had sent three divisions of infantry and one of cavalry to reinforce General Early in the Shenandoah valley, leaving, according to General Butler's estimate, only 8,500 men to hold the intrenchments north of the James. At noon on the 12th Grant ordered Major-General W. S. Hancock to move with his own corps, the 2nd, the 10th corps, Major-General D. B. Birney commanding, and Gregg's cavalry to the north side of the James at Deep Bottom and threaten Richmond. The movement was almost identical with that of the latter part of July (see preceding article), except Hancock was to embark his corps on steamers at City Point and move up the river to the lower pontoon bridge during the night of the 13th, Birney's corps crossed at the upper bridge and the cavalry at the lower. It was intended to have all the troops on the north side of the James and ready for an advance by daylight on the 14th, but owing to delay in disembarking it was well toward noon when the advance was commenced. The plan was for Birney to attack the enemy on the west side of Four-mile creek at daybreak, and if successful he was to move over the roads leading to Chaffin's bluff and Richmond. Mott's division, as soon as it was disembarked, was to move up the New Market road, drive the enemy into his intrenchments on the west side of Bailey's creek, and farther if practicable. Barlow was to move to the right of Mott and attack the enemy's works near Fussell's mill, and Gregg's cavalry was to cover the right flank. If Barlow succeeded in carrying the lines in his front he was to move to the left and uncover Mott's front, after which the two divisions were to advance on the New Market road and form a junction with Birney. The object of these combined movements was to turn the Confederate position and gain possession of Chaffin's bluff, which would be an important step toward opening the James river to the Federal gunboats. Barlow carried one line, held by dismounted cavalry, and about 4 p. m. assaulted the works near Fussell's mill, but the attack was made with only one brigade and was not a success. His advance was so threatening, however, that the enemy weakened his right to strengthen the line near the mill, and Birney, taking advantage of this, carried a part of the line west of Four-mile creek, capturing 4 guns and a few prisoners. Gregg advanced up the Charles City road and carried a line of rifle-pits, and at night a strong picket line was established along the entire front. During the night the troops were disposed for an attack on the next morning. Birney's command was massed in the rear of Barlow, with instructions to find and turn the Confederate left. The dense woods made a reconnaissance difficult, and the operations of the 15th were begun without knowing just how the enemy was located. Slight skirmishing occurred at several points during the day, but Birney did not come upon the Confederate line until nearly 7 p. m., and as the ground was not favorable for a night attack further operations were postponed until the next day. Early on the morning of the 16th Gregg moved out on the Charles City road and drove the enemy before him across Deep creek, nearly to White's tavern. In a skirmish near Deep creek Confederate General Chambliss was killed. About 10 a. m. Terry's division of Birney's corps carried the works above Fussell's mill, capturing about 300 prisoners. Craig's brigade and the colored troops under Brig-General William Birney made an assault 0n the right and captured the intrenchments, but were unable to hold them. In this action Colonel Craig was killed. About 5 p. m. Gregg was driven from his position on the Charles City road and forced back across Deep creek. When night closed the Federals held only the advanced rifle-pits of the enemy. During the night of the 16th a fleet of steamers came up from City Point to Deep Bottom to convey the impression that the Union forces were withdrawing, in the hope that the enemy would come out of his works and attack, but the ruse was not successful. Nothing was done on the 17th, but about 5 p. m. on the 18th the Confederates sallied out of their works above Fussell's mill and attacked Birney. While the fight was going on Miles, now in command of Barlow's division, struck the enemy on the left flank, driving him in confusion and with considerable loss. The 19th was spent in looking for a weak point in the Confederate line, but none could be found. Grant's information, regarding the number of troops sent to Early, was erroneous, only Kershaw's division having left Richmond, and as soon as Hancock crossed the James, Mahone's division and Hampton's cavalry were sent over from Petersburg to reinforce the lines on the north side of the river. Finding the position there too strong to be carried, Grant ordered Hancock and Birney back to their original positions on the Petersburg lines, and immediately after dark on the 20th the troops were withdrawn, Birney covering the movement. The Union loss in the operations about Deep Bottom was 328 killed, 1,802 wounded and 721 missing. The Confederate loss was not ascertained, but it was probably somewhat less, as they fought most of the time behind breastworks. Among their killed were Generals Chambliss and Girardy, both of whom fell on the 16th.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 353-355.


DEEP CREEK, VIRGINIA, February 29, 1864. (See Ballahock.) Deep Creek, Virginia, August 16, 1864. (See Deep Bottom, same date.) Deep Gully, North Carolina, March 31, 1862.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEEP GULLY, NORTH CAROLINA, May 2, 1862. 1st Rhode Island Artillery. This was an attack on the pickets of Battery F, on the Trenton road, about a mile from Deep Gully, by 40 Confederate infantry. One of the pickets was killed and another severely wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEEP GULLY, NORTH CAROLINA, March 30, 1863. Pickets of 2nd Brigade, 5th Division, 18th Army Corps. An extract from the "Records of Events" of 2nd brigade, 5th division, 18th army corps, says: "Five companies of this brigade picketed that portion of our lines running from red house to Trent river, in the vicinity of Deep Gully, at which place, on March 30, a slight skirmish with the enemy's pickets occurred." The Federal casualties were slight, 1 man being wounded and captured.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEEP GULLY, NORTH CAROLINA, March 13-14, 1863. 5th, 25th and 46th Massachusetts Infantry. On the 13th the Confederates under General D. H. Hill drove in the Federal pickets, crossed Deep Gully and intrenched their position. The same night the 2nd brigade, 1st division, 18th corps, comprising three Massachusetts regiments, moved out to the Gully from New Berne and bivouacked. At daylight a movement was begun to drive the enemy from his position, but the skirmishers had no sooner gone into action than the 5th and 46th regiments were recalled to New Berne, leaving the 25th with 2 pieces of artillery to hold the enemy in check. At 6 p. m. the 46th was sent to relieve the 25th. Next day the enemy withdrew. The Federal loss was 1 wounded and 1 missing. The Confederate reports do not mention any loss on their side.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEEP RIVER BRIDGE, NORTH CAROLINA, April 4, 1865. Stoneman's raid. Deep Run, Virginia, June 5-13, 1863. (See Franklin's Crossing.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEEP WATER, MISSOURI, June 11, 1862. 1st Iowa Cavalry. Lieutenant Benjamin Raney, with 30 men, succeeded in dispersing a band of 132 Confederates after following them for 2 days and nights. The enemy lost 3 killed, 5 wounded and 5 captured; the only casualty in the Federal command was 1 man wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEEPWATER TOWNSHIP, MISSOURI, March 27, 1864. Detachment of 1st Missouri State Militia. Sergt. John W. Barkley with a squad of men, having been sent to break up a marauding band operating in Henry county, came upon 3 of the band, 1 of whom was wounded, in the house of a Mr. Dunn. After keeping them surrounded all night, Barkley demanded a surrender, to which the guerrillas acceded. They were taken to Germantown and after a trial were executed.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEER CREEK, DAKOTA TERRITORY, May 20, 1865. 11th Kansas Cavalry. Lieutenant William B. Godfrey, of the 11th Kansas cavalry, reporting from camp on Deer creek, Dakota Territory, says: "On the 20th instant myself with 3 men were attacked by 25 Indians three miles above our camp, on Deer creek, Dakota Territory After a brisk fight of two hours I succeeded in repulsing the Indians, killing 2 and, as near as I could ascertain, wounding 4. Simultaneous with the attack upon myself Sergt. Smythe, Company L, nth Kansas cavalry, with 6 men, was attacked in camp by 50 Indians. After two hours and a half fighting the Indians abandoned the attack, with the loss of 3 killed and 5 wounded, 2 horses wounded and 1 killed."  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355.


DEER CREEK, MISSISSIPPI, February 23, 1863. Cavalry of Expedition to Greenville. As an incident of the expedition, the Confederate artillery opened on the 83d Ohio infantry from the opposite side of Fish lake as soon as a bridge had been completed to allow the Federal force to cross. The cavalry was sent forward in an effort to cut off the battery's retreat, but the Confederate pickets received warning of the movement in time to forestall it . The opposing forces met, however, at a bend of Deer creek, the Confederate cavalry being routed and separated from the artillery. The Federal cavalry then captured the guard at another bridge of the creek some distance below the scene of the first encounter. The Federal loss was 1 killed and 2 captured; the Confederate casualties, though not reported, were estimated at 30 killed and wounded.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 355-356.


DEER CREEK, MISSISSIPPI, March 21-22, 1863. Portion of 15th Army Corps. As an incident of the Steele's Bayou expedition the gunboats had proceeded up Deer creek to the mouth of the Rolling fork on the 20th. From there Admiral Porter sent word to Major-General William T. Sherman that he must have troops to guard his working parties and Sherman immediately sent the 1st brigade of the 2nd division under Colonel Giles A. Smith. The vicinity of the fleet was reached by 4 p. m. of the 21st, the advance of the brigade being fired into by the sharpshooters which were annoying the men on the decks of the vessels. The sharpshooters were driven off and the remainder of the brigade was distributed along the creek to prevent the enemy from further obstructing it. Next morning the fleet began its movement back through the creek and proceeded about 6 miles without molestation. Then it was discovered that the enemy was taking position about a mile ahead of the Federal advance and soon opened upon the gunboats from die batteries concealed behind the infantry and cavalry. The pieces on board the boats replied and soon silenced the Confederate guns. Three companies of the 6th and 8th Missouri had the previous night been posted beyond the point reached by the enemy, and fearful that they would be cut off Smith sent four companies of the 6th Missouri to their aid. These latter found that Sherman had hurried up the rest of the brigade and with the 2nd had driven off the enemy. The Federal casualties amounted to 1 man killed and 3 wounded in the land forces. The other losses were not ascertained.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 356.


DEER CREEK, MISSISSIPPI, April 7-10, 1863. (See Black Bayou Expedition.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 356.


DEER CREEK, MISSOURI, October 16, 1863. 1st Arkansas Cavalry. Captain DeWitt C. Hopkins, while on a scout with a company of the 1st Arkansas cavalry, met the enemy at Deer creek. He repulsed an attack of the Confederates, but finding himself being surrounded, withdrew in good order to North Prairie, 12 miles from the scene of his encounter. His loss was 5 men.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 356.


DEER CREEK STATION, DAKOTA TERRITORY, May 20, 1865. Detachment of Company K, 11th Kansas Cavalry. Two hundred Indians attacked part of Company K under Lieutenant-Colonel Plumb at Deer Creek Station and were repulsed with a loss of 7 killed and several wounded. Plumb pursued, killing and wounding several more. One soldier was killed. The red men succeeded in stampeding a herd of 22 horses.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 356.


DEER PARK ROAD, ALABAMA, March 25, 1865. 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, 16th Army Corps. This brigade, having the advance of the corps in the Mobile campaign, moved out on the Deer Park road. A small party of Confederates was soon encountered and the skirmishing at once commenced, four companies of the 9th Minnesota comprising the skirmish line. The road was cleared for the column to pass. No casualties were reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 356.