This Month's Events

• 5 October. In Tennessee Wheeler's Confederate cavalry cuts the railroad between Nashville and Chattanooga, thus worsening the position of the Union Army of the Cumberland under General William Rosecrans. However, they are pursued by Federal forces and badly mauled.


• 5 October. Sergeant-Major William H. Von Eberstein of the 61st North Carolina returns to duty after being wounded. William is one of the state's more unusual soldiers. He has been a sea captain, a whaler, a slaver, a merchant, a soldier, a farmer, and a school teacher. He is also a German nobleman, Baron William Henry Von Eberstein. His memoirs survive today in the archives of East Carolina University.


• 17 October. Major Gen. Ulysses S. Grant receives command of the Western armies, designated the Military Division of the Mississippi. He moves to reinforce Chattanooga and replaces Rosecrans with Major General George H. Thomas.


• 23 October. In Chattanooga, Tennessee on a rainy evening, Captain Horace Porter is called to Headquarters to meet "a general officer, slight in figure and of medium stature, whose face bore an expression of weariness. He was carelessly dressed and his uniform coat was unbuttoned and thrown back from his chest. He held a lighted cigar in his mouth, and sat in a stooping posture, with his head bent slightly forward. His clothes were wet and his trousers and top-boots were spattered with mud." This is Grant, the new commander. [See right.]


• This month a new Union regiment, the 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, is organizing in Knoxville, Tennessee. Among its members is Keith Blalock, who, with his wife Malinda, has deserted from the Confederate 26th North Carolina and become notorious as guerrillas in the mountain counties of North Carolina. [See right]


• Meanwhile the Confederate commanders are distracted by quarrelling among themselves. President Davis receives petitions from other generals to remove Braxton Bragg, but he continues to support his old friend.

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