150 years ago this day...

[BadLeroyDawg]

Sunday, 16 April 1865

The North was deep in mourning while the South felt great dismay as news of the Lincoln assassination spread. Federal troops pursued John Wilkes Booth and David Herold in Maryland. Previously, Dr. Samuel Mudd had ordered Booth and Herold out of his house after learning of President Lincoln's assassination. Early in the morning, the two fugitives arrived at the Rich Hill home of Samuel Cox, after a harrowing trip through swamps and over meager trails. Meanwhile, Federal authorities captured Lewis Paine at the boardinghouse of Mrs. Mary Suratt. Authorities also arrested Mrs. Suratt as a co-conspirator after learning that Booth and his accomplices had discussed assassination plans in her home.

In Washington, DC, Mrs. Lincoln was prostrate with grief while newly sworn President Andrew Johnson was gathering up the reins of his new office. Radical Republicans were hopeful that the new President would be more amenable to their policies than Lincoln had been, which included retribution for secession and further treating the Southern States as conquered territory. Johnson met with former President Lincoln's cabinet, then with Radical Republican leaders in Congress. Leading Radical Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio told him, "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble running the government."

In North Carolina, plans were set for a meeting of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston and Federal Major General William T. Sherman, although more skirmishing occurred at Crawford, Girard and Opelika, Alabama.

The entourage of carriages and horses of President Jefferson Davis and the remnants of the fleeing Confederate government arrived in Lexington, North Carolina, but would have to continue on rapidly in light of the approaching Johnston-Sherman negotiations.

Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles directed: "To prevent the escape of the assassin who killed the President and attempted the life of Secretary of State, search every vessel that arrives down the bay. Permit no vessel to go to sea without such search, and arrest and send to Washington any suspicious persons." Response was immediate; ships took stations "...on the coast of Maryland and Virginia."

The Navy Department directed that on 17 April a gun be fired in honor of the late President Abraham Lincoln each half hour, from sunrise to sunset, that all flags be kept at half-mast until after the funeral, and that officers wear mourning crepe for six months.

Skirmishing breaks out at Crawford, at Girard, and near Opelika, Alabama, with Union Brigadier General James H. Wilson's cavalry. They also see action at Columbus, Georgia, before occupying the town. The Union troops then attack Fort Tyler, near West Point, Georgia, and occupy West Point.

Confederate Brigadier General Robert Charles Tyler is mortally wounded by a Federal sharpshooter, while defending a Confederate earth work called Fort Tyler on the western side of the town of West Point, Georgia, against the advancing Federal cavalry under Brigadier General James H. Wilson.

 

[Booneville Dawg]

Good info, Thanks****

nm

 

[UGA-FAN 49]

Good morning Leroy, and thanks for the 150, on the day in 1789

George Washington leaves Mount Vernon. He is headed to New York where he would be inaugurated as the first President of the United States.

 

[TEEDAWG]

Good Work**


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[32gacofdawg]

Good job BLD, thanks the the 150's.**

^

 

[Top Row Dawg]

General Tyler and his fort. The last officer killed in the Civil War

Robert Charles Tyler (1833 - April 16, 1865) was a Confederate Brigadier General during the American Civil War. Killed at the Battle of West Point on April 16, 1865, Tyler was the last general officer to die in the war.

Robert Tyler is generally was born in Jonesborough, Tennessee and moved to Baltimore in his early childhood. He served as a First Lieutenant in William Walker's filibustering army and fought in Nicaragua during the Campaign of 1856-57. Returning to Baltimore via New York City he moved to Memphis, Tennessee working as a clerk. Prior to the war he allegedly helped organize the Knights of the Golden Circle.

When the American Civil War erupted, Tyler joined the Confederate Army as a private in Company D of the 15th Tennessee Infantry Regiment, and was promoted to Quartermaster Sergeant the same date. Within early 1861 Tyler was promoted to the position of Regimental Quartermaster, and is said to have been Quartermaster-General on the staffs of Generals Benjamin F. Cheatham and Gideon Pillow with the rank of captain and later as major. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel shortly before the Battle of Belmont. As Polk was about to send the 15th Tennessee with this force, Confederate authorities realized the regiment had no commander. Three weeks earlier, their commanding officer, Colonel Charles M. Carroll, had been court-martialed for 'conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.' Found guilty, Carroll departed, leaving the 15th Tennessee without a leader. The regiment asked Polk whether Tyler, serving on Cheatham's staff, could lead them, and when Polk assented, Tyler found himself in combat.

Battle Belmont.


Tyler and his regiment boarded Hill and crossed the river to Belmont. During the crossing, the men spotted 'Yankee' troops moving on the far shore. Immediately, the novice Confederates opened fire - only to discover that they had fired on fellow Confederates who were wearing dark uniforms, a circumstance that would frequently endanger Southern troops as the war continued.


The shootings foreshadowed Tyler's performance as a regimental commander. Although he was understandably unfamiliar with the dispositions of his new command, during the thick of the fighting the attacks of the 15th Tennessee were poorly coordinated, and when the regiment attempted a blocking action during the Battle of Belmont, Tyler's men failed miserably.Tyler retained command of the regiment till the Battle of Shiloh. Tyler managed to remedy the command problems he had experienced, and his leadership improved greatly after the inauspicious start.

Battle Shiloh.


At the battle of Shiloh Church the 15th Tennessee advanced against the Union right, the regiment encountered heavy infantry and artillery fire. The Rebel line wavered, and some of Tyler's men broke and began running toward the rear. Tyler, however, drew his pistol and forced them back into line. Bushrod Johnson noticed and later observed, 'The gallantry, decision, and firmness of Lieut. Col. R.C. Tyler, who now, with drawn pistol, restored order and pressed forward his regiment, merits the highest commendation.'


During the morning, Tyler's horse was shot three times, and by midday, Tyler himself had been 'painfully' wounded, according to Cheatham, and was taken from the field. Colonel George Maney was then given command of the remnants of the 15th Tennessee. He led them in an attack across the Sarah Bell field.

Sarah Bell Field


Stationed at Corinth the 15th Tennessee reorganized, and Tyler was elected to become Colonel of the regiment. Partially due to his wounds, by order of General Braxton Bragg he served as Provost-Marshal General of the Army of Tennessee during the Confederate Heartland Offensive. After the Battle of Stones River, the depleted 15th Tennessee was consolidated with the 37th Tennessee Infantry Regiment and Tyler was selected by General Bragg to command the 15th-37th Consolidated Tennessee Infantry Regiment, which he led into the Battle of Chickamauga.

On the first day of that battle, his men advanced about fifty yards, but then, he wrote, 'a heavy volley of musketry was poured in upon us from a position occupied by the enemy on the Chattanooga road not more than 250 or 300 yards in my immediate front.' As the enemy muskets cracked from the top of Brotherton Ridge, Tyler ordered his men to shout three times 'For old Tennessee!' and then charge. He later explained, 'We charged them from the hill in utter confusion and fired several volleys upon them as they retired to a skirt of woods.'


The routed Federals were in complete disarray as they fled Brotherton Ridge. Although Tyler's troops chased them down the slope, the Rebels were soon struck by artillery fire coming from the woods to the right of them. 'I immediately determined,' Tyler later wrote, 'to capture or drive [the battery] from its position. Advancing in almost a run, and with the yells of demons, we soon captured four pieces of fine artillery, the horses all having been removed or killed.'

Guns at Chickmauga.

Tyler, who had lost about eight men killed and sixty wounded in this action, suddenly grew fearful that the Yankees would strike his flank. Unaware as he was of the location of Bate's Brigade, he hauled the captured cannons back to the regiment's original position. The troops halted about three hundred yards east of the Chattanooga road. As darkness fell over the battlefield, Bate reported, 'We bivouacked for the night upon the field of carnage enveloped by the smoke of battle and surrounded by the dead of friend and foe.' Tyler was slightly wounded in the Longstreet assault on the next day.


When after the battle Brigadier William B. Bate was elevated to division command, Tyler took command of the brigade. Tyler then had command not only his own 15-37th Tennessee, but also the 10th, 20th and 30th Tennessee Regiments, as well as the 1st Tennessee Battalion, the 4th Georgia Battalion and the 37th Georgia Regiment. In the ensuing Chattanooga Campaign Tyler's (Bate's) brigade was posted on Missionary Ridge, right in the center of the Confederate second line near Bragg's headquarters. During the Battle of Missionary Ridge the brigade initially hold its position against Wagner's brigade, but was dislodged by the flanking attack of Hazen's brigade. Trying to rally his fleeing men Tyler was shot in the left leg and was carried from the field.

Missionary Ridge.


The wound eventually led to the amputation of his leg and bound him to use crutches for the rest of his life. For his physical recovery, he transferred into a hospital at West Point, Georgia, and was still there when he received a promotion to Brigadier General on February 23, 1864. Though his brigade was renamed to Tyler's Brigade, he never commanded the unit in the field. Instead he stayed in Georgia and later in 1864 commanded a camp near Macon where dismounted cavalrymen, stragglers and shirkers were organized into infantry. When the area was evacuated in late 1864 Tyler returned to West Point as commander of Fort Tyler, a small square earthwork with two field guns and a large 32-pounder gun. He held the position during winter, guarding the railroad bridges over the Chattahoochee River with a small detachment of reconvalescent soldiers, invalids and militiamen.

Battle Fort Tyler.


The evening's festivities would have been dampened had the guests known that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Va., on April 9. Not until weeks later, on April 26, would Johnston surrender the Army of Tennessee to General William Tecumseh Sherman. News of the Confederacy's faltering fortunes had not yet reached west central Georgia.

More views of fort.


On the morning of April 16, 1865, seven days after Robert E. Lee's surrender, one of the brigades of Wilson's Cavalry Corps, commanded by Colonel Oscar Hugh La Grange and accompanied by a battery of artillery, attacked Fort Tyler. As the Federals approached, women and children were sent across the river, and Tyler, hobbling on his crutches, gathered convalescents and local militia to oppose the Northern advance. The general had 113 men to defend the town. Only six of these were regular soldiers; the remainder, according to one trooper, were 'old men and boy volunteers.' Furthermore, these makeshift infantrymen were armed with smoothbore muskets. Outnumbered significantly by LaGrange's Federal brigade, Tyler hustled the sick and elderly defenders into Fort Tyler, a small earthen fort on the west side of town that had recently been renamed in his honor.

The battle raged on through most of the day as the outnumbered Confederates under command of General Tyler attempted to hold their fort. While the Rebels slowly reloaded their muzzleloaders and attempted to avoid the shelling, the Federal cavalrymen fired rapidly into the fort with their repeating carbines. The firing covered the dismounted cavalrymen as they moved toward the fort. One Kentuckian wrote, 'Our regiment was then directed to get up as close to the fort as possible Around noon. During a stalemate, Tyler looked out onto the battlefield and was shot by a sniper positioned in a nearby cottage - which Tyler had refused to burn earlier because he knew the owner and did not believe the person could afford the loss. He was shot at twice by sharpshooters. One bullet slammed into his chest. The second snapped his crutch in half, toppling the one-legged Southerner to the ground, where he died. He was tenderly borne to the foot of the flagstaff, where he died an hour later, beneath the flag he had sworn to protect with his life, which had been presented by the noble ladies of West Point and vicinity.'

General Tyler is buried on the Fort Tyler Cemetery at West Point, like the other fallen defenders of Fort Tyler. He rests in a joint grave together with a longtime friend, Captain Celestino Gonzalez of the 1st Florida Infantry.
This post was edited on 4/16 11:04 AM by Top Row Dawg

 

[cosmodawg#]

Thank you sir for the good read!**

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