For History Enthusiasts: 150 years ago today...

I draw the reader's attention to the near daily series being run in the New York Times retelling the events of the Civil War as it happened 150 years ago. As an avid history buff I find the stories, often told in the present tense, engrossing and even suspenseful despite knowing how things will turn out. I have also linked the "DISUNION" blog in the sidebar. You can find the previous entries at the blog site as well.

Near Mobile, Ala., Jan. 4, 1861

They struck at daybreak. Armed men seemed to drop out of the morning air, landing with soft thuds on the lawn, like ripe fruit falling from a tree. By the time Capt. Jesse Reno realized what was going on, he was already overrun. One party of attackers had scaled the rear wall of the arsenal compound with ladders, leaping to the ground from atop the 14-foot parapet. Others forced open the main gate.

The surrender was bloodless; Captain Reno, the dozen men under his command, and their wives and children could scarcely have resisted this onslaught of hundreds. And they had been taken unawares – quite literally caught sleeping. An attack had seemed impossible: the state of Alabama was still officially within the Union, after all.

But it was useless now to demand explanations, much less to protest. The 35-acre Mount Vernon arsenal and barracks – located just north of Mobile and perhaps the most valuable military post in the state of Alabama – was now in rebel hands. Even more important, so were the contents of its storerooms: 20,000 stand of arms, 150,000 pounds of gunpowder, assorted cannons and other munitions of war.

This was no rash assault by a few self-appointed vigilantes. The governor of Alabama, Andrew B. Moore, had ordered it personally, telegraphing the state militia colonel at Mobile that he was to make the seizure without a moment’s delay. The city’s proudest volunteer companies – the finest troops the cosmopolitan port could muster – were dispatched on the mission: the Mobile Rifles with their dark-green coats and white-plumed hats; the scarlet-uniformed Washington Light Infantry; the German Fusiliers; the francophone Gardes Lafayette.

The occasion for this sudden attack, according to later newspaper reports, was the unexpected appearance in Mobile Bay of a small naval vessel, the USS Crusader, which was wrongly assumed to be bringing federal troops. (Her captain actually just needed to stop and cash a check.) But there was considerably more to the story than just that. Two days earlier, Governor Moore’s counterpart in Georgia had telegraphed to suggest that although secession had not yet officially been proclaimed in their respective states, federal military assets should be seized as a precaution.

Read the rest here.