Unusual Shipboard and Soldier Id’d Edition of E.A. Pollard’s “The First Year of the War”

Enlisted as a Private (date unknown).

He also had service in:

US Army 2nd LA Batty F

At St. Louis, Mo., April, 1861. Attached to Army of the West and Dept. of Missouri to

February, 1862. An artillery Division, Army of Mississippi, to April, 1862. Artillery,

2nd Division, Army of Mississippi, to November, 1862. Artillery, 8th Division, Left

Wing 13th Army Corps, Dept. of Tennessee, to December, 1862. 1st Brigade, 8th Division,

16th Army Corps, Army of Tennessee, to March, 1863. Artillery, 2nd Division, District

of Corinth, Miss., 16th Army Corps, to May, 1863. 3rd Brigade, District of Memphis,

Tenn., 5th Division, 16th Army Corps, to November, 1863. Fuller’s Brigade, 2nd

Division, 16th Army Corps, to January, 1864. Artillery, 4th Division, 16th Army Corps,

to September, 1864. Artillery, 1st Division, 17th Army Corps, to November, 1864.

Artillery, District of Nashville, Tenn., Dept. of the Cumberland, to August, 1865.

SERVICE.-Expedition from St. Louis, Mo., to Booneville, Mo., June 13-17, 1861.

Capture of Jefferson City June 14. Booneville June 17. Expedition from Springfield to

Forsyth July 20-25. Forsyth July 22. Battle of Wilson’s Creek August 10. Moved to

Commerce, Mo., February, 1862. Operations against New Madrid, Mo., and Island No. 10,

Mississippi River, February 28- April 8. Moved to Hamburg Landing, Tenn., April 1823.

Advance on and siege of Corinth, Miss., April 29- May 30. Reconnoissance toward

Corinth May 8. Pursuit to Booneville May 30-June 12. Duty at Corinth till September.

Battle of Iuka September 19. Battle of Corinth October 3-4. Pursuit to Hatchie River

October 5-12. Grant’s Central Mississippi Campaign. Operations on the Mississippi

Central Railroad November 2, 1862, to January 10, 1863. Duty at Corinth, Miss., till

May, 1863, and at Memphis, Tenn., till October. Movement to Prospect, Tenn.,

October 18-November 13. Duty there and at Decatur, Ala., till April, 1864.

Atlanta (Ga.) Campaign May 1 to September 8. Demonstrations on Resaca May 8-13.

Battle of Resaca May 13, 14 and 15. Battles about Dallas, New Hope Church and

Allatoona Hills May 25-June 5. Operations about Marietta and against Kenesaw Mountain

June 9-July 2. Assault on Kenesaw June 27. Nickajack Creek July 2-5. Ruff’s Mills

July 3-4. Chattahoochie River July 5-17. Battle of Atlanta July 22. Siege of Atlanta

July 22-August 25. Ezra Chapel July 28. Flank movement on Jonesboro August 25-30.

Battle of Jonesboro August 31-September 1. Lovejoy Station September 2-6. Operations

against Hood in North Georgia and North Alabama September 29-November 3. Ordered to

Nashville, Tenn. Duty at Nashville, Tenn., Bridgeport, Ala., and Chattanooga, Tenn.,

till August, 1865.

The first USS Miami was a side-wheel steamer, double-ender gunboat in the United States Navy

during the American Civil War. Miami was launched by Philadelphia Navy Yard on

November 16, 1861, and commissioned there on January 29, 1862, Lieutenant Abram Davis Harrell

in command. Upon her completion, USS Miami was sent to Ship Island, Mississippi to head off the

upcoming Confederate attack on New Orleans (Battle of New Orleans, April 25th – May 1st, 1862).

The Federal plan was to utilize mortar fire against enemy forts while providing safe passage

for ground forces to retake the installations. This involved Miami towing three schooners

carrying the mortar equipment within range of Fort St. Phillip and Fort Jackson. Once in place,

the vessels opened fire and occupied the forts for some time which allowed a Federal naval flotilla

to push past the forts. With the fleet successfully moved beyond direct danger, USS Miami began

moving in ground forces. The fighting that ensued eventually led to the capture of both forts for

April 28th.

Edward Alfred Pollard was born on February 27, 1832 on the Oakridge Plantation in

Nelson County, Virginia. He graduated at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia in

1849. He then studied the Law at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia as

well as in Baltimore, where he was admitted to the bar. He wrote several books. For example, in

1859, he advocated a reopening of the slave trade in Black Diamonds Gathered in the

Darkey Homes of the South. He also rejected the idea that slavery improved the slaves and that

slavery should gradually fade away. Pollard was strongly in favor of secession and during the

war continued to write about slave society and Union depredations. After the Union forces occupied

Richmond in 1865, he was arrested for continuing to publish pro-Confederate and pro-slavery

writings, and he decried emancipation as the North’s ultimate war crime. In 1866, he wrote a book

about the Confederacy titled, The Lost Cause. This book saw the war as a battle between

“two nations of opposite civilizations” and that slavery had “established in the South a peculiar

and noble type of civilization.” Pollard continued to change his opinions. By the early 1870s, Pollard

wrote in favor of northern capitalism and thrift, limited civil rights legislation, and black suffrage. He

supported segregation, but opposed the Ku Klux Klan, and shortly before his death wrote that by

1860, slavery had “completed its historic mission and its continuance would have been an

inexcusable oppression.”