Good News Bragg
Two big war events 150 years ago this week were the capture of Savannah and the attempt to capture Fort Fisher. It took a while for the news to make its way up to upstate New York. Here’s an article about Fort Fisher from a Seneca County, New York newspaper in January 1865:
Congratulatory Order of General Bragg.
The Richmond Sentinel of the 31st ult., has the following dispatch from Wilmington, N.C., from which it will be seen that that the rebel Gen. Bragg claims a great victory over our land and naval forces under Butler and Porter:
hungry?
General Bragg has issued a congratulatory order on the defeat of the enemy’s grand armada before Wilmington, paying a merited compliment to Generals Whiting and Kirkland, Colonel Lamb, and the officers and men engaged. the enemy’s attack on the first day lasted five hours; on the second day, seven hours – firing, altogether, over twenty thousand shots from fifty kinds of vessels. The confederates responded with six hundred and sixty-two shots on the first day, and six hundred on the second. Our loss is three killed and fifty-five wounded. The ground in the front and rear of the fort is covered with shells, and is torn in deep pits. Two guns in the fort burst, two were dismounted by ourselves, and two by the enemy’s fire, yet the fort is unhurt. Scouts report that Butler made a speech at Newbern saying he would eat his Christmas dinner at Wilmington. It is reported that a part of a negro regiment and the fifth regiment of regulars were lost in the gale. The expedition up the Roanoke has returned.
I don’t know if General Butler really boasted that he would enjoy his Christmas repast in Wilmington, but Civil War Daily Gazette reports that the general spent December 25th aboard the Chamberlain managing the rather half-hearted and failed Union ground assault.
Cartoonist Thomas Nast used Christmas 1864 to portray a victorious and yet conciliatory Union in the December 31, 1864 issue of Harper’s Weekly (at Son of the South):
Good Will
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Spontaneous peace broke out along parts of the Western front around Christmas 1914. The Christmas Truce was far from universal. The December 26, 1914 issue of The New York Times reported that French guns were shelling Metz and a sea battle was raging off the Chilean coast. And a Christmas Day air battle over England:
New York Times 12-26-1914
no peace at Metz ( The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) at Project Gutenberg)
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