Portal:American Civil War/This week in American Civil War history/18

April 25

1862 - New Orleans - David Farragut anchored his flotilla in the Mississippi River opposite the Confederate city of New Orleans at noon

1864 - Marks' Mills - Two Confederate cavalry divisions ambushed and captured a Union foraging column with 240 wagons under Francis Drake in Cleveland County, Arkansas

April 26

1862 - Fort Macon - Accurate rifled cannon fire penetrated the scarp of these Carteret County, North Carolina fortifications, causing the fort's speedy surrender

1865 - Durham - Confederate General Joseph Johnston surrendered his army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place

1865 - Port Royal - Union cavalry troopers cornered and killed John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln's assassin, in Virginia

1863 - Cape Girardeau - John S. Marmaduke Confederate cavalry division attacked John McNeil's Union garrison at Cape Girardeau County, Missouri; McNeil's command retreated into their field works, and Marmaduke was forced to withdraw

April 27

1861 - Washington, D.C. - President of the United States Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus

1865 - Memphis - The steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,400 passengers, exploded and sank in the Mississippi River, killing 1,700, most of whom were Union survivors of the Andersonville Prison

April 30

1863 - Day's Gap - Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest skirmished with mule-mounted Federal raiders under Abel Streight in Cullman County, Alabama, but were repulsed by his rear guard units as the raiders escaped toward Georgia

1863 - Snyder's Bluff - As the Union main body crossed the Mississippi River below Vicksburg at Grand Gulf, infantry under William T. Sherman attacked northern approaches to hold Confederate defenders inside the Vicksburg fortifications

1864 - Jenkins' Ferry - Frederick Steele's Union Camden Expedition columns were attacked repeatedly while trying to cross the Saline River in Grant County, Arkansas, but Kirby Smith deployed his units piecemeal

May

May 1

1862 - New Orleans - Union infantry under Benjamin Butler occupied the city, which surrendered without fighting

1863 - Chalk Bluff - William Vandever, commanding the 2nd Division of the Union Army of the Frontier, was repulsed in an attempt to prevent Confederate cavalry under John S. Marmaduke from crossing the St. Francis River

1863 - Chancellorsville - Joseph Hooker, commanding the Army of the Potomac, pulled back after initial success against the Army of Northern Virginia; later he confessed, "I just lost confidence in Joe Hooker"

1863 - Port Gibson - With two of his three Federal corps assembled on dry ground south of Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant pushed northeastward along the Bayou Pierre attempting to flank Confederate prepared fortifications at Grand Gulf