December 27 1861 Thursday
East Kentucky Operations
North Missouri Operations
USA. US Secretary of State William Henry Seward formally announced the release of Confederate envoys James Murray Mason and John Slidell and acknowledged the United States’ diplomatic error in seizing them from aboard the Trent.
Indian Territory. Confederate Colonel Stand Watie (2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles) engaged pro-Union Creeks and Seminoles.
Missouri. Union Brigadier-General Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss sent a company to Hallsville and attacked an undetermined Confederate force under the command of Colonel Caleb Dorsey. A ten-minute skirmish occurred about half a mile north of Mount Zion Church, about three miles southeast of Hallsville and fifteen miles northeast of Columbia. Prentiss’s troops suffered casualties including some men taken prisoner, before retreating back to Sturgeon by 6 pm.
New York. Union Captain David Glasgow Farragut USN began to fit out his fleet for an expedition to New Orleans. He collected eighteen warships (including two steam frigates, seven screw loops, and nine gunboats). All were of wooden construction and mounted a total of 243 guns. Commander David Dixon USN Porter also collected a flotilla of twenty newly-built mortar schooners to join them later for operations in the Mississippi River.
Union Organisation
Commander in Chief: President Abraham Lincoln
Vice-President: Hannibal Hamlin
Secretary of War: Simon Cameron
Secretary of the Navy: Gideon Welles
North Atlantic Blockading Squadron: Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough
South Atlantic Blockading Squadron: Samuel Francis Du Pont
Gulf Blockading Squadron: William McKean
Pacific Squadron: John Berrien Montgomery
Western Gunboat Flotilla: Andrew Hull Foote
Potomac Flotilla: Robert Harris Wyman
General–in-Chief: George Brinton McClellan
Department of Florida: Harvey Brown
Department of Kansas: David Hunter
Department of the Missouri: Henry Wager Halleck
- District of Cairo: Ulysses Simpson Grant
- District of St Louis: John McAllister Schofield
- District of Central Missouri: John Pope
- Army of Western Missouri: John Pope
- District of North Missouri: John McAllister Schofield
- District of Southeast Missouri: Ulysses Simpson Grant
- District of Southwest Missouri: Samuel Ryan Curtis
- Army of the Southwest: Samuel Ryan Curtis
- District of Western Kentucky: Horatio Gouverneur Wright
Department of New England: Benjamin Franklin Butler
Department of New Mexico: Edward Richard Sprigg Canby
- Southern District of New Mexico: Benjamin Stone Roberts
Department of New York: Edward Denison Morgan
Department of the Ohio: Don Carlos Buell
- Army of the Ohio: Don Carlos Buell
Department of the Pacific: George Wright
- District of the Humboldt: Francis James Lippitt
- District of Oregon: Albemarle Cady
- District of Southern California: James Henry Carleton
Department of the Potomac: George Brinton McClellan
- District of Harper’s Ferry and Cumberland: Frederick West Lander
- Army of the Potomac: George Brinton McClellan
Department of Texas: Vacant
Department of Virginia: John Ellis Wool
Department of Western Virginia: William Starke Rosecrans
- District of the Kanawha: Jacob Dolson Cox
- Cheat Mountain District: Robert Huston Milroy
- Railroad District: Benjamin Franklin Kelley
Confederate Organisation
Commander in Chief: President Jefferson Finis Davis
Vice-President: Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Secretary of War: Judah Philip Benjamin
Secretary of the Navy: Stephen Russell Mallory
Military Adviser to the President: Vacant
Department No 1: Mansfield Lovell
Department of Alabama and West Florida: Braxton Bragg
- District of Alabama: Jones Mitchell Withers
- Army of Pensacola Braxton Bragg
Department of Henrico: John Henry Winder
Department of the Indian Territory: Albert Pike
Department of Norfolk: Benjamin Huger
- District of Albemarle: Henry Alexander Wise awaited
Department of North Carolina: Richard Caswell Gatlin
- District of Cape Fear: Joseph Reid Anderson
- District of Pamlico: Lawrence O’Bryan Branch
Department of Northern Virginia: Joseph Eggleston Johnston
- District of Aquia: Robert Augustus Toombs
- District of the Potomac: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
- Army of the Potomac: Joseph Eggleston Johnston
- I Corps Potomac: Earl Van Dorn
- II Corps Potomac: Gustavus Woodson Smith
- Valley District: Thomas Jonathan Jackson
- Army of the Valley: Thomas Jonathan Jackson
- Army of the Northwest: William Wing Loring
Department of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder
- Army of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder
Department of South Carolina, Georgia and East Florida: Robert Edward Lee
- District of Middle and East Florida: William Montgomery Gardner
- District of Georgia: Alexander Robert Lawton
- District of South Carolina: Roswell Sabine Ripley
- 1st Sub-District of South Carolina: Arthur Middleton Manigault.
- 2nd Sub-District of South Carolina: Roswell Sabine Ripley
- 3rd Sub-District of South Carolina: Nathan George Evans
- 4th Sub-District of South Carolina: John Clifford Pemberton
- 5th Sub-District of South Carolina: Thomas Fenwick Drayton
Department of Southwestern Virginia: William Wing Loring
Department of Texas: Paul Octave Hébert
- Western District of Texas: Henry Eustace McCullough
- District of Galveston: Ebenezer B Nichols
- Defences of Pass Cavallo: John W Glenn
Western Department: Albert Sidney Johnston
- First Geographical Division: Leonidas Polk
- District of Upper Arkansas: William Joseph Hardee
- District of East Tennessee: George Bibb Crittenden
- Army of Central Kentucky: Albert Sidney Johnston
- Army of Eastern Kentucky: Humphrey Marshall
- Western Army: Benjamin McCulloch
District of Arizona: Henry Hopkins Sibley
- Army of New Mexico: Henry Hopkins Sibley
Forces in Richmond: Charles Dimmock
Union Generals
Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission
Major-General USA
George Brinton McClellan
John Charles Frémont
Henry Wager Halleck
Major-General USV
John Adams Dix
Nathaniel Prentiss Banks
Benjamin Franklin Butler
David Hunter
Edwin Denison Morgan
Brigadier-General USA
John Ellis Wool
William Selby Harney
Edwin Vose Sumner
Joseph King Fenno Mansfield
Irvin McDowell
Robert Anderson
William Starke Rosecrans
Philip St George Cooke
Brigadier-General USV
Samuel Peter Heintzelman
Erasmus Darwin Keyes
Andrew Porter
Fitz-John Porter
William Buel Franklin
William Tecumseh Sherman
Charles Pomeroy Stone
Don Carlos Buell
Thomas West Sherman
John Pope
George Archibald McCall
William Reading Montgomery
Philip Kearny
Joseph Hooker
John Wolcott Phelps
Ulysses Simpson Grant
Joseph Jones Reynolds
Samuel Ryan Curtis
Charles Smith Hamilton
Darius Nash Couch
Rufus King
Jacob Dolson Cox
Stephen Augustus Hurlbut
Franz Sigel
Robert Cumming Schenck
Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss
Frederick West Lander
Benjamin Franklin Kelley
John Alexander McClernand
Alpheus Starkey Williams
Israel Bush Richardson
James Cooper
James Brewerton Ricketts
Orlando Bolivar Willcox
Michael Corcoran
George Henry Thomas
Ambrose Everett Burnside
Henry Hayes Lockwood
Louis Blenker
Henry Warner Slocum
James Samuel Wadsworth
John James Peck
Ormsby McKnight Mitchel
George Webb Morell
John Henry Martindale
Samuel Davis Sturgis
George Stoneman
Henry Washington Benham
William Farrar Smith
James William Denver
Egbert Ludovicus Vielé
James Shields
John Fulton Reynolds
William Farquhar Barry
John Joseph Abercrombie
John Sedgwick
Charles Ferguson Smith
Silas Casey
Lawrence Pike Graham
George Gordon Meade
Abram Duryée
Alexander McDowell McCook
Oliver Otis Howard
Eleazar Arthur Paine
Daniel Edgar Sickles
Charles Davis Jameson
Ebenezer Dumont
Robert Huston Milroy
Lewis Wallace
Willis Arnold Gorman
Daniel Butterfield
Horatio Gouverneur Wright
Edward Otho Cresap Ord
William Nelson
William Thomas Ward
John Gross Barnard
Innis Newton Palmer
Seth Williams
John Newton
Winfield Scott Hancock
Thomas Leonidas Crittenden
George Wright
Isaac Ingalls Stevens
Thomas Williams
George Sykes
William Henry French
William Thomas Harbaugh Brooks
John Milton Brannan
William Wallace Burns
John Porter Hatch
David Sloane Stanley
William Kerley Strong
Albin Francisco Schoepf
Lovell Harrison Rousseau
James Scott Negley
Thomas John Wood
Richard W Johnson
Adolph Wilhelm August Friedrich Von Steinwehr
Joseph Bennett Plummer
John Gray Foster
George Washington Cullum
Jeremiah Tilford Boyle
Christopher Columbus Augur
Schuyler Hamilton
Jesse Lee Reno
George Washington Morgan
Julius Stahel
John McAllister Schofield
Thomas Jefferson McKean
John Grubb Parke
Zealous Bates Tower
Jefferson Columbus Davis
James Henry Lane
John McAuley Palmer
William High Keim
Brigadier-General USA (Staff)
Montgomery Cunningham Meigs (Quartermaster-General)
Henry Knox Craig
Lorenzo Thomas (Adjutant-General)
James Wolfe Ripley (Ordnance)
Confederate Generals
Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission
General ACSA
Samuel Cooper
Albert Sidney Johnston
Robert Edward Lee
Joseph Eggleston Johnston
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Major-General PACS
Leonidas Polk
Braxton Bragg
Earl Van Dorn
Gustavus Woodson Smith
Theophilus Hunter Holmes
William Joseph Hardee
Benjamin Huger
James Longstreet
John Bankhead Magruder
Mansfield Lovell
Thomas Jonathan Jackson
Edmund Kirby Smith
George Bibb Crittenden
Brigadier-General PACS
Alexander Robert Lawton
Milledge Lake Bonham
Benjamin McCulloch
William Wing Loring
Charles Clark
John Buchanan Floyd
Henry Alexander Wise
Richard Stoddert Ewell
David Rumph Jones
John Clifford Pemberton
Henry Hopkins Sibley
John Henry Winder
Richard Caswell Gatlin
Daniel Smith Donelson
Samuel Read Anderson
Benjamin Franklin Cheatham
Felix Kirk Zollicoffer
Daniel Harvey Hill
Jones Mitchell Withers
Richard Heron Anderson
Robert Augustus Toombs
Samuel Jones
Arnold Elzey
William Henry Chase Whiting
Jubal Anderson Early
Isaac Ridgway Trimble
Daniel Ruggles
Roswell Sabine Ripley
Albert Pike
Paul Octave Hébert
Joseph Reid Anderson
Simon Bolivar Buckner
Leroy Pope Walker
Albert Gallatin Blanchard
Gabriel James Rains
James Ewell Brown Stuart
Lafayette McLaws
Thomas Fenwick Drayton
Thomas Carmichael Hindman
Adley Hogan Gladden
John Porter McCown
Lloyd Tilghman
Nathan George Evans
Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox
Robert Emmett Rodes
Richard Taylor
Louis Trezevant Wigfall
James Heyward Trapier
Samuel Gibbs French
William Henry Carroll
Hugh Weedon Mercer
Humphrey Marshall
John Cabell Breckinridge
Richard Griffith
Alexander Peter Stewart
William Montgomery Gardner
Richard Brooke Garnett
William Mahone
Lawrence O’Bryan Branch
Edward Johnson
Maxcy Gregg
Henry Constantine Wayne
Raleigh Edward Colston
Daniel Marsh Frost
American Civil War High Command 