1861 January 20th

January 20 1861 Sunday

Go to January 21 1861

Louisiana. An incomplete and unnamed US Army fort located on Ship Island at the mouth of the Mississippi River was seized by Mississippi State troops. Ship Island was a key location for naval operations in the Gulf of Mexico and the lower Mississippi River.
Mississippi passed legislation in 1858 to give jurisdiction over the island to the United States government. The US Congress was constructing modern masonry fortifications at strategic locations along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, including Ship Island. Construction of the fort began in 1859 and continued up to the outbreak of war. The Confederate captors later named the uncompleted structure Fort Twiggs after David Emanuel Twiggs who was dismissed from the US Army after joining the Confederacy on 1 March 1861. After Union reoccupation, the fort was renamed Fort Massachusetts in 1862 in honor of the Union warship which seized the abandoned outpost.

Union Organisation

Commander in Chief: President James Buchanan
Vice-President: John Cabell Breckinridge
Secretary of War: Joseph Holt
Secretary of the Navy: Isaac Toucey

African Squadron: William Inman
Brazil Squadron: Joshua Ratoon Sands
East Indian (Asiatic) Squadron: Cornelius Kinchiloe Stribling
European Squadron: vacant
Home Squadron: Garrett J Prendergast
Mediterranean Squadron: Charles H Bell
Pacific Squadron: John Berrien Montgomery

General–in-Chief: Winfield Scott

Department of the Pacific: Albert Sidney Johnston

• District of Oregon: George Wright

Department of the East: John Ellis Wool

Department of New Mexico: Thomas Turner Fauntleroy

Department of Texas: David Emanuel Twiggs

Department of Utah: Philip St George Cooke

Department of the West: William Selby Harney

Union Generals

Major-General USA

Winfield Scott

Brigadier-General USA

John Ellis Wool
David Emanuel Twiggs
William Selby Harney

Brigadier-General USA (Staff)

Joseph Eggleston Johnston