June 18 1861 Tuesday
Chesapeake Bay Blockade
McClellan’s West Virginia Campaign
Lyon’s Operations in Missouri
Maryland. Skirmishes at Edwards Ferry and Goose Creek.
Maryland. Union troops crossed the Potomac into Virginia from Hagerstown to Williamsport.
Missouri. Incident at Camp Cole.
Missouri. Thirty-five Confederates were captured at Liberty by US Regular Army soldiers from Kansas City.
Missouri. As parts of the Missouri State Guard accompanied pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Jackson from Boonville towards southwest Missouri, a Union Home Guard regiment was moved to interfere with his retreat. In Benton County, the majority of the inhabitants were of Southern origin and pro-Confederate in sentiment,. However, the large numbers of German immigrants in the area were exclusively pro-Union and anti-slavery. These Germans made up the core of the Benton County Home Guard. Captain Abel H W Cook began to form his regiment in early June and called for the volunteers to assemble northeast of Cole Camp on 11 June.
At the same time, a pro-secession force was gathering nearby at Warsaw. Confederate Captain Walter S O’Kane organized the Warsaw “Grays” and Major Thomas W Murray organized the Warsaw “Blues.” The combined force numbered about 350 men, with 100 of them mounted. O’Kane was elected to command the battalion as its Lieutenant-Colonel. The secessionists were aided by Benton County’s Sheriff Bartholomew W Keown who attempted to arrest Captains Cook and Mitchell at the Union Home Guard camp, but the Unionists refused to submit. The arrest was apparently concealed Keown’s real mission of gathering intelligence.
The Union force occupied two adjoining farms 600 yards apart owned by Henry Harms and John Heisterberg. The Home Guards called this location Camp Lyon. Cook’s men had about 400 smoothbore muskets. While up to 900 men had initially gathered, half of them were on furlough for lack of weapons or for other reasons. Meanwhile, O’Kane’s force marched from Warsaw to attack them. A respected citizen, John Tyree, had witnessed the preparations of the secessionists and reported it to the officers at Camp Lyon. As he returned from reporting this, he was captured by O’Kane’s men and shot as a spy.
North Carolina. The relocation of ordnance equipment from the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal to the Fayetteville Arsenal in North Carolina was completed and the manufacture of arms began.
South Carolina. USS Union, Commander J R Goldsborough, captured the Confederate blockade-runner Amelia at Charleston with a cargo of contraband from Liverpool.
Virginia. Lieutenant Robert Randolph Carter CSN, commanding the tender CSS Teaser, was ordered to support the batteries at Jamestown Island for the defence of the James River, and to scout for intelligence of Union movements either side of the river.
Virginia. The relocation of ordnance equipment from the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal to the Richmond Arsenal in Virginia was completed and the manufacture of arms began.
Virginia. Confederates from Romney destroyed the railroad bridge at New Creek.
Union Organisation
Commander in Chief: President Abraham Lincoln
Vice-President: Hannibal Hamlin
Secretary of War: Simon Cameron
Secretary of the Navy: Gideon Welles
- Coast Blockading Squadron USN: Flag Officer Silas Horton Stringham USN
- Gulf Blockading Squadron USN: Flag Officer William Mervine USN
- Pacific Squadron USN: Captain John B Montgomery USN
- Western Gunboat Flotilla USN: Commander John Rodgers USN
- Potomac Flotilla USN: Commander James Harmon Ward USN
General–in-Chief: Winfield Scott
- Department of Annapolis: Nathaniel Prentiss Banks
- Department of the East: John Ellis Wool
- Department of Florida: Harvey Brown
- Department of Kentucky: Robert Anderson
- Department of New Mexico: Edward Richard Sprigg Canby
- Department of Northeastern Virginia: Irvin McDowell
- Department of the Ohio: George Brinton McClellan
- Army of Occupation: George Brinton McClellan
- Department of the Pacific: Edwin Vose Sumner
- District of Oregon: George Wright
- Department of Pennsylvania: Robert Patterson
- Army of the Shenandoah: Robert Patterson
- Department of Texas: Vacant
- Department of Utah: Philip St George Cooke
- Department of Virginia: Benjamin Franklin Butler
- Department of Washington: Joseph King Fenno Mansfield
- Department of the West: Nathaniel Lyon
Confederate Organisation
Commander in Chief: President Jefferson Finis Davis
Vice-President: Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Secretary of War: Leroy Pope Walker
Secretary of the Navy: Stephen Russell Mallory
Military Adviser to the President: Robert Edward Lee
- Department No 1: David Emanuel Twiggs
- “Forces in New Orleans” “Army of Louisiana”: Braxton Bragg
- Department of Fredericksburg: Theophilus Hunter Holmes
- Department of Norfolk: Benjamin Huger
- Department of North Carolina: Theophilus Hunter Holmes
- Defences of North Carolina: Theophilus Hunter Holmes
- Department of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder
- Army of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder
- Department of the Potomac: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
- Army of the Potomac: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
- Department of South Carolina: Daniel Harvey Hill
- Department of Southwestern Virginia: William Wing Loring
- Department of Texas: Earl Van Dorn
- Department of West Florida: Braxton Bragg
- “Forces in Pensacola”: Braxton Bragg
- Defences of Savannah: Alexander Robert Lawton
- Indian Territory: Benjamin McCulloch
- Forces in Harper’s Ferry”: Joseph Eggleston Johnston
- Forces in Richmond: Thomas Turner Fauntleroy
- Army of the Kanawha: Henry Alexander Wise
- Army of the Northwest: Robert Selden Garnett
Union Generals
Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission
Major-General USA
Winfield Scott
George Brinton McClellan
John Charles Frémont
Major-General USV
John Adams Dix
Nathaniel Prentiss Banks
Benjamin Franklin Butler
Brigadier-General USA
John Ellis Wool
William Selby Harney
Edwin Vose Sumner
Joseph King Fenno Mansfield
Irvin McDowell
Robert Anderson
William Starke Rosecrans
Brigadier-General USV
Samuel Peter Heintzelman
David Hunter
Erasmus Darwin Keyes
Andrew Porter
Fitz-John Porter
William Buel Franklin
William Tecumseh Sherman
Charles Pomeroy Stone
Don Carlos Buell
Thomas West Sherman
Nathaniel Lyon
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
Brigadier-General USA (Staff)
Montgomery Cunningham Meigs
Confederate Generals
Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission
General ACSA
Samuel Cooper
Albert Sidney Johnston
Robert Edward Lee
Major-General PACS
David Emanuel Twiggs
Brigadier-General ACSA
Joseph Eggleston Johnston
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Braxton Bragg
Brigadier-General PACS
Alexander Robert Lawton
Milledge Lake Bonham
Benjamin McCulloch
William Wing Loring
Charles Clark
John Buchanan Floyd
William Henry Talbot Walker
Henry Rootes Jackson
Theophilus Hunter Holmes
Henry Alexander Wise
Earl Van Dorn
Robert Selden Garnett
William Joseph Hardee
Richard Stoddert Ewell
David Rumph Jones
Benjamin Huger
John Bankhead Magruder
James Longstreet
Edmund Kirby Smith
John Clifford Pemberton
Thomas Jonathan Jackson
Henry Hopkins Sibley
Barnard Elliott Bee
