June 23 1861 Sunday
McClellan’s West Virginia Campaign
Chesapeake Bay Blockade
Louisiana. USS Massachusetts, Commander Melancton Smith, captured the Mexican schooner Brilliant, with a cargo of flour, and the Confederate schooners Trois Freres, Olive Branch, Fanny, and Basile in the Gulf of Mexico.
Missouri. Expedition to Little River ended.
Missouri. Thirty-five Confederates were captured at Liberty by US Regular Army soldiers on patrol from Kansas City.
Missouri. Union Colonel Franz Sigel moved his force overland from the railroad at Rolla and arrived in Springfield. He prepared to march onwards to Carthage, hoping to catch up with the retreating Missouri State Guard.
Virginia. Skirmish at Righter.
Virginia. The Confederate Navy began the reconstruction of the salvaged USS Merrimack into the revolutionary ironclad warship CSS Virginia at Norfolk.
Virginia. Professor Thaddeus Lowe made experimental ascents with his observation balloon at Falls Church.
Virginia. Union Major-General George Brinton McClellan set up his headquarters at Grafton. He had collected around 20,000 men, of whom about 5,000 were scattered in detachments along 200 miles of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. His Army of Occupation counted 16 Ohio regiments, 9 from Indiana, and two recruited in western Virginia. They were supported by four batteries of artillery, two troops of cavalry, and a company of riflemen. Ohio State Brigadier-General Thomas Armstrong Morris led the militia stationed along the railroad while the mobile forces were organised into three brigades under Brigadier-General William Starke Rosecrans, Ohio State Brigadier-General Newton Schleich, and Colonel Robert Latimer McCook.
Virginia. Confederate raiders destroyed 48 locomotives and other rolling stock of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at Martinsburg.
Union Organisation
USA: Colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby (19th US Infantry) arrived to assume full command of the Department of New Mexico.
Commander in Chief: President Abraham Lincoln
Vice-President: Hannibal Hamlin
Secretary of War: Simon Cameron
Secretary of the Navy: Gideon Welles
Atlantic Blockading Squadron: Silas Horton Stringham
Gulf Blockading Squadron: William Mervine
Pacific Squadron: John Berrien Montgomery
West Indies Squadron: Garrett J Pendergrast
Western Gunboat Flotilla: John Rodgers
Potomac Flotilla: James Harmon Ward
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
CSA: The Army of Liberation was established unofficially, comprising the forces collected at and around New Madrid, Missouri.
CSA: Major-General of Tennessee Militia Gideon Johnson Pillow assumed command of the Army of Liberation.
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 Liberation: Gideon Johnson Pillow
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
John Henry Winder
American Civil War High Command 