1861 June 4th

June 4 1861 Tuesday

Chesapeake Bay Blockade
McClellan’s West Virginia Campaign

Go to June 5 1861

Atlantic Ocean. The Confederate privateer Savannah captured the brig Joseph, thereby becoming the first Charleston privateer to take a prize in the war. Later the same day, she chased another vessel but discovered too late that it was the armed brig USS Perry. After a brief running battle to escape the more powerful opponent, Captain T Harrison Baker surrendered the lightly armed Savannah. Baker and his crew were put in irons and taken to New York, where they were imprisoned and tried for piracy.

California. Incident at Bell Spring.

Virginia. Union Brigadier-General Irvin McDowell reported his forces south of the Potomac as 12,000 infantry, two artillery batteries, and six to eight companies of cavalry. This was a remarkably large force, considering that there had been negligible forces around the capital at the outbreak of the war. He asked for a further reserve of 5,000 men to be collected at Alexandria. He resisted imperative demands from the government and strident public outcry to advance before his troops were trained and brigaded. He estimated the Confederate force at Manassas to number about 25,000 men and said that he could not proceed unless he had at least 35,000 men, as the Confederates might easily draw on 10,000 reinforcements from the Shenandoah Valley if pressed. His forecasts were prescient and he held off the urgent demands to move until mid-July.

Union Organisation

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
Western Gunboat Flotilla: John Rodgers
Potomac Flotilla: James Harmon Ward

General–in-Chief: Winfield Scott

Department of Annapolis: John Adams Dix interim Nathaniel Prentiss Banks awaited

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

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: Henry Rootes Jackson promoted Brigadier-General PACS 4 June 1861.

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

Department No 1: David Emanuel Twiggs

• “Forces in New Orleans” “Army of Louisiana”: Braxton Bragg

Department of the Potomac: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

• Army of the Potomac: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

Department of Norfolk: Benjamin Huger

Department of North Carolina: Theophilus Hunter Holmes

• Defences of North Carolina: Theophilus Hunter Holmes

Department of the Peninsula: Daniel Harvey Hill temporary

• Army of the Peninsula: Daniel Harvey Hill temporary

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

Potomac Line: Daniel Ruggles

Forces in Harper’s Ferry”: Joseph Eggleston Johnston

Forces in Richmond: Thomas Turner Fauntleroy

Forces in the Kanawha Valley: Christopher Quarles Tompkins

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

Major-General PACS

David Emanuel Twiggs

Brigadier-General ACSA

Robert Edward Lee
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