1861 June 6th

June 6 1861 Thursday

Chesapeake Bay Blockade
McClellan’s West Virginia Campaign

Go to June 7 1861

Kentucky. A pro-Confederate camp at Ellicott’s Mills was broken up by Union forces sent from Cairo, Illinois.

New Hampshire. Nathaniel S Berry succeeded Ichabod Goodwin as Governor of New Hampshire.

South Caroline. Governor Pickens banned the remittance of funds to creditors in the Union states.

Virginia. The State army and naval forces of Virginia were transferred to the service of the Confederate States.

Virginia. A patrol of 35 Confederate cavalrymen was captured near Alexandria, and released on parole.

Virginia. Confederate Colonel John Bankhead Magruder sent Colonel Daniel Harvey Hill and the 1^st North Carolina, supported by Major G W Randolph with four guns of the Richmond Howitzer artillery, to Big Bethel Church (or Great Bethel Church). They were scouting within eight miles of the Union camps at Newport News and Hampton. Hill occupied high ground just north of the west branch of the Back River and established a well-fortified camp which blocked the road between Yorktown and Hampton and commanded the bridge over the Back River. On the north side of the river, Hill had his men dig entrenchments, laying out the position in the form of a square. He had an outlying position guarding an old ford on his left and a redoubt for a howitzer on his right and across the river. He also had some flank protection from heavy woods and marshes. Magruder’s force established a smaller outpost at Little Bethel Church about eight miles from Hampton. The fortified position at Big Bethel Church was a short distance further north from Little Bethel Church, along and mainly north of Marsh Creek, a tributary of Back Creek. The position at Big Bethel Church blocked the main road between Yorktown and Hampton. About 1,500 men held Big Bethel Church while 50 cavalrymen manned the outpost at Little Bethel Church.

Virginia. Confederate Brigadier-General Henry Alexander Wise had raised Wise’s Legion in the Kanawha Valley. Styled grandiosely as the Army of the Kanawha, they were to be led almost like a private army by the former Governor of Virginia. Its miscellaneous militia and army units were ill-equipped, poorly supplied and disorganised. It amounted to about 1,800 men from western Virginia and suffered heavy rates of desertion when it was later moved to protect the Virginia Central Railroad.

Union Organisation

USA: The state of Missouri transferred from the Department of the West to the Department of the Ohio.

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: The Forces in the Kanawha Valley was discontinued and incorporated into the Army of the Kanawha.
CSA: The Army of the Kanawha was established, comprising the former Forces in the Kanawha Valley and additional troops, with headquarters initially at Charleston, Virginia.
CSA: Brigadier-General Henry Alexander Wise assumed command of the Army of the Kanawha.

CSA: Brigadier-General Theophilus Hunter Holmes assumed command of the Department of Fredericksburg.

CSA: Robert Selden Garnett promoted Brigadier-General PACS 6 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 Fredericksburg: Theophilus Hunter Holmes

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

Forces in Harper’s Ferry: Joseph Eggleston Johnston

Forces in Richmond: Thomas Turner Fauntleroy

Army of the Kanawha: Henry Alexander Wise

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
Theophilus Hunter Holmes
Henry Alexander Wise
Earl Van Dorn
Robert Selden Garnett