October 20 1861 Saturday
California. Union Major William Scott Ketchum’s Regular Army soldiers were relieved at Camp Latham by three volunteer companies of the 1st California Cavalry. The Californians were also sent to San Bernardino County to establish Camp Carleton and later Camp Morris and to suppress any secessionist uprising. Volunteer troops were also sent to Camp Wright in San Diego County to watch the southern overland approach into California across the Colorado Desert from Fort Yuma, located on the west bank of the Colorado River. They were also ordered to intercept secessionist sympathisers travelling east to join the Confederate Army.
Kentucky. Alarmed by the Confederate incursion into eastern Kentucky by Confederate Brigadier-General Felix Zollicoffer, Union Brigadier-General George Henry Thomas sent a detachment under Colonel Theophilus Toulmin Garrard from Camp Dick Robinson at Lancaster to secure the ford on the Rockcastle River near London. Garrard was ordered to establish a camp (Camp Wildcat) at the heavily forested Wildcat Mountain. His mission was to obstruct the Wilderness Road passing through the area and to hold the ford. Garrard informed Thomas that if he did not soon receive reinforcements, he would have to retreat because he was outnumbered seven to one. Thomas sent forward Brigadier-General Albin Francisco Schoepf with the equivalent of a brigade, raising Garrard’s total force to about 7,000 men. The Union troops awaited the Confederates who had to pass by their stronghold before they could penetrate into central Kentucky. Zollicoffer’s Confederate troops had to pass Camp Wildcat but he was unaware that the camp had been greatly reinforced. He mistook the column of Union reinforcements spotted during the afternoon to be the entire Union force preparing for battle and underestimated the strength of his opposition. Union pickets skirmished with the Confederates during the evening and returned to camp to report that a large Confederate force was nearby.
Missouri. Two Union columns, one under Colonel Joseph Bennett Plummer with 1,500 men and a second under Colonel William Passmore Carlin with 3,000 men, were sent in pursuit of Missouri State Brigadier-General Meriwether Jefferson Thompson’s partisans after they had burned the Iron Mountain Railroad Bridge over the Big River. Thompson learned of the pursuit and withdrew south of Fredericktown. In the evening he decided to turn and resist the Union advance.
Virginia. Incident at New River.
Virginia. Reconnaissance to Herndon Station, Hunter’s Mill, Thronton Station, and Thornton’s Mills.
Virginia. Union Major-General George Brinton McClellan was informed by a Union signal station on Sugar Loaf Mountain that the Confederates appeared to have moved away from Leesburg. McClellan ordered Brigadier-General Charles Pomeroy Stone to conduct what he called “a slight demonstration” in order to see how the Confederates might react. Stone moved troops to the river at Edwards Ferry, positioned other forces along the river, had his artillery fire into suspected Confederate positions, and briefly crossed about a hundred men of the 1st Minnesota Infantry to the Virginia shore just before dusk. Seeing no reaction from the Confederates, Stone recalled his troops to their camps and the “slight demonstration” came to an end. Stone then ordered Colonel Charles Devens of the 15th Massachusetts Infantry (stationed on Harrison’s Island facing Ball’s Bluff) to send a patrol across the river at that point to gather information about enemy deployments. Devens sent Captain Chase Philbrick and approximately 20 men to carry out Stone’s order. Advancing in the dark nearly a mile inland from the bluff, the inexperienced Philbrick mistook a row of trees for the tents of a Confederate camp and without verifying what he saw, returned and reported the existence of a camp. Stone immediately ordered Devens to cross some 300 men and, as soon as it was light enough to see, attack the camp and then return. Devens had permission to stay on the Virginia side of the river and to proceed to Leesburg if he found it unguarded. Devens requested reinforcements for that purpose.
Union Organisation
USA: Brigadier-General George Wright was appointed to temporary command of the Department of the Pacific, arriving on 26 October 1861, to succeed Brigadier-General Edwin Vose Sumner.
USA: The District of Harper’s Ferry and Cumberland was established in the Department of the Potomac, with responsibility for the protection of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad between Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and Cumberland, Maryland, including a strip of land twenty miles wide along the south bank of the Potomac River.
USA: Brigadier-General Frederick West Lander assumed command of the District of Harper’s Ferry and Cumberland.
Commander in Chief: President Abraham Lincoln
Vice-President: Hannibal Hamlin
Secretary of War: Simon Cameron
Secretary of the Navy: Gideon Welles
Atlantic Blockading Squadron: Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough
Gulf Blockading Squadron: William McKean
Pacific Squadron: John Berrien Montgomery
Western Gunboat Flotilla: Andrew Hull Foote
Potomac Flotilla: Thomas Tingey Craven
General–in-Chief: Winfield Scott
Department of the Cumberland: William Tecumseh Sherman
Department of the East: Vacant
Department of Florida: Harvey Brown
Department of New England: Benjamin Franklin Butler
Department of the Ohio: Ormsby McKnight Mitchel
- District of Grafton: Benjamin Franklin Kelley
Department of the Pacific: Edwin Vose Sumner interim George Wright awaited
- District of Oregon: Benjamin Lloyd Beall
- District of Southern California: James Henry Carleton
Department of the Potomac: George Brinton McClellan
- District of Harper’s Ferry and Cumberland: Frederick West Lander
- Army of the Potomac: George Brinton McClellan
Department of Texas: Vacant
Department of Virginia: John Ellis Wool
Western Department: John Charles Frémont
- District of Western Kentucky: Charles Ferguson Smith
- District of North Missouri: John Pope
- District of Southeast Missouri: Ulysses Simpson Grant
- Southern District of New Mexico: Benjamin Stone Roberts
- Western Army: John Charles Frémont
Department of Western Virginia: William Starke Rosecrans
- District of the Kanawha: Jacob Dolson Cox
Confederate Organisation
Commander in Chief: President Jefferson Finis Davis
Vice-President: Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Secretary of War: Judah Philip Benjamin
Secretary of the Navy: Stephen Russell Mallory
Military Adviser to the President: Robert Edward Lee
Department No 1: Mansfield Lovell
Department of Alabama and West Florida: Braxton Bragg
- District of Alabama: Jones Mitchell Withers
Department of Fredericksburg: Daniel Harvey Hill
- District of Aquia: vacant
Department of Middle and Eastern Florida: John Breckinridge Grayson interim
Department of Norfolk: Benjamin Huger
Department of North Carolina: Richard Caswell Gatlin
- District of Cape Fear: Joseph Reid Anderson
- District of Pamlico: Daniel Harvey Hill
Department of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder
- Army of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder
Department of the Potomac: Joseph Eggleston Johnston
- Army of the Potomac: Joseph Eggleston Johnston
- I Corps Potomac: Earl Van Dorn
- II Corps Potomac: Gustavus Woodson Smith
- Army of the Valley: Thomas Jonathan Jackson
Department of South Carolina: Roswell Sabine Ripley
Department of Southwestern Virginia: William Wing Loring
Department of Texas: Paul Octave Hébert
- District of Galveston: John Creed Moore
Western Department: Albert Sidney Johnston
- First Geographical Division: Leonidas Polk
- District of Upper Arkansas: William Joseph Hardee
- District of East Tennessee: Felix Kirk Zollicoffer
- District of the Indian Territory: Benjamin McCulloch
- Army of Central Kentucky: Simon Bolivar Buckner
- Western Army: Benjamin McCulloch
District of Arizona: John Robert Baylor
Defences of Savannah: Alexander Robert Lawton
Forces in Richmond: Charles Dimmock
Army of the Northwest: William Wing Loring
Union Generals
Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission
Major-General USA
Winfield Scott
George Brinton McClellan
John Charles Frémont
Henry Wager Halleck
Major-General USV
John Adams Dix
Nathaniel Prentiss Banks
Benjamin Franklin Butler
David Hunter
Edwin Denison Morgan
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
Erasmus Darwin Keyes
Andrew Porter
Fitz-John Porter
William Buel Franklin
William Tecumseh Sherman
Charles Pomeroy Stone
Don Carlos Buell
Thomas West Sherman
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
James Brewerton Ricketts
Orlando Bolivar Willcox
Michael Corcoran
George Henry Thomas
Ambrose Everett Burnside
Henry Hayes Lockwood
Louis Blenker
Henry Warner Slocum
James Samuel Wadsworth
John James Peck
Ormsby McKnight Mitchel
George Webb Morell
John Henry Martindale
Samuel Davis Sturgis
George Stoneman
Henry Washington Benham
William Farrar Smith
James William Denver
Egbert Ludovicus Vielé
James Shields
John Fulton Reynolds
William Farquhar Barry
John Joseph Abercrombie
John Sedgwick
Charles Ferguson Smith
Silas Casey
Lawrence Pike Graham
George Gordon Meade
Abram Duryée
Alexander McDowell McCook
Oliver Otis Howard
Eleazar Arthur Paine
Daniel Edgar Sickles
Charles Davis Jameson
Ebenezer Dumont
Robert Huston Milroy
Lewis Wallace
Willis Arnold Gorman
Daniel Butterfield
Horatio Gouverneur Wright
Edward Otho Cresap Ord
William Nelson
William Thomas Ward
John Gross Barnard
Innis Newton Palmer
Seth Williams
John Newton
Winfield Scott Hancock
Thomas Leonidas Crittenden
George Wright
Isaac Ingalls Stevens
Thomas Williams
George Sykes
William Henry French
William Thomas Harbaugh Brooks
John Milton Brannan
William Wallace Burns
John Porter Hatch
David Sloane Stanley
William Kerley Strong
Albin Francisco Schoepf
Lovell Harrison Rousseau
James Scott Negley
Thomas John Wood
Richard W Johnson
Adolph Wilhelm August Friedrich Von Steinwehr
Brigadier-General USA (Staff)
Montgomery Cunningham Meigs (Quartermaster-General)
Henry Knox Craig
Lorenzo Thomas (Adjutant-General)
James Wolfe Ripley (Ordnance)
Confederate Generals
Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission
General ACSA
Samuel Cooper
Albert Sidney Johnston
Robert Edward Lee
Joseph Eggleston Johnston
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Major-General PACS
Leonidas Polk
Braxton Bragg
Earl Van Dorn
Gustavus Woodson Smith
Theophilus Hunter Holmes
William Joseph Hardee
Benjamin Huger
James Longstreet
John Bankhead Magruder
Mansfield Lovell
Thomas Jonathan Jackson
Edmund Kirby Smith
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
Henry Alexander Wise
Richard Stoddert Ewell
David Rumph Jones
John Clifford Pemberton
Henry Hopkins Sibley
John Henry Winder
Richard Caswell Gatlin
Daniel Smith Donelson
Samuel Read Anderson
Gideon Johnson Pillow
Benjamin Franklin Cheatham
Felix Kirk Zollicoffer
Daniel Harvey Hill
Jones Mitchell Withers
Richard Heron Anderson
Robert Augustus Toombs
Samuel Jones
Arnold Elzey
William Henry Chase Whiting
Jubal Anderson Early
Isaac Ridgway Trimble
Daniel Ruggles
George Bibb Crittenden
John Breckinridge Grayson
Roswell Sabine Ripley
Albert Pike
Paul Octave Hébert
Joseph Reid Anderson
Simon Bolivar Buckner
Leroy Pope Walker
Albert Gallatin Blanchard
Gabriel James Rains
James Ewell Brown Stuart
Lafayette McLaws
Thomas Fenwick Drayton
Thomas Carmichael Hindman
Adley Hogan Gladden
John Porter McCown
Lloyd Tilghman
Daniel Marsh Frost
American Civil War High Command 