January 19, 1865 Thursday
Gen Sherman issued orders for his army to get under way in its new march from the area of Savannah, Georgia northward into South Carolina. The troops did not start off simultaneously, but on this day movement of some segments began. Their goal was Goldsborough, North Carolina by about March 15. The attitude of the army marching into South Carolina was changed. The men felt much more vindictive toward South Carolina than they had toward Georgia. To the army, South Carolina had been the birthplace of the rebellion. President Davis, Genls Hardee, Beauregard, and others continued their desperate struggle to recruit men to oppose Sherman, but without success. The bottom of the barrel had been scraped, and there were still too few men to stop Sherman’s two-pronged drive toward Columbia, South Carolina.
A skirmish occurred at Corinth, Mississippi; and there was a Federal reconnaissance around Myrtle Sound, North Carolina; Federal scouting from Donaldsonville, Louisiana; and a four-day Union expedition from Memphis, Tennessee to Marion, Arkansas.
President Lincoln inquired of Gen Grant as a friend whether there was a place in Grant’s military family for his son Robert. The young man was soon appointed captain and assistant adjutant general on Grant’s staff (
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/te ... oln8%3A472 ).
Gen Lee rather reluctantly told President Davis he would “undertake any service to which you think proper to assign me,” but he felt, if named General-in-Chief, “I must state that with the addition of the immediate command of this army I do not think I could accomplish any good.” He added, “If I had the ability I would not have the time.” However, pressure continued on Davis to appoint Lee.
Blockade runner Chameleon (formerly C.S.S. Tallahassee), Lieutenant John Wilkinson, put to sea from Bermuda loaded to the rails with commissary stores and provisions for General Lee's hardpressed, ill supplied army. Wilkinson had departed Cape Fear on this special blockade running mission on 24 December 1864 in the aftermath of the first Fort Fisher campaign. Upon his return, he successfully ran the blockade (as he had done on 21 separate occasions during 1863 with Robert E. Lee) and had entered the harbor before learning that Union forces had captured Fort Fisher during his absence. Chameleon reversed course and safely dashed to sea. Wilkinson later said that he had been able to escape only because of the ship's twin screws, which "enabled our steamer to turn as if on a pivot in the narrow channel between the bar and the rip." After an unsuccessful attempt to enter Charleston and in the absence of orders from Secretary Mallory, Wilkinson took Chameleon to Liverpool and turned the ship over to Commander Bulloch, the Confederate naval agent. Ironically, he arrived on 9 April, the same day that Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.