PENSACOLA, April 7, 1861.
Hon. L. P. WALKER:
Your dispatch of 5th answered by telegraph and letter. I shall fire upon any re-enforcements to Pickens unless ordered not. Need supplies called for in my ordnance requisition. Have but few cartridge bags and no flannel. I shall send to Mobile for some to-day, but have no money to pay. Not a cent has been received since I arrived. Dispatches for Fort Pickens and the fleet can be received from Washington through the post-office here. The blow is over, and the vessels stood it out. Twelve hundred men expected on to-day from Mississippi and Georgia.
BRAXTON BRAGG,
Brigadier-General.
I assume that by the time Bragg wrote this, Mobile was in Union hands?
I am posting day-by-day 160 years after the original day of each document whether it be dispatch, journal diary entry, news article, etc.
160 years ago today, is 5 days before the firing on Fort Sumter.
Oops! No, wait!
Saw the date of the dispatch. ????
War not yet officially declared.
The civil war was never “officially declared” as such.
Years later, the US Supreme Court identified April 19th as the “official” start of the war, basing that on the President’s proclamation of the Southern Blockade as the first official belligerent declaration.