It was MY error, not theirs

Wow! Almost 2 weeks since my last post. I'm sorry for the lack of posts as I have not had much time to do a lot of research or looking for topics. I will have some information on Battery Hooper Days at the James A Ramage Civil War museum posted soon, since it is coming up on the 18th and 19th of this month. (End shameless plug now.)

I was actually really looking forward to writing a long, perhaps even smug, post this weekend. I thought I something good and that I had found an error on the National Park Service's wonderful Soldiers and Sailors System. Sometime Saturday I began looking for links and other sources (such as local newspaper articles I had previously seen) to support my understanding and claim. I was starting to copy and paste text, and highlight the errors when a final reading of their text revealed that they had the right information after all, just much lower in the text than I had looked closely before. Talk about a let-down!

I thought they had been mistaken in the description of the 13th Infantry Regiment of the United States Regular Army. They had it located at Newport News, Virginia while Confederates threatened Cincinnati. I was going to jump over that and claim the regiment was actually at Newport, Kentucky, a city across the river from Cincinnati. Geographically, that made much more sense (why be in Virginia and mention the threat against a city hundreds of miles away?) and it seemed logical that someone could have mistaken "Newport" for "Newport News." I was even ready to propose this as a sign that of the bias towards the "eastern theater" and Virginia as opposed to the the west. Ah-ha! I thought - here's evidence of that bias, and I found it. I guess pride does cometh before the fall, however, as later down the report of this unit, this site did list that one unit of this regiment had been at Newport Barracks starting in September 1862 when the Confederates threatened Cincinnati during the "Siege of Cincinnati" I have often mentioned.

Here is a link to that unit's page, and below is the text it will take you to, with emphasis added on the text that originally caught my attention and the line I had overlooked at first.

So much for my "discovery" huh? C'est la vie, I suppose. At least I figured it out before posting it and really making a fool of myself.

(It's also  interesting to me that this unit was at Young's Point, Louisiana in early 1863 as my g-g-g-grandfather was a member of the 7th Kentucky Infantry in the same area about that time. He became ill and ended up in the Veteran's Reserve Corps for the rest of the war.)

13th Regiment, US Infantry (Regular Army)

Overview:

Created by direction of the President May 4, 1861,  and confirmed by Act of Congress July 29, 1861. Organized at Jefferson Barracks, Mo. Company "A" organized October 8, 1861, "B," "C" and "G" November 13, 1861. "D," "E" and "F" April 1, 1862. Battalion ordered to Alton, Ill., February 12, 1862, and duty there till September 4, 1862. Moved to Newport News, Va., September 4, and duty there during Kirby Smith's threatened attack on Cincinnati, Ohio. Moved to Memphis, Tenn., October 14-22. Attached to District of Memphis, Tenn., Right Wing 13th Army Corps, Dept. Tennessee, to December, 1862. 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, Sherman's Yazoo Expedition to January, 1863. 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, 15th Army Corps, Army Tennessee, January, 1863. Headquarters, 15th Army Corps, to September, 1863. 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, 15th Army Corps, to December, 1863. District of Nashville, Tenn., Dept. Cumberland, to July, 1865.

Service:

-Duty at Memphis till November, 1862. Grant's Central Mississippi Campaign, "Tallahatchie March," November 26-December 12. Sherman's Yazoo Expedition December 20, 1862-January 3, 1863. Chickasaw Bayou December 26-28. Chickasaw Bluff December 29. Expedition to Arkansas Post, Ark., January 3-10, 1863. Assault and capture of Fort Hindman, Arkansas Post, January 10-11. Moved to Young's Point, La, January 17-22, and duty there till March. Expedition to Rolling Fork via Muddy, Steele's and Black Bayous March 14-27. Black Bayou March 21. Deer Creek, near Rolling Fork, March 22. At Young's Point till April 29. Demonstration on Haines and Drumgould's Bluffs April 29-May 2. Moved to join army in rear of Vicksburg via Richmond and Grand Gulf May 2-14. Jackson May 14. Battle of Champion's Hill May 16. Big Black May 17. Siege of Vicksburg, Miss., May 18-July 4. (1st at Vicksburg.) Assaults on Vicksburg May 19 and 22. Advance on Jackson, Miss., July 4-10. Siege of Jackson July 10-17. At Big Black till September, 1863. Moved to Memphis, Tenn., thence to Chattanooga, Tenn., September 27-November 21. Action at Colliersville October 11. Operations on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad in Alabama October 20-29. Bear Creek, Tuscumbia, October 27. Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign November 23-27. Battles of Chattanooga November 23-25. Foot of Missionary Ridge November 24. March to relief of Knoxville, Tenn., November 28-December 17. At Bellefonte, Ala., till January 1, 1864, and at Huntsville, Ala., till April 4. Duty at Nashville, Tenn. Guard at Headquarters of General Sherman till July, 1865. Battle of Nashville December 15-16, 1864. Moved to St. Louis, Mo., July 13-20, 1865. To Jefferson Barracks August 8. To Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, August 24, thence moved to Fort Riley, Kansas. Company "E" at Newport Barracks, Ky., September 4, 1862, to May 4, 1863. At Dayton, Ohio, till June 6. Moved to Vicksburg, Miss., June 6-16.

Regiment lost during service 3 Officers and 55 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 7 Officers and 121 Enlisted men by disease. Total 186.