Following the American Civil War Sesquicentennial with day by day writings of the time, currently 1863.

September 18.—General Schofield, in command in Missouri, issued a General Order, stating that martial law would be enforced throughout his department against all persons who should in any manner encourage military insubordination, or endeavor to create disaffection among the troops and against all persons who should publish or utter publicly words calculated to excite insurrection, lawless acts among the people, or who should publish falsehoods or misrepresentations of facts, calculated to embarrass or weaken the military authorities, or in any way interfere with the men in the discharge of their duties. Any person guilty of either of the offences above mentioned, should be punished by fine and imprisonment at the discretion of a military commission, and any newspaper which might contain said publications in violation of this order would be suppressed.

—A party of soldiers, belonging to the Eighty-third Illinois regiment, were attacked, about five miles above Fort Donelson, Tenn., by a party of rebel guerrillas, led by the notorious George Hinson. The guerrillas were secreted in bushes, from which they fired a volley, killing two of the soldiers, named John Pickerel and A. P. Wolfe, of company E. The guerrillas escaped after the firing. The soldiers sent a man to the fort for an ambulance, removed a short distance from the road, and hid in the bushes. The guerrillas soon returned, when the soldiers fired on them five rounds. Hinson was shot in the head. The rest fled.

—Major-General Dix issued general orders thanking the troops quartered in the city of New York, during the difficulties consequent upon the draft, for their admirable discipline and soldierly deportment.—Colonel Trusten Polk, formerly United States Senator from Missouri, with his wife and daughter, was captured at Bolivar Landing, Arkansas, and delivered to General Buford, commanding at Helena. Colonel Polk was General Holmes’s Judge-Advocate General, and was with the rebels at New-Madrid.

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