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The concentration of troops can be done fast and easy, on paper. -- Radomir Putnik |
USS Sonoma was the first of two 1105-ton "double-ender" side wheel steam gunboats built at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine. Commissioned in July 1862, she was initially employed in the West Indies and western Atlantic areas, searching for Confederate commerce raiders and blockade runners. During the first four months of 1863, she captured or helped capture four vessels suspected of blockade violations.
Overhauled in June-September 1863, Sonoma next joined the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. She took the steamship Ida with a cargo of cotton on 8 July 1864, after that blockade runner had left Sapelo Sound, Georgia. In February 1865, Sonoma operated against enemy shore positions to assist General Sherman's drive north from Savannah, engaging shore batteries on the 9th and supporting an amphibious landing at Bull's Bay, South Carolina, in mid-month. Following the Confederate surrender, the gunboat was sent to New York, where she decommissioned in June 1865. USS Sonoma was sold in October 1867. |
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This Day in History
1865:
Confederate General Joseph Johnston officially surrenders his army to General William T. Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina.
1865: John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. 1865: Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to Sherman. 1937: The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes. 1952: Armistice negotiations are resumed. 1971: The U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281,400 men, the lowest since July 1966. 1972: President Nixon, despite the ongoing communist offensive, announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000. |