150-Year Anniversary ยท November 1861
On November 7, 1861, a powerful Union fleet reduced the Confederate forts guarding Port Royal Sound in South Carolina, seizing a vital anchorage between Charleston and Savannah and a foothold deep in the Confederate heartland.
On November 8 the USS San Jacinto stopped the British mail steamer Trent and removed two Confederate envoys, James Mason and John Slidell. The seizure thrilled the North but outraged Britain, bringing the two nations to the brink of war.
Earlier in the month George B. McClellan succeeded the aged Winfield Scott as general-in-chief of the Union armies, taking command of a vast force that the impatient North expected him to lead to victory.
By November 1861 the war had already outgrown any single month. That longer chronology is kept on the Civil War timeline hub.