Battle of Gloucester Point (1861) Battle of Gloucester Point (1861) The Battle of Gloucester Point, Virginia was an inconclusive exchange of cannon fire between a shore battery on the York River which was manned by Virginia (soon to be Confederate) forces and the Union gunboat USS "Yankee". The action occurred on May 7, 1861, three weeks after the start of the American Civil War (Civil War) at Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina on April 14, 1861. The Gloucester Point engagement is notable as the earliest exchange of gunfire between the Union Navy and organized Rebel (Confederate) forces after the U.S. Army
Peace Conference of 1861 president, the only avenue for compromise involved informal negotiations between Unionist southerners and representatives of the incoming Republican government: Congress was no longer a factor. A final convention of only the slave states still in the Union scheduled for June 1861 never occurred because of the events at Fort Sumter. Robert H. Hatton, a Unionist from Tennessee who would later change sides, summed up the feelings of many shortly before Congress adjourned: Peace Conference of 1861 The Peace Conference of 1861 was a meeting of 131 leading American politicians in February 1861, at the Willard's Hotel in Washington, DC, on