June 3, 1861

Union and Confederate forces clash in the tall hills of western Virginia. This is the first full-scale skirmish between organized forces in the ever-growing conflict between the North and the South.

June 2, 1861

Virginia's Governor John Letcher finally calls the Liberty Hall Volunteers to action on June 2, 1861 and ordered them to proceed to Harper's Ferry, where the Valley forces were mobilizing.

June 1, 1861

Captain John Quincy Marr of the 17th Virginia Infantry was killed by enemy fire at Fairfax Court House. He was the first Confederate officer killed in the Civil War.

May 31, 1861

Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, late Post-Master General, under President Buchanan, wrote a letter to J. F. Speed upon the policy of the General Government, the pending revolution, its objects, its probable results if successful, and the duty of Kentucky in the crisis. It strikes directly at the heart of treason, and gives it no show of quarter. It vindicates the right of the Federal Executive to send troops into or through any State to suppress rebellion, and rebukes unsparingly the neutral position assumed by the half-hearted Unionists of Kentucky. It shows that the crimes and outrages of the rebels are such as no Government could afford to overlook, and that their pretence that they “want to be let alone” is absurd.

May 30, 1861

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was today placed in charge of forces along the Alexandria line in the northern part of Virginia.

May 29, 1861

A mass meeting of leading members of the Baptist Church was held at Brooklyn, N. Y., for the purpose of giving formal expression to their feelings, as a religious community in the present crisis, and to record their attachment to the Union, and their determination to uphold the efforts of the Federal Government, in behalf of the Constitution.