The British sailing vessel Emily St. Pierre had been seized by the U.S.S. John Adger, found to be carrying raw materials useful for war, and taken as a prize to be sailed to Philadelphia.  Before dawn three days later the British captain, 47 year-old Scot William Wilson, his cook and a German steward recaptured the ship from its twelve man American prize crew by stealth and sailed to Liverpool in England, arriving there to British celebration on April 21, 1862. This touched off a brief international incident concerning the legality of the recapture.  (By John Osborne) 

The British sailing vessel Emily St. Pierre had left Calcutta in November 1861 bound for Charleston, South Carolina or St. John, New Brunswick depending on the war situation.  Twelve miles off the southern coast, she was seized by the U.S.S. John Adger, found to be carrying raw materials useful for war, and taken as a prize to be sailed to Philadelphia.  Three days later the British captain, William Wilson, and two of his men recaptured the ship from its prize crew and sailed to Liverpool in England, arriving there on April 21, 1862. (By John Osborne) 

The United States Ambassador to Britain, Charles Francis Adams, received a group of representatives from the country's leading abolitionist group, the British and Foreign Ant-Slavery Society at the embassy in London.  He heard them plead for a solution to the civil war in America that would include the end of slavery there.  (By John Osborne) 

Union naval units from Commodore A. H. Foote's river force commenced what would be a long bombardment of Fort Pillow in western Tennessee.  Situated on the Chickasaw Bluffs commanding the Mississippi River, the fort was the next obstacle in the Union efforts to control the river and split the Confederacy.  Confederate troops abandoned Fort Pillow just under three weeks later, on June 4, 1862.  Memphis then soon fell to the Union.  (By John Osborne) 

Officers of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court briefly arrested former Secretary of War Simon Cameron in Philadelphia where he was preparing to travel to take up his new assignment as the United States minister to Russia.  Pierce Butler, a prominent Philadelphian who owned South Carolina slave plantations and had been married to the famous English actress Fanny Kemble, had sued Cameron for having him arrested and imprisoned for treason in August 1861.  He dropped the case the following month.  (By John Osborne) 

Most of those who volunteered to aid James J. Andrews in his daring assault on the Georgia railroads were soldiers from Ohio Regiments. Andrews and seven others had been executed in June 1862.  The remaining fourteen prisoners attempted a mass breakout from the county prison in Atlanta.  Eight men from the 21st and 33rd Ohio succeeded and all, through varied routes and remarkable effort, reached Union lines.  The six men recaptured were exchanged on March 18, 1863. (By John Osborne) 

Most of those who volunteered to aid James J. Andrews in his daring assault on the Georgia railroads were soldiers from Ohio Regiments.  When they were captured following the failed raid, William Campbell, the only other civilian, George D. Wilson, Marion A. Ross, Perry Shadrack, all of the 2nd Ohio, and Samuel Slavens, Samuel Roberts of the 33rd Ohio, together with John Scott of the 21st, were all tried in a military court as spies.  On a bright Atlanta day, they were informed of the sentence of death and hanged together several hours later. (By John Osborne) 

After his capture on April 14, 1862 James J. Andrews, a civilian and an experienced spy, was quickly identified as the recent failed railroad raid's leader, convicted in a military court in Chattanooga and sentenced to hang.  He escaped briefly on June 1, 1862 but was recaptured two days later.  He was transported to Atlanta on the day of his execution and was hanged on schedule just off the Peachtree Street Road two miles from the town center.  He was thirty-two years old.  He is buried in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. (By John Osborne) 

After two days on the run in rain-soaked northern Georgia from his daring but failed attempt to disrupt by sabotage the Western and Atlantic Railroad from Atlanta to Chattanooga, James J. Andrews was captured, as were all of his men.  The twenty raiders were mostly from Ohio Volunteer regiments but Andrews was a civilian and an experienced spy who was quickly identified as the raid's leader, convicted in a military court and sentenced to hang.  He escaped briefly on June 1, 1862 but was recaptured and executed as scheduled in Atlanta a week later.  (By John Osborne) 

To assist General O.M. Mitchel's advance on Chattanooga, Union spy James J. Andrews led twenty-two Ohio Infantry volunteers covertly in small groups to Kennesaw, twenty-five miles north of Atlanta.  There they took over a train and its locomotive, "The General," and, in pouring rain, set out on a mission of sabotage along the line toward Chattanooga.  Pursued for 87 miles by the train's conductor, William Fuller, the raiders were forced to abandon the train and were all captured soon after.  Andrews and seven others were later executed. (By John Osborne)