Confederate Brigadier-General Henry Hopkins Sibley, a former U.S. Army major who had served in the SouthWest, had been assigned in July 1861 to take command in Texas and mount a conquest of New Mexico.  He made his headquarters at San Antonio, Texas and organized a brigade of mostly mounted Texas volunteers and moved out towards Fort Bliss, Texas where he arrived on December 14, 1861 and took command of the newly designated "Army of New Mexico." His invasion was decisively repulsed during the early 1862.  (By John Osborne) 

Major-General Henry W. Halleck was a studious West Point graduate, known as "Old Brains" in the Army, who General Scott had favored to replace him as general-in-chief.  After President Lincoln appointed George B. McClellan to that post, he assigned Halleck to command the newly created Department of the Missouri, which replaced the old Department of the West and included operations in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, and western Kentucky. Halleck later did become general-in-chief in July 1862.  (By John Osborne)

Lieutenant-Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest had recently assembled a regiment of cavalry made up of companies from Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas.  At the head of three hundred of these men, he left the Confederate camp at Hopkinsville, Kentucky on his first of his many mounted operations of the war. Scouting northward towards the Ohio River, he reached into Crittenden County, Kentucky before returning to base without engaging the enemy.  (By John Osborne) 

Loyalist citizens met under Union Army auspices in a convention at Hatteras in Dare County, North Carolina that claimed to represent forty-five of North Carolina's counties.  Its ordinances rescinded the state's secession from the Union and named Methodist minister Marble Nash Taylor as new provisional governor.  Taylor never actually served and President Lincoln named his own temporary governor, Edward Stanley, in early 1862.  (By John Osborne)

Major General and Episcopal bishop Leonidas Polk commanded the Confederacy's "Department 2" headquartered at Columbus, Kentucky.  Days after the clash at Belmont, his artillerymen were demonstrating the command's heaviest cannon, named "Lady Polk" after the bishop's wife, when it exploded, a shot having been left in the barrel following the previous action.  Seven soldiers were killed and Polk had his clothes blown off, his eardrums injured, and was knocked out.  Shock slowed his recovery but he resumed his duties in December.  (By John Osborne)

President Lincoln, with his secretary John Hay and Secretary of State William Seward, made an evening call at new Army chief George B. McClellan's town house a few blocks from the White House on an important matter.  McClellan was attending a wedding but was expected to return shortly so the group waited.  When the general came in, he made his way upstairs unnoticed and then sent word that he had retired for the night.  Hoping for military success, Lincoln endured such arrogance for a year before losing patience and dismissing him.  (By John Osborne) 

Under the leadership of Greene County, Pennsylvania native Daniel Showalter, the group had made for Arizona to join the Confederacy.  A patrol of the First California Cavalry under 2nd Lt. Chauncey R. Wellman set out in the early morning of November 20, 1861 from Camp Wright in San Diego County to intercept them.  Wellman and his men caught the Showalter Party at Minter's Ranch near Temaluna in the early morning hours and they surrendered without a fight, marking the only time Union forces encountered Confederates in California during the war. (By John Osborne)

A group of Californians had assembled in Los Angeles under the leadership of Greene County, Pennsylvania native Daniel Showalter, a Mariposa County state assemblyman, and made for Arizona to join the Confederacy.  A patrol of the First California Cavalry under 2nd Lt. Chauncey R. Wellman set out in the early morning of this day from Camp Wright in San Diego County to intercept them.  Wellman and his men caught the Showalter Party at Minter's Ranch near Temaluna on the morning of November 29, 1861 and they surrendered without a fight. (By John Osborne)