Battle of Mathias Point
| Battle of Mathias Point | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the American Civil War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 United States (Union) |
 CSA (Confederacy)
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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James H. Ward † James C. Chaplin J. P. K. Mygatt |
Daniel Ruggles J. M. Brockenbrough R. M. Mayo |
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| Strength | |||||||
| about 36–50 plus gunboat crew |
about 400–500 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 1 killed 4 wounded |
Reported: none |
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The Battle of Mathias Point, Virginia (June 27, 1861) was an early naval action of the American Civil War in connection with the Union blockade and the corresponding effort by the Confederates to deny use of the Potomac to the enemy.
Two Union gunboats tried to prevent the Confederates from installing a battery on the Potomac at Mathias Point in King George County, Virginia. A landing party prepared to install their own battery, but were beaten back before they could unload their guns from the USS Thomas Freeborn. Cannon fire from this vessel kept the Confederates temporarily at bay, and Commander James H. Ward ordered another landing. This was also repulsed, and Ward was killed, becoming the first Union Navy officer to be killed in the war. The Confederates held this position until March 1862.
On April 15, 1861, the day after the small U.S. Army garrison surrendered Fort Sumter in the harbor Charleston, South Carolina to Confederate forces, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to reclaim federal property and to suppress the rebellion begun by the seven Deep South slave states which had formed the Confederate States of America. Four Upper South states which also permitted slavery, including Virginia, refused to furnish troops for this purpose and began the process of secession from the Union. On April 17, 1861, a convention in Richmond, Virginia, immediately passed an ordinance providing for Virginia's secession from the Union and authorized the governor to call for volunteers to join the military forces of Virginia to defend the state against Federal military action. The Virginia Secession Convention made the act of secession subject to a vote of the people of the state on May 23, 1861, but the actions of the convention and Virginia political leaders, especially Governor John Letcher, had effectively taken Virginia out of the union. In view of developments in Virginia, President Lincoln also did not wait for the vote of the people of Virginia on secession to take action as if Virginia already had joined the Confederacy. On April 27, 1861, he extended the blockade of the Southern states that he had declared on April 19, 1861, to include the ports of Virginia and North Carolina.
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