Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

A dvancing against Marye’s Heights on the afternoon of December 13, 1862, Private J. Archibald McCullough of the 126 th Pennsylvania recalled the moment General Humphreys ordered his regiment to charge the Confederate line. “We were formed in line of battle, as we supposed, to support our battery which was planted and doing good execution on the hill in front,” McCullough wrote. “Soon, however, old General Humphreys rode up to General Tyler, ordering him to charge the works in front and in the meantime an aide from General [Daniel] Butterfield came to General Humphreys saying the works should be carried at all hazards. General Humphreys took off his old hat and waving it said, “I’ll take it sir, without fail.” “We were immediately ordered to fix bayonets, then came the sound of “attention” from the bugle, the sound which we so much dislike to hear when tired and halted on a march. Soon, this was followed by the call of “forward” when old Humphrey as we call him rode to the front c...

R ecently while walking at Secor Metropark west of Toledo, my wife and I visited Wolfinger Cemetery which is inside the park boundaries. While walking through, we discovered a gravestone for Private Eliakim Munson of Co. F, 14 th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Intriguingly, it stated that he was killed in action September 19, 1863, during the Battle of Chickamauga. The 14 th Ohio suffered 245 casualties out of 460 engaged during Chickamauga including 35 killed. That said, it is unusual to find a gravestone in the North for a Federal soldier who was killed at Chickamauga. As the Army of the Cumberland was defeated during this fight, the dead were (by and large) left behind on the battlefield. So, was this stone a cenotaph erected by his family, or was Private Munson actually buried in Wolfinger Cemetery? Gravestone of Private Eliakim Munson of Co. F, 14th Ohio Volunteer Infantry at Wolfinger Cemetery in northwestern Lucas Co., Ohio Before answering that, let’s dig a little more into wha...

T his gritty account of the charge on December 29, 1862, at Chickasaw Bayou, was penned by an unknown soldier in the 13 th Illinois.  The 13 th Illinois was part of Brigadier General Frank P. Blair’s brigade, holding the right front of the brigade when they conducted their charge. The regiment lost 27 killed, 107 wounded, and 40 prisoners in the fight along with their colors. Sergeant Jesse Pierce of Co. H carried them into action and was knocked out by the concussion of a shell. He came to when the Confederates, believing him to be dead, rolled him over to liberate the flag “which they valued more than they did the sergeant,” the regimental historians of the 13 th noted.           The letter appeared in the May 1, 1863, edition of the Mercersburg Journal , published right about the time that General Grant launched his ultimately successful campaign to take Vicksburg.

N ear high noon on December 31, 1862, General William S. Rosecrans saw that a sacrifice needed to be made to buy time to reform the collapsing Federal army at the Battle of Stones River. He turned to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. Shepherd commanding the Regular Brigade.           An officer of the 18 th U.S. Infantry was within earshot of Rosey’s conversation with Colonel Shepherd. “The enemy had succeeded in massing his forces at our weak point and that a change of front of our own forces was necessary for the salvation of the entire army,” he wrote. “My first knowledge of this fact was derived from hearing the fact stated in an undertone by General Rosecrans to [Lt. Col. Oliver L.] Shepherd who happened to be within eight or ten feet from me at the time. [Rosecrans] stated that he had ordered two brigades of Rousseau’s division forward to hold the enemy in check as long as possible. But that unless we could hold them for 30 minutes withou...

I n May of 1862, General Stonewall Jackson's Valley army pushed the Federal forces under General Nathaniel Banks out of the Shenandoah Valley. It was a discouraging defeat that set off something of a panic in Washington, but Captain Andrew Clark of the 3rd Wisconsin felt certain that the troops were not to blame.        " There was something wrong somewhere in withdrawing so many troops from General Banks and leaving him with so small a force so far in the enemy’s country," Captain Clark wrote. "We were three months driving the Rebels from the valley and have lost all we gained and considerably more in three days, which makes it rather discouraging for us who have worked night and day. But we have one consolation: we have done our duty and cannot be blamed for the disaster."           Captain Clark’s missive describing the First Battle of Winchester and the subsequent retreat of General Banks army from the Shenandoa...

L ooking back on the Battle of Chickamauga, Lieutenant Colonel Ole Johnson of the 15th Wisconsin lamented to his brother that " there was great mismanagement somewhere during this battle is evident to everyone but to point where the blame rests may not be quite so easy. On Saturday, our brigade was hurried into the fight entirely unsupported on either flank and the result was that after desperate fighting and heavy losses we were driven back and then another brigade would be sent in in the same manner, and thus we were defeated in detail."      Continuing his story of what happened to his regiment on September 19th, he wrote, "W hen the 25 th   Illinois had passed to the rear, we became immediately engaged with the enemy and the line in our rear (after the 25 th   Illinois passed over them and probably thinking that they were the last of the our troops in front of them) immediately opened fire and we were thus placed between the fires of friends and foes, suffer...