Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

A fter a long winter of relative inactivity, the war in the Kanawha Valley of western Virginia opened with a bang in May 1862 with a series of engagements at Giles Courthouse, Princeton, Charleston, and Lewisburg. Sergeant Major Phocian Way of the 11 th Ohio missed all of the action, tasked with guarding stores at Raleigh. But the stern realities of war rolled into town on the evening of May 26.           “Last evening, 63 of the men wounded at Princeton were brought here in ambulances and placed in the courthouse which has been fitted up as a hospital,” he wrote to the editors of the Clinton Republican . “I saw the poor fellows as they were carried into the building. Some had one leg shot off, some were minus an arm, and others exhibited ghastly saber cuts. One of them, Lieutenant Bluher of the 37 th Ohio, had his leg amputated and it is feared that he will not survive the operation. The sight of these suffering men brought me fully to r...

C harging the Confederate works at Fort Donelson on the afternoon of February 15, 1862, Andrew Nichols of the 2nd Iowa recalled the intensely personal nature of combat. "The enemy did not fire a shot until we got within about 50 yards," he wrote. "As for me, I held my head as low as possible and ran my best for they were shooting high until I got within about 10 feet of the ditch. I saw a man stick his gun under the log as they had laid logs on top of the breastworks with just room to shoot under. I saw him just about to shoot; I thought I was just about as sure of him as if I was inside so I blazed away at him. He went out of sight and I jumped into the ditch and loaded. When I got loaded and over there was a good many ahead of me.  The first shot I got inside was at a fellow in butternut clothes who slipped out from behind a tree about 30 yards off and was going to shoot at one of our boys. I was just about to pull when another one stepped out to shoot over his shoulde...

A setting sun silhouetted the charging Confederates as they broke the first line of Federals at Pleasant Hill on the evening of April 9, 1864. Chaplain Francis Evans of the 35th Iowa observed their approach from the second line and marveled at the response of his fellow Iowans.     " While the Rebels were charging up the field and the troops in our second line were sitting and lying on the ground waiting for orders, a shell from a Rebel gun struck Peter Harrison of Co. A on the head, knocking one side of it entirely off, and then passed through the breast of Captain Henry Blanck of the same company, killing them both instantly," Evans wrote. " The Rebels continued to advance until within about 200 yards of our main line when our boys, receiving orders to charge, sprang up with a wild cheer and poured into the Rebels such a deadly volley that they paused in their defiant advance to anticipated triumph and began gradually to fall back. Our brave boys advanced rapidly upon...

W atching the sun set after the first day of Shiloh, Sergeant Harold White of the 11 th Iowa “commenced musing over the affairs of the day and you may well suppose my musings were not of a very agreeable character. The prospect was most decidedly blue- not the bright cerulean tings of the summer sky, but a dark, despairing, deplorable blue.”           “That we were whipped was certain. That on the morrow we should all be taken prisoners was more than probable. Nothing but the appearance of Buell could save us from utter destruction. Fortunately, Buell was near at hand and all night long we could hear the constant splashing of the steamboat wheels as regiment after regiment was brought over the stream. During the night, as if nature was disposed to add to the general gloom, a furious storm came on, which continued for several hours.”           Sergeant White’s detailed recounting of his regimen...

A fter most of the officers and men of the 16 th Indiana Infantry had been captured at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky on August 30, 1862, they were given battlefield paroles and sent back home. They soon found themselves in military limbo, stuck at Camp Morton, kept under tight guard, their days filled with endless drill. Morale suffered accordingly.             “This is the most unpleasant camp I have ever been in,” one soldier from Co. E complained. “Several of the paroled men refused to drill, the feeling being much warmer in the 12 th Indiana than in the 16 th . Indeed, there appeared to be whole companies of the 12 th who were taken to the guardhouse while there was only two men in our company who suffered that punishment for refusing to drill.”           The following missive, first published in the October 9, 1862, edition of the Aurora Journal, was written by a “high private” ...

A fter the fall of Fort Donelson in February 1862, Colonel Morgan L. Smith secured a company flag taken from Co. F of the 23 rd Mississippi and sent it back to his home state of New York for presentation to the City of New York. The New York Daily Herald shared the following story in their February 26, 1862, edition.