Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

L eft at the landing when his regiment (the 2 nd Iowa) went to the front, Private Daniel McWorkman had a front row seat to the gunboat attack at Fort Donelson and witnessed its grisly aftermath.           “As the boats drifted by me, I could see that they had it pretty hot,” he wrote in a letter to his wife. “Their decks were covered with splinters, the flag staff of one had been shot away. When they landed I went down to them. They had lost several men. One man had been torn to shreds and I saw them pick up pieces of flesh as big as my two hands and throw them into the river. One man had both arms shot off.”           McWorkman’s letter first saw publication in the February 28, 1862, edition of the Keosauqua Republican .

S hortly after mustering into service in June 1861, the men of the 23 rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry received their allotment of firearms. It was a mixed bag: Companies A and B, being the flank companies, received the highly prized Enfield rifles; two more companies received Springfield rifles; the balance received old flintlock muskets dating from the Revolutionary War that had been converted to percussion. The men of Company E flat out refused to accept them.           Despite pleadings from their company officers and threats from the colonel branding the company as mutineers and threatening to have them shot, the stalwart men of Co. E refused to take up these antique arms. Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Matthews and Major Rutherford B. Hayes, old college buddies from Kenyon, cooked up a shooting contest between the crack shots of Co. E armed with the antique muskets and six crack shots from Co. A armed with Enfields. "Of course, the muskets c...

C aptain John Atkinson of the 22 nd Michigan missed the Battle of Chickamauga by two days; it might have saved his life. Writing a week after the engagement, he informed the homefolks of the tragedy that had befallen his regiment on the second day of the battle atop Horseshoe Ridge and especially noted the devastation of the color guard.           “The color sergeant Philo G. Durkee was shot through the breast and face and fell dead the first round. Corporal Stansell of the color guard from Co. H grasped the colors but had scarcely raised them when a bullet passed through his head, killing him instantly. Corporal Vincent of Co. C lifted the colors and a moment after received a ball in the thigh, wounding him severely. He was carried to the rear. First Sergeant William F. Atkinson took the colors, handing them to Sergeant Kendell of Co. C who carried them the rest of the day and had them when the regiment went into the last charge,” he wrot...

A lthough the battle at Pea Ridge did not result in a victory for the Confederate Army of the West, First Lieutenant James P. Douglas of Good’s Texas Battery felt confident “we have taught the Federals a lesson they won’t forget soon.” Engaged at b oth Leetown on March 7 th and near Elkhorn Tavern the following day, Douglas and his battery experienced some of the hottest artillery fighting of the entire engagement. The artillery duel with the Federals on the morning of March 8 th he considered most impressive. “At sunrise, we opened on the enemy’s batteries to our front at a distance of 600 yards. Our fire was answered with great spirit and soon the roar became ceaseless and sublime. The six-piece battery to our left fired a few rounds and fell back. The one to our right fired slowly while the enemy with eight batteries poured a torrent of shot, shell, and canister upon our little band. Our boys manned the guns with coolness and great rapidity. Soon many of them were wounded and fi...

R eading Sergeant Thomas Organ’s letter after the seizure of Cumberland Gap in September 1863, one gets the sense that the Ohio sergeant felt a sense of deliverance from not only avoiding death in battle but from no longer being under the command of Colonel John F. DeCourcey.           “The colonel (little DeCourcey as the boys term him) was a foreigner by birth and having been educated in and the breathed the atmosphere of tyranny and oppression, they had become so perfectly instilled into his innermost being that it forms the predominant part of the man. He seemed never so happy himself unless those around him were miserable,” Organ complained. DeCourcey’s command of the brigade terminated once Cumberland Gap was secured. “Colonel DeCourcey had his feathers cut some for disrespectful language toward General [James] Shackelford and was sent back to his regiment. General Shackelford had attacked the Rebs on the Tennessee side of the Gap b...

C olonel Robert L. McCook of the 9 th Ohio Infantry was wounded in the right leg during the Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky on January 19, 1862. Writing from a hospital bed at Camp Hamilton, Kentucky two days afterwards, one of his first tasks was to notify Gustavus Tafel back in Cincinnati that his brother Hugo had been killed in the Battle of Mill Springs. He also explained how he came to be wounded. “My horse received three wounds from shots: one ball passed through my overcoat and the fifth struck me in the leg. I received a severe wound in the leg below the knee. I hope the leg is but slightly injured. You will see from this that we were in the midst of a fiery shower of balls. Had I left the field immediately it would perhaps been better for me. I remained in the field, however, and pursued the enemy at the head of my brigade a distance of twelve miles, of which I was compelled to make three miles on foot in an ankle-deep morass,” McCook wrote.      ...