Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

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.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Hatchie Bridge in October 1862, Captain William H. Bolton commanding Battery L of the 2 nd Illinois Light Artillery was presented with the flag of the Clark County Farmers, Co. D of the 7 th Battalion Mississippi Infantry, by the order of his divisional commander General Stephen Hurlbut. Captain Bolton proudly sent the flag back to Chicago for presentation to the city little knowing that a fellow Illinois captain would hotly dispute his battery’s claim to the flag. The story, convoluted as it may be, requires a touch of explanation.

D uring the Battle of Stones River, the Army of the Cumberland suffered heavy losses in artillery, particularly by the Right Wing under the command of Major General Alexander McCook. Colonel James Barnett, chief of artillery for the Army of the Cumberland, reported total losses of 28 guns which are spelled out below.

W hile recuperating in an Atlanta hospital after suffering a hip wound on the last day of the Battle of Chickamauga, Sergeant Hugh Wilson, Jr. of the 19 th South Carolina cobbled together his notes and assembled the following campaign diary for the editors of the Abbeville Press and Banner . It is a remarkable chronicle of the movements of the Army of the Tennessee in the days leading up to its victory at Chickamauga.           During that campaign, Wilson’s regiment (part of the 10 th /19 th Consolidated South Carolina) was part of General Arthur M. Manigault’s brigade, General Thomas C. Hindman’s division, of Polk’s Corps. His account first saw publication in the October 2, 1863, edition of the Abbeville Press and Banner.

S tanding atop Missionary Ridge on the afternoon of November 25, 1863, Lieutenant William M. Boroughs of the 24 th Alabama described the approaching Federal attack as  "the grandest array of blue ever witnessed by the veterans on the ridge.  As soon as the Federal lines appeared about midway through the plain, shells and shots went screaming over our heads and we could see by the white puffs that they exploded right in the midst of the enemy. When the Federals arrived within 200-300 yards of the base of the ridge, they moved at a double quick which soon broke into a run and as line after line came up, they lay down at the foot of the ridge and now the work of death began. They had now gotten within range of our small arms, but our artillery could not be sufficiently depressed to reach them."  Later, in “one of those incomprehensible things happened which so frequently turned the tide of success to one side or the other during our civil war,” a Union regiment surged over ...