Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

S tunned and nauseated after the explosion of one of his battery’s caissons, a member of the Macbeth Light Artillery of South Carolina stumbled back into the streets of Sharpsburg while the battle of Antietam was at its height. “As I passed along the streets in the western suburbs of Sharpsburg, I saw the most horrible scene that I witnessed during the war: a Confederate soldier lying on the street with the top of his head shot off,” he wrote. “It had evidently been done by Federal guns on the eastern side of the Antietam a mile away. His blood and brains were scattered on the ground and a hog was reveling in them as though the battle was for the special benefit of hungry brutes. On the crest of a high hill just beyond this scene, I saw General Lee, almost alone, with his glasses to his eyes intently watching his center that had already been broken without the slightest apparent indication of alarm.” The following article, part of a lengthy series describing the wartime services of...

L ooking back on the ferocious fighting at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, Captain William H. Kinsman of the 4th Iowa called it "a perfect hurricane of death howling through the woods."   " The weather was splendid and the smoke, instead of hanging murkily among the trees, rose rapidly and rolled away over the hills in dense, sulfurous masses. The thunder of the artillery was terrific as the shot and shell hissed and screamed through the air like flying devils while the infantry with their rifles, shotguns, and muskets kept a perfect hurricane of death howling through the woods. The Rebels fought well but generally fired too high and their batteries, although getting our range accurately, missed the elevation much of the time. Their poor shooting was our salvation. Had they done as well as our men with the tremendous odds against us, they must have annihilated us," he wrote.            Captain Kinsman’s description of ...

F ollowing his army’s victory at the Battle of Iuka, Mississippi on September 19, 1862, General William S. Rosecrans lavished praise on numerous regiments of the command for their steadfast fighting. One regiment, however, was called out: the 17 th Iowa Infantry.           Burt Axton, reporting for the Cincinnati Commercial on September 23 pointed out that “censure is cast upon the 48 th Indiana, 80 th Ohio, and 17 th Iowa for misconduct in action, but how far their fault is attributable to the incompetency or poltroonery of the officers remains to be investigated.” The subsequent investigation by Rosecrans’ staff absolved the 48 th Indiana of misconduct noting that regiment posted on the left of the Union line “held its ground until the brave Eddy fell and a whole brigade of Texans came in through a ravine on the little band and even then only yielded a hundred yards until relieved.” The 80 th Ohio was similarly absolved of blame. ...

I llinois gunner Thaddeus Hulaniski, writing his mother after the Battle of Hatchie Bridge, described the intense moment when he nearly lost his life. "The enemy knew the position of the bridge which we had to cross and kept up a perfect shower of shot, shell, and canister, together with the musketry and thunder of artillery- a scene awful and sublime,” he said. “All our forces were engaged here except two batteries. Here our gun axle was cracked, disabling the gun and a shot sent into our limber chest which contains ammunition. I was standing by the side of it, that being my position. The shot broke two shells inside but luckily did not explode otherwise I would not be here to write this letter.” Private Hulaniski’s description of the fight at Hatchie River/Davis Bridge first saw publication in the October 27, 1862, edition of the Daily Gate City published in Keokuk, Iowa.

Colonel Daniel McCook of the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "Colonel Dan" to his troops, fell at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia on June 27, 1864 while leading his brigade in a charge upon the Confederate works.  W hen on August 21, 1862, I joined Captain James Taylor Holmes company en route to Camp Dennison, Ohio, it was on the condition that 7 members already enrolled must be rejected by physical examination or join other companies. To explain to those who have grown up since the close of the war, as well as to refresh the memories of those we became identified and part of the 300,000 more of 1862, I will state that if a volunteer chosen to select his associates in an Ohio company or regiment there were qualifications other than patriotism precedent to being sworn into the army.           I recall one experience of my attending a war meeting in an old log Methodist meeting house, dimly lighted with tallow-dip candles held in place by tin r...

O n April 11, 1862, Federal forces under the command of Brigadier General Ormsby M. Mitchel captured Huntsville, Alabama in a surprise move upon the vital Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Troopers from the 4 th Ohio Cavalry galloped into town at dawn, quickly seizing the post office and railroad depot. Among the papers of the telegraph office, they discovered a dispatch from General P.G.T. Beauregard dated from two days before at Corinth, Mississippi. Upon receiving this dispatch, General Mitchel’s staff set to work deciphering the document. “It is a simple and easy cipher which required General Mitchel and his aides about 20 minutes to translate,” a reporter from the Cincinnati Gazette noted. But how did they actually crack the code? And why was this seemingly important document sitting on a desk in Huntsville? This article explores those questions.