Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

F ollowing the Federal victory at Mill Springs, Private William Ruby of the 10 th Indiana observed the mad scramble for souvenirs amongst his peers. He proudly reported securing one of the best prizes: a Confederate flag that belonged to a company in the 16 th Alabama. “We gave them such an ungodly scare in the fight that they left their wagons, tents, trunks, horses, saddles, clothes, guns, pistols, ammunition of all kinds, cannons and in fact everything imaginable,” he wrote to his father. “A person could not form the least idea of the scene which followed. There is hardly anyone but what had a relic or trophy to keep in remembrance of the ever-to-be remembered 19 th of January. I captured a splendid banner belonging to the Marion County, Alabama Guards. I will present it to old Tippecanoe County, together with another one captured by Johnny Mackessey of our company. I also got a flute worth about $30, a silver watch, a splendid pistol and case worth about $30. I have several ni...

A t the Battle of Stones River, Lieutenant Noah Webster Yoder could lay sole claim to being the premier bullet magnet of the Army of the Cumberland. The Ohioan no doubt must have felt snake bit at the battle as the 25-year-old former country doctor sustained no less than eight wounds in a manner of minutes when his 51 st Ohio vainly tried to stop Breckinridge’s attack on the afternoon of January 2, 1863.           Lieutenant Yoder’s story, copied from a family history of the Hostetler family, is given as follows: He educated himself, taught school, studied medicine and practiced till the war of 1861, when he entered the army as Lieutenant of Co. G, 51 st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He engaged in many battles and skirmishes in Kentucky and Tennessee. At the battle of Stones River through some mistaken order of his superior officers his regiment was ordered to advance over the brow of the hill and hold the position at all hazards. The Rebel...

A fter gathering the bodies of his slain comrades, murdered at the hands of Bloody Bill Anderson and his band of guerillas outside the town of Centralia, Missouri in September 1864, one Iowa captain resolved to seek revenge for the deaths of his men.           “I arrived on the ground the morning after the massacre and received a detailed account of it from an eyewitness,” he wrote to a friend in Illinois. “I had a small detail to look after the murdered men of our own regiment, as it was known that seven of them had been on the train. I was not long in finding them, but in an awfully mangled condition. The butchers had thrown some of them across the track and compelled the engineer to run a construction train over them. There were two men from my own company among the slain and I found one of them with nine bullet holes in him and his throat cut. The other one had three bullets and his throat cut. Now talk of peace with such a race, will y...

O n Sunday night, April 13, 1862, Lieutenant Benjamin H. Ober of the 77 th Pennsylvania witnessed one of the saddest sights of his short military career: the arrival of the steamboat Minnehaha at Louisville, Kentucky carrying a boatload of wounded soldiers from the Shiloh battlefield. He climbed aboard eagerly seeking news of his comrades.           “I walked through the cabins and looked into every suffering face, fearing at every step to meet the gaze of a wounded comrade with whom I had been so long associated and with whom I enjoyed so many pleasures and endured so many hardships,” he wrote. “But there were no familiar faces there. It is impossible to describe the sufferings of many of the poor fellows. Some of them were writhing and twisting, rolling over on their hard couches and uttering piteous groans that made the heart ache. Others less severely wounded seemed cheerful and happy and very ready to communicate all they knew about ...

S urveying the carnage wrought by his battery during the reduction of Fort Hindman, Arkansas in January 1863, Private Everett Hudson of the Chicago Mercantile Battery came away with a harsh education in the horrors of war.           “Such a sight as met my eyes when I first gained the top of the pits I can never forget,” he wrote a week later. “Here and there lay dead and wounded Rebels in all conceivable forms. Some lay with a head off, some a leg, others an arm, and some mangled all to pieces. Inside the casements, our shells had burst and hit the gunners on the head and spattered the brains all over the walls. Pieces of shells weighing 15-20 lbs. were found imbedded in the solid walls inside, showing that our shells were terribly destructive.”           The carnage was not one-sided. Hudson witnessed a Confederate shell that detonated among a nearby group of Federal soldiers. “The ball cut m...

W ounded during the fighting in the Round Forest at Stones River, Private Almon Stuart of the 9th Indiana recalled the desperate plight of the Federal army on the first day of the battle, and the part his regiment played in turning the tide.       "For a time Wednesday, it seemed as if our defeat was inevitable," recalled Private Almon Stuart of the 9th Indiana Infantry.  "But the left wing, that portion of the army in which the old 9 th   Indiana is, held its own; nay more, they drove back a portion of the Rebel force and saved our army from destruction changing what seemed for a time certain defeat into a great and glorious victory . It should be called the Battle of Cottonfields for it was fought over not only woods, meadows, and cornfields, but also over three cotton fields, in all of which the cotton was ungathered."      Private Stuart's vivid description of the Battle of Stones River first appeared in the February 5, 1863, edition of t...