Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

       By June of 1864, Captain Alfred E. Lee of the 82nd Ohio had seen his fill of Civil War combat- his initiation began at   McDowell  in May 1862, his education considerably deepened when his regiment was cut to pieces at   Second Bull Run , his psyche scarred by the embarrassing defeat at   Chancellorsville , and then his body perforated by a Confederate bullet that knocked him out at   Gettysburg . Captured by the Confederates when they overran the town of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Captain Lee was reported to have died and when he arrived in Delaware, Ohio a few weeks after the battle, he found that a local pastor was already writing his eulogy.        The Ohio Wesleyan graduate recuperated from his hip wound slowly; in September 1863 he traveled back east to rejoin his regiment but was placed in a convalescent camp for a month. By then, the 82nd Ohio had transferred to the western theater and Captain Lee rejo...

          The first assault on Vicksburg, Mississippi occurred during the afternoon of May 19, 1863 as General U.S. Grant, eager to follow up on his victories at Champion Hill and Big Black River, pushed forward William Tecumseh Sherman’s 15 th Army Corps and General James B. McPherson’s 17 th Army Corps to assault the northeastern quadrant of the Vicksburg defenses. The primary assaults took place against Stockade Redan and on Green’s Redan just to the south of Stockade Redan. The 95 th Illinois, part of Brigadier General Thomas E.G. Ransom’s brigade of the 17 th Army Corps, took part in the bloody assault on Green’s Redan. Ransom’s brigade, consisting of the 11 th , 72 nd , and 95 th Illinois regiments, along with the 14 th and 17 th Wisconsin regiments, charged across a deep ravine but could get no further than the outer wall of the Confederate works which were stoutly defended by the 36 th and 37 th Mississippi regiments. A...

Captain Zenas Crane Rennie of Co. I, 49 th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry wrote the following letter to the Pittsfield Eagle from Port Hudson, Louisiana on June 2, 1863. This extraordinarily honest account describes his leading a detachment of sharpshooters tasked with plinking off Rebel gunners from a 64-lb cannon that was proving particularly troublesome to the Union siege of that bastion. Captain Rennie had a reputation as a crack shot, and drew this tough assignment of sharpshooting gunners but as you will read below, the hunters soon became the hunted…

Private Willis S. Thompson of Co. F of the 15 th Illinois Volunteer Infantry was the regular correspondent of the Woodstock Sentinel during his three years’ service in the Civil War. It was nearly eleven months into their service before the 15 th Illinois first “smelled powder” at the Battle of Shiloh; they had spent months marching around Missouri and had arrived at Fort Donelson right after the surrender, missing the battle altogether. Thompson’s account of the battle of Shiloh, drawn from several letters he wrote to the Woodstock Sentinel , provide a private’s viewpoint of the desperate fighting that took place near Review Field on April 6, 1862.   The 15 th Illinois served as part of Colonel James C. Veatch’s Second Brigade of Brigadier General Stephen Hurlbut’s Fourth Division of U.S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Other infantry regiments in the brigade including the 14 th and 46 th Illinois and the 25 th Indiana.

Isaac McCoy’s usual duties as orderly sergeant of Co. C of the 68 th Ohio during battle kept him in close proximity to the regimental color guard. [Companies C and H formed the center of the regiment, each company on a flank of the color guard] On the morning of October 4, 1862, as the 68 th Ohio left Bolivar, Tennessee to intercept the Confederate army retreating from their defeat at Corinth, Mississippi, it was discovered that someone was needed to carry the regimental banner as the usual color sergeant was away ill. “Old Zeke” McCoy stepped in to fill the void and bore the colors through the ensuing Battle of Hatchie Bridge fought the following day.           The Battle of Hatchie Bridge pitted three brigades of Federal troops against Sterling Price’s Army of the West. The battle, a Union victory, cost both sides roughly 500 casualties and other than giving Price’s army a nudge in their retreat, was bereft of significant results. The...

Corporal Daniel Allen Dorsey of the 33 rd Ohio was among the first of Andrews’ Raiders to provide an account of that abortive raid upon his escape into Union lines in the fall of 1862. In April 1862, a group of 24 men (two of whom were civilians) penetrated Confederate lines into Georgia with a plan to destroy bridges along the Western & Atlantic Railroad which ran between Chattanooga, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia. They surreptitiously boarded a train at Big Shanty, Georgia, and ran it north, pursued along the way by a persistent Confederate conductor named William A. Fuller. After a chase of 87 miles, the Raiders abandoned the train and tried to escape back to Union lines. Within days, all of the Raiders were captured. Eight of the men were eventually hung in Atlanta.   Daniel Allen Dorsey Medal of Honor recipient for his participation in Andrews' Raid in April 1862 Corporal Dorsey escaped from the Fulton County Jail on October 16, 1862 and made his way back into Unio...

Safely in camp in Nashville, Tennessee on December 6, 1864, Surgeon W. Morrow Beach of the 118th Ohio Volunteer Infantry penned this lengthy account of the Tennessee campaign through which he had just passed. The trials and dangers of the overnight march from Columbia through to Franklin still filled him with horror and relief that somehow the army had gotten through. The battle of Franklin presented horrors enough to last a lifetime. Surgeon Morrow's letter was published in the December 22, 1864 issue of the Madison County Union and is presented in two parts. Part I covers the march from Columbia through Spring Hill, while Part II covers the Battle of Franklin and the retreat to Nashville.

Safely in camp in Nashville, Tennessee on December 6, 1864, Surgeon William Morrow Beach of the 118th Ohio Volunteer Infantry penned this lengthy account of the Tennessee campaign through which he had just passed. The trials and dangers of the overnight march from Columbia through to Franklin still filled him with horror and relief that somehow the army had gotten through. Dr. Beach had served as assistant surgeon with the 78th Ohio for two years, taking part in the aftermath of Shiloh, Holly Springs, and the Vicksburg campaign, later becoming a member of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee. In June of 1864, he was commissioned surgeon of the 118th Ohio and served with that regiment for a year, mustering out June 24, 1865. After the war, he returned to his farm in Madison County, Ohio and continued to practice medicine, also serving as a state senator from 1869-1873. Surgeon Beach died of paralysis May 5, 1887 and is buried at Deer Creek Township Cemetery in Lafayette, Madison...

     Sergeant Launcelot L. Scott served a three-year term of service with the 18 th Ohio and saw action in some of the toughest battles of the Civil War, but the tightest spot he was ever in was at the little-remembered engagement at Davis’ Crossroads in the days leading up to the battle of Chickamauga.        As relayed in his article from the National Tribune , General James S. Negley’s division of the 14 th Corps entered McLemore’s Cove on September 9, 1863 having crossed Lookout Mountain intent on reaching Lafayette, Georgia. The Federal army was operating on the mistaken premise that Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee was in full retreat; as Negley’s division approached Dug Gap, they found themselves confronted in front and on both flanks by determined Confederates. As the situation became clear to General Negley on the afternoon of September 11 th , the division was ordered to retreat out of the beartrap set by Bragg and just in time. Sergea...

The following letter about the Battle of Resaca was written by an officer serving on the staff of Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox. Cox commanded the Third Division of the 23 rd Corps and the officer was on detached service with Cox from the 103 rd Ohio. The 103 rd Ohio was part of the Second Brigade of Cox’s division in General Mahlon D. Manson’s brigade (65 th Illinois, 63 rd and 65 th Indiana, 24 th Kentucky, 103 rd Ohio, and 5 th Tennessee) and at Resaca was led initially by Colonel John Casement; the wounding of General Manson elevated Casement to brigade command and devolved command of the 103 rd unto Captain William W. Hutchinson who was killed in battle.           The life of a staff officer on the field could be filled with danger as this officer describes. Dodging Confederate shell fire, he witnessed one shell pass “not more than a foot from my right side, which I can see distinctly turning end over end and the air was v...

In the aftermath of the three Confederate offensives to defend Atlanta in late July 1864, General William B. Hazen, then leading the Second Brigade of the Third Division of the Fourth Army Corps (Army of the Cumberland), wrote this extraordinary letter to a friend back in Ohio. The Atlanta campaign had just passed its bloodiest period, but Hazen believed that the true battlefront was not in Georgia: it was at the ballot box back in Ohio. One of the nation’s foremost fighting generals saw that the true power for ending the rebellion rested in the hands of the civilians, not the army. “Our first great battle must be at the ballot box and the war power must be sustained at all hazards,” he opined. Hazen believed that by August 1864, the army could not win or lose the war: that result depended on the civilians.   "Our first great battle must be at the ballot box and the war power must be sustained at all hazards," General Hazen wrote in August 1864. Hazen felt that Lincoln...

       In the days leading up to the Stones River campaign, the Army of the Cumberland settled into its camps around Nashville, Tennessee and due to the condition of the Cumberland River and the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, was forced to rely on foraging from the surrounding regions to sustain the army. “So large an army as this has in its service thousands of mules and horses and these consume an immense quantity of provender. Formerly this was supplied from the north. But now it is principally obtained in the region surrounding the encampment or in the country through which we march,” recalled Sergeant John H. Purvis of the 51 st Ohio. “When the enemy is in such close proximity, and watching every chance to annoy us, it is attended with a vast deal of trouble and danger to life to obtain the requisite supplies, for the Rebels are always on the alert to capture our forage trains and the guards sent with them.”      Thirty miles south, the Con...

  Following their release from Libby Prison in November 1863, three Federal surgeons captured at the Battle of Chickamauga drew up a letter describing the conditions under which they worked while prisoners of the Confederacy. To put their letter into broader context, in late 1863, Northern newspapers started to run articles and letters from imprisoned soldiers that described the worsening conditions within Confederate prison camps, Libby Prison in particular. The thrust of the articles was that the Rebels’ treatment of Union soldiers was brutal, and this letter serves to help make that point by showing that the brutality started upon their capture on the battlefield, and continued throughout their tenure in Rebel hands. Outside of the political purpose of this letter, it provides some interesting insights into how armies dealt with the problem of wounded prisoners and their status behind the lines.   Soup bones carved by "Chickamauga" and "Atlanta" by Surgeon Henr...

     In the closing days of August 1863, the Army of the Cumberland spread out to cover the fords of the Tennessee River preparatory to the jump across the river that culminated in the Chickamauga campaign. With the two armies in such close proximity, clashes between the opposing picket lines were a frequent occurrence, but surprisingly, truces often quickly developed and the men took the opportunity to trade and talk. Confederate tobacco for Yankee coffee was the most common trade, but the men also traded newspapers, trinkets, and most importantly, army gossip.  Second Lieutenant Charles W. Hills, Co. A, 41st Ohio Infantry      Second Lieutenant Charles W. Hills of the 41st Ohio Infantry was among the troops ordered to patrol these fords and likewise had his own visit with his opposite number. Hills' conversation with a Rebel major named Dale went well beyond trading tobacco for coffee; it appears the men had a good debate about the respective justic...

On October 26, 1862, newly promoted Major General William S. Rosecrans departed Corinth, Mississippi under orders to report to Cincinnati, Ohio. Rumors had been rampant for weeks that President Lincoln had desired removing General Don Carlos Buell from command of the Army of Ohio, and now it was clear that Rosecrans would be Buell’s successor. The War Department’s handling of the removal of Buell is worthy of a story in its own, but today’s post will examine how Rosecrans introduced himself to his men. General Rosecrans atop "Boney" leads a contingent of staff officers and leading generals of the Army of the Cumberland in this watercolor painting by William Travis.  The differences between the leadership styles of Buell and Rosecrans could hardly be more pronounced. Buell, despite his competence and recognized ability at organization, came across to his volunteer soldiers as a haughty, stiff, humorless West Pointer, unapproachable, and unpopular. Rosecrans, as the following...

It was a long, awkward train ride from Bridgeport, Alabama to Nashville, Tennessee for Sergeant Major William P. Tisdel of the 7 th Ohio Infantry. It was a cold, dreary Thursday December 3, 1863. Tisdel had been tasked with escorting the bodies of his beloved regimental and brigade commanders to Ohio, both whom had been killed at the battle of Ringgold less than a week before. He found himself seated next to a young Confederate officer who had been captured at Missionary Ridge.   As soldiers do, the men fell to talking and Tisdel learned that he was seated next to Lieutenant Cabell Breckinridge, the son of former vice president John C. Breckinridge then serving as a divisional commander in the Army of Tennessee. Cabell, a teenaged “slightly built but confident young man nattily dressed in gray and wearing an embroidered hat,” had been captured by soldiers from the 9 th Iowa near Rossville Gap on November 25, 1863 while delivering a dispatch from his father to some Georgia tro...