Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

 William Wesley Gist was barely 15 years old when he participated in the Battle of Franklin. The Hocking County, Ohio native had enlisted as a private in Co. D of the 26th Ohio Volunteer Infantry on March 23, 1864; the regiment was home on veteran's furlough and Gist lied about his age (he had just turned 15) to join up. He served with the regiment through the Atlanta campaign and penned the following account of Franklin late in life. The 26th Ohio, as part of General George Wagner's Division, was one of the unfortunate regiments way out in front of the Union entrenchments that was forced back into the works by the Confederate assault.  Gist's account was published in the January 1916 issue of Confederate Veteran .       Private William Wesley Gist, Co. D, 26th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Following the war, Gist attended Ohio State University and the Union Theological Seminary, being ordained a minister in 1881. He soon moved to Iowa and served as a Congregati...

Three times the Army of Tennessee had moved out from Atlanta and assaulted General Sherman's army, and each time the Confederates met with a bloody repulse. The 15th Army Corps missed out on the first battle, Peach Tree Creek on July 20th, but certainly got their measure of fighting in the battle of July 22nd east of the city. The 15th Corps later moved from the east side to the west side of the city just in time to receive the third and final assault of Hood's bloody trifecta, a battle known as the Battle of Ezra Church fought on July 28, 1864.      Among those veterans of the 15th Corps who participated in the Battle of Ezra Church was  Captain Ira Jackson Bloomfield of Co. K, 26th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. The 29 year old Ohio native  had certainly seen his fair share of hard fighting during his three years' service with the regiment, but the fighting qualities displayed by both armies at Ezra Church impressed him deeply. "I have seen a good many charges, ...

For much of the early part of the Civil War, Rutherford P. Hayes served under the immediate command of Eliakim P. Scammon, a West Point-trained officer who frequently clashed with Hayes during their years of service together. Scammon felt that Hayes was bold to the point of rashness, and that assessment played out in early May 1862 at a place in western Virginia called Giles Courthouse.       Lieutenant Colonel Hayes with the 23rd Ohio had pushed east from Princeton, Virginia on May 6, 1862 to occupy the town but unwittingly stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble in the form of General Henry Heth's brigade. As intelligence arrived that Stonewall Jackson was on the move in the Shenandoah Valley and that time had come for the Federal forces in the region to concentrate for action, Hayes and his men at Giles Courthouse came under sudden attack by Heth's men. It was a short fight, and Heth's superior numbers knocked the 23rd Ohio out of the town without much difficulty. B...

       The Chicago Board of Trade Battery, led by Captain James H. Stokes, was formed in the summer of 1862 in response to President Lincoln's call for 300,000 troops. The battery was mustered into service August 1, 1862 and after spending a month in Chicago drilling with their new equipment, they departed for the seat of war, arriving in Louisville on September 10, 1862. The battery was soon attached to Buell's Army of the Ohio and served with it during the Perryville campaign. Just prior to the Stones River campaign, Stokes' battery was attached to the Pioneer Brigade, tasked with provided the protection of heavy firepower when the pioneers undertook the arduous tasks of constructing roads or river crossings.       On the first day of Stones River, the battery, consisting of four 6-lb smoothbores and two 10-lb James rifles, found itself sitting in the Federal center with the chaos of battle breaking out around them, but without orders. "The Batt...

     In the mid-1880s, noted historian Henry Howe toured through every county in Ohio duplicating a tour he made in the mid-1840s, his aim being to note the changes and progress in the state and to update his book that featured the history of each county. The resulting book, Historical Collections of Ohio , is considered one of the key tomes of Ohio local historical lore. In the midst of his travels, Howe took the opportunity to visit with a number of notable actors in the Civil War, among them the subject of today's blog, General James Sidney Robinson of Kenton, Ohio.     General Robinson was then closing out his active and successful career as a newspaperman, businessman, Congressman, and soldier. The General lived in a fine home on the north side of Kenton (the house is long gone unfortunately) when Howe came to visit. Robinson had seen four years of service in the Civil War, seeing action throughout Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas with both t...

The question is often and rightly asked; “Why did they fight?” What prompted our forebears to don the blue or the gray, to lay their lives on the line, and take up arms against their fellow countrymen? Over four million men (and who knows how many women) served in either the Union or Confederate armies during the conflict, and for every one of them, their reasons for fighting were unique. Patriotism and love of country prompted some, revenge and hatred prompted others; some enlisted because war seemed a grand adventure, some enlisted purely for the money; others enlisted to be with their family and friends who had chosen to fight, others enlisted to get away from home. Some enlisted to fight to preserve the Union as it was, others enlisted to fight for the Union as it may be, and others fought for independence from a Union in which they thought they no longer had a place. Some were drafted and compelled to serve against their will. A love of liberty and democratic ideas prompted many...

The assault by the Army of the Cumberland upon Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863 is remembered as one of the most dramatic episodes of the Civil War, and today’s blog post features an account from an eyewitness of this assault, a Confederate staff officer serving with General William J. Hardee. The letter, written the day after Missionary Ridge, never made it to its intended recipient. The author, Major John W. Green (1827-1914) who was Hardee’s military engineer, addressed the letter to his wife Fanny in Macon, Georgia after proving unable to send a telegram at Chickamauga Station. “To relieve all anxiety on my account, I will tell at once I am well and unhurt,” he assured her. Green then gave a sketch of the Battle of Missionary Ridge and describes the reaction of General Hardee to the disaster. However, Green’s wife never received the letter; it was inadvertently left behind, or the mail was captured by the Federal army once they moved into Ringgold.   Ironically, it wa...

       In the aftermath of the Federal victory at Mill Springs in January 1862, Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood's brigade marched from Lebanon, Kentucky to Hall's Gap near Stanford, Kentucky. Upon arriving, the four regiments of the brigade were given a seemingly simple task: build a corduroy road through Hall's Gap to Somerset, Kentucky, where General George H. Thomas' division was waiting for supplies. What started out as a simple construction job degenerated into a tedious, frustrating, fruitless, and even deadly proposition. The situation became so bad that the men referred to Hall's Gap as Hell's Gap. Indeed, Wilbur Hinman of the 65th Ohio reported that "our two week's stay at Hall's Gap cost us as many men who died or were disabled by disease as we lost at either Stones River or Chickamauga."     A combination of rainy weather and heavy traffic turned the Somerset road into a quagmire, and the need to upgrade the road became abundantly e...

       The 3rd Ohio Infantry was a regiment in search of a battle. Mustered into the three year service in June 1861, the 3rd Ohio has served in both western Virginia and throughout the western theater since that time and had barely burnt any powder while doing so. All of that changed on October 8, 1862 as the regiment found itself in a very tough fight at Perryville, Kentucky.       In August 1862, the regiment was camped at Decherd Station in southern Tennessee, but as news of the Confederate invasion of Tennessee spread, the regiment was quickly put on the road. As recalled by Whitelaw Reid, the march north "was severe in the extreme. The weather was intensely warm, the roads dry and covered inches thick with stifling dust. The water courses were dried up and what water there was to be had was often very filthy and loathsome. All these disabilities, combined with scant rations, made the march one of particular hardship and toil to the soldiers....

  The Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia fought March 8-9, 1862 was the most important naval battle fought during the Civil War, not because of the tactical or strategic question decided by the clash, but because of the revolution in naval technology that the clash of ironclads represented. The debut performances of the Monitor and Merrimac demonstrated that the future of naval construction lay in iron and steel; wooden-hulled vessels which had dominated naval construction for centuries were on the way out.   Among the witnesses of this historic naval engagement was an Ohioan serving in Co. M of the 11 th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The company, whose motto was “We Know Our Rights and Knowing, Dare Maintain Them,” was raised in southeastern Ohio in August 1861 and mustered into service as an independent cavalry company. The company joined Harlan’s Light Cavalry (11 th Pennsylvania Cavalry) in October 1861, a regiment which had companies from four other states besides Pennsylvan...

The Second Battle of Springfield, Missouri, a small engagement that pitted roughly 2,000 Federal troops versus 2,000 Confederates, took place on January 8, 1863. Springfield was an important supply depot supporting the Army of the Frontier then engaging Confederate forces in northern Arkansas; while the garrison numbered only roughly 1,300 soldiers, the town had a line of earthen forts and other defenses that made it a tough nut to crack. Brigadier General Egbert Brown, in command of the post, learned that three detachments of Confederates under General John Marmaduke were heading to take Springfield and chose to defend the town, calling under arms the local Missouri militia and also arming convalescents from the local military hospital. The convalescents were formed into three companies (A, B, and C) and dubbed the "Quinine Brigade." One of those convalescents who saw action with the "Quinine Brigade" at Springfield was Corporal Ichabod Taylor Miller from Co. F of ...

 Quintessential:   representing the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class.      With that definition in mind, I was wondering: what was the quintessential regiment of the Army of the Cumberland? Which regiment most perfectly represented the normal, average regiment that served in the Army of the Cumberland? There are a number of ways to look at this, but immediately a regiment from one of three states comes to mind: Indiana, Illinois, or Ohio. These states (led by Ohio) provided the bulk of the manpower of the Army of the Cumberland. Society of the Army of the Cumberland medal The AofC had quite a mixture of regiments, regulars and volunteers, but the volunteers were in the vast majority, and infantry regiments represented the vast majority of the army. So we have a volunteer regiment of infantry from Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, and one that likely mustered into service in 1861 or early 1862. That narrows down the list.  The AofC also had it...

The Iron Brigade of the Army of Potomac is rightly famous for its demonstrated heroism at Brawner's Farm, Antietam, and Gettysburg where the brigade suffered 61% casualties. Lost in the mix of the Iron Brigade's history is its participation in the Battle of Chancellorsville, a battle perhaps receiving less attention because the casualty list for Chancellorsville (at least as far as the Iron Brigade is concerned) was relatively small.       The following account, written by Augustus F. Muller of Co. C of the 6th Wisconsin, was written to a cousin in Illinois who provided the letter to the editor of the Bloomington Daily Pantagraph; the letter was published in their May 21, 1863 issue, the editor commenting that the letter "places before our minds in a few words how the thing is done." Muller's description of forcing the Rappahannock River crossing under enemy fire is indeed a superb description of "how the thing is done."

  The first reports of the Battle of Shiloh had not quite reached the newspapers but the pall of despair had already fallen over the Harrell household in Oskaloosa, Illinois. After sustaining a ghastly wound at the Battle of Fort Donelson in February, 21 year old Private James M. Harrell died at his parents' home from the effects of the wound. "I was shot in the mouth, the ball breaking out part of the lower jawbone and lodging under the tongue, cutting one side of it loose," he wrote. "All my teeth are jarred loose, the pain of which troubles me excessively." Unidentified Union soldier      It was a sad ending for Abington, Virginia native who chose to take up arms to subdue a rebellion of his native state, no doubt fighting against kith and kin. The outbreak of the war found James working as a farmer at Cheney's Grove Township near Bloomington, McLean Co., Illinois in the central part of the state. Captain John Oliver Pullen of Bloomington was raising a co...

In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, December 31, 1862 outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Private John Wilson of Co. D, 39 th Indiana Infantry stamped his feet and rubbed his hands together to fight off the damp chill. The company had been sent out on picket after sunset the night before eating a supper of raw bacon and hardtack; they were not permitted fires. All night long, he and his comrades serving on the picket line of General August Willich’s brigade, constituting the extreme right wing of the Army of the Cumberland, had heard the noises of a Confederate Army on the move in their front. A jumpy Federal picket had shot a cow during the night which had blundered into the lines. A long line of campfires stretching to the west appeared to indicate trouble in the morning. It was a harrowing time for the Shiloh veterans. Collapse of the Federal right wing at Stones River as depicted by Army of the Cumberland artist William Travis. Hugh Cummings of Co. B remembered in  1898 that t...