Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

       Josiah Morgan had seen much of war in his two years of service with the 125 th Ohio, but what he witnessed at Franklin on the evening of November 30, 1864 “chilled his blood.”      The 125 th Ohio as part of Colonel Emerson Opdycke’s brigade played a critical role in re-establishing the Federal line at the Carter House in some of the most brutal fighting of the entire war in the West. It was the most awful battle the Ohioan ever saw. “Colonel Opdycke rushed our brigade into the gap with fixed bayonets and we soon had them on the other side of the works where we held them, though they tried many times to rout us. We lay for more than an hour on one side of the works, and they on the other, not venturing to show our heads on either side. But we kept loading and sticking our guns over and firing at each other by raising our hands and pointing the muzzles down on the opposite side as much as possible. The fighting was awful to the extreme,” Morg...

       In the closing days of November 1864, the Army of the Ohio under the command of Major General John M. Schofield found itself nearly trapped in Spring Hill, Tennessee by a rapid movement made by General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee. The three brigades of General George D. Wagner’s division of the Fourth Army Corps arrived in town just in the nick of time to keep the road open, and at the tail end of Wagner’s column marched First Lieutenant John K. Shellenberger commanding Co. B of the 64 th Ohio.      A sharp fight ensued with dismounted Confederate cavalry and the lieutenant recalled the narrow escape he had with a bullet that had his name on it. “ A bullet, coming from the right, passed through my overcoat, buttoned up to the chin, in a way to take the top button of the blouse underneath the coat. The big brass button struck me a stinging blow on the point of the left collar bone. Clasping both hands to the spot, I began feeling with m...

       The triumph of the Union army at Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863 marked one of the high points in the service of the 104 th Illinois, but for two of its officers, it also presented a chance to put aside a long-standing personal enmity. First Lieutenant Moses Osman of Co. A and Captain Joseph Fitzsimmons of Co. K had barely spoken to each other in months, but when they climbed to the top of the ridge at the head of their respective companies, they decided it was time to “bury the hatchet.” “Captain Fitzsimmons of Co. K leading the left wing of the regiment and your humble correspondent in command of Co. A on the right wing claim the honor of first reaching the top of the ridge. For the past few months on account of a personal difficulty, Captain Fitzsimmons and I have not been on very intimate terms. Our intercourse extended no further than our official duties rendered necessary. But on reaching the top of Mission Ridge at about the same time and being...

       Capturing a flag during the Civil War represented the height of ambition and the peak of glory for most soldiers whether they wore the Blue or the Gray. A regiment or battery’s flags were a source of intense pride and were carried by the bravest men of the unit, surrounded by a stout guard, all of whom were ready to pick up the flag and carry on if the color bearer was struck down. To lose your flag to the enemy was considered a humiliation, a surefire sign that your unit had been bested in battle; but the fact was, battlefield flag captures occurred frequently and oftentimes had nothing to do with a regiment’s bravery or courage. Call it the chances of war, but colors were lost in some of the craziest circumstances. [Case in point- the regimental colors of the 72 nd Ohio were captured at Shiloh by being accidentally left in a wagon, having never been unfurled.] Regardless of the chances of war, men still fought and died and took incredible risks to capture o...

       The 20 th Army Corps of the Army of the Cumberland was born April 4, 1864, outside Chattanooga, Tennessee by an order which consolidated the former 11 th and 12 th Army Corps which had previously served in the Army of the Potomac. Placed under the overall command of Major General Joseph Hooker (their old commander from Potomac days), the corps was divided into three divisions led initially by Generals Alpheus S. Williams, John W. Geary, and Daniel Butterfield.           The 20 th Corps is a fascinating unit from the standpoint of the origins of its troops as it hosted troops from every corner of the Union. The Harvard-trained officers of the 2 nd Massachusetts and 5 th Connecticut rubbed elbows with lumberjacks from the 3 rd Wisconsin and farmers of the 70th Indiana. Maryland was represented by a detachment of the 3 rd Maryland Infantry, Connecticut had two regiments (the 5 th and 20 th ), Massachusetts a...

      In the summer of 1862, the 2 nd Ohio Volunteer Cavalry was on duty at Fort Scott in southern Kansas, and it decided to create a detachment of roughly 100 men to form a battery. General James Blunt badly needed artillery, and rather than petition the authorities back east to send him a battery, Blunt assigned 13 men from each company of the 2 nd Ohio Cavalry along with two lieutenants and placed them all under the command of Captain Job B. Stockton of Kansas. Armed with two 3” Ordnance rifles and four M1841 6-lb smoothbores, the unit was originally called the 3 rd Kansas Independent Battery. They took part in the battles of Newtonia and Prairie Grove before being re-named the 25 th Ohio Battery the following February. The battery replaced their outmoded smoothbores with 6 -lb rifles that spring and saw much service in the Trans-Mississippi. By the time their term of service ended in 1865, the men of the battery had marched 6,351 miles! But the battery was most no...

       From his position atop Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, First Lieutenant William A. Ewing, commanding the left section of Battery H of the 1 st Ohio Light Artillery, witnessed the most desperate hours his battery had seen since Port Republic a year before.       It was the evening of July 2, 1863 and as a heavy line of Confederate infantry surged towards his position, Ewing recorded how his gunners held their ground. “Soon they came and entered the battery and actually had possession of the two left guns of the battery. A secesh lieutenant was just grasping the battery colors when the bearer shot him through the heart with a revolver, receiving a ball in his own the next. The colors were instantly seized by Lieutenant Brockway and the staff was shot away below his hand. The lieutenant, discovering a Rebel demanding the surrender of one of his sergeants, struck him in the head with a stone, completely flooring him. Nothing daunted, Johnny Reb j...

       The rapid transfer of the 11 th and 12 th Army Corps from the Army of the Potomac to the Army of the Cumberland in the fall of 1863 stands as one of the most impressive logistical feats of the entire Civil War. In the span of two weeks, 15,000 men, 5,000 horses, and over 700 wagons moved from northern Virginia to southern Tennessee, providing crucial reinforcements for William Rosecrans’ army in the wake of the defeat at Chickamauga.      The move was laid on with great suddenness. General Oliver O. Howard, commanding the 11 th Army Corps, recalled in his memoir that General George Meade gave him the order on September 24 th directing him to lead his corps west the following day. “The two corps quickly started up from their scattered camps in regiments, loaded up their tents and luggage, and marched to the nearest railway station. Instead of having a single long train, we were furnished with several short ones and as soon as the first one ...

       Private John Overton Casler of the 33 rd Virginia had already been through a half dozen battles in Virginia, but what he saw in the aftermath of Chancellorsville convinced him that “we were barbarians, North and South alike.”           “The dead and badly wounded from both sides were lying where they fell. The woods, taking fire that night from the shells, burned rapidly and roasted the wounded men alive. As we went to bury them, we could see where they had tried to keep the fire from them by scratching the leaves away as far as they could reach. But it availed not; they were burnt to a crisp. The only way we could tell which army they belonged was by turning them over and examining their clothing where they lay close to the ground. There we would usually find some of their clothing that was not burnt, so we could see whether they wore the blue or the gray. We buried them all alike by covering them up with dirt w...

       When Dr. William J. McMurray of the 20 th Tennessee looked back on the Battle of Shiloh, he argued that better arms made all the difference. Three months prior at the Battle of Mill Springs, his regiment went into the fight with flintlock muskets, only one out of five of which would fire in the rainy damp conditions experienced on the field that day. It is little wonder that his regiment and the rest of Zollicoffer’s command performed so poorly on the field when equipped with such useless shooting irons. “Only a few days before the Battle of Shiloh, the 20 th Tennessee drew new Enfield rifles with new accoutrements and English ammunition, and if there was ever a body of men that appreciated a good thing, it was this regiment for they had experienced the inferiority of their arms to that of their enemy on the battlefield,” McMurray recalled. “And now we were well-armed and equipped, we thought that the 20 th Tennessee regiment was able to meet successfully...

       Andrew Langley and his comrades in the 91 st Ohio were guarding a herd of army cattle at the Federal camp on Cedar Creek on an otherwise humdrum Wednesday morning in October 1864 when they were startled awake by the sounds of battle erupting to their south.   Jubal Early’s army struck hard and early, driving back Colonel Joseph Thoburn’s Federal division out of its camp, and starting a stampede. “The First Division ran through our camp which was aroused by this time. The Rebs at the same time charged into the camp of the 19 th Army Corps. We just got up and dusted without any breakfast. Our regiment, being the cattle guards, had a little start of the rest. We just made the cattle fly through the fields. We fell back three miles before we could get a chance to form a line,” Langley remembered. As the 91 st Ohio reorganized, Langley saw one of the most inspiring sights of Civil War lore, General Phil Sheridan arriving on the field at the end of his fam...

       Twenty years after the Battle of Stones River, the Grand Army of the Republic held a fair in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania where two poignant relics of the battle were placed on public display. “The display of fancy articles and relics all combine to make it a place where an evening may be spent with profit and enjoyment,” the local newspaper crowed. “The relics on exhibition are an interesting feature. Most conspicuous in this line is the uniform of the lamented Colonel Peter B. Housum, which was worn by him when he fell at the head of his regiment at the battle of Stones River. The coat is a blue frock and contains the hole of the bullet that cost him his chivalrous life.” On display near Colonel Housum’s bloody coat was a superb military drum carried by John Stoner who served in Housum’s 77 th Pennsylvania regiment. “Stoner was near the lamented Colonel Housum when he fell mortally wounded, and assisted in placing him in an ambulance, thus preventing him fr...

     Whitelaw Reid's two volume Ohio in the War series published in 1895 remains the most comprehensive work yet produced on the state's participation in the Civil War. Volume I features a history of the state itself during the war as well as a lengthy section detailing the lives of the Ohio-born Generals who led the Union army. But there is one group of Ohio-born Generals that Reid conspicuously avoided: the Buckeye-born Generals of the Confederacy.      I was surprised to discover that a total of six native Ohioans achieved a general's rank in the Confederate army. A few common themes emerged: each man had migrated to the South years before the start of the war, most of them hailed from the southern half of the state, most of them ultimately served in the western theater, and every one of them was either wounded and killed in the service.  The job of detailing their lives and service fell to Ezra Warner and their stories below were featured in his b...

       In April 1895, William H. Tucker and Francis E. Engle, two veterans of the 14 th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, traveled back to the battlefield to participate in the first veterans’ reunion at the newly created Shiloh National Military Park. Congress had mere months prior established the park and placed it under the jurisdiction of the War Department to manage. Tucker, who had served as a sergeant in Co. D, wrote the following account giving his impressions of the Shiloh battlefield as it existed in 1895 before the erection of the hundreds of markers and monuments that adorn the field today. To him, the task of interpreting the field was daunting. “It will almost require the aid of the spirits of the fallen heroes to locate the several positions held on that memorable 6 th and 7 th of April 1862,” he noted. “The grounds have grown up with another growth of timber and thick underbrush and with open fields now where timber stood then. As soon as they cut away...

       On Saturday January 3, 1863, Colonel Daniel McCook of the 52 nd Ohio was ordered to escort a supply train of 95 wagons loaded with ammunition and hospital stores destined for General William S. Rosecrans’ army at Murfreesboro. McCook assembled as escort for the train six companies of the 60 th Illinois (300 men), Companies A and D of the 10 th Michigan Infantry (100 men), five companies composing the left wing of his own 52 nd Ohio (250 men) and the 213-man strong 6 th Tennessee (Union) Infantry, totaling in all roughly 1,000 men including the teamsters. The train set out that morning along the Nashville Pike heading south but seven miles out, a detachment of General Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry supported by a battery of cannon struck the train and cut it in half. The 60 th Illinois and two companies of the 10 th Michigan climbed up on the wooded slope of Cox’s Hill on the right of the pike and opened fire on the Rebels, while McCook ordered up the Ohioan...

       In early September 1863, the Union army under General Quincy Gillmore closed in on the capture of Battery Wagner outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The army tried taking the fort by assault back on July 18 th and suffered a bloody repulsed as graphically depicted in the movie Glory . The subsequent siege of the fort lasted through the hottest months of the South Carolina summer, a time characterized by constant shelling, deadly sharpshooters, and the dangers of Confederate torpedoes spread all along the approaches to the fort. On top of the man-made dangers, the men struggled with heat, thirst, and rapacious insects such as mosquitoes and sand fleas. Sergeant James Brice of the 13 th Indiana remembered a particularly grisly discovery made by one of his comrades as the parallels crept closer to the fort.           “Some of the boys in the company while digging out a place of safety wherein they could lie down...

       It was a week after the Battle of Perryville and with General Braxton Bragg’s army well on the road back to Tennessee, the troopers of the 3 rd Ohio and 4 th Ohio little thought they had much to worry about as they went into camp in a woodlot on the grounds of Henry Clay’s estate, Ashland near Lexington, Kentucky. The Federal pursuit of Bragg’s army had been a leisurely affair, and it was believed that Bragg wanted nothing more than to get back to Tennessee unmolested.      But at dawn on October 18, 1862, the Ohioans learned, much to their chagrin, that an aggressive force of Confederate cavalry under John Hunt Morgan wasn’t interested in slipping quietly back to Tennessee quite yet. Morgan commanded a small force consisting of the 2 nd Kentucky Cavalry regiment, two cavalry battalions, and a pair of guns and was determined to operate in the Federal rear and cause mayhem. His scouts had reported that the Ohioans were isolated and divided, ...

       Like the battle of Shiloh fought five months later, the Battle of Belmont was marked by the raw inexperience of the soldiers of both armies that fought it. A prime example of this is the story of the 11 th Louisiana who arrived on the field late in the battle and was sent out to flank the Union line and recapture the four guns of Watson’s Battery. “We came out of the woods immediately in their rear and seeing them drawn up in line of battle without discovering their colors, we hesitated to fire, thinking them our Tennessee regiments that were endeavoring to flank them on the left,” one veteran remembered. “At this moment, Major E.G.W. Butler of the 11 th Louisiana rode forward to ascertain who they were and having descried the “stars and stripes,” endeavored to fall back to his regiment when he fell, seriously wounded, under a volley of musketry from the Federals.   This was to us the signal for an advance and loud was the shout of vengeance that rang...

       All through the winter of 1861 and 1862, Colonel George Crook of the 36 th Ohio drilled his men incessantly, aiming to make his boys the crack regiment of the Kanawha Division. To facilitate drill in the frequently inclement weather of the western Virginia mountains, Crook had a large drill hall built (over 700 feet long!) in Summerville, Virginia, and the work began to mold these citizens into soldiers.      In May of 1862, the work would pay off as the 36 th Ohio, along with the 44 th Ohio, emerged the victors at the Battle of Lewisburg. “On May 12, 1862, the regiment started south via Cold Knob and Frankfort for Lewisburg in Greenbrier County. At that place was met the 44 th Ohio Volunteer Infantry under Colonel Sam Gilbert and a battalion of the 2 nd Virginia Cavalry under the command of Colonel Bolles, all constituting a brigade under Colonel Crook,” Whitelaw Reid reported.      “In the early morning of May 23 rd , G...

       The opening of the 1862 spring campaign season found the 34 th Ohio split up into two detachments in the mountains of west Virginia with four companies at Princeton and six at Frenchville. The Federal soldiers of the District of Kanawha under General Jacob Cox were poised to move south and threaten Confederate control of the East Tennessee & Virginia railroad, a vital supply link between Virginia and the western Confederacy. As Stonewall Jackson moved into the Shenandoah Valley and defeated Robert Milroy’s troops at McDowell on May 8 th , Confederate forces under Humphrey Marshall also moved north into western Virginia. On May 15 th , they ran into the Federal detachment at Princeton and pushed back that small force. Federal reinforcements surged into the area and on May 17 th they took a crack at driving off Marshall’s force, but suffered about 100 casualties and soon retreated towards Flat Top Mountain.         ...

     While recently walking through the grounds of Florence National Cemetery in Florence, South Carolina, my son and I came across the grave of a Buckeye laid to rest long from home. It is a beautiful and quiet setting with live oaks and Spanish moss hanging down nearly to the ground. The gray and brown mockingbirds loudly chirped nearby over the graves of more than 2,000 Union soldiers buried as unknowns, most of them dying during their brief captivity at the adjacent Florence Stockade in late 1864 and early 1865. But one grave stood out, that of Lieutenant A.T. Hamilton of Ohio. The fact that he was from Ohio intrigued me, and the fact that his grave was identified when so many others were not further piqued my interest.      It didn’t take too much digging to learn that the grave was that of Adjutant Arthur T. Hamilton of the 9 th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, and it also became clear why his grave was marked while so many others were not: he didn’t die as a...