Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

       The Union fleet above Vicksburg, Mississippi was sitting quietly at anchor when at around 8:30 on the morning of July 15, 1862, the U.S. ram Queen of the West sailed into view from the Yazoo River belching an enormous quantity of smoke. To be sure, the ram was running for her life and the confused sailors soon saw why: the much-rumored Confederate ironclad Arkansas was hot on her trail.           “Such an excitement as there was among the fleet here would be hard to describe,” one observer noted. “Broadside after broadside was dealt out to this Rebel ram without the least apparent effect, the shot even of the 11-inch guns bounding off her casemates like hailstones on a stone pavement. She ran by twelve or fifteen ships and gunboats, mounting from 12 to 30 guns each, and seemed to laugh at the whole fleet.” The 1,200-ton Arkansas blew through the U.S. fleet and later that morning lay anchored beneath the protecting guns of Vicksburg much to the jubilation of the residents.

       On Saturday afternoon September 19, 1863, Jacob Reasoner and his comrades of the 36 th Ohio were called upon to salvage a collapsing Union position during the Battle of Chickamauga. The sight that met their eyes upon arriving at the ground would shake the spirits of even veteran troops.           “On came our retreating brigade and now was to come the test of discipline. A panic once started generally extends throughout the whole division or army and all doubted whether even our regiment would withstand its influence,” he recalled. “On came the routed brigade, battery, and all, rushing through our ranks, almost knocking down our men. Some of the faint hearted wished to go with them, but their officers succeeded in stopping them and getting them back to their places.”           Reasoner’s account of the Battle of Chickamauga first saw publication in the October 15, 1863, edition of the Jackson Standard .

       In the early evening of hours of May 2, 1863, the six 12-lb bronze Napoleons of Captain Hubert Dilger’s Battery I of the 1 st Ohio Volunteer Light Artillery sat well behind the front lines of the 11 th Corps. The battery’s commander, a well-regarded German emigree known by his men as “Leatherbreeches” for his propensity to wear doeskin pants, was convinced that the army was about to be struck in the flank. To be sure, Dilger had made a personal reconnaissance earlier that afternoon in which he stumbled into a hornet’s nest of Rebels and tried in vain to convince his superiors of this fact, but Leatherbreeches’ command of English failed him and he galloped back into camp fit to be tied. Shortly thereafter, Jackson’s attack began and Dilger’s battery soon found itself amidst the maelstrom of the collapsing 11 th Corps. The subsequent conduct of Captain Hubert Dilger in fighting his battery during the retreat of the 11 th Army Corps at Chancellorsville proved one of the few b

       It was June 1863 near Murfreesboro, Tennessee in the days leading up the Tullahoma campaign when Major Bedan B. McDonald of the 101st Ohio, dressed in his finest uniform and proudly sitting atop a new horse, proudly led his regiment out one afternoon to discharge their muskets after dress parade.      "He was a fine fellow and the Major sat on him like a king," recalled Lewis Day of the occasion. "He had taken the regiment out in good shape and we stood in line. 'Company A," sang out the major in his best voice, 'Ready! Aim! Fire!" Every gun blazed. But the new horse did not understand it and he was off in a twinkling, nor stopped until he reached camp. Some of the boys almost died with merriment. The major soon quieted the trembling beast and with much coaxing got him within a few rods of our line when Company B suddenly fired as one man and away to camp went poor McDonald, his coat-tails flapping wildly in the breeze. He took some time to get t

       The Battle of Tazewell, Tennessee fought August 6, 1862 was a small-scale engagement fought in the vicinity of Cumberland Gap in the opening stages of Kirby Smith’s 1862 offensive into Kentucky. Both sides suffered a loss of about 70 men (reports varied widely) and while the battle itself decided nothing, the prisoners taken by both sides gave their captors valuable information that had an important impact on the forthcoming campaign.           The proximity of Tazewell to Cumberland Gap is the key to the story. In June 1862, General George W. Morgan’s division drove south from Kentucky and took possession of the gap after Confederate troops abandoned it and pulled back towards Knoxville. Morgan set his men to work fortifying the position, and by early August Morgan was confident that he could hold the Gap against any assault the Confederates might stage. However, Morgan believed that it was more likely that Confederates under Humphrey Marshall would strike westwards from Virg

      The story of the 20th Maine and the fight for Little Round Top at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863 is a familiar one for most Civil War buffs and historians, the details of that fight being a major part of the 1993 film Gettysburg . I can remember my own fascination with the Civil War growing as a result of seeing that film many years ago, and my appreciation for the movie grew as I learned more of its broad cultural impact. Whether you love the movie or its the movie you love to hate, no one can deny that the story of the battle as presented in the movie has done much to shape the popular memory of the real battle of Gettysburg.                 Today's blog post features a letter from a soldier of the 20th Maine written just three days after Pickett's Charge while the 20th Maine was still camped on the field. The story of the 20th Maine as presented by this soldier may lack much of the Hollywood glamor, but it is a story of remarkable heroism honestly told. In describing the f

     At the end of May 1862, the Army of Mississippi abandoned its positions surrounding Corinth, Mississippi and conducted a 50-mile march to go into camp near Tupelo. The army was in ragged condition: a field return from June 9, 1862 shows that of the total force of 94,756 officers and men on the rolls of the army, only 45,335 were in condition for duty. As a matter of fact, nearly a quarter of the army was sick either in the hospitals or absent from the army. The poor health conditions at Corinth contributed to widespread demoralization and by the time the army marched into Tupelo, one veteran noted that “it was a perfect rabble that would have done much more running than fighting if they had been put to the scratch.”           Sickness was no respecter of rank, and in this case the commander of the army General Pierre G.T. Beauregard was just as sick as his many of his men. The Creole had been battling poor health for months and the strain of assuming command of the army in the w

     During the Civil War, the state of New York provided more than 400,000 men to the Union army, the highest number of soldiers of any state, and as can be imagined, the task of arming those hundreds of thousands of volunteers was a very difficult one. At the outbreak of hostilities, the state militia numbered 19,000 men but the state possessed only about 8,000 long arms nearly all of which were utilized to arm the eleven militia regiments which left the state in the earliest days of the war. The state dispatched an agent to England on April 24 th to purchase 25,000 Enfield pattern rifle muskets but upon his arrival, he found those weapons hard to find as Confederate agents had already been busy buying up the stock. Eventually, he was able to secure 19,000 Enfields at a cost of $335,000; these weapons arrived in bits and pieces over the next several months and were issued out soon after their arrival to newly formed regiments.  A perusal of the adjutant general’s report for the st

          The fight of the 1 st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics regiment at LaVergne, Tennessee on January 1, 1863 represented the proudest moment in that regiment’s service during the Civil War. Numbering only 315 officers and men under the command of Colonel William Innes, the regiment hunkered down in their breastworks and protected one of the army’s baggage trains from destruction by Joe Wheeler’s cavalry and suffered but small loss to themselves. But it was desperate fighting as remembered by Private William L. Clark of Co. K.           “The main force came plunging up on the left of the company, discharging their pieces and wheeling to the left when they found our defenses so good that they could not gallop their horses over them. They were an excellent mark for every musket, rifle, and revolver loaded in the company and many were killed or wounded. One gallant fellow tried to spring his horse over in front of Lieutenant Curtis. “Don’t come over here, sir!” said he and a ball

     The English-made Model 1853 .577 caliber Enfield Rifle Musket was widely regarded as the best infantry arm in the world at the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. Favorable international press describing its efficiency in the Crimean War and in suppressing the Indian rebellion led to the widespread desire of American infantrymen (both Federal and Confederate) to be armed with these accurate and well-made arms. The lock plate of this well-worn P1853 Enfield rifle musket produced in 1862 shows the typical markings of a British-made weapon that made it through the Federal blockade.  ( Army of Tennessee Relics ) Enfield-pattern weapons were imported into the states by the tens and hundreds of thousands during the war years; one estimate stated that the Federal government purchased 500,000 while the Confederates purchased another 400,000. The Confederate government dispatched Captain Caleb Huse to Europe in April 1861 to purchase weapons and Huse focused on securing all the Enfi

A special correspondent of the Philadelphia Daily Inquirer following in the wake of the Union army entered the shattered debris of Sarah Bell’s peach orchard and cotton field on the late afternoon of Monday, April 7, 1862 intent on exploring the field. The sights, smells, and sounds staggered the reporter: arrayed before him were hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers, blue and gray, surrounded by the scattered refuse of war: discarded and battered rifles, ripped and torn clothing, bullets and cannon ball fragments, broken swords revolvers, and everywhere blood. This image of the Peach Orchard taken shortly after the Civil War gives few clues to the carnage that surrounded the orchard and adjacent cotton field in the aftermath of the battle. One observer noted that hundreds of spent bullets were lying on the ground "like fruit from a heavily-laden tree after a storm." “In one place lay nine men, four or five of ours and about as many Rebels who from indications must have ha

       The son of a cabinet maker, Charles W. Evers was born in Miltonville, Ohio on July 22, 1837 and grew up in the wilds of Wood County. By the time he reached his maturity was teaching the local district schools. At the age of 19, he struck out for the West and spent a few years on the Minnesota frontier before returning to Ohio in 1860 to study at Oberlin College with his older brother John. The outbreak of war led the two brothers into different theaters of war: John enlisted with many of his Oberlin classmates in Co. C of the 7th Ohio Infantry (see here ) and went east to Virginia while Charles enlisted in Co. H of the 2nd Kentucky Volunteer Infantry and served in the western theater. A younger brother Orlando later served in the 67th Ohio in the eastern theater (see here ).       Despite its Kentucky moniker, the ranks of the 2nd Kentucky were composed almost entirely of Buckeyes.  The regiment first saw service in the western Virginia campaign of the summer of 1861 taking part