Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

Father Jeremiah F. Trecy seated at left next to Father Fontaine. The Irish-born Trecy moved to Pennsylvania with his parents in 1836 and was ordained a Catholic priest at age 28 in 1850. His first assignments were in Iowa and Nebraska but by 1860 he had moved to Huntsville, Alabama for health reasons. Tasked with attending to the needs of the scattered Catholics of northern Alabama, he networked and succeeded in raising funds to build a church in Huntsville but the outbreak of war prevented its completion. Father Trecy worked in the hospitals and army camps attending to the sick and wounded before he joined Rosecrans' headquarters in the summer of 1862.       Father Jeremiah F. Trecy tried to make himself as inconspicuous on the battlefield as he could. Wearing a light blue Federal overcoat to hide his black vestments, he wore a typical soldier’s hat and high boots as he worked his way through the battlefield at Stones River. Over his shoulders he carried two canteens, one filled w

Private John Engle of the 1 st Michigan Infantry described the terrifying moments of combat at Boatswains' Swamp near Gaines Mill, Virginia on June 27, 1862. His regiment had just opened fire on the charging Rebels and before long, Engle had burned through most of his ammunition. “In 20 minutes from the time I fired the first shot, my rifle was so hot that I could hardly hold it in my hands and in ramming down a cartridge, my gun exploded from the heat of the barrel, blowing my ramrod sky-high. We had the patent cartridges and could load with amazing rapidity. I took our orderly sergeant’s gun and continued the fight until we were ordered to fall back. During the fight, one of the Rebel bullets shaved the whiskers on my left cheek, slightly scorching the skin. It made the fire sparkle in my left eye a little, and I sent him my compliments with a good will. But, pshaw, I cannot give you half a description,” he lamented. During the Seven Days’ Campaign, the 1 st Michigan was pa

       It was a common joke amongst the infantry that “no one had ever seen a dead cavalryman,” and tensions between the two branches of service tended to always run on a low simmer, flaring up during active campaigning. For one Confederate trooper, the constant jeering and criticisms from the ”web feet” became too much and he sought vindication by writing the following missive in defense of the cavalry.        The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain had just been fought a few days before when the Southern Confederacy ran the following letter from a disappointed trooper in the 1 st Tennessee Cavalry lamenting the dismissive attitude that had been adopted against his branch of service and longed for the return of the heady days when Forrest and Morgan made the Confederate cavalry the terror of the Federal army.      “It has become so much a matter of habit to disparage and depreciate the cavalry that the wonder now is that we ever fight at all, no matter what the odds are in our favor---for t

General William S. Rosecrans, depicted as seated atop Boney on the left bank while pointing with his sword, observes the troops of McCook's 20th Army Corps crossing the pontoon bridge at Caperton's Ferry near Stevenson, Alabama in August 1863. The Army of the Cumberland crossed the Tennessee River at four points downstream from Chattanooga at the end of August and early September: Caperton's Ferry, Bridgeport, Shellmound, and Battle Creek. "The crossing of the Tennessee was a great feat," recalled Charles Belknap of the 21st Michigan Infantry. "Bragg's failure to resist in the vicinity of these crossings was due in part to the fact that even after he knew the heads of the columns were across the river, he still inclined to look at their movements as a feint." General Thomas L. Crittenden's force had demonstrated against Chattanooga from the north bank of the Tennessee since August 18th and had convinced Bragg that Rosecrans was going to cross ups

Colonel Emerson Opdycke learned the value of discipline and drill while serving as an officer in the 41 st Ohio under the tutelage of Colonel William B. Hazen. In the summer of 1862, Captain Opdycke was given the chance to raise his own regiment by Governor David Tod, and that regiment became the 125 th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. By the time of the Battle of Chickamauga, the 125 th Ohio had been in service more than nine months but hadn’t yet fought a battle. But Colonel Emerson Opdycke had drilled and trained his men incessantly from the very beginning and few regiments had been better prepared for their first battle than the 125 th Ohio. All of the hard work and training paid off on the afternoon of September 20 th when Opdycke’s regiment earned its sobriquet as the “Ohio Tigers” while fighting atop Snodgrass Hill. The regiment went into action with 16 officers and 298 enlisted men and lost roughly a third of the men that afternoon, but their staunch fighting under the direct ob

       The Battle of Hartsville, Tennessee fought December 7, 1862, ended Colonel Absalom B. Moore’s promising military career. Just a few months removed from civilian life in LaSalle County Illinois, Colonel Moore found himself commanding the green 39 th Brigade consisting of his own 104 th Illinois, the 106 th Ohio, and the 108 th Ohio. He assumed command of the brigade on December 2nd and as his obituary later stated, "it was his misfortune to hold a command for which he was unfitted by reason of inexperience, the want of confidence in the part of many of his officers, and the absence of those military instincts which soldiers recognize and trust."       Moore was a political colonel par excellence. He had moved to Illinois from New Jersey in the mid-1850s and became a successful businessman as an agent for the Illinois Central Railroad. Besides preaching in the Methodist Episcopal Church, Moore favored the nascent Republican Party and was a staunch advocate for Lincol

At 37 years of age, James Tingle was one of the oldest volunteers to join Co. B of the 93 rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry in August of 1862. A veteran of the Mexican War, he was promoted to sergeant on the cusp of the Stones River campaign. It was his first major battle as he related the following story of that campaign in this short memoir which appears on the blog courtesy of my friend Phil Spaugy and the Historical Society of Vandalia-Butler.

       Lieutenant Colonel Christian Poorman was less than a year away from operating the Belmont Chronicle newspaper when he found himself in command of his 98 th Ohio Infantry at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky on October 8, 1862. He noted with pride and sadness the fate of his commanding officer and friend Colonel George Webster in the following letter published in his old newspaper back home.      “Colonel George Webster, commanding the 34 th Brigade, could be seen during the whole afternoon in the thickest of the fight leading his brigade wherever the fight raged the hottest,” he wrote. “He encouraged the men by his presence and advice, making new recruits do the work of veterans, until about 5 o’clock, when he was shot through the small of the back, the ball passing above and near the right hip bone and through his bowels, lodging in front in his left side. He fell from his horse and was carried from the field; his wound was examined by the surgeon, and he was carried to t

History exists beneath our feet if we only take the time to seek it out. This past weekend, I had the opportunity (for the first time) to accompany Stan Hutson for an afternoon of metal detecting in a field located where the opening shots of the Battle of Stones River occurred on the morning of Wednesday, December 31, 1862.  Stan had already worked over the field a few days previously and scored a large chunk of a 12-lb cannon ball and felt the field had more to offer up. “One of things about detecting is that sometimes you have to sift through 150 years of junk to find the good stuff,” he said. “You’d be surprised to see the amount of trash you come across.” Our target field was a located at the intersection of Gresham Lane and Old Fort Parkway in sprawling Murfreesboro, Tennessee next to the RaceTrac gas station; the field was a construction site for a new business which offered a last chance to pick up any relics lying just beneath the surface. The field was covered with grass a

     Lieutenant Colonel David McKee served with the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry and first saw action at Bull Run in July 1861. Promoted to field grade with the 15th Wisconsin in early 1862, he served with the regiment throughout the western theater and gained the reputation as a remarkably brave and capable officer. The day before his demise at Stones River, the St. Louis native worried that he would be killed in action and tried to leave his watch and money with non-combatants.      On the first day of the Stones River campaign, the courage of the 15th Wisconsin was put to the test at Knob Gap near Nolensville, Tennessee. General Alexander McCook's corps had marched south from their camps at Nashville that morning and as morning turned to afternoon, the skies let loose and the troops quickly found themselves tramping along muddy roads. Ahead lay a Confederate cavalry outpost supporting a battery covering Knob Gap, and General Jefferson Davis wanted the guns taken.     " We know th

     John S. Kountz of Maumee, Ohio, an orphan boy of German parents, was just 17 years old when he lost his right leg to amputation at the Battle of Tunnel Hill in November 1863. Two years prior he had been permitted to enlist at age 15 as a drummer in the third German regiment from Ohio, the 37 th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. By the time of Tunnel Hill, the 37th Ohio was serving in General Joseph Lightburn's Second Brigade of Morgan L. Smith's Second Division of the 15th Army Corps.       Musicians usually served as stretcher bearers during a battle but when General William T. Sherman’s force struck General Patrick Cleburne’s entrenched line at Tunnel Hill on November 25, 1863, Kountz grabbed a rifle and served into the ranks until a Confederate bullet slammed into his right leg.      “During the battle I was hit by a rifle ball just above the knee and the wound bled until the ground under me was covered with blood. I became very thirsty, but fortunately had two canteens of

       After having been in service for nearly a year and yet to find a battle, the officers of the 8 th Indiana finally got their chance March 7, 1862 at the Battle of Pea Ridge. The battle had been roaring for an hour when word finally came that it was time for the 8 th Indiana to head for the line, but there was one catch. Orders only called for five companies of the regiment to go.           “Our boys now ceased to look for fun where they were and became clamorous to be led to the field,” recalled First Lieutenant Samuel H. Dunbar of Co. B. "Half our regiment and a section of our battery was ordered out. Colonel Benton proposed to Lieutenant Colonel Shunk that he would take the right wing and Shunk would take the left and they would draw cuts which should go. They did so and Colonel Shunk was successful, and the left wing hurried away. In a short time, it was in the hottest of the fight, being ordered to flank a force that was fighting with fearful effect the 4 th Iowa.”

       The ardor of the 90-day volunteers to mix it up with the Confederates was plainly evident to Private Isaac Ruth Sherwood of the 14 th Ohio in early June 1861. Describing his comrades as “ferocious for a fight” as they moved into western Virginia, the regiment was met by a detachment of Union Home Guards who greeted the arriving Federals with a salute. “Our boys thought themselves attacked by secessionists and the guard stationed upon the engine returned fire. The entire regiment immediately jumped out of the cars, expecting a battle of course. The Home Guard broke and ran which saved their lives,” Sherwood noted.           The subsequent “battle” of Philippi which occurred on June 3, 1861 would hardly qualify as a skirmish in later years. About 3,000 Federals under General George McClellan including three regiments of Indiana troops, two of Unionists Virginians, and the 14 th Ohio conducted an overnight march to attack the Confederate camps around Philippi. Two columns were