Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

       The supply wagons of General Alexander McCook's corps had been sitting near LaVergne for hours on December 30, 1862 awaiting orders to move forward. Ten miles south on the Nashville Pike, the Federal army was closing in on Murfreesboro, but the long hours of waiting made the train guards and teamsters nervous. Shortly after 2 o'clock, things got beautifully worse as Ordnance Sergeant John J. Gallagher of the 81st Indiana later recalled. " About 2 o'clock some of the boys went to the wagons to lay down and take a nap.    As they were fixing to make themselves comfortable, they looked out from the back of the wagons toward the road and beheld a sight that caused their hearts to beat quickly, for as far as they could see there was nothing but the enemy's cavalry galloping about, dressed in the well-known butternut clothing, hooping, yelling and rushing around like madmen in every direction.    The boys seized their guns and ran to the nearest ...

     By April 1862, the 15 th Ohio Infantry had been in service for eight months but had yet to come into contact with the Confederates, but the Buckeyes would get a bellyful of fighting during the afternoon of Monday April 7, 1862, at Shiloh. As part of Colonel William H. Gibson’s brigade of Alexander McCook’s division, the 15 th Ohio had marched all night the day before to arrive at Savannah, Tennessee where they stood in the rain for hours until they boarded a steamboat and crossed over to Pittsburg Landing on the morning of April 7th.           The brigade disembarked around 11 a.m. and, marching at the double quick, raced to the front where they went into action around 1 in the afternoon. The Rebels were waiting. “The balls from the Rebels some 200 yards from us were not only to be heard passing over our heads with their sharp whiz, but to be seen striking the earth at our feet and all surrounding objects. Many of the ...

       In August 1864, General John P. Hatch ordered an expedition from Jacksonville into the interior of Florida to wreck the Gainesville Railroad. Among the troops that participated in the expedition were roughly 200 men from the 75th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. These hard-fighting 11th Army Corps veterans of Second Bull Run , Chancellorsville , and Gettysburg had been sent to South Carolina in the aftermath of their terrible losses at Gettysburg to recoup. The regiment's rest period proved brief, and in early 1864 they were converted into mounted infantry and now found themselves marching through the wilds of Florida.     After three days of marching, the 75th Ohio was brought to heel by a scratch force of Confederate cavalry and militia in the center of Gainesville, Florida. " The inhabitants generally were most intensely secesh and the fairer portion with the incomparable sneer delighted to ring in our ears what proved an unwelcome truth: that preparatio...

       In 1884, Thomas Manning Page wrote his autobiography entitled Bohemian Life, or the Autobiography of a Tramp that gave a whimsical view of his life as a country-roaming urchin in the 1850s and 1860s. Page’s urchin tendencies followed him into the army where he enlisted in Co. C of the 83 rd Ohio while tramping around Cincinnati in the summer of 1862. The Civil War had been going on for months when Page, all of 15 years old and recently kicked out of school for mouthy impertinence, lied about his age and tried to enlist, but recruiters were quick to note his youth and turned him away. Page then learned to beat a drum. “I soon acquired a crude skill that was useful to a class of ambitious gentlemen who in those days were active in the recruiting service,” he wrote. “In this way, I became identified as a warrior wide the foundations of acquaintance with numerous officers. Meanwhile, I was unremitting in my efforts to merge my martial identity with that of a ma...

It was 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 9, 1865. At the Wilmer McLean House near Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, Robert E. Lee, and Ulysses S. Grant had just signed their names to the final surrender terms by which the Army of Northern Virginia laid down their arms and after shaking hands, General Lee mounted Traveler and rode back to the camp of his army. Three hundred miles south of Appomattox, the Federal and Confederate armies in South Carolina clashed one final time near Sumter, South Carolina at a place history barely remembers called Dingle’s Mill. A scratch Confederate force of approximately 200 local militia, mostly elderly men and teenaged boys waged a short but desperate fight against two brigades of Federal troops at a crossing of Turkey Creek four miles south of Sumter. The name of the battle is drawn from the fact that the embankment of the mill dam for Dingle’s Mill formed part of the road into Sumter upon which the Federal forces advanced. The precise location of the graves of ...

     It was the afternoon of January 11, 1863, and after an initial repulse from Fort Hindman, General A.J. Smith rode amongst his troops steeling them for the task ahead.           “There was no panic, nobody was scared, all wondering why we fell back,” recalled Orderly Sergeant Thomas B. Marshall of the 83 rd Ohio. “General A.J. Smith and his staff rode to and fro, pistols in hand, to realign the troops and start them in again and oh how he swore! For artistic and effective profanity, General A.J. Smith had no superior and coming from him, it never sounded wicked. His every word hit the nail on the head while all the air was blue. We soon reformed and moved forward in good order, going to the edge of the slashing and to the top of the little rise. The fort was now in plain sight and the bullets were singing their songs as they flew both ways. We dropped to the ground, loaded, and fired as fast as we could, or when we could...

     The men of the 36 th and 44 th Ohio regiments were just settling down to breakfast in their camp at Lewisburg, Virginia on the morning of May 23, 1862, when a clattering of musketry from the picket line accompanied by the booming of cannon announced that Henry Heth’s Confederates were on the attack.      “ Our men immediately formed in line of battle and the work now began in earnest, which continued for nearly one hour and of as hard fighting as was ever done in so short a space of time,” Chaplain Thomas P. Childs of the 44 th Ohio recalled. “The enemy opened with rifled cannon, aiming at some companies who were pressing over to the line of battle, in which one noble boy was killed, directly in the rear of our wagon yard. But most of their shots appeared to be aimed at our commissary and the wagon train which was being put in order. The shells buzzed over our heads and burst all around us for 15-20 minutes in a manner somewhat new to most of us. ...

  The arrow corps badge of the 17th Army Corps was worn by many members of the 68th Ohio in the latter days of the war.       Private Edward A. Bigelow of Co. F of the 68th Ohio Volunteer Infantry wrote this brief account of the Battle of Atlanta just two days afterwards to his father back home in Henry County, Ohio. The regiment formed a part of Colonel Robert K. Scott's three regiment all-Ohio brigade consisting of the 20th, 68th, and 78th regiments, being designated the Second Brigade of the Third Division of Frank Blair's 17th Army Corps. Bigelow's letter originally appeared in the Napoleon Press newspaper and was copied in the Toledo Daily Commercial which was providential as no known copies exist today of the wartime Napoleon Press.  

     158 years ago today, Major General James Birdseye McPherson lost his life in the opening stages of the Battle of Atlanta. The 35-year-old native of Clyde, Ohio was then in command of the Army of the Tennessee and his death made him the highest ranking Federal officer killed during the Civil War. A widely beloved and respected figure within the army, the news of McPherson's death so impacted General Ulysses S. Grant, then fighting Robert E. Lee around Petersburg, Virginia, that Grant reportedly retired to his tent and sobbed like a child.   General James B. McPherson's monument in McPherson Cemetery in Clyde is easily seen from busy U.S. 20 highway which runs along the southside of the cemetery. It is a striking monument and bears a remarkable resemblance to McPherson; he stands in dress uniform pointing to the west with his field glasses in hand.       McPherson's body was recovered on the afternoon of July 22, 1864 ( see story here ) an...

       The 14 th Ohio Battery had a long history of service with the Army of the Tennessee stretching back to its baptism of fire on the first day of Shiloh . By the time of the Atlanta campaign, the northeastern Ohio battery had become attached to the artillery battalion of the Fourth Division of the 16 th Army Corps and fought in innumerable engagements during that campaign, but its tightest spot came on July 22 nd , 1864, when it fought in the Battle of Atlanta. Rushed to reinforce the 17 th Army Corps line near Bald Hill, the battery galloped into position just as the Confederate debouched from a ravine aiming to strike the flank of the Union army. “Hardly had these dispositions been made when the detestable gray jackets came pouring up through the ravine, deploying to our left, when they were greeted with a shower of shells from our pieces; a moment later and they came rolling up in our front and to the right in three lines where they received a like recept...

  “It may be true, as the clerks who reflect the opinions entertained in high official circles declare, that the day for old fogies like Lee, Beauregard, and Johnston is past, and the time has come for young men of the Dick Taylor, Hoke, and Hood stamp to lead our armies to Napoleonic victories.” ~ Richmond Whig

       “The great struggle for Atlanta has now fairly begun and its first sanguinary scenes have already transpired,” wrote Captain Alfred E. Lee of the 82 nd Ohio the day after the Battle of Peachtree Creek. “On yesterday occurred the most bloody and obstinate battle which this army has yet fought during the campaign. Almost the entire Army of the Cumberland was engaged, but perhaps on no portion of the line was the battle so fierce and so hot as along that part occupied by General Hooker’s Corps.” The three divisions of the 20 th Army Corps under General Joseph Hooker had moved into line on the left of the 14 th Army Corps south of Peachtree Creek and expected to be among the first Federal troops to march into Atlanta. As the men rested atop a ridge, Captain Lee, as assistant adjutant general on the staff of Colonel James S. Robinson in John Geary’s Second Division, had a front row seat to how the generals reacted once it became clear that a fight was imminent...

       For Lieutenant Lyman U. Humphrey of the 76 th Ohio, the fighting at Taylor’s Ridge near Ringgold, Georgia on November 27, 1863, was close, hot, and deadly. Tasked with pursuing Braxton Bragg’s retreating Army of Tennessee, the 76 th Ohio was surprised to find the Confederates entrenched atop Taylor’s Ridge near Ringgold Gap and determined to put up a fight. The regiment had started up the hill when “we saw them closing around us and pouring an enfilading fire on our flanks, but we determined not to give back, and stood there and fought them almost hand to hand,” Humphrey wrote in a letter to his mother. “I saw a big Rebel behind a tree grab one of our men and tear the haversack off of him, just then one of our fellows shot the Rebel and the prisoner came back to us. We were so close that a Rebel picked up a stone and hit one of our men, hurting him severely. And so hot was the fire that both the color bearers were shot down and every color guard was either...

     The following account of the July 18 th , 1863, assault on Battery Wagner was written by Felix Gregory DeFontaine, then working as the war correspondent for the Charleston Daily Courier. DeFontaine, a native of Boston, was the first reporter to dispatch the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 and enamored with Charleston and its people, he cast his allegiances with the new Southern Confederacy. He married a Charleston belle named Georgia Vigneron Moore, the daughter of Reverend George Washington Moore who would die just a few weeks after DeFontaine wrote his account.           Writing under the pen name of “Personne,” DeFontaine’s riveting account is reproduced below from three dispatches published in the July 20 th , July 21 st , and July 22 nd editions of the Charleston Daily Courier . Personne’s articles were widely copied throughout the Confederacy and represent some of the finest war reporting of the conflict.

     The battle still raged at Battery Wagner as Captain Luis Emilio, the ranking surviving officer of the 54 th Massachusetts, rallied the battered survivors of the failed charge behind a sand embankment. The regiment had suffered grievously: Colonel Shaw was missing and presumed dead, hundreds of men were missing, at least 50 more had returned with wounds ranging from the trivial to the ghastly, and the pride of the regiment, its state and national colors were missing. One of the color guards had managed to bring off the staff of the state colors, but the silk flag itself was missing. Out of the gloom, the men of the regiment spied a man stumbling towards the line carrying a flag; to their surprise, they found that it was Sergeant William H. Carney of Co. C bringing back the national colors of the 54 th through a hail of bullets and shells. The Virginia-born sergeant had been wounded once in the left hip, once in the right leg, once through the chest, once more thro...

     The story of the 62 nd Ohio in the assault on Fort Wagner is one rarely told; as a matter of fact, the regiment could be known as one of Ohio’s “silent” regiments. Despite serving nearly four years and witnessing combat everywhere in the eastern theater from First Kernstown all the way to Appomattox, correspondence and accounts from this regiment are rather scarce. Throughout the war, the 62 nd Ohio served alongside the 67 th Ohio , a regiment who more than made up for the 62 nd ’s silence by being incredibly prolific with their writings.           In the assault on Wagner, the 62 nd Ohio sustained its highest losses of the war losing 19 officers and 156 enlisted men killed, wounded, or missing, including its commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Clemens F. Steele and Adjutant Daniel C. Liggett. This represented 175 men out of the 320 who took part in the assault, a casualty rate of nearly 55%. Casualties among the o...

     Several months after Gettysburg, Adjutant Alanson Crosby of the 154th New York explained to a friend how he came to be captured on the first day of battle along with most of his regiment during the fight at Kuhn's brickyard .       " Before we got into line, a murderous fire was poured into our ranks from a Rebel brigade concealed in a wheat field close at hand," he wrote. "Nothing daunted, they formed in line, advanced, and opened the battle with great energy. The enemy advanced in splendid style, and swung their left wing, which extended far beyond our right, gradually around, until we were handsomely flanked. Not a man flinched or gave an inch to the overwhelming force opposed to them. There they stood, firm as the pyramids, fighting with the desperation of a forlorn hope, a murderous fire all the time raking them in front and flank. The enemy was gradually closing in upon us, and to remain longer was certain capture. The order to fall back was...

       In the autumn of 1863, Major Lewis D. Warner of the 154 th New York arrived in Tennessee as part of the movement of the 11 th and 12 th Army Corps from the Army of the Potomac to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland. "The corps which could steal mit Blenker, fight mit Sigel, and run mit Howard, can dig like 'ter tyvel' as the Dutchmen say," and soon were given the chance to do just that.  By early November, his regiment was firmly in place in the Lookout Valley building a corduroy road over which supplies for the army would flow into Chattanooga. During this period of road construction, Major Warner took the opportunity to study the civilian inhabitants of the region and recorded, with dismay, their wretched living conditions. “In personal appearance, there is the same sallow complexion, the same expressionless countenance, the same evidence of the most abject poverty, and of an aimless life, with no aspiration above the mere qualification of physica...

       Orderly Sergeant Charles Henry Paddock of Co. C of the 157 th New York Volunteers had just rejoined his regiment on the afternoon of July 1, 1863 outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, arriving just in time to be on the receiving end of the Confederate assault that broke the 11 th Army Corps and drove it through town.           “There was a single brigade against the 157 th at a very short distance,” he wrote to his brother. “Seeing that it was useless to stand against such odds, we were ordered to retreat, and we fell back out of immediate range. I got pretty near the town, where I was helping carry Adjutant Henry, when a ball came hitting two of us, and we were obliged to leave him in the edge of the town. There were but six men of my company left including officers. The colonel was there and the colors all right. I was so tired that I could not stand up. Seeing the Rebels were getting in the south part of the ...

     In the wake of the Federal defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, the War Department decided to send two army corps from the Army of the Potomac west to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland. Veterans of Rosecrans' army would later ask why this step wasn't taken a month earlier and its interesting to speculate how different Chickamauga might have turned out with the 11th and 12th Army Corps on the field. But as it was, the two corps set out from Virginia in the waning days of September and arrived in theater during the first weeks of October.     Major Lewis Warner of the 154th New York was among those troops who traveled west. Two letters are featured below courtesy of the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center. His first letter provides a detailed description of the rail journey from Virginia to Bridgeport, Alabama while the second details the march of his regiment into Lookout Valley with a brief description of its first engagement in t...

       In the closing stages of the Battle of Opequon, Lieutenant Colonel Winsor B. French halted his 77 th New York in the Old Stone Presbyterian Church graveyard near Winchester, Virginia. Walking among the graves, he discovered one that reminded him of his regimental hometown in New York and of the “mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave” that connected the Revolutionary War with the Civil War. At his feet lay the grave of Revolutionary War hero General Daniel Morgan, considered one of the finest tacticians of that war. Morgan won his laurels in upstate New York in the fall of 1777, leading the 500-man Provisional Rifle Corps, often called Morgan’s Sharpshooters, during the Continental victories at Saratoga and Bemis Heights.   Colonel French could remember the 77th New York's original regimental colors to visualize the deep connection between the regiment with the Morgan and the battles at Saratoga. The Tiffany-made fl...

    It was Sunday May 3rd 1863 and  Private Israel A. Kurtz of the 119th Pennsylvania had visions of marching on Richmond as his regiment marched over Marye's Heights and headed west on the Plank Road. " I had almost begun to fancy what the steeples of Richmond would look like for up to this time we had been grossly deceived with regard to the operations of the army on the right: having been told every day that Hooker was driving the enemy, and it only remained to capture their trains," he wrote. "Suddenly we were brought to a halt, and soon discovered that a Rebel battery was planted at a point commanding the road for a long distance—and so favorable was its position that our artillery could not be brought to bear upon it except with great danger."     The Sixth Army Corps under Major General John Sedgwick had marched west to join the rest of the Army of the Potomac then fighting near Chancellorsville. Robert E. Lee, aware of the danger that Sedgwick posed, dis...

     It was nearly midnight on October 28th 1863 when the long roll beat in the camps of the two divisions of the 11th Army Corps near Wauhatchie, Tennessee. The men had that day completed a long march from Bridgeport, Tennessee with the aims of opening a land-based supply line for the besieged Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. The sounds of gunfire and cannonading to their south came as a great surprise; night attacks during the war were almost unheard of.       " Late that night an attack was made on Geary's division, of the Twelfth Corps, who had encamped about three miles in our rear," recalled an officer of the 136th New York. "General Howard ordered the Eleventh Corps to return to the aid of General Geary. The men turned out promptly and the brigade was soon on the road. When within one and one-half miles of Geary's camp, it was found that the Rebels had taken possession of a hill, at the base of which the road passed on which our troops wer...

       The closing moments of the Battle of Gettysburg proved fatal for Private Richard Youell of Co. C of the 136 th New York.       “He passed unharmed through all danger until about 4 o'clock of Friday, July 3 rd ,” recalled Lieutenant Edward E. Sill as he described Youell’s death to his father. “He, with his comrades from our regiment, was in the advance, skirmishing, when the enemy charged on our works. He was fighting manfully when he received his fatal wound. He was struck by a rifle ball, which lodged in his bowels. When hit he dropped his gun, placed both hands upon his wound and exclaimed, "I am shot" when he turned and walked off the field. He was temporarily placed in the cellar of a brick house on the field. He was cheerful and seemed grateful for the attention shown him. As we met, he smiled, and extending his hand we bade each other farewell. I was conscious he would not survive his wound.”       ...

       After serving the better part of two years with the 27 th Pennsylvania and fighting alongside them at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Major Lewis D. Warner of the 154 th New York was hardly surprised at the Pennsylvania Germans’ faltering performance when ordered to storm Rocky Face Ridge on May 8, 1864.           “As we neared the summit, the fire from above became more fatal, and the 27 th Pennsylvania halted and utterly refused to advance,” he wrote. “This regiment claimed that their time had expired and were bold in declaring that they would not fight. I will here state that the failure of the 27 th to come to time enabled the enemy to turn his whole attention to us, and the 154 th was exposed to a deadly fire, not only from its front, but from the right flank. The 27 th Pennsylvania should not have been ordered in where anything depended upon them, as they (never very reliable) are now very much disaff...