Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

       At the conclusion of the Chickamauga campaign, it was decided to dispatch the 15 th Army Corps under General William T. Sherman across country to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland then besieged at Chattanooga. The march took more than a month to complete, and the First Division under General Peter Osterhaus arrived last at the tail end of the column in mid November 1863.           The 31 st Iowa celebrated their first year in the service while making this march and Captain Robert B. Speer kept his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa fully apprised as to the progress. Speer’s frequent letters to the Cedar Falls Gazette came about a bit accidentally; when Co. B left the state in the fall of 1862, George Perkins, the current editor of the newspaper, laid aside his pen and went into the ranks as a private and took on the task of correspondent. But within a few months, Perkins became very ill and eventually would be discharged and Captain Speer rather reluctantly took on the job. H

The 18 th Georgia, serving in the famous Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia, captured two stands of Federal colors during its two days of action of the Second Battle of Bull Run. The Georgians captured their first set of colors, belonging to the 24 th New York of Hatch’s Brigade, during a furious hand-to-hand fight on the evening of August 29, 1862, an incident “scarcely heard of” but was “ certainly one of the most daring and brilliant of the series of fights which resulted in the great victory for our arms on the 30 th ,” a veteran of the 18 th later wrote. “At the distance of three-quarters of a mile they came upon a brigade of the enemy posted in a ravine in an open field. The night was so dark that they were not discovered until they opened fire which they did at a distance of about ten paces. The Texans returned it with fine effect and with a yell they closed upon them with the bayonet. How shall I describe the scene which followed? A hand-to-hand conflict is awful

       John Pope’s Army of Virginia had been battering at Stonewall Jackson’s line all day of August 29 th and while it had enjoyed some small successes, they had been unable to break the Confederate hold. John Pope turned to General Phil Kearny, one of the best fighters in the Army of the Potomac, and ordered him to punch through Jackson’s line. Kearny chose to make the attack with about 2,700 men from his division, among them the veteran 3 rd Michigan Volunteer Infantry. Going into action with 233 men under the command of Colonel Stephen G. Champlin, still recovering from a wound sustained at Fair Oaks a few months before, the Wolverines plunged into the woods, intent on besting Maxcy Gregg’s South Carolinians.           “The enemy opened upon the little advancing band with a front and a flanking fire, while strange and unaccountable as it may seem yet it is no less true, that the 63 rd Pennsylvania on the left of the railroad which should have supported our left flank, poured i

       Two days before his regiment’s baptism of fire at Brawner’s Farm, Private Hank Gaylord of the 19 th Indiana wrote home while in camp upon the Cedar Mountain battlefield. The camp stunk to high heaven- unburied horses and men lay strewn in the area.           “When we first came here yesterday, a detail of ten men from each company was taken for the purpose of carrying rails to pile on the dead horses and burn them, and to decently bury many of the soldiers, some of whom were not put into the ground at all, but simply covered with a little straw and earth. We have had some awful hot weather lately, but now it is quite comfortable in the daytime and rather cold during the night,” he wrote.           The following day, the 19 th Indiana would march out of camp to pursue Stonewall Jackson’s troops who had stolen a march on John Pope’s army and taken positions near the old Bull Run battlefield. On the night of August 28 th , the 19 th Indiana as part of General John Gibbon’s F

       The charge of the 3 rd Iowa Infantry across Davis Bridge over the Hatchie River on October 5, 1862, proved to be one of the highlights of that regiment’s extensive combat service during the Civil War. “General Stephen Hurlbut, as cool as if on review, placed himself at the head of the 3 rd Iowa and led the way across the bridge,” one veteran recorded. “We passed the raking fire that swept in front of the bridge, the shot crashing into the buildings on either side of the road. On we passed across the bridge at the double quick, the boys keeping well closed up and cheering. Across the bridge we came to another open space where we seemed to receive the full fire of the batteries loaded with canister shot. As we passed the bridge, the Generals found that if we charged upon their batteries from that point, we should receive the full fire of their troops stationed along the banks of the river in a thick jungle and amid the crash of artillery and musketry, it was impossible to orde

       The fighting in the Miller Cornfield during the Battle of Antietam is remembered as some of the bitterest combat of the war, and on the Confederate side is largely remembered as a fight of the Texas Brigade. However, the Texans didn’t fight alone in the Miller Cornfield; they fought alongside both Hampton’s South Carolina Legion and the subject of today’s post, the 18 th Georgia, both members of Colonel William T. Wofford’s brigade of Hood’s Division.           The Georgians, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Solon Z. Ruff, went into action at Antietam with 176 men and in that killing field lost 101, a casualty rate of 57%. Less than a week after the battle, an unknown soldier of the 18 th Georgia writing under the nom-de-plume of “Potomac” penned a superb account of the 18 th Georgia’s role in both Second Manassas and Antietam for the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper. Potomac’s missive first saw publication on page two of the October 11 th , 1862, edition of t

       Sergeant John T. Boggs of the 3 rd Iowa had fought for hours defending the Union line that ran through the Sarah Bell cotton field and peach orchard, but as daylight faded, he saw that his brigade was being flanked left and right, and that it was high time to retreat.           “The Rebels had driven our lines back some four miles already and things began to look rather gloomy. Captain Smith took command and ordered our retreat. It was just in time, too, to save our bacon- it was every man for himself. When I got to our camp the Rebels were on two sides of it. This took me by surprise, and I thought I was a gone goose. But I had good faith in my running qualities and said to myself, here goes it. With musket in hand and my neck stretched out like a sand hill crane, I started through a heavy crossfire from the Rebel musketry. At every jump I thought it would be my last. I could see men fall all around me and before I reached the brush some cuss shot at my long-legged boots, th

     Captain Frederick W. Keil of the 35th Ohio looked back on the battles for Chattanooga as a time where his regiment and comrades in the Army of the Cumberland proved to General U.S. Grant that they could fight. Keil commented rather acidly in the regimental history how Grant had commented to Sherman that "Thomas' army had been so demoralized by the battle of Chickamauga that he feared they could not be got out of their trenches to assume the assume the offensive.' This stricture was wholly uncalled for and highly unjust. A more determined and pluckier set of men than those found in the trenches at Chattanooga never shouldered a musket," Keil noted. "Braver men with stouter hearts never wore the blue and these men needed no Army of the Tennessee to show them how to fight."    Among those who made the charge at Mission Ridge was Private Patrick C. Hathaway of Co. A. He reported that his brigade was " in the advance but were not in any order whatever

       It was October 6, 1862, in the town of Bolivar, Tennessee that Surgeon William Morrow Beach of the 78 th Ohio attended to yet another amputation case. Casualties from the Battle of Davis or Hatchie Bridge continued to be brought into town for treatment and the young man brought into the hospital had an awful wound. “His right leg had been badly shattered and torn by a musket shot so as to render amputation unavoidable,” Beach later wrote. “He was informed of such necessity, but not a murmur or word of complaint escaped his lips. There was but a soldierly submission, a heroic submission without a question or a sigh.”           Sergeant William C. Newton of Co. G of the 3 rd Iowa Infantry was Beach’s new patient. A native of Ohio and resident of Winterset, Iowa, this marked the second time Newton had been wounded during the war. He sustained his first wound six months earlier on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh. “He indulged freely in conversation respecting the operation

Lieutenant Colonel David McKee of the 15 th Wisconsin was perplexed by the blundering evident at the Battle of Perryville and appalled at the butchery.           “The slaughter had been terrible on both sides,” he wrote. “I have no means of ascertaining the number of killed or wounded on either side, but I have no doubt it reaches into the thousands. The amount of good accomplished in this battle is unknown. True we have killed and wounded many men, but some great want in either judgement or loyalty on the part of the managers of this army in failing to make a complete and annihilating victory out of what now remains but a barren success certainly exists."           The 15 th Wisconsin, primarily comprised of Norwegians and other Scandinavians, was part of Colonel William P. Carlin’s 31 st Brigade of General Robert B. Mitchell’s Ninth Division of General Charles Gilbert’s Third Army Corps. The division stood in ranks less than a mile away from McCook’s corps and witnessed i

Charles Hamilton Bacon, a private serving in the Cumberland Grays (Co. F) of the 3 rd New Jersey Volunteer Infantry, was the West Jersey Pioneer’s regular army correspondent. The 32-year-old father of five had been working as a roller in Bridgeton, New Jersey when he joined the Grays in 1861, and soon after taking the field he commenced sending back a superb letters detailing his army experiences. As discussed on John Banks’ blog , Charles was killed in action September 14, 1862, during the Battle of Crampton’ Gap, Maryland and was buried under an elm tree on the Jacob Goodman farm, land now preserved by the American Battlefield Trust. Among Charles’ final missives are the two letters below describing his regiment’s experiences during the Seven Days battles in June 1862, starting with the Battle of Mechanicsville on June 26 th through Malvern Hill on July 1 st . The 3 rd New Jersey was part of the First Brigade (George W. Taylor) of the First Division (Henry Slocum) of General Wi

       “Rumors have gone forth and some of them have been published making matters much worse than I have detailed them,” one correspondent wrote to the Atlanta Southern Confederacy in the days after the Battle of Corinth. “The future is dark in this part of the country, and I fear other reserves are in store for us, including the loss of much ground now held by us.”           Newspapers throughout the South, starved for news about the events at Corinth in October 1862 took to republishing articles from Northern newspapers but occasionally a word from a direct participant made the pages. The Mobile Register & Advertiser took a more personal route by conducting direct interviews with soldiers on leave from Price and Van Dorn’s army. One of those soldiers was Colonel John W. Portis of the 42 nd Alabama Infantry. Private Patrick McGlynn, Co. H, 42nd Alabama Infantry (Photo courtesy of Stan Hutson)           Portis’ regiment had been devastated at Corinth. Assigned to General Jo

In the aftermath of defeat at the Second Battle of Corinth, questions were raised within the rank and file of the Confederate army as to who was to blame for the disaster. One correspondent who served in a Missouri regiment of General Louis Hebert’s division was sure it wasn’t his fellow Missourians. “The plan of attack for Saturday morning was that the whole Confederate line should, at a given signal, move forward and attack the enemy’s works so that the different wings of our army should mutually support each other. The left wing (General Price) was to open the battle by a cannonade; and then, at the same moment, a charge along our whole line was to be made. General Price did open the engagement as directed. The left wing held the position it had so nobly won for 40 minutes. Had this part of our lines been promptly and adequately supported by corresponding action on our right, Corinth was ours. The left wing, at least the Missouri part of it, had worked up to time and up to contrac

     The “Lady Richardson” was a 20-lb steel Parrott rifle that belonged to Battery D of the 1 st Missouri Light Artillery under Captain Henry Richardson. The battery was assigned to the artillery battalion of General Thomas Davies’ Second Division of the Army of West Tennessee, and was a veteran unit, having fought previously at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and during the siege of Corinth. The gun, with its name emblazoned in white paint on the reinforcing band of the tube, was captured at Oliver’s Hill on October 3, 1862, during the Second Battle of Corinth, Mississippi, but multiple claims were made after the battle regarding who actually captured the cannon. Tom Parson, a Park Ranger at the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center explained that “Richardson’s Battery was in the thick of the fighting during the Battle of Corinth. Early in the morning of October 3 rd the four guns, all 20 pounders, were unlimbered on Oliver’s Hill about 2 ½ miles from downtown [Corinth]. Eventually the ou

At the end of the Battle of Williamsburg, Captain J. Howard Willetts of the 7 th New Jersey counted himself as lucky to be alive. The 27-year-old physician had lost 14 of the 23 men he led into battle that day and counted six bullet holes through his clothing.   “I was struck on the hand while carrying Sergeant Clark’s musket for a moment, cutting the musket almost in two pieces; but, strange to say, it only scratched the skin on my hand,” he relayed in a letter to his mother. “I was struck once in the breast fair over my left lung. The ball struck a large brass button on my overcoat and carried it clear through two thicknesses and my dress coat, heavily padded, on through my vest and two shirts and just broke the skin on my breast. Bullet number 3 struck my hip but had passed through one of my men, killing him, and was spent before hitting me; it only bruised me. Two more were put through my coat, and one struck my foot, cutting my boot, but did not touch the flesh.” The fighting

In a war in which brother fought brother and father fought son, it is to be expected that fathers and sons would fall on the same field as was the case with two soldiers from Wisconsin, Charles, and William Fulks from Co. H of the 7 th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade. At 43 years old, Charles was one of the oldest lieutenants in the regiment; his son William Henry Fulks hadn’t yet turned 18 when he enlisted in Co. H along with his father back in June 1861. The two men went off to war together and their 7 th Wisconsin became part of the Army of the Potomac’s famed Iron Brigade, seeing action at Gainesville, Second Bull Run, Antietam , and Chancellorsville . The 7th Wisconsin went into action late in the morning of July 1 st at the Battle of Gettysburg as the leading element of the First Corps under General John Reynolds. The regiment first fought General James Archer’s brigade near the Herbst Woods and this was where Charles was struck in the mouth by a bullet, the projectile pass

  “A new recruit I had issued a gun the day before the fight was dead with a firm grasp on his gun, the bayonet of which was broken in three pieces. So, they fought and died, defending the cause that we revere.” ~ Second Lieutenant Matthew M. Miller, Co. I, 9 th Louisiana Infantry (African Descent)   Matthew M. Miller was finishing his final year at Yale when the Civil War began in 1861. The Galena, Illinois native returned home where he enlisted in the 45 th Illinois Infantry, taking his place among the high privates of Co. C in early 1862.   He first saw action at Fort Donelson and two months later at Shiloh. A year and a half later, now Corporal Miller was given a chance to partake in an army experiment; he would be placed on temporary assignment as a lieutenant in command of a company of black troops. The genesis of the 9 th Louisiana Infantry (African Descent) goes back to the Emancipation Proclamation which took effect throughout the states considered in a state of rebel

       It was like a nightmare that happened in slow motion. Corporal Erastus Winters was in line with his comrades of the 50 th Ohio on the afternoon of November 30, 1864 near Franklin, Tennessee when he spied two Federal brigades in their front breaking for the rear. As the mass of troops converged on his position, Winters nor his comrades could fire for fear of striking their own men. “The Rebs, quick to see their advantage, raised the cry, ‘Let’s go in with them! Let’s go in with them!’ So the rush for the center of our main line became a confused mass of blue and gray, wedge-shaped, entering our works at the pike and pressing outward to the right and left of the pike, overwhelming the 50 th Ohio and a part of Reilly’s brigade. They swarmed through the works on the pike and over the works on top of us, Yank and Reb together. I heard Lieutenant Pine say, ‘Boys, we have to get out of here!’ A glance shows me the colors going back and I think its time to go, but I am too late. A b

       “Skirmish fighting often requires as great courage and stubborn staying qualities as it does to face a line of glistening steel or face death by charging a battery of death-dealing guns,” Corporal Erastus Winter of the 50 th Ohio wrote in 1905. Corporal Winters found the intense skirmish fighting that marked the opening months of the Atlanta campaign as “a rather new experience for us and we found it quite different from guarding railroad bridges back in Kentucky and Tennessee. While it is true that skirmishers have the right to shield themselves behind trees, stumps, logs, or any other object that presents itself to them, yet in advancing on the foe through open fields, very seldom anything of that kind comes in the way; there is only the body of the soldier to stop the ball of the deadly sharpshooter or to arrest the progress of the ragged fragments of the bursting shells. And a soldier must also be well blessed with courage and grit to advance through the woods and underbrus

       The night after his vessel’s epic engagement with the C.S.S. Virginia off Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862, Lieutenant Samuel Dana Greene of the U.S.S. Monitor , despite being up for more than two days, couldn’t bring himself to sleep. “I had been up so long, had had so little rest and been under such a state of excitement that my nervous system was completely run down. Every bone in my body ached. My limbs and joints were so sore that I could not stand. My nerves and muscles twitched as though electric shocks were continually passing through them and my head ached as if it would burst. Sometimes I thought my brain would come right out over my eyebrows. I laid down and tried to sleep, but I might as well have tried to fly,” he wrote.      His mind was consumed with the battle. Events had reached a crisis point at around noon that day when Lieutenant Greene was summoned to see his captain, John L. Worden. “I went forward, and there stood as noble a man as lives, at the foot of the

       The following letter, reproduced from Ebenezer Hannaford’s regimental history of the 6 th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, was written by Second Lieutenant James F. Meline of Co. H. I arrived at Meline’s authorship through a process of elimination. Hannaford simply heads this missive as “an officer’s letter” and states that it was “a private letter from one of its bravest and most intelligent subalterns” but gives no other clues. In the middle of the letter, the author mentions the wounding of Captain Tinker who is referred to as “my captain.” That would be Captain Henry H. Tinker of Co. H who badly wounded and left for dead, only to return to the regiment as a paroled man ten days later. So, the letter was written by one of Co. H’s lieutenants- a quick check of the state roster for the 6 th O.V.I. shows that the company had two lieutenants at that time- First Lieutenant Joseph L. Antram and Second Lieutenant James F. Meline. There were no other clues as to the author’s identity withi

     Despite being in intense pain from his own wounds, Captain Jules J. Montagnier of the 6 th Ohio performed the melancholy task that fell to company commanders during the Civil War of notifying the next of kin of the death of one of the men under his command.           Montagnier, born in Cincinnati in 1835 to a French veteran of Napoleon’s army, had been educated at St. Xavier’s College in Cincinnati then went into the newspaper trade, working as a typographer for the Cincinnati Enquirer and later editing the largest circulating Know-Nothing organ of southern Indiana. The outbreak of the war found him back in Cincinnati as a member of the old Guthrie Gray Battalion, and Montagnier was among the first to respond to Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion.           Montagnier, commissioned a second lieutenant in Co. G, would progressively rise to the rank of captain and saw action with the 6 th Ohio throughout the western theater, including Shiloh, Ston

       The 104 th Ohio Infantry marched onto the field at Utoy Creek, Georgia on August 6 th , 1864, soaked after spending the night in a drizzling rain and with the criticism of their fellow Buckeye soldiers stinging in their ears. This occurred the night before when the troops of Milo Hascall’s Second Division of the 23 rd Corps were called upon to drive a line of Confederates from the front of General Jacob Cox’s Third Division to which the 104 th Ohio was attached. “In the long campaign through which we had passed, General Cox’s division of our corps frequently found the enemy in its front too strong to be readily dislodged, whereupon our division moved through its lines and drove the enemy before us so easily the wonder was why we have been called upon for assistance,” recalled Captain Wesley S. Thurstin of the 111 th Ohio of Hascall’s division. “This treatment of our division had become so marked of late that when upon this movement, we marched through the entrenchments thr

       The Army of the Cumberland spent Tuesday, December 30, 1862 maneuvering into position facing Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee northwest of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It proved to be hot work, particularly for Alexander McDowell McCook’s wing which forced its way into positions south of the Wilkinson Pike and paralleling Gresham Lane. The sun had already set when Captain William Wiles, Rosecrans’ provost marshal, ordered  James H. Woodard to ride along the army’s front lines and report what he observed. Woodard, in this 1892 account, provides his personal experiences and discussions with the commanders of the McCook’s corps and provides valuable insights into the mindset of Generals McCook, Sheridan, Johnson, Willich, and Sill on the night before the battle. Just before sunrise, he took breakfast with General Willich who Woodard found unconcerned about a Rebel attack. “I found General Willich about half past 5 in the morning sitting by a campfire, drinking some coffee, and he as