Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

L ieutenant James H. Fraser’s 50 th Alabama stepped out on the morning of Sunday, September 20, 1863, at Chickamauga eager to get into the fight with the Yankees and determined to not let Longstreet and his Virginia veterans “get all the glory of whipping Rosy.”           “Early in the morning of Sunday the 20 th , we were called to attention, the roll was called, and every man answered “here” loud and lively,” Fraser wrote to his father a week later. “But how many brave soldiers who were then full of life and hope lie cold and stiff in a soldier’s grave with nothing around them but a soldier’s blanket. We made a new graveyard, Pa, and then filled it with our own brave dead.”           Lieutenant Fraser’s detailed account of the fighting on September 20 th first saw publication in the October 8, 1905, edition of the Montgomery Advertiser , being shared with the newspaper by the Joseph E. Johnston chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Athens, Alabama, Fraser’s home

C aptured on the second day of the Battle of Chickamauga, Sergeant Samuel S. Boggs of the 21 st Illinois had survived 18 months imprisonment in some of the worst camps throughout the South: Libby, Belle Isle, Danville, Andersonville, and now at Florence, South Carolina. Attached to the hospital squad, he remained at Florence when many of the haggard survivors moved off to another camp at Goldsborough.           “We of the hospital squad stayed with the sick and gathered from in the prison all the sick we could put under our sheds and arranged the balance so we could give them water,” he wrote. “They were decreasing rapidly by death. The Rebels told us if we would take an oath not to go beyond the stockade, they would take off the guards. We consented, glad to get rid of those murderers and then swore not to hold conversation with the Negroes or slaves and not go beyond the limits of the stockade. The nurses counseled together and agreed to stay with the sick as it would not be long

“Stonewall Jackson had dark gray eyes full of strength and depth of expression. They seemed to look through a man and discern his thoughts at a glance.” ~ Colonel William C. Oates, 15 th Alabama

I n the summer of 1936, the Richmond Palladium-Item newspaper serialized the wartime diaries belonging to Corporal Maurice J. Williams of the 36 th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.   Williams proved to be a remarkably consistent diarist, his entries covering nearly every day from his enlistment on September 23, 1861 to nearly two years later as his regiment was marching through northern Georgia en route to Williams’ end on the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga. He possessed a good eye for the details of army life that make his diary refreshing and enlightening reading.           One of the more interesting passages in Williams’ diary discussed the march of his division to Pittsburg Landing and participation in the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. General William Nelson’s division departed their camp near Nashville, Tennessee on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1862. “Everything looks bright and happy as we are marching on what is called the Old Military Road to the Tennessee River,” Wil

P ickett's Charge has been traditionally presented as the high point of Confederate fortunes in the East; as a matter of fact, a monument denoting the High Water Mark of the Confederacy is located at the Copse of Trees to mark the furthest penetration of Union lines during the ill-fated attack of July 3, 1863. In this two-part series, we'll examine accounts from two officers who participated in the action: one who wore the blue, and one who wore the gray.      In the second part of the series, we'll examine the reminiscences of Captain Henry Thewat Owen who served in Co. C of the 18th Virginia. The 18th Virginia served in General Richard Garnett's all-Virginia brigade of General Pickett's division and anyone familiar with the film Gettysburg and it's depiction of Pickett's Charge will instantly recognize much of Captain Owen's story.  18 th Virginia Infantry, Garnett’s Brigade, Pickett’s Division, First Corps (Longstreet) Captain Henry T. Owen, Co.

P ickett's Charge has been traditionally presented as the high point of Confederate fortunes in the East; as a matter of fact, a monument denoting the High Water Mark of the Confederacy is located at the Copse of Trees to mark the furthest penetration of Union lines during the ill-fated attack of July 3, 1863. In this two-part series, we'll examine accounts from two officers who participated in the action: one who wore the blue, and one who wore the gray.       In the first part of the series, we'll examine an account from an unnamed officer of the 14th Connecticut. This regiment, part of Colonel Thomas Smyth's Second Brigade of Alexander Hays' Third Division of the 2nd Army Corps, was arrayed along the right center of the Federal line on Cemetery Ridge. As reported by the regiment's commanding officer Major Theodore G. Ellis, the 14th Connecticut went into action with approximately 160 men and lost a total of 66 (10 killed, 52 wounded, 4 missing).       However

T he fighting at Fox's Gap on September 14, 1862, marked the end of the road for Joseph Joel of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The Ohioan was struck five times, including once through the lung, when his regiment charged against a Confederate line arrayed behind a stone wall. As he surveyed the landscape, he saw the field carpeted with his comrades including his beloved regimental commander Rutherford B. Hayes.       Joel remembered that " Lieutenant Colonel Hayes was struck by a musket ball just above the elbow of his left arm, carrying away the entire width of bone. Fearing an artery was cut, he asked a soldier to tie a handkerchief above the wound, but he was soon obliged to lie down. In a few moments, he got up and began giving directions, but owing to faintness, was compelled to lie down again. Fearing the enemy would flank the regiment, he ordered Co. H to wheel backward and face the threatened attack and the whole line gradually fell back to the edge of the woods unde

A t the outset of the Civil War, the Federal government ran into a serious issue when the Confederacy occupied Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, the home of one of the nation’s two armories, and carted the gun making equipment off to Richmond, Virginia. This left just the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts as the sole government-operated entity to produce longarms for the Union army.           But it quickly became apparent that production at Springfield would have to be supplemented, so the War Department pursued two tracks to increase the weapons supply. Agents were dispatched to Europe to purchase suitable weapons from England, France, Austria, Belgium, and Prussia. Over time, these agents acquired hundreds of thousands of European arms of different designs and origins that equipped Federal regiments in the first years of the war.           In the meantime, operations at the Springfield Armory were sped up to produce the army’s new Model 1861 Springfield rifle musket. By t

W hen the veterans of General Sherman’s army marched along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington in that memorable parade that marked the close of the war, a placid old cow tied to the rear of an ambulance became burdened under a constantly increasing weight of garlands and flowers piled upon her by the enthusiastic spectators along the line of march. She bore her honors meekly for she had won them by a steady devotion to the Union cause through the Vicksburg and Atlanta campaigns and in Sherman’s March to the Sea.           She belonged to that class upon whom greatness is thrust for she was drafted into the army for no nobler purpose than to be transformed into beef, but fate reserved her for three years of campaigning and a soldier’s burial at the end. Early in 1862, she was picked up in some quiet pasture of the North and sent with many of her kind to the Army of Tennessee which then operated in western Tennessee. As the commissary of subsistence surveyed his herd, he discovered one

I am proud to present the Brice’s Crossroads campaign diary of First Lieutenant Thomas A. Carter of Co. E of the 20 th Tennessee Cavalry. Lieutenant Carter’s diary appeared in serial form from March 10-15, 1935, in the pages of the Paris News of Paris, Texas. A.W. Neville wrote that the diary was copied from “an old scrapbook owned in Detroit [Texas] and covers several months of his life in service from 1863-1864 east of the Mississippi River. The diary was kept in a small pocket memorandum book.”           It took some digging to determine the author of this diary; the newspaper articles in which it appeared mentioned the soldier as being Lieutenant Carter. The first diary entry mentions his enlistment in Captain W.D. Hallum’s company of the 15 th Tennessee Cavalry on September 17, 1863, at Paris, Henry Co., Tennessee, but I could find neither Captain Hallum nor a Lieutenant Carter in the 15 th Tennessee. Additionally, the 15 th Tennessee didn’t fight at Brice’s Crossroads and h

C oncurrent with the annual meeting of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, a Blue-Gray Veterans’ Reunion and Barbecue was held at Crawfish Springs, Georgia on September 20, 1889. It was reported that over 12,000 attended the barbecue, thousands of them veterans who enjoyed not only a hearty meal but a chance to tour the battlefield and meet face to face with their enemies from years before.           Uriah Cahill, a veteran of the 31 st Ohio, wrote that “on Friday morning the 20 th , we boarded an early train for Crawfish Springs where the blue and gray were to have a grand barbecue,” he wrote. “Our party got off at Mission Ridge station and a walk of a mile and half brought us to Snodgrass Hill where the 31 st Ohio fought on that Sunday afternoon 26 years ago. We had no trouble locating the spot where we took part in one of the hardest contested battles of the war. There may be seen evidence of the desperate struggle.” Invitation to the 1889 Blue-Gray Barbecue (Image courte