Amid a Very Hell of Carnage: Charging Jonesboro with the 38th Ohio

 In the years after the Civil War, the veterans of the 38th Ohio gathered each September 1st to renew old ties and discuss their participation in the regiment's hardest fight of the war, the Battle of Jonesboro. The men believed that their charge at Jonesboro represented the regiment's finest hour and its highest loss in a single battle with 152 men killed or wounded. Sergeant Lee H. Rudisill of Co. H penned the following account of the charge at Jonesboro for the August 7, 1890 edition of the National Tribune. 

A phenomenal wartime image showing two Buckeyes in sack coats and forage caps from the National Archives. The image is something of a mystery. The clean shaven soldier at left, Private George E. Gray, served three years in Co. K of the 38th Ohio and took part in the fighting at Jonesboro. The comrade sitting at his right holds a Colt's Revolving Rifle, a weapon most famously associated with the 21st Ohio which, like the 38th Ohio, hailed from northwestern Ohio.  During the Atlanta campaign, the 38th Ohio primarily carried Enfield rifle muskets although the ordnance reports indicate that a few (very few) Springfields were also utilized. I could not find any record showing the 38th Ohio as ever using Colt Revolving Rifles which leads me to believe the soldier above was a comrade in the 38th Ohio posing with a privately purchased weapon, or possibly a relative or friend from Defiance County serving in the 21st Ohio as both regiments had men from that county. It would really be something to identify the gentleman at the right. 

I wish to speak a word for the living and the dead of my comrades who helped to win the battle on that September evening 26 years ago and especially for the men of my own regiment, the 38th Ohio. All day long we had been stubbornly crowding Hood’s army further south, the 14th Corps keeping the general direction of the railroad and the 15th and 17th Corps swinging to the right with the evident intention of striking the Confederate flank or rear in order to cut off his retreat in the direction of Macon.

          About 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the forces in front met with considerable resistance and the heavy firing away to our right indicated that Hood had been fought to a standstill and meant to hold his ground until darkness gave him a better opportunity to continue his retreat. About this time the Third Division commanded by General Absalom Baird emerged from a dense patch of woods through which it had been fighting its way most of the afternoon. We entered an open country of nearly half a mile in extent where the Confederate position could be fairly outlined in front although partially masked by a belt of timber. This woods, as we afterwards learned at fearful cost, was composed principally of jack-oak timber with a heavy undergrowth that had been slashed and tangled in every conceivable shape, making the ground in front of the works, which were 10-12 rods back from the open field, almost impassable.

38th Ohio veterans parade through Melrose, Ohio during their 1889 regimental reunion. Most of the veterans are wearing reunion ribbons, a few are wearing G.A.R. hats, while many doff their hats to the photographer. 

          The division was rapidly advanced across this open country, the left resting on or near the railroad until it reached a depression in the ground affording a slight shelter about 500 yards from the enemy’s works. In the meantime, a terrific fusillade had been going on a little to our right and front in which w Rebel battery was taking part but did not seem to be doing much damage for, as one of the boys said, “they did not elevate their guns low enough.”

          However, a lull soon occurred, and the word went along the line that the Regular Brigade had attempted to carry the works in their front but failed. The Third Brigade of Baird’s division (14th Ohio, 38th Ohio, 74th Indiana, 10th Kentucky, 18th Kentucky), which was at that time in reserve, was now marched to the right until they reached about the same ground where the fighting had occurred, ordered to unsling knapsacks, fix bayonets, and be ready for the order to charge. Instructions were also given to have every gun loaded but to reserve their fire until the works were reached. My recollection is that the 14th and 38th Ohio were in the advance and the other regiments in close support.

 

“Well do I remember the words of General Davis to his staff during the struggle of the Regular Brigade, that awful repulse by which the ground was strewn with the wounded, dying, and fleeing brigade of General Long. “Tell General Baird to fill the breach,” Davis said to one of his aids. General Biard told Colonel Este, “General Davis wished you to close the breach and charge the works.” And while the bullets were flying after the retreating brigade they created a lively stir and almost a stampede of General Davis’s staff. General Davis, after his usual stern and resolute manner, said while turning to his staff, “Hold your horses and don’t a damn one of you run!” ~Corporal Benjamin F. Mattern, Co. K, 38th O.V.I.

 


          At the command, the brigade went forward on the double quick up a slight grade, the Rebels reserving their fire until the front line of the charging column reached the edge of the timber and then delivered a volley straight into our faces. Their aim being too high, it did comparatively little execution and the works no doubt would have been reached before they could reload if it had not been for the scraggy, tangled brush the line here encountered.

As it was, before the advance had forced its way more than half the distance through, it received a withering fire from the works that thinned our ranks frightfully and staggered it for a moment, but the second line soon came up and joined the remnant of the first line, and together they fought their way through to the Rebel works amid a very hell of carnage. The battle smoke in the meantime became so thick that one could scarcely see anything but the flash of the guns. The color bearer of the 38th Ohio was killed while clambering over the brush well in advance of the line. One of the guards picked up the flag and he, too, went down a moment later. Another took the flag only to leave the impress of his death grasp upon its staff and moisten its folds with his warm lifeblood. Then another and still another of this dauntless and devoted color guard raised the old flag to its place in the hot breath of the battle front and the fifth man took it onto the works and kept it there until the fight was won. This man was Charlie Donze.

 

National colors of the 38th Ohio. 

“In memory of that day, the 38th Ohio has chosen the 1st of September as its anniversary day and each year meets in reunion to shed a tear for our fallen boys and fight the Battle of Jonesboro anew.” ~Corporal Benjamin F. Mattern, Co. K, 38th O.V.I.

 

There were two guns of a Rebel battery near the right of our regiment with others still farther to the right and I think it was near this that the Confederate line was first broken. A portion of our line, then swinging to the left, took that of the Confederate line in the flank and rear and by this means they were about all gobbled in, the smoke being so thick they could not see that their line had been broken. Well to their right they were found steadily firing to the front and looked somewhat disgusted when the order to surrender was backed up by the nearness of Federal bayonets. Even after they had been picked out of their works in this manner and gathered together, one regiment would curse the other for allowing the line to be broken so much at a loss were they to know how and where it had occurred. They were especially indignant when they saw the weakness of our own line. They comprised Govan’s entire brigade, one of the best in the Confederate army.

Colonel William Alden Choate of the 38th Ohio was mortally wounded during the charge at Jonesboro and would die September 12, 1864 in a hospital at Jonesboro. Colonel Choate, who took over command of the 38th Ohio when its previous regimental commander Colonel Edward Phelps was killed at Missionary Ridge in November 1863, is buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Napoleon, Ohio beneath a badly weathered gravestone. He left a widow and three children.

Our regiment took only about 300 men into the fight and of these 152 were killed or wounded; 20% or more were buried on the field including Colonel William A. Choate who fell mortally wounded within 20 feet of the rifle pits. A better regimental commander and one more beloved never led men into battle. Altogether, it did not leave the 38th Ohio one commissioned officer to a company, my own being commanded on the march to the sea by Orderly Sergeant J.D. Gleason.

To learn more about the fight at Jonesboro, check out the following posts:

Jonesboro Revisited: Why did Este’s assault succeed?

Hot, Bloody, and Glorious: The 14th Ohio at Jonesboro

    

Sources:

“Atlanta Campaign: What One Brigade Did at Jonesboro,” Sergeant Lee H. Rudisill, Co. H, 38th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, National Tribune, August 7, 1890, pg. 3

“Baird’s Charge at Jonesboro,” Corporal Benjamin F. Mattern, Co. K, 38th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, National Tribune, May 17, 1883, pg. 7

Find-A-Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80422646/l-h-rudisill

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