Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

W hile escorting a wagon train of supplies to General Phil Sheridan's army at Harrisonburg, Virginia in late September 1864, a Wisconsin soldier stumbled across one of the most controversial acts of Sheridan's Valley campaign: the burning.     " When within eight miles of Harrisonburg, we met a force of cavalry gathering cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs into droves, and burning barns, hay, and grain stacks," he wrote. "As far as I could see in all directions the country was on fire. It is well settled and in times of peace must have been a wealthy country. It was a fearful sight. No one out of the army can conceive of the awful waste of property that a marching army makes."       The following soldier's letter first appeared on the front page of the October 20, 1864, edition of the Appleton Motor published in Appleton, Wisconsin. The correspondent, listed by the newspaper as simply "one of our neighbors now serving in the army," was never ident

W hen Quartermaster William C. Webb of the 37 th Wisconsin sent his regiment’s colors back to Governor James Lewis in September 1864, his memory was drawn to the fierce devotion demonstrated by its color bearers during the fighting near Petersburg that summer.            “On the 17 th of June, Color Sergeant William H. Green of Co. C, while carrying the flag in the action in front of Petersburg, was seriously wounded,” Webb noted. “Although it required the use of both of his hands to drag himself from the field, yet he did not abandon the glorious flag which he had so honorably borne during the storm of shot and shell into which our regiment was led. He seized the flag with his teeth and crawled off the field, taking the flag with him, drawing it fully a hundred rods with his teeth.”           A month and a half later, the colors saw their last fight at the Battle of the Crater. Borne now by Private Reuben Shaw of Co. C, Shaw “planted the colors in full view of the Rebel batterie

                                                                           Ohio Colonels in the Civil War D uring the Civil War, the state of Ohio furnished some of the highest ranking officers of the Union army. The names of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and McClellan are familiar with most Civil War buffs, but while these men were born in Ohio, they started their climb into the upper echelons of the high command through their prior services in the Regular Army.       Ohio had over 200 regimental-sized organizations during the war, and its a fair question to ask which of those regimental commanders most distinguished themselves during the Civil War?  One measure of a soldier's value to his country is entrusting higher levels command responsibilities beyond just a singular regiment, with brigade, divisions, corps, even armies. So I'm going to rank these colonels based on who went into the upper echelons of command, i.e. which of Ohio's colonels rose highest in the ranks? We'

Ohio Colonels in the Civil War "They weren't all heroes."      It stands to reason that somewhere in the over 200 regimental-sized organizations that Ohio fielded during the war, a bad apple or two would end up in command. Today's article tackles this admittedly sensitive subject with a top 11 list of Buckeye colonels  who exited the service under less than honorable circumstances during the Civil War. It's a list of cowards, drunks, incompetents, and outright scoundrels whose record adds color (or rather off color) to Ohio's history in the Civil War and is "history that deserves to be remembered."       They are presented in the rough chronological order of their exit from the service. 

Stones River Letters Series T he fortunes of General William S. Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland appeared to be on the wane as the sun set on Friday afternoon January 2, 1863. A determined attack by General John C. Breckinridge’s division upon Colonel Samuel Beatty’s division, arrayed on the east side of Stones River, had crumpled the Union line and was surging towards Stones River. Second Lieutenant Robert S. Dilworth of the 21 st Ohio recorded the chaotic scene from the west side of the river. “On swept the tide of battle. Pell-mell, hurry-scurry, came our troops, hotly pursued by the advancing Rebel columns,” Dilworth stated. “The 99 th Ohio broke across the river and came near running over us. When they had finally passed through our ranks, Colonel [James] Neibling in his sonorous voice cried out, “Attention!” The whole regiment sprang to their feet in an instant with their arms gripped, ready for the oncoming assault of the Rebel forces and the coming struggle. The Rebels cha

Q uartermaster Sergeant Robert F. Wolfkill of the 13 th Ohio missed out on the combat that nearly destroyed his regiment at Stones River, but his letter, written in Nashville as the guns went silent, was the first word his home community of Urbana, Ohio learned of the battle. Writing his mother after helping to bring a load of 800 wounded men to Nashville, Robert wrote his mother in the wee hours of the morning of Sunday, January 4, 1863. “The old 13 th Ohio is completely cut to pieces,” he reported. “They went into the battle the first day 500 strong and yesterday 150 men were all that could be got together, the balance all killed, wounded, or prisoners. Co. C has six men left for duty. In Co. A, out of 80 men has only 12 left; 30 men fell at the first fire in Co. A. The reason our regiment suffered so much is this: the two regiments on the left of our regiment gave way and the Rebels flanked and got our regiment and the 44 th Indiana between two fires. The consequence is that ou

G eneral Edmund Kirby Smith’s invasion of Kentucky began on August 13, 1862, and was spearheaded by the two regiments of his cavalry command, the 1 st Louisiana and the 1 st Georgia. Starting out for Kentucky, “joy seemed to pervade the very souls of the entire command,” one Georgian recalled. “They moved with cheerfulness and alacrity, anticipating a stirring time.” Ten days later, the cavalrymen had a stirring time when they learned that a Federal wagon train bound for Cumberland Gap near Big Hill a few miles southeast of Richmond, Kentucky. Taking position atop the hill, the Georgians soon got into a fight with the rookie 7 th Kentucky Cavalry (US) under Colonel Leonidas Metcalfe and a portion of the 3rd Tennessee (US) under Lieutenant Colonel John C. Chiles.  After pushing the Kentuckians off Big Hill, the Confederate cavalry pursued the fleeing bluecoats before running into the 3rd Tennessee at the Merritt Jones tavern at the foot of the hill. “The Yankees had a very strong p

I n May 1860, William Tecumseh Wilson, editor of the Wyandot Pioneer of Upper Sandusky, traveled to Chicago to take part in the Republican Party’s national convention in which Abraham Lincoln gained the nomination which resulted in his election as 16 th President of the United States.     " We had the good fortune to be present at the national convention held at Chicago last week, and we think we are safe in averring that no national convention ever assembled in this country where such a complete state of harmony, unanimity, and good feeling generally, was manifested," Wilson reported through the pages of his newspaper. "Delegates as well as the thousands of outsiders, upon consultation, all expressed a willingness to lay aside personal prejudice and unite upon whoever was thought to be the winning man and it was soon discovered that that man was honest old Abe Lincoln of Illinois, the man who, but his own unaided industry, has fought his way up from the position of a h

T his past Tuesday, I finally visited my uncle Fred in Kalkaska, Michigan. Now we’ve never formally met, as you see Uncle Fred died in 1905, more than 70 years before I arrived here during the country’s bicentennial. And I would wager our meeting Tuesday was rather one sided, as I did the talking and his gravestone listened patiently.           He was born Frederick McLargin on June 2, 1835, in the wilds of the Black Swamp of Wood County, Ohio to James and Barbary McLargin, his father from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and Barbary variously reported as being from Pennsylvania or Germany. Fred didn’t come into the world alone- if family records are to be believed, his twin sister Sarah arrived either shortly before or shortly after Frederick’s first cries greeted his mother’s ears. Frederick and Sarah would be the fifth and sixth children of the growing McLargin family, and my great-great-great-great grandmother Isabelle Jane was the oldest.           The McLargin’s were hacking a

W riting in her journal on Sunday, January 4, 1863, McMinnville resident Lucy Virginia French recalled the ghastly toll the Battle of Stones River levied upon her local community. It was the evening of New Year’s day when the body of Captain Drury C. Spurlock of the 16 th Tennessee was brought into McMinnville by Spurlock’s father. “We went into the parlor at John’s to see poor Cap as soon as he was laid out,” she recorded. “His uniform was very bloody and it had to be cut off of him. They dressed him in a fine suit of black cloth such as he used to wear before the war began. How noble and handsome he looked and how natural! You could not notice the small place where the ball entered as it was completely concealed by his mustache and his face was so serene and calm. His mouth had a faint smile upon it.” They buried him the following day as the thunderous sounds of Breckinridge’s assault echoed in the distance. “The artillery firing at Murfreesboro was tremendous that evening, heav

T he discouragement and war-weariness that gripped the North following the defeat at Fredericksburg permeates the pages of one Pennsylvania soldier's letter home written just a few days after the battle.       " The two great armies are resting, as it were, from their excessive labors of the past few days," he began. "Resting, did I say? No, rather renewing their energies with even more determined vigor for a still more desperate struggle. Hostilities have ceased for the present at least for a few days, in order not to “change base” exactly but the manner of attack. After sacrificing a few thousand lives, the “powers that be” have deemed it advisable to sacrifice a few thousand more by changing the mode of attack. Perhaps if this mode does not succeed, they will “change base” with a change also in commanders."     The letter, written by Corporal William Blain of the 62nd Pennsylvania, first saw publication in the December 23, 1862, edition of the Altoona Tribune

A fter months of captivity at Lynchburg and Belle Isle, Sergeant Samuel Wooldridge of the 29th Ohio wrote the following letter to his parents back home in Ohio. It had been four months since he had last been able to write them. The English-born sergeant was captured in the aftermath of the Battle of Port Republic on June 9, 1862, and endured three months as a prisoner of war.       " We were kept on a hill with no grass on it," was how he described Lynchburg. "We had no tents, two-thirds of us no blankets, only food enough to make us one meal a day and not very good at that.  After about a week, we were taken into the fairgrounds. There we had flour, beef, bacon, beans, rice, sugar, salt, and vinegar, about half a ration of each. But being closely confined, we did not get exercise enough to make us very hungry." Life at Belle Isle wasn't any better. " There we lived on half a loaf of bread and every third day a small piece of beef, half boiled and unsalted.

T he week after the Battle of Antietam, two Pennsylvanians, Ephraim B. McCrum and Henry C. Dern, both editors and proprietors of the Altoona Tribune , journeyed south into Maryland. Their intentions were to visit the camps of their local regiments, touch base with the boys, and to report back on their findings. “We were told by those who had preceded us that we obtained a sight of the tail end only,” they stated. “If that be so, we have no desire to see the whole animal.”           The pair first went to Hagerstown, and on Tuesday morning September 23, 1862, they secured a wagon and set out for Sharpsburg. “Nothing worthy of special attention attracted our attention until we ascended a hill about two miles this side of the battlefield,” they wrote. “Here our olfactory organs informed us very perceptibly that we were in the region of decaying animal matter. On every rise of ground thereafter we were greeted with the same stench, yet we could see no marks of the battle. Thus, we passed

I n the days following the defeat at Chancellorsville, the soldiers of the Third Division of the 11 th Corps were horrified to see their good names besmirched in the newspapers. “Every newspaper that fell into our hands told the world a frightful story of the unexampled misconduct of the 11 th Corps,” remembered Major General Carl Schurz, commanding the division. “How the ‘cowardly Dutchmen’ of that corps had thrown down their arms and fled at the first fire of the enemy, had led in the disgraceful flight without firing a shot, and how these cowardly ‘Dutch’ had overrun the whole battlefield and came near stampeding other brigades or divisions. I was thunderstruck.”           Another soldier who was “thunderstruck” was one of Schurz’s brigade commanders, Brigadier General Alexander Schimmelfennig. In this extraordinary letter to General Schurz, Schimmelfennig insisted that the truth be heard and justice obtained for his men. “The officers and men of this brigade of your division,

I n the bitter fighting near the Peach Orchard and Wheatfield at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863,  John Garden of the 62nd Pennsylvania recalled that at times the combat became hand to hand.       " Again that “yell” which was heard so often at Chancellorsville commenced and made us grasp our pieces with firmer grips.," Garden commented. “Attention,” and “forward” passed along the line and we advanced across the wheat field and formed behind a stone wall. We were hardly posted behind the wall before the word was passed that we were flanked on the right of our brigade which we soon found to be too true for the bullets commenced flying in among us from the right. We remained in our position until the order came “about face” when we walked out in good order, contending with the enemy both in front and rear, they having nearly surrounded us.  For a time, it was a hand-to-hand engagement, muskets were clubbed, and pistols and sabers were used in the scuffle. Our regiment lost one of it

I t’s easy to think that our ancestors during the Civil War rarely enjoyed an opportunity for fun, but Private Jonathan Kinsel’s description of how his regiment enjoyed their New Year’s holiday in coastal South Carolina shows otherwise. “Taking everything into consideration, we enjoyed quite a pleasant time,” he wrote. “The performance was entertaining and the ale, cider, cakes, and apples which our ever-thoughtful colonel purchased for the occasion were refreshing. The wheelbarrow race also caused great merriment. The competitors were blindfolded and placed directly in line with a certain point, the one coming nearest the goal being the victor. The fun consisted in their deviation at every imaginable angle from a straight line, trotting soberly along, each under the pleasing impression that he was making a straight line for the mark. Of course, the one farthest out of the way was greeted with peals of derisive laughter and encouraged to renewed diligence by assurances of success.”

A s Captain Frederick Garternicht’s company of the 84 th Illinois arrived on the outskirts of Murfreesboro on the evening of December 29, 1862, he witnessed the destruction of a brick home along the Nashville Pike near the Two-Mile Marker. Confederate engineers intended to destroy some outbuildings to clear lanes of fire for Confederate artillery, but the flames spread to the main residence which was soon engulfed. “In front of us were some buildings burning,” Garternicht recalled. “It began to get dark and we advanced towards them but were ordered to halt 200 paces distant. A fine brick building took fire just as we halted [the Cowan House] and it was a grand sight, but we all felt bad when a few buckets of water would have extinguished the flames. To stand within 200 paces of a nice, big building and see it burn down- see the flames progress from window to window until their fiery tongues enveloped the entire edifice in one common conflagration.” The resulting wreckage became an i

F or one Confederate soldier, the sheer intensity and violence of combat during the Battle of Iuka changed his opinion on the war.           “There was one continuous roar of small arms while grape and canister howled in fearful concert above our heads and through our ranks,” he commented in a letter to the Jackson Mississippian newspaper. “The troops against which we were contending were Western men, the battery manned by Ohio troops who fought bravely and well. I know this: that the events of that evening have considerably increased my appetite for peace and if the Yankees will not shoot us anymore, I shall be perfectly satisfied to let them alone.”           This letter, written by an unknown soldier serving in the 40th Mississippi, provides a frank and candid Confederate eyewitness view of Iuka and was included in Volume 5 of the Rebellion Record .

J ames Walker’s account of charging Missionary Ridge with the 31 st Ohio speaks volumes to the intensity of the hand-to-hand combat that took place as Turchin’s brigade crested over the Confederate works on November 25, 1863. “We climbed to the top of the works and looked down upon the Confederates formed in two lines, one kneeling in the trench with fixed bayonets and the other lying down behind them,” Walker stated. “With a yell, we jumped down into the trench on top of them and a hand-to-hand fight followed, with muskets, bayonets, and even fists. We had broken the Confederate line and as our men came up to support us, we faced right and left and kept widening the gap.  One of the Confederates who had thrown down his musket and held up his hands in token of surrender fired at us after we had passed and hit one of our boys on the knee. I turned on him with the butt of my gun but before I could strike, Sam Wright pushed me to one side and said, “Let me fix him.” Placing his musket

S ergeant Otis D. Smith of the 6 th Alabama, marching in the vanguard of the Army of Northern Virginia, observed the warm welcome the army received from Maryland residents when they entered the state in early September 1862.           “Everyone in high spirits at the thought of crossing the Potomac and freeing Maryland,” he commented. “The citizens began to flock in to see us. They could hardly realize our arrival but welcomed us most enthusiastically and assured us of a warm reception and any quantity of aid and comfort. During the day, people from a distance of 16 miles away visited us. All assured us Maryland was ripe for action.”           Private Smith, a Vermont native who moved south in the 1850s to teach with his namesake uncle, was working near Columbus, Georgia when the war began. “Always quiet in manner, unobstructive, and self-forgetful in the services of others,” his obituary read. “His purity of character, sanity of mind, cheerful disposition, and warm heart won the

T oday, we’re sitting down with Dave Powell, noted Civil War historian and author of the soon to be released The Atlanta Campaign Volume I: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864, via Savas Beatie, the first in a five-part series covering this seminal campaign of the Civil War.       This new book, scheduled for release on July 6, 2024, is available for pre-order directly from Savas Beatie or through Amazon at the links below: Savas Beatie direct: The Atlanta Campaign Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville   (Preferred) Amazon: The Atlanta Campaign Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville (if you must support the Empire, please be sure to leave a review)  See more details here and add it to your wishlist: https://www.savasbeatie.com/the-atlanta-campaign-volume-1-dalton-to-cassville-may-1-19-1864/ Dave Powell's latest work The Atlanta Campaign Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville tips the scales at 624 pages and offers the most in-depth study to date of this crucial western theater campaign. "While Grant

G eneral Paul Semmes’ brigade was among the last to charge the Federal position at Malvern Hill on the night of July 1, 1862. One officer of the 10 th Georgia observed how as Semmes line swept forward, their ranks were increased by men from other brigades that had previously tried to charge the same position. “Scattered portions of other brigades which had been previously repulsed before the same guns in the same field saw our unbroken ranks and volunteered to join the fresh charge and asked a place in line,” he remarked. “We were joined by North Carolinians, Mississippians, and a company of Georgia Regulars commanded by young Benning. As these brave men swelled the charging column, their leaders inquired “what general is in command” and I forgot for once I was walking the path of death as I shouted the name of General Paul J. Semmes. I pointed to him as Semmes literally led his men, calling them to follow.” General Paul Semmes’ brigade, part of General Lafayette McLaws’ division

W hile most of the focus at Vicksburg was on Grant’s army that surrounded the city, a detachment of his army was given the delicate task of guarding the army’s rear from any offensive launched by General Joseph E. Johnston to break Grant’s siege. Among the troops tasked with this important (if unexciting) duty was the 46 th Ohio which took up a position upon Snyder’s Bluff near the Yazoo River in early June and patiently awaited Johnston’s arrival. “We are now on fighting ground and feel the importance of our position for if Johnston wishes to reach the rear of General Grant’s force at Vicksburg, he will likely try it through this way,” noted First Lieutenant Emanuel Giesy. “It would be poor generalship to leave a live general in so good a position to flank him and cut off his retreat. And should he, on the other hand, attack us, I think he will find General W.S. Smith at home ready to attend their call. In addition, General Sherman is not far off ready to cheer on the boys to greater