Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

F irst Lieutenant Wilbur F. Hinman of the 65 th Ohio, who later gained much notoriety for his books Si Klegg & His Pard and The Story of the Sherman Brigade , penned this reminiscence of his experiences being wounded at Chickamauga. This story was included in his 1892 anthology Camp and Field: Sketches of Army Life Written by Those Who Followed The Flag, ’61-’65.

G eorge Gilman Smith was never comfortable with his reputation as a fighting chaplain. “A year before I had been the pastor of a charming little church in a beautiful valley of upper Georgia,” he recalled. “I was just married and ought to have stayed at home, but when I saw my parishioners going to the front, I went, too, as chaplain of the Phillips Legion. I did not go into the army to fight and I did not fight when I got there; I had as little stomach for fighting as Falstaff. I went to the army as a chaplain yet that day at South Mountain I got a bullet through my neck.” Phillips' Georgia Legion served as part of General Thomas Drayton's brigade of General David R. Jones division of Longstreet's Corps. The Georgians lost heavily in the fighting at South Mountain; by the end of the engagement, the survivors were led by a lieutenant.              The Phillips Legion had 15 companies- nine of infantry, five of cavalry, and on...

A fter losing both of his legs to amputation at Second Bull Run, Corporal James Tanner of the 87 th New York recalled a striking instance of what he called “practical Christianity,” as he lay amongst the wounded and the dying. The men had gone without food or water for several days and one mortally wounded man, whose name is lost to history, crawled in agony from the tent to a nearby apple tree. Stuffing a half dozen worm-eaten apples that had fallen to the ground into his coat pocket, he crawled back to the tent and gave them to his comrades. It was his final act. Within moments, the man was dead. “I have often thought that in his last act he exhibited so much of what I consider the purely Christ-like attribute,” Tanner recalled. “What that man’s past life had been, I know not. It may have been wild and his speech may have been rough. I know that he was unkempt, unshaven, his clothes soiled with dirt and stained with blood. Not a picture that you would welcome at first sight into...

A s Blythe’s Mississippi regiment went into action at Shiloh on Sunday morning, April 6, 1862, they encountered General Beauregard and staff but ran into a serious problem: the general’s coach lay astride the regiment’s path directly in front of Captain James DuBerry’s Co. C.             “Captain DuBerry was a good fighter but he had supreme contempt for the finesse drill and this obstruction, stretching the full front of his company filled him with perplexity," remembered Captain Benjamin Sawyer of Co. I. “Had it been a four-gun battery confronting him, he would have been at no loss for action but that gaudy coach, with its caparisoned team, was more than his tactics ever provided for. Without knowing how to flank it, he marched his company squarely against it when the men halted and looked around in confusion.”             “The regiment was aligning upon the colors and of ...

     Echoes of Battle: Annals of Ohio's Soldiers in the Civil War Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Fort Sanders  is the latest in  a three-part series compiled and edited by Dan Masters and Larry Strayer presents 109 firsthand battle accounts written by Ohioans during the Civil War covering the critical middle period of the war from December 1862 through November 1863.      It was a war fought upon some of the bloodiest stages in American history such as Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Antietam, and at obscure skirmishes such as Scary Creek, Snaggy Point, and Limestone Station. These Ohioans will recount the thrill of victory at Shiloh, Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge, and the sadness and demoralization of defeat at Chancellorsville, Fort Wagner, and Brice’s Crossroads. The horrors of war will come home with stark clarity from places such as Port Republic, Corinth, Stones River, and Franklin. Sailors will recount their battles with Confederate forts a...

D uring its nearly three years’ service with the Army of the Cumberland, the veterans of the Fourth Army Corps had repeatedly suffered when the Confederates had broken their “cracker lines.” In late August 1864, “Uncle Billy” finally gave the boys a chance to get even when he directed the army to swing around the west side of Atlanta and break the Macon & Western Railroad. After an all-night march, Captain Wilbur Hinman recalled the relish with which his men dove into the work of destruction. “Language can but faintly describe the scene that ensued as the boys were in high spirits and laughed, yelled, sang, and jested with infinite enjoyment,” he remembered. “The day was hot, and under the scorching sun the sweating and dust-begrimed soldiers pounded, pried, and lifted, tearing up the rails and pulling the ties from the ground. Others were engaged in collecting dry brush and rails and lighting a long row of fires. Merrily the men poked and fed the roaring fires until the ties wer...

L ooking back on his experiences during the war, Captain Wilbur Hinman of the 65 th Ohio (perhaps best known as the author of Si Klegg and His Pard ) recalled that the first road along which his regiment marched was strewn “with debris. A pair of six-mule wagonloads might have been gathered of notions that had been flung aside by a thousand suffering “tenderfeet.” “The average young patriot started for the war with a wheelbarrow load of clothing, a bed quilt or two, books, photograph albums, toilet articles, and gimcracks of every sort,” he wrote. “Neither he nor the good homefolks had the slightest conception of the capacity of a knapsack, nor did they for a moment imagine that before the close of his first day upon the road every pound he carried would seem a hundred.” To the true mark of a veteran soldier was one who “learned to dispense with every unnecessary ounce of weight, and just in the ratio that he did this he increased his efficiency as a soldier. It was of the highest...

A ll through the night of September 18 th and into the early hours of September 19, 1863, the tired men of General John Turchin’s brigade marched north along the Glenn-Kelly Road, moving towards Chattanooga. “Our way the entire distance of about 12 miles was lighted by burning fences, all of which on each side of the road, were in a blaze,” remembered Chaplain William W. Lyle of the 11 th Ohio. “The mountains on either side could occasionally be seen illuminated by the cold, wind which lifted up the heavy, dark cloud of smoke which hung above us. The stars seemed to shine with a pale, ghastly hue from out the reddish sky.” After a short rest and quick breakfast, the brigade again moved out, marching north while the sounds of battle echoed in the dim distance. Around 8 o’clock, the brigade halted near the Dyer Tannery near Glenn-Kelly Road and prepared to go into battle. Chaplain Lyle, “feeling anxious to have one more opportunity of speaking a word of encouragement” to his comrades...

I n the days after Antietam, Chaplain William W. Lyle of the 11 th Ohio Infantry worked among the field hospitals attending to the spiritual needs of the dying. The experience proved one of the most heart-rending of his wartime service. “As I looked upon the hundreds of killed and wounded, I thought of the distant homes of these men and how the sunlight of hope and joy would be quenched in grief,” Lyle later wrote. “Mother and wife and sister would clasp their hands in speechless agony, and how fathers would bow their heads and weep as only strong men weep when the names of loved ones were announced as among the killed, wounded, or missing. Not alone on the battlefield was there agony that day. Who could refrain from breathing a prayer that the Angel of the Covenant might visit every weeping household and comfort every stricken heart?”           Chaplain Lyle was particularly struck by the deaths of two young soldiers, one who seemed pre...

T hree months into the Atlanta campaign, Captain Abraham Botkins of the 79 th Ohio noted with sadness that his company had shrunk to half the size it was at the beginning of the campaign. He lost 14 out of 37 men alone at Peach Tree Creek on July 20, 1864.      “Company C is only a shadow of what it once was,” he commented. “When we marched from Wauhatchie on the 2 nd of May, the company numbered 60 men present. Since then, it has received only two recruits and now there are only 31 present. We have had a hard, hot, and wearisome campaign and men naturally wear down. We have not been paid for seven months and many of us would be pleased to know whether there is yet such a thing as greenbacks.”      Peach Tree Creek marked the 79 th Ohio’s first open field fight and they had to respond quickly to meet the Confederate assault. Climbing atop a ridge, they arrived just before the gentlemen in gray. “A moment later and all would have been lost,” Botkin de...

  T he naval battle at Plum Point Bend along the Mississippi River north of Memphis, Tennessee marked the first time the Union and Confederate fleets clashed on the western rivers. Fought on May 10, 1862, the eight cottonclad rams of the Confederate River Defense Fleet under Captain James Montgomery struck a surprise blow early that morning, knocking out two Federal gunboats before coming under heavy fire and retreating to the protection of Fort Pillow.           Among those who participated in the fight at Plum Point Bend was Assistant Engineer James Wilkin of the ill-fated U.S.S. Cairo . In this letter to the editor of the Steubenville Weekly Herald , Wilkin describes the action in detail and makes a point that more vessels than just the Cincinnati participated in the engagement.

C ombat at Fort Donelson marked the first time Corporal Allen Walker of the 7 th Illinois had been under fire. He remembered the experience as a kaleidoscope of emotions. “I did not feel as though I would be hit even in the hottest of the battle,” he wrote his uncle after the fight. “After the first discharge, there was a feeling of hate or rage that drowned all fear. At every little advantage gained by us we all shouted and on a charge we all shouted as though our throats would burst. If it was not for this peculiar feeling, which I cannot better describe, there would be no battles fought.” The battlefield he described as a “solemn place. On the battlefield where the two contending bodies of men met in deadly conflict, the leaves and ground are covered with blood. The black ambulances, men carrying away the wounded, the dead lying all around, some with a smile on their faces and others with features expressive of the greatest agony. The Rebels who attempted to escape fought long ...

I t was mid-August 1862 when the veteran troops of the Kanawha Division in western Virginia received orders to proceed with haste towards Washington, D.C. “The troops that had served so long and faithfully among the mountains in the West were very anxious for a change of scene,” the regimental historians of the 11 th Ohio remembered. “They desired to behold the grand Army of the Potomac which they had so often heard extolled as excelling all others in drill, discipline, and fighting qualities. The sequel will show how the anticipations formed were realized.”           Dispatched along with the 12 th Ohio to Manassas on the morning of August 27 th , the first sight the Buckeyes had of the Army of the Potomac was a jarring one: the wreckage of General George Taylor’s New Jersey brigade streaming back in full retreat from their clash with Stonewall Jackson’s men at Union Mills. It looked like a repeat of Bull Run the year before. “We met t...

“It seldom falls to the lot of veterans to be more tried than was the Ohio National Guard at the stone bridge, and none ever carried our trying and hazardous orders betters or with a more determined spirit than did the 149 th Ohio and the men associated with it.” ~ Brigadier General Erastus B. Tyler on the Battle of Monocacy           L ittle was expected of the ten companies of recently federalized Ohio National Guardsmen when they went into action at the Battle of Monocacy on July 9, 1864. General Lew Wallace tasked the Buckeyes with holding the Jug Bridge east of Frederick. This bridge carried the National Road over the Monocacy River, constituting the army’s retreat route to Baltimore. Wallace expected his opponent, General Jubal Early, to push south of Frederick to head for the nation’s capital, which meant that the Buckeyes should have a quiet assignment, but it didn’t turn out that way. While the main fighting would take place far...

W riting from camp near Wartrace, Tennessee on July 4, 1863, Sergeant Jesse Oren of the 40 th Ohio was delighted at the warm reception given to the Union army by the residents of Shelbyville. “It is impossible to describe the joy that was manifested by the citizens as our column advanced into town,” he wrote. “The stars and stripes were waving at almost every house. It seemed to us more like entering a northern city where all the people are supposed to be loyal than a Southern one in the heart of the rebellion. I only wish all the people in the North were as true to the flag of their country as those in and around Shelbyville, Tennessee. At one house we saw an old lady who had seen her three score and ten waving with her own hand the flag of our Union.” This warm reception boosted Oren’s confidence, even overconfidence, in his army. “All fears of another bloody battle have passed away and we look forward to sure and easy victory. We may be mistaken in the last part of this proposi...