Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

Q uietly sitting in the collections of the Hardin County Historical Museum in Kenton, Ohio is a collection of medals that belonged to local resident Delano Morey . Among them is the Medal of Honor Morey was awarded in 1893 for his courage at the Battle of McDowell when he was just a 16-year-old private in the ranks of Co. B of the 82nd Ohio. Private Morey described the circumstances under which he was later awarded the medal to the editors of Deeds of Valor in the late 1890s.

T he Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, was raging when the life of Major Anson G. McCook of the 2 nd Ohio Infantry was saved by the daring act of a 17-year-old private in Co. G named William Surles. As Surles, “a mere boy, weighing less than a hundred pounds and of almost girlish appearance,” remembered it, it was a spur of the moment decision.           “A Confederate soldier, a veritable giant in appearance, presently sprang from behind a tree close by and took deliberate aim at McCook,” recalled Surles. “I had observed this fellow’s movements and realized the great danger of my beloved commander. My blood froze in my veins as I saw the Rebel raise his gun and take aim at our brave leader. Presently, on the spur of the moment and moved by the love and admiration I felt toward our commander, I sprang directly in front of Colonel McCook, ready to receive the bullet which was to strike him.”         ...

T hirty years after witnessing the carnage of Stones River as a 17-year-old drummer boy in the ranks of the 94 th Ohio, Dr. James E. Shellenberger returned to visit the area while journeying to Chickamauga in company with several fellow Buckeyes. In some ways, it was as if he had never left.           “Soon we arrived at LaVergne, the scene of a cavalry engagement during the Battle of Stones River and the place of Wheeler’s raid on our trains. It was found just as we left it 30 years ago,” commented Shellenberger. Once in Murfreesboro, the men hired a guide, a local soldier named H.C. Moore who had fought in the battle in the ranks of the 18 th Tennessee. “We came out by the courthouse out towards the line of earthworks or forts on both sides of Stones River. The large one is on the east side of the pike near the river and called Fortress Rosecrans. These works, all plainly marked, remain undisturbed by the natives living about them.” ...

C aptain Alfred E. Lee’s return to Delaware, Ohio in July 1863 caused a sensation among the citizens of that small middle Ohio town. On Friday the 10 th , the Delaware Gazette newspaper reported somberly that “we regret to notice among the deaths in the late battle at Gettysburg our friend and correspondent Captain A.E. Lee. He was a young man of decided ability, a good soldier, and his whole heart was enlisted in the cause for which he gave up his life.”             At the Battle of Gettysburg while commanding his company in the 82 nd Ohio on July 1, 1863, he was wounded and left for dead upon the field by his retreating comrades. [see " Alfred E. Lee and the 82nd Ohio at Gettysburg ."] “The enemy taking possession of the ground, one of Jubal Early’s aides carried him off the field with certain Rebel wounded and deposited them in an obscure farmhouse where he had no means of communication with his regiment or friends,” recalled...

E very object has a story to tell.... ...in this case, a few reminders of the 4th Indiana Battery's fight along Wilkinson Pike at Stones River.

S econd Lieutenant H. Charles Lynch of the 2nd Delaware took understandable pride in recounting to his parents how his regiment fought at the Battle of Antietam.       " Our division met the flower of the Southern army and we whipped them badly," he noted. "The Irish brigade and our brigade were fighting against General Jackson’s best men. " I came through safe (thanks be to God) but not so with our company. We went into the fight with 23 men and came off with 17. None were killed, however, that I know of but we had five wounded and one missing. I have hopes that the missing one will turn up yet. My men fought well and I feel proud of them. I thought that I would never be able to stand fire, but I soon found out differently for I was as cool and could be through the whole engagement and never thought once of being shot or backing off the field."       Lieutenant Lynch's account, written just three days after the battle, first saw publication in th...

C orporal Reuben Scott of the 67 th Indiana was scarcely two weeks from the plow when his regiment arrived in Louisville, Kentucky in the opening days of September 1862. With threatening news that two Rebel armies under Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith were invading Kentucky, the 67 th Indiana was dispatched south to guard the vital Louisville & Nashville railroad bridge over Green River at Munfordville. The Hoosiers scarcely had time to finish their first squad drill before called upon to defend the bridge during the Battle of Munfordville on September 14 th . General James Chalmers, commanding one of Bragg’s advance brigades, impetuously tried to take the bridge in a frontal assault against stout Union defenses.             The Hoosiers lacked discipline but showed plenty of fighting spirit, using their Belgium muskets to good effect during their clash with the Rebels. “Our boys filled the air with deadly ...

I n the closing days of November 1864, John Van Arsdel and battery mates in the 22 nd Indiana Battery drew the unenviable assignment of holding the railroad bridge at Columbia, Tennessee. Under orders to hold the bridge at all hazards and destroy it if they couldn’t hold it, it wasn’t long until Van Arsdel and 50 th Ohio infantry came under attack from determined Confederates.             “I was on the skirmish line with the Ohio boys; there were 14 of them and they put their loaded guns down by a rock in the railroad cut and went out on the bridge to fire it,” he recalled. “ I saw the Rebels advance and deploy their skirmish line and come on the double quick. The skirmish line advanced in an oblique direction towards me. I picked up one of the guns and, having a good rest, fired at the coming line of men. They kept coming. The ball went somewhere in one Johnny’s neighborhood. At any rate, he heard it and fell down, but when the...

W riting in the early morning hours of October 10, 1862 “by a light of oak boards with their smoke occasionally drifting” past his eyes, First Lieutenant E.J. Fitzpatrick of Semple’s Battery noted with pride the role his battery played in the recent fight at Perryville.             Stationed to protect the town, the Alabamians were not called upon to fight until late in the day when Federal troops approached along Springfield Pike. “We fought them from about 5 p.m. till dark and had the satisfaction of stopping their advance which threatened to be disastrous to our side,” Fitzpatrick noted. “A disabled piece and broken caisson with many dead and wounded men (we are told) was the result of our practice. The casualties in our company were only two men: Greene Mitchell, wounded in the hand, and Peyton Bolling, struck by a spent spherical case bullet on the ankle, neither much hurt. Our boys behaved nobly, and today Semple’s Battery i...

I n the early morning hours of December 20, 1862, General Earl Van Dorn led 3,500 Confederate troopers in a successful raid upon the Federal supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi. Swooping in at dawn from three directions, the Confederates quickly subdued the 1,500-man garrison and torched $1.5 million of supplies, all destined to support General U.S. Grant’s overland drive on Vicksburg.             A remarkable account of this raid was written by a sutler attached to an Illinois regiment at Holly Springs who describes the terror-filled opening moments of the Confederate attack, and his own subsequent capture. “As is usual with me, I arose early and went out into the street in front of the store and at once saw the dash of the Rebel cavalry as they entered the city yelling and shooting,” he wrote. “At once, I tried to regain the store but in vain. It was fastened on the inside and before I could gain an entrance, the word “Ha...

P rivate Henry H. Bowles of the 6 th Maine Volunteers observed that successful assault of the 6 th Army Corps upon Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg during the Chancellorsville campaign turned into a vicious hand-to-hand struggle. “The men fought with the courage of despair, maddened both by their heavy loss and the perfidy of the Rebels. Men became fiends. The lumbermen of Maine and Wisconsin, who had handled picks and spikes all their lives on the rivers and logjams, used their guns in the same manner. Mike Carey cried out when he saw the Johnnies breaking, “Hang Palfrey, boys! Boom ‘em, damn ‘em, boom ‘em!” Jumping on the works, he kicked a giant Confederate to the ground and drove his bayonet to the hilt in his breast. Corporal Brown used his gun as a club and, like a mad demon, brained five men. A wiry little Frenchman named Willet bayonetted man after man, and when implored by a Rebel to spare his life for God’s sake cried, “Me know no God! You kill me, me kill you!” Bowles...