Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

                                                                                                                       Five Days at Chancellorsville

                                                                                                                     Five Days at Chancellorsville

T he 79 th Pennsylvania, part of Colonel John Starkweather’s brigade, was marching into action at the Battle of Perryville side by side with the 1 st Wisconsin.       “As the solid, serried ranks of glistening bayonets and brave men moved onward with all the regularity and precision of a dress parade, and with the steadiness of veteran troops, the two regiments involuntarily paid just tribute to one another by sending up long and loud cheers,” one veteran recalled. “It was a grand sight! There was no flinching- not a man! Every man stood his ground firmly and manfully.”           But out of the eyesight of our correspondent, one man did flinch, indeed, making a conscious decision to flee the battlefield. He can perhaps be forgiven this decision because as John D. Kautz marched onto the battlefield at Perryville, his German-born wife Barbara and infant son Christian accompanied him. It’s an interesting if rather convolu...

I n mid-January 1863, General Ambrose Burnside directed what proved to be his final offensive move as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside’s aim was to steal a march on his opponent General Robert E. Lee, seize Banks’ Ford on the Rappahannock, and push into the rear of Fredericksburg. It was a bold move, but within two days of beginning, the drive was hopelessly mired down in the mud and the dejected Federals tramped back to their camps near Falmouth.           The offensive became known as the Mud March, and it marked both the end of Burnside’s tenure as commander of the Army of the Potomac and the nadir of the war for his army. Today’s post will revisit the Mud March through the words of the men who were in the thick of it, slogging through the Virginia mud in a downpour. It is the picture of misery as our eyewitnesses will attest.           All of the accounts comprising this post ...

S ergeant Fred True of the 41 st Illinois numbered among the lucky survivors of Shiloh as he explained in a letter to his sisters back home in Illinois.           The regiment went into action on the morning of April 6, 1862, and soon found itself in a pounding firefight with advancing Confederates. “I was hit twice. One ball struck my leg and numbed it considerably without entering the pants. The other struck me on the chin or throat and drove me from the field. The wound bled severely so that I was worse scared than hurt,” True confessed. “Buell’s forces came to our relief Sunday night and on Monday by desperate fighting we forced them to fall back as steadily as they had advanced on Sunday. But for Buell’s forces, I believe we would all have been whipped and killed or taken prisoner.”           Sergeant True’s letter originally was published in the April 17, 1862, edition of the Mattoon Gaz...

T he 12 th Illinois fell into line at Shiloh morning of Sunday April 6, 1862, attired in gray jackets with spirits at “very low ebb” as one soldier remembered. The sounds of battle thundered in the dim distance and the Illinoisans fell into line led by a “superannuated and inexperienced captain” in “gloomy silence.”           The cause of the gloom had to do with the fact that both their regimental commander Augustus Chetlain and their brigade commander (and former regimental commander) General John McArthur were under arrest. The prospects of going into combat under an inexperienced leader proved disheartening, but within moments all that would change.           First came the order for the men to take off their old gray jackets and throw them in a pile along the road, to be replaced by black frock coats. Then General McArthur and Colonel Chetlain rode in amongst the men. “12 th , I am permit...

B y the time John Baker of Battery B, 1 st Michigan Light Artillery was exchanged more than six months after being captured at the Battle of Shiloh, the artilleryman had traveled through seven of the eleven states of the Confederacy, and lost his brother to typhoid fever at Cahaba, Alabama. “We have suffered everything but death and that has stared us in the face,” he wrote to the editors of the Hillsdale Standard . “There has been 270 men who have died since our captivity began. We have been without clothing and have been obliged to live upon corn meal and bacon. I have never seen any meat but what was rotten, and no one but God can tell what we have suffered.” John Baker’s travelogue of Confederate captivity was compiled from a pair of letters he wrote to his hometown newspaper the Hillsdale Standard in 1862.

I n the early twilight hours of September 19, 1863, at Chickamauga, Sergeant William Richey of the 15 th Ohio was dispatched between the lines to try and ascertain the location of the Confederates. “Presently I saw an officer on horseback approaching me from the right only a short distance from me,” he later wrote. “We were no sooner side by side than I discovered that we were enemies. As quickly as I could, I said to the man on horseback in a loud, bold tone, “You are my prisoner! Surrender, or I will blow out your brains!” Instantly the officer reached for his pistol but, pointing my weapon at him, I repeated my demand with increased determination and ordered him to dismount. He complied and became my prisoner.” For this act, Sergeant Richey would be awarded the Medal of Honor in 1893. He explains the story of his regiment on the first day of Chickamauga in this harrowing account published in Walter Beyer and Oscar Keydel’s 1901 tome Deeds of Valor: How America’s Heroes Won the ...

I n a war defined by the theme of brother against brother, the amazing tale of Granville and George Moody and their journey through the Civil War highlights the interconnected nature of family and social life in the 19th century. It's a story that starts in Maine, weaves through the histories of both the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Cumberland, twists in and out of prisoner of war camps, and ultimately involves President Jefferson Davis in the final days of the Civil War and President Andrew Johnson in its immediate aftermath.            Granville Moody was born January 2, 1812, in Portland, Maine to William and Harriet Brooks Moody while his younger brother George Vernon Moody was born there in February 1816. One technically could say that the brothers were born in Portland, Massachusetts, as Maine did not become a state until 1820. Regardless, the Moody family moved to the state of Maryland in 1817 and there in 183...

T he first commissioner of major league baseball was Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis who was appointed by the team owners in November 1920. His unusual first name was chosen by his parents in remembrance of one of the bloodiest engagements of the Atlanta campaign, the Battle of Kenesaw Mountain which was fought on June 27, 1864. But had his father not been wounded at Kenesaw, its possible he would have named his later famous son Chickamauga Landis after the horrors he experienced at that engagement.  Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born November 20, 1866, in Millville in Butler County, Ohio to Doctor Abraham Hoch Landis and his wife Mary (Kumler) Landis. The future judge was the sixth of seven children; among his notable siblings was an older brother John Howard Landis who followed his father in the practice of medicine and two brothers who became Congressmen: Charles B. Landis (served from 1897-1909) and Frederick D. Landis (served from 1903-1907). Dr. Landis moved his family from Ohi...

F or Second Lieutenant Hugh Siverd of the 1st Ohio Cavalry, the death of his regimental commander Colonel Minor Millikin during the Battle of Stones River proved a singularly depressing event in his military experience.       "W ith Colonel Minor Millikin went my nearest hope," he lamented in a letter to a friend in Ohio. " Colonel Minor Millikin is no more and bitterly do his men bear the cup. For certain it is that he won the unlimited confidence of all, and while he may sleep the long calm sleep of death, there ever will linger around his grave that devotion that men only bear for officers departed that have been brave, cautious, and kind, such was Colonel Minor Millikin."       Lieutenant Siverd witnessed the death of his beloved commander firsthand on December 31, 1862. The situation was that Colonel Millikin, seeing the the ammunition train of the Right Wing was about to overrun by General John Wharton's cavalry brigade, ordered a daring sab...

M oments into his regiment’s attack on the bastion of Vicksburg on May 22, 1863, Corporal Charles Morris of the 33 rd Illinois found himself pinned down in front of the Confederate works “with the missiles of death raining around, the hot sun pouring down, amidst the wail of the wounded, the fierce yell of the victors, and the incessant roar of musketry. Death stared us in the face if we remained or if we attempted to get down. We knew it was madness to send men there. The Rebel rifle pits to our left could fire upon us and every now and then some poor fellow would go down. The terrors of that day made men grow old.” The Illinoisan called the attack a “dark spot” in his memory, commenting that “scarcely one of the old guard who either does not carry a reminder of it on his person or points to that fatal day as the last on earth of some cherished comrade.” Morris’s vivid description of his brigade’s assault against Vicksburg originally saw publication in Wilbur Hinman’s 1892 compendi...