Billy Patterson: Monarch of Artillery

The Civil War was entering its fourth year when a batch of Southern Unionist recruits joined Lieutenant William J. Patterson's battery at Gallatin, Tennessee. The boyish lieutenant from Ohio, not yet 21 years of age, was "young enough to be brimful of boyish spirits, soldier enough to know the worth of strict discipline, dignified enough to command without danger of disobedience from any, and brave enough to fear nothing on earth or under the earth if duty pointed the way into danger," remembered one of those recruits Thomas Williamson.    

    "This Lieutenant Patterson had to teach us, and he did it by blending the play fellow and officer in a way that no one could have done so well as he," continued Williamson. "He went swimming with us or took off his coat with its shoulder straps and played ball with us and at such times he would say, “Now boys, I am Billy Patterson and we’ll have a good game together.” Then when the game was over, he would resume his insignia of authority, saying at the same time, “Now men, I am Lieutenant Patterson and expect you to respect my rank.” This might seem childish to old soldiers, but without some show of manly and officer-like dignity, he would have been absolutely run over and made a mere playboy by the well-meaning, unmilitary fellows under him. We had everything to learn and Lieutenant Patterson taught us in a pleasant, gentlemanly way that impressed all and was understood."

    An affable man in camp, Patterson's bravery on the battlefield led Williamson to call his former commander the "monarch of artillery." At the Battle of Bull's Gap in November 1864, Patterson led his battery into a tight spot to protect the Union flank. As the Confederates pushed closer and closer, they finally got so close that the gun could not be brought to bear. Patterson, "had the gun double-shotted with canister, then taking hold of the trail handspike, he lifted the trail as high as he could and ordered “fire!” That discharge scorched the Johnnies’ neckties, and they left convinced that our left was all right and that their business pressed them in another direction. Ask anyone that ever fired a cannon if that was not a deed for a Hercules or a Samson? But he did it and saved our line." 

    Thomas Williamson's memoir of his battery commander first saw publication in the May 23, 1888, edition of the Summit County Beacon published in Akron, Ohio. 

These ten men comprising the crew of an artillery piece posed for posterity with one of their officers in this evocative image from the Liljenquist Collection. The green Tennesseans that comprised Lieutenant Billy Patterson's command had plenty of enthusiasm and fire in the belly, but required a steady hand and gentle discipline to turn them into soldiers. Patterson, a veteran who had served two years in the ranks of Battery D, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, proved an inspired choice as one of his men, Thomas R. Williamson, explains in the article below. 

There was a regiment of light artillery enlisted for the Union service during the war in Tennessee. Battery G of that regiment, called the Memphis Mercantile Battery, was from Memphis as its name indicated and was commanded by Henry C. Kelly of Chicago. This company was moved from Memphis to Nashville about March 1864 and after manning the three heavy guns of Fort Morton near the Hardin Pike until July, it was sent, without ordnance, to Gallatin, Tennessee.

          There we met Battery E of the same regiment armed with six 3” Parrott pieces and commanded by Lieutenant William J. Patterson of Cuyahoga Falls. As Battery G, of which I was a member, was unarmed and moreover was officered by men who had very little military experience of any kind (at least so far as I know), the two batteries were consolidated and placed under Lieutenant Patterson. The officers of Battery G who outranked him were kept away from the battery.

          We were ordered to march overland from Gallatin to Knoxville where we arrived in due time after a 200-mile picnic through interminable fields of roasting ears, forests of blackberries, and orchards of mellow, juicy peaches. Oh, what a luscious march that was! I would willingly go soldiering again for such another with such good fellowship as existed in our jolly company of Southern Unionists. They were not all Tennesseans by any means. Many were refugees from the intensely Rebel regions further south; some were river men; some were happy-go-lucky fellows who traveled where they pleased and were always at home where their hats were off. That last about describes the writer.

          But we all kept loyal, cadenced step to genuine Union music every time we heard it and hated the Confederacy with a vim and vigor that presaged victory if we once got our Parrotts sighted in the direction of the Rebels. We got them sighted, oh yes, we did. The corn stews and the palatable peaches were too good to last always, and before two months had elapsed our happy march ended at Knoxville, we knew the smell of burnt powder and were learning politeness by bowing, dodging, and saluting before the rush and whistle of Rebel shells.

          And while I could easily and lovingly speak at length of the company, it was to do Captain Patterson deserved honor that I began this article. He had left Cuyahoga Falls in an Ohio battery [Battery D, 1st Ohio Light Artillery] and after participating in battle and tramp down through the Kentucky bluegrass where he fought the Rebels at Richmond. Suffering defeat there, he was sent on recruiting service into Tennessee where he enlisted a sufficient number of men to secure him a lieutenant’s commission.

          His captain, at the time of my first acquaintance with him, had resigned or been given a separate command and Billy Patterson, as we called him, was monarch of the artillery he surveyed when mounted on his spirited sorrel and in the midst of his guns. At Knoxville, we were brigaded with the 8th, 9th, and 13th Tennessee Cavalry regiments and placed under the command of Brigadier General Alvan C. Gillem. We were sent up into eastern Tennessee around Greenville, Andy Johnson’s home, to drive out the Rebels, succor our own good friends, wives, daughters, sweethearts, and next-door neighbors to the whole brigade, and to widen out the Union clearing just as much as possible by cleaning out all the treasonable underbrush and taller growth that the bright valleys of the Holston and French Broad were encumbered with. We were also given a name and we taught it to the Johnnies so that they knew who were meant whenever they heard of the brigade of “Governor’s Guards.” Andrew Johnosn was then military governor of Tennessee, we were guarding his home, and so the title fitted to a T.

This youthful artilleryman is not Billy Patterson as far as we know, but his look and swagger captures Patterson's spirit as described by Thomas Williamson. 

          Lieutenant Patterson was what one might call an ideal officer. Young enough to be brimful of boyish spirits, soldier enough to know the worth of strict discipline, dignified enough to command without danger of disobedience from any, and brave enough to fear nothing on earth or under the earth if duty pointed the way into danger. The Southern country boys, as most of us were, knew nothing of strict subordination to the absolute will of an officer. We were apt to want to joke or have a little fun mixed into the most serious affairs. Our officers were Billy and Dick and Ned to us; we never had seen the use of trying to look up to a person without first knowing the reason why.

          This Lieutenant Patterson had to teach us, and he did it by blending the play fellow and officer in a way that no one could have done so well as he. He went swimming with us or took off his coat with its shoulder straps and played ball with us and at such times he would say, “Now boys, I am Billy Patterson and we’ll have a good game together.” Then when the game was over, he would resume his insignia of authority, saying at the same time, “Now men, I am Lieutenant Patterson and expect you to respect my rank.” This might seem childish to old soldiers, but without some show of manly and officer-like dignity, he would have been absolutely run over and made a mere playboy by the well-meaning, unmilitary fellows under him.

          We had everything to learn and Lieutenant Patterson taught us in a pleasant, gentlemanly way that impressed all and was understood. At Blue Spring [October 15, 1864], nine miles from Greenville, I saw our lieutenant on his horse not more than 20 feet from the limber chest that contained 50 rounds of shell, canister, shot, and powder when the whole thing blew up.

A fight was cracking away in the advance and the battery had just started on the trot for the front. A man had just climbed on that chest when bang it went, and quick as the flash of the powder itself while the flying fragments were still ascending, Lieutenant Patterson stuck the spurs to his horse and was up to the very spot of the disaster. It seemed as if he was there the very moment of the flash while the air was yet full of the missiles of death. No thought of personal risk deterred him and no care lay upon him but to see what was the matter and to remedy the trouble, if possible. He was brave as a lion.

The man on the chest was killed [Sergeant William W. Davis], the limber demolished, and the horses attached to it and their drivers were most fearfully burned. Then the lieutenant went on with one of the guns, drove the Rebels, followed them in such hot haste that the cannoneers had not time to mount to their seats. In Greenville, for want of a crew, Lieutenant Patterson sighted the piece himself and fired it by using an officer’s belt for a lanyard. He hooked the sword hook of the belt into the friction primer and so pulled her off.

A Federal artillery battery in the field with each member of the crew in his proper position for firing. From left to right: No. 1 holds the sponge and rammer while No. 3 stands behind him; the corporal or sergeant sighting the piece stands directly behind the cannon. To his right rear stands No. 4 who has the friction primers. Near the front of the piece, No. 2 in front stands ready to receive a round from No. 5 who stands near the wheel. Nos. 6 and 7 are mounted behind the corporal while an officer in mounted to the right. 

Again at Bull’s Gap, 18 miles from Greenville, where Breckinridge attacked our brigade of 2,500 men with about 7,000 men, Captain Patterson (he received his commission dated the day of the Greenville fight which was also his 21st birthday) commanded the battery, but as the brigade had to fight all around at once, the captain took one piece out to the left on Bags Mountain and there, with no support from the cavalry at all, with only a detachment of batterymen belonging to the piece, he sustained several desperate charges of the enemy and canistered them off every time.

The last time, owing to a depression in the mountainside just below his position, the Rebs got where the muzzle of the piece could not be depressed enough to fire into them though they were but three or four rods away. Then they thought they had that piece safe; they began shooting the horses and yelling. If they had taken the gun, they could have shelled us easily enough as that was the key to our line.

But Captain Patterson was not easily scared. He had the gun double-shotted with canister, then taking hold of the trail handspike, he lifted the trail as high as he could and ordered “fire!” That discharge scorched the Johnnies’ neckties, and they left convinced that our left was all right and that their business pressed them in another direction. Ask anyone that ever fired a cannon if that was not a deed for a Hercules or a Samson? But he did it and saved our line.

At Salisbury, North Carolina during Stoneman’s Raid, when the cavalry had swept ahead of the place, our guns were blazing and it became evident that we battery fellows could do no more. Captain Patterson dashed forward with the horsemen with the exclamation, “here goes for a double row of buttons of a soldiers grave,” meaning that he wanted a field officer’s position or was willing to suffer death in the grand rush against the enemy. At Morristown, after dislodging the enemy three times with our shells, he led us on in the charge of the brigade, which caused a staff officer to remark that he never before saw a battery charge right in and even with the cavalry.

Captain Patterson was as kind and patient as he was brave. I have seen him drill men that were as stupid as little children, teaching them the manual of the piece, and though they took a great deal of his time, he never evinced the slightest impatience as army officers were so apt to do under such circumstances, but was always kind, cool, and gentlemanly. He was a good officer, a kind and generous friend, and a true soldier. No man under him that was willing to do half-way right ever saw or felt any indication of severity or domineering superiority in his disposition.

 Williamson wrote the above from Tallmadge, Ohio on May 15, 1888.

Source:

“War Record of Captain William J. Patterson of Cuyahoga Falls,” Private Thomas R. Williamson, Battery E, Tennessee Light Artillery, Summit County Beacon (Ohio), May 23, 1888, pg. 5

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