Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

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...

W riting to his father and fellow doctor Warham Cromwell back in Columbus, Georgia on June 29, 1862, while still on the march near Richmond, Virginia, Surgeon Benjamin M. Cromwell of the 3 rd Louisiana Battalion described the extreme fatigue wrought after four continuous days of surgical work during Lee’s Seven Days campaign.           “I say I am broken down as you will understand why when I tell you I have been up all day and very nearly all night for four days and nights attending to and operating on the wounded,” he wrote. “I suppose I must have given my personal attention to upwards of 80 wounded men, up to my elbows in blood at the time. My division is now in pursuit but I need a little rest.”           Surgeon Cromwell, born September 22, 1835, in New Orleans, graduated with honors from the University of Medicine in New York in 1857 and was practicing in Albany, Georgia when the war bro...

T he Union left at Chickamauga appeared to be going up the spout on the morning of September 20, 1863. As Colonel John Beatty’s brigade was shattered by Breckinridge’s flanking attack, the storm of battle pushed south and struck the balance of the line held by the First Division of the 14 th Army Corps. Beatty’s retreat precipitated a similar retreat by the left of General John King’s Regulars. But an intrepid 23-year-old bugler in the 15 th U.S. was determined to rally the line.           William J. Carson, a Pennsylvania native who was living near Bellefontaine, Ohio when he joined the 15 th U.S. in September 1861, had grabbed a gun and was firing away when he saw the rout spreading down the line. “Try as they would, the officers were powerless to check the rout,” Carson recalled. “I threw down my gun, rushed out some 30 yards to the color bearer of the 18 th U.S. and said, “Let us rally these men or the whole left is gone.” The brave...

W e’ve known for many years that my wife’s family are descendants of George Saul who served in the 49 th Ohio during the Civil War. I’ve previously shared his remarkable story of being severely wounded at the Battle of Pickett’s Mill, a little-remembered engagement of the Atlanta campaign where his regiment lost half of the men it took into action. {see “ Inside the Crime of Pickett’s Mill: Voices of the 49 th Ohio .”} But until today, we had never visited his grave in Seneca County and it was frankly a visit long overdue.           George Saul was born March 7, 1845, in Liberty Township, Seneca County to George and Mary (McEwen) on the farm a few miles northwest of Tiffin, Ohio. As he became a teenager, George watched as cousin after cousin marched off to war, most of them with the storied 49 th Ohio which was raised in Tiffin and the surrounding area and was led for most of the war by William Harvey Gibson, a notable local politician...

M ost of us Civil War buffs are familiar with the stories about how during the Maryland campaign in September 1862, soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia sang the tune “Maryland, My Maryland” as they entered the state. The idea behind this was to show solidarity with the “oppressed” people of Maryland and that the arrival of Robert E. Lee’s army provided an opportunity for Maryland to throw off the yoke of Federal oppression and take her place in the ranks of the Confederacy. There was an interesting parallel to this sentiment in the western theater as well and at the same time. In late August 1862, an army under the command of General Edmund Kirby Smith marched into Kentucky and after quickly dispatching a small Federal army at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky, set up camp in central Kentucky and opened the recruiting offices to accept Kentucky volunteers. The arrival of General Braxton Bragg’s army a few weeks later further cemented this golden opportunity for Kentuckians to jo...

B y the evening of May 3, 1863, General U.S. Grant’s successful effort to cross the Mississippi River at Port Gibson meant that his forces needed supplies quickly, and the decision was made to run the gauntlet of Confederate guns at Vicksburg with a single tugboat, the George Sturgis , pulling two barges loaded to the gunwales with hay and other stores. A total of 35 volunteers were sought, and among those who joined the perilous expedition was Captain William H. Ward from Co. B of the 47 th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. “Previous expeditions had run the gauntlet of these batteries with more or less success, but always on the darkest of nights and convoyed by armor-clad gunboats,” reported Deeds of Valor . “On this occasion, a full moon and a clear sky made the night as light s day and there were no gunboats to shelter the barges from the enemy’s fire. There was only one little tug to tow the barges and any accident to her would wreck the whole expedition. This did not discourage the gal...

"Moderate artillery practice every day but nothing exciting," was how Private John Reynolds of the 96th Ohio described an average day during the siege of Vicksburg. "Our sharpshooters keep popping it to them all the time and woe to the Rebel that sticks their head above the works for our boys are watching with eager eyes and daring them to show their gray backs."  T hree weeks into the siege of Vicksburg, matters had settled down to something approaching a routine in the Union lines surrounding the city. As described by Private John Reynolds of the 96 th Ohio, the “routine” consisted of long hours with a pick and shovel punctuated by the occasional dangers from Confederate bullets and shells flying over the works.           “Whilst writing, one of the 67 th Illinois boys was shot through the head by the Secesh sharpshooters while carrying the pickets’ breakfast to them,” recorded Reynolds. “The balls and shells fly thick and fast over ...

T oday, the little town of Nolensville, Tennessee is a bedroom community of the booming metropolis of Nashville. But during the Civil War, it was little more than a country crossroads all but forgotten by war. But in one afternoon in February 1863, an intrepid band of Federal soldiers fought off ten times their number of Confederate cavalry in a little remembered engagement that later resulted in eight of the men being awarded Medals of Honor.    Borrowing The History Guy Lance Geiger's favorite phrase, the little "affair" at Nolensville is history that deserves to be remembered...  By February 1863, Nolensville lay on the fringes of both the Army of the Cumberland and the Confederate Army of Tennessee. In the quiet months following Stones River, both armies scoured the area with foraging parties to secure the rich produce of middle Tennessee. Occasionally those foraging parties would blunder into one another and a sharp skirmish would ensue, and that is precisely what ha...

C aptain George W. Merrill, leading Co. F of the 44 th Indiana, described his regiment’s role in the capture of Fort Donelson, Tennessee in February 1862. “Our regiment with the 11 th Indiana and 8 th Missouri were the last in the fight and the first into the fort after it surrendered,” he wrote. “My company had the honor of going into the fort at the head of the column, but you may believe it was rather ticklish for a regiment alone to march down where there were 10,000-12,000 Rebels yet under arms, guns loaded, and expect them to stack arms to us, but they did it like men and we rather appreciated their kindness for it looked as though it was possible that we had run into a hornet’s nest. Secesh got a severe blow here and they feel it the more coming so soon after the capture of Fort Henry.” Captain Merrill, a Toledo, Ohio native but resident of Waterloo, Indiana at the outbreak of the war, was commissioned captain of Co. F of the 44 th Indiana on September 20, 1861, and must...

W riting to his wife from Memphis about a week after the defeat at Brice’s Crossroads, Commissary Sergeant William H. Planck of the 114 th Illinois called it “the worst managed affair of the war. Our men were never formed in line of battle but were sent in by regiments to be cut to pieces and we were whipped in detail. In less than 20 minutes after the men went in, the wounded were brought back by the dozens.  General Sturgis told the men between Guntown and Ripley to “look out for themselves.” What think you of such a miserable general as this? No death he could suffer would be sufficient punishment for him. I believe he sold us, for he ordered all the train right up to the front and it was all lost including the ambulances.”           Planck knew well of what he wrote, as he was in charge of the regimental supply wagons that were caught up in the chaos near Tishomingo Creek at the close of the engagement,  escaping capture or d...

D uring the Civil War, the task of protecting the regimental colors fell to the regimental color bearers and color guard, men specially selected for their courage and tenacity. The colors served as a rally point for the regiment and equally as a target for the enemy; that said, casualties among the color guard were high. For the 1 st Delaware at Antietam, all nine men guarding the colors were struck down when the regiment advanced against the Confederate positions in the Sunken Road. The colors lay in the field between the fires, and Lieutenant Charles B. Tanner describes the anguish this caused within the ranks of his regiment.           “We had become desperately enraged, thinking not of life, but how to regain the broad strips of bunting under which we had marched, bivouacked, suffered, and seen our comrades killed,” he wrote. “To lose what we had sworn to defend with our blood would have been, in our minds, a disgrace. Every man of 1 s...

M arching from Camp Nelson, Kentucky on the 19th of April 19, 1864, Corporal David Johnson of the 45th Ohio recorded that the long and tedious march through the mountainous regions of Kentucky and Tennessee to join Sherman's army at Dalton, Georgia was broken only by the music of a brass band and humorous interactions with the few local residents.       "W e were cheered up by the 112 th   Illinois Brass Band," Johnson told his parents. "When they would start up a tune the sound would strike against the side of some huge rock and echo, then die away in some distant dell or reverberate in some distant pine top.  We saw but very few inhabitants along the road. I remember seeing an old lady pass by when Lieutenant Bradford asked her how far it was to Clinton (a small town ahead), she replied in backwoods style “they call it 19 miles from old Tommy Chambers, war you ever up thar?” Oh, what ignorant people inhabit these mountains. I saw good looking girls that k...

I n the aftermath of the Battle of Perryville, a portion of General Don Carlos Buell's army pursued Braxton Bragg's retreating columns towards southeastern Kentucky and in the course of that pursuit had a series of minor engagements, among them a rolling fight near Stanford, Kentucky on October 15, 1862, described by Quartermaster Sergeant John D. Galloway of the 3rd Wisconsin Battery.      " The Secesh made a stand against us on eleven different hilltops," Galloway recalled. "They had four pieces of artillery but the road was so narrow that they could only use two at a time. They had the advantage in position because they could choose their place, knowing exactly where the head of our column would have to appear and sending their other two pieces on to choose another position.   The performances of the day were wound up by dismounting one of their guns at a mile and a half distance by Arza Noble’s Parrott, aimed by gunner Woodbury. The result of the day’s work m...

W riting 30 years after the Battle of Corinth, James A. McKinstry of the 42 nd Alabama recalled his experiences storming Battery Robinett with Colonel William P. Rogers of the 2 nd Texas and expressed guilt that it was perhaps his action that brought about the colonel’s demise. “On seeing a line of Federals approaching, and before giving the situation a thought, I immediately raised my gun and fired full into the breast of a Federal sergeant, who was in front of the column, and only a short distance from us.  'Twas then that Captain George Foster shouted, "Cease firing, men! cease firing!" and waved his handkerchief, then I realized the true situation. 'Twas too late! That fatal volley had been turned on our little band from the muzzles of 1,500 muskets. I was still standing just as I was when I fired my last shot, and within a few feet of Colonel Rogers, when a Minie ball went crashing through my left hip and turned me half round; another went tearing through my ...

T he fighting between the two armies near Dallas, Georgia in the final days of May and early June 1864 was remembered by the veterans of both armies as some of the worst of the Atlanta campaign. In a prelude to the trench warfare that became the hallmark of the First World War, both armies took to ground and blazed away at each other in the thick northern Georgia woods. They later termed this region the “Hell Hole.” It was a place where death arrived with the shocking suddenness. One false move brought forth the shrieking sound of a Minie ricocheting off a tree or the solid thunk as the lead bullet flattened against a log or pierced through a soldier’s body. One soldier later said, “I must confess that it is not calculated to make one feel that his life is very secure unless he is pretty strongly fortified.” These two accounts, one penned by a soldier in the 65 th Ohio of the 4 th Army Corps and a second from Surgeon Luther Griswold of the 103 rd Ohio of the 23 rd Army Corps, g...

O n the receiving end of General Daniel Harvey Hill’s divisional attack on the afternoon of May 31, 1862, were the three brigades of General Silas Casey’s division. Casey’s division, mostly composed of newly raised troops with little combat experience, wilted in the heat of the Confederate attack and bore much of the blame from the rest of the army for the misfortunes of the day.        “Casey’s division is used up and will, it is thought, never go into battle again,” commented Sergeant John Whipple of the 92 nd New York. “We got no praise for what we did at Seven Pines, although we held the field against desperate odds for a long time. McClellan gives us no credit for it. Casey’s men lost far more men than any other in proportion to their number and yet, because we had to retreat before the superior numbers that threatened to outflank us and take us prisoners, and because our retreat was not conducted in a proper military manner…McClellan says we behaved shameful...