Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

T homas Williams’ account of the 12 th Ohio Infantry regiment’s participation at the Battle of South Mountain is a classic case of writing through the pain. As he wrote, his left hand throbbed as one of the fingers had been shot off during the engagement.           “I am well at the present time with the exception of a sore hand,” he wrote to his brother back in Ohio. “In the evening, I got tapped with a ball which took off the finger of my left hand, the one next to the little finger. It is very sore at present. It will have to be cut off again, which will be a very painful operation.”           The Ohioan took pride in how his fellow Buckeyes handled the enemy in battle. On September 14, 1862, the Kanawha Division under General Jacob Cox struck the Confederate lines held by General Daniel Harvey Hill’s division at Fox’s Gap. “I never before the ground covered with dead as it was with Secesh where we charged,” he commented. “We were so close to them that we could not well miss th

P inned down during his regiment’s assault on the Federal works at Munfordville, Kentucky, Private Francis Chaplin of the 10 th Mississippi observed the various sounds made by the fusillade of bullets that flew overhead.           “It seemed at length as if I could tell the nature of every ball that passed,” he wrote. “Each kind of ball has its peculiar sound. A shell screams. A grapeshot or round musket ball whistles, a conical ball from a large Belgian rifle sings. A half-ounce Enfield ball, if smoothly formed, sounds like the rapid tearing of a piece of silk. If roughly made, it produces a fluttering noise as though it had a small piece of paper tied to it. A spent ball hums like the last drawn note of a bumble bee, and when it strikes an object, sounds like a stone thrown against it.”           Chaplin’s account of the September 14, 1862, assault on Munfordville ranks as one of the finest battle accounts I’ve yet encountered, loaded with details and insightful observations of

I t had been over a month since the men of the Army of Mississippi under the command of General Braxton Bragg had departed their camps at Tupelo, Mississippi, and finally, as Bragg had promised, they were flinging their banners to the breeze and marching towards Kentucky. The first major challenge after leaving Chattanooga was to cross Walden's Ridge and the Cumberland Mountains, a daunting task as recalled by Captain Thomas J. Cox of the 39th Alabama.     " Sauntering forth this morning exhausted, sleepy, and stupid from the excessively tough march of yesterday with the hope of shaking off my lethargy," was how the Alabamian began his letter written from Pikeville, Tennessee on September 3, 1862. The road across Walden's Ridge, " doubtless the roughest in the South," made for slow going, but the prospect of advancing on the Yankees buoyed the men's spirits. " Our boys, not withstanding the unprecedented privation, are buoyant and confident. Constan

“After a season of seeming peace, our beautiful city has put on its war mask again.”           I n the early days of September 1862 as the rumors of Kirby Smith’s invasion spread through the state, Marie Butler wrote back to her family in Ohio describing the panic that gripped the city of Louisville, Kentucky.           “Louisville is under martial law and every male citizen between 18 and 45 is ordered to enroll himself in the militia and exempts are to form a reserve,” she said. “The Rebel forces are said to be advancing on Louisville and every preparation is being made to meet them. Meanwhile, bank specie and hospital stores are being sent across the river to Indiana for safe keeping. Arrest of disloyal citizens are being made every day by scores and traitors in our midst are beginning to feel that the government which they have insulted so long has not lost its power or dignity.”           Marie Butler’s letters describing life in wartime Louisville first saw publication in t

W hile escorting a wagon train of supplies to General Phil Sheridan's army at Harrisonburg, Virginia in late September 1864, a Wisconsin soldier stumbled across one of the most controversial acts of Sheridan's Valley campaign: the burning.     " When within eight miles of Harrisonburg, we met a force of cavalry gathering cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs into droves, and burning barns, hay, and grain stacks," he wrote. "As far as I could see in all directions the country was on fire. It is well settled and in times of peace must have been a wealthy country. It was a fearful sight. No one out of the army can conceive of the awful waste of property that a marching army makes."       The following soldier's letter first appeared on the front page of the October 20, 1864, edition of the Appleton Motor published in Appleton, Wisconsin. The correspondent, listed by the newspaper as simply "one of our neighbors now serving in the army," was never ident

W hen Quartermaster William C. Webb of the 37 th Wisconsin sent his regiment’s colors back to Governor James Lewis in September 1864, his memory was drawn to the fierce devotion demonstrated by its color bearers during the fighting near Petersburg that summer.            “On the 17 th of June, Color Sergeant William H. Green of Co. C, while carrying the flag in the action in front of Petersburg, was seriously wounded,” Webb noted. “Although it required the use of both of his hands to drag himself from the field, yet he did not abandon the glorious flag which he had so honorably borne during the storm of shot and shell into which our regiment was led. He seized the flag with his teeth and crawled off the field, taking the flag with him, drawing it fully a hundred rods with his teeth.”           A month and a half later, the colors saw their last fight at the Battle of the Crater. Borne now by Private Reuben Shaw of Co. C, Shaw “planted the colors in full view of the Rebel batterie