Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

W riting in his diary, Private Manius Buchanan of the 29 th Indiana recalled the eagerness with which his regiment marched towards Savannah, Tennessee with the sounds of the battle of Shiloh ringing in their ears.           “The forced march was kept up until 2 p.m. when we were halted until 4 p.m,” he noted. “The rest was really needed, but the continual question is ‘Why are we stopped here?’ The sound of battle increased in volume and anxiety to be up and doing grows more intense. As I am weak from a late sickness, I am urged to fall to the rear; but no, in common with all, I want to see a battle and fear this will be my only chance.” The regiment would go into action the following afternoon, and of the four neighborhood boys who had enlisted together in Co. B, only Buchanan escaped unscathed. One afternoon's exposure to the horrors of battle was all it took to satisfy this Hoosier's desire to see the elephant. “I wanted to see a battl...

T he 1939 film The Wizard of Oz has delighted viewers for 85 years and ranks as a personal favorite, especially during the Halloween season. While watching it with the family the other night, I wondered if there were any connections between the film and the Civil War. Not surprisingly, the answer is yes and those connections touch both the blue and the gray.           Interestingly both “witches” in the film not only had Civil War ancestors but had connections with Civil War soldiers from Ohio. Margaret Hamilton, the “Wicked Witch of the West,” was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 9, 1902, to attorney Walter Jones Hamilton and his wife Mary Jane Adams; Margaret’s grandfather was Judge Edwin Timothy Hamilton. Judge Hamilton had served as a private in Co. D of the 84 th Ohio Infantry during the summer of 1862. The 84 th Ohio, a three months’ regiment, served nearly the whole of its service attached to the Railroad District in western Ma...

F or one soldier in the 5 th Alabama, the hardest fighting at Chancellorsville didn’t occur during Jackson’s celebrated flank attack on the evening of May 2 nd . It occurred when the regiment erroneously charged against General John Geary’s entrenched Federal division on the morning of May 3 rd which resulted in not only heavy casualties but the loss of the regiment’s colors.           The men had recently advanced and were firing upon a Federal battery when they found themselves under a crossfire. “In a few moments, the crossfire slackened and supposing that they were being driven back on the left, we were ordered to charge,” the soldier stated. “We did so in dashing style, or least a portion of the regiment (the rest not hearing the order) and carried the redoubts of Chancellorsville Heights. Just as we were ordered to charge, our color sergeant was wounded and George Nutting, seizing the colors, waved them in proud triumph and cried, “...

T he anguish is palpable as one reads the words of James Powers of the 20 th Alabama in this short letter he wrote home to his brother in Greensboro, Alabama. His regiment, the senior one assigned to General Stephen D. Lee’s brigade, collapsed under a heavy enfilade fire and scattered to the winds. “My impression is that the whole brigade is captured with the exception of a few who were cut off and fell in with Loring’s command,” he commented. “The last account we had from our company, it was scattered everywhere.”           Lieutenant Stephen Underhill, serving as aide-de-camp to General Stephen D. Lee, was in a slightly better position to describe the impact of the battle on Lee’s brigade, but likewise was cut off from his commander and despaired of the result. “ When I got up to the road I caught and mounted a loose horse, I saw several aides riding about who all told me the day was lost,” Underhill wrote to his mother back home in Engl...

                                                                                                                  Ohio Colonels in the Civil War      D uring the Civil War, the state of Ohio lost 22 colonels killed in action, 6 in the eastern theater and 16 in the western theater. The importance of a regiment's colonel cannot be overstated- they set the tone and character of the regiment and many of the soldiers often looked upon their regimental commanders as father figures. The loss of a regiment's commander in action, even an unpopular one, tended to cast a pall over the organization and degrade its combat efficiency for a period of ti...

L aying aside his attorney's robes for the garb of a private soldier, John P. Hubbard of the 22nd Alabama provided this pen portrait of his first army camp, that of Camp Yancey near Mobile, Alabama in the last days of 1861. In this letter, published in the Southern Advertiser in Troy, Alabama, Hubbard describes the layout of the camp, life in the tents, and the regiment's patient wait for pay. 

O rdered to charge the Rebel works at Resaca in advance of the rest of the army, one Hoosier serving in General Henry Judah’s division recalled the horrors he experienced in that ill-fated charge.           “Now just think about the dozens of cannons playing on this small squad with solid shot, shells, grape, and canister until the air was thick; solid shots flying through the dead treetops and cutting off the limbs which fell and killed or wounded many men,” Corporal William Bicknell of the 80 th Indiana recalled in 1889. “Now while this was going on, just think of the thousands of rifles that were shooting at us as fast as they could load and shoot, almost as thick as any hailstorm you ever witnessed. We faced this storm a distance of about 30-35 rods when we came to a creek with opposite banks so steep we could not get up except by helping one another. This was so slow that the enemy shot us down as fast as we could reach the top.” ...

W hen Jacob Runkels of the 71 st Ohio penned the following letter to a friend back in Ohio in the days after Shiloh, he would have been horrified to learn that the letter would not only never reach its destination, but would be captured by the Confederates, published, and held up as an object of ridicule.           “As the Yankees are constantly boasting that they possess all the decency, learning, and intelligence, we publish one of their letters picked up on the battlefield at Farmington as a specimen of their boasted intelligence,” the editors of the Southern Advertiser stated. “Many others were found, too disgusting to be made public. The following may therefore be considered rather above the average.”           “The sheet of paper on which the letter was written was ornamented with a picture of Lincoln and the envelope ornamented with a likeness of General Halleck,” it continued. The ori...

Major Robert Henry Glass, editor of the Lynchburg Republican , witnessed the Federal advance and attack at Carnifex Ferry, Virginia on the afternoon of September 10, 1861, impressed both with the heroism of his comrades and that of his opponents. “The enemy was seen swarming in the woods from one end of our lines to the other,” Glass reported. “He approached us from this point in double-quick time, evidently intending to force our works at the point of the bayonet. At the first crack of our rifles the gallant Colonel who led in front of his men, on a splendid black charger, fell dead to the earth, while the head of his column recoiled in utter confusion. The Colonel's horse, as if unconscious of the fall of his rider, dashed up to our embankments and around them into our camp, and from the inscription upon the mountings of his pistols, proved to be Colonel William H. Lytle of Cincinnati [commanding 10 th Ohio Infantry]. I saw the daring officer fall from his horse, and he was ce...

  “The noise of battle is the only music that ravishes the senses of Forrest.” I t was May 1864. Back east, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac were locked in the deadly dance of the Overland Campaign while in Georgia, General William Tecumseh Sherman's army squared off against General Joseph E. Johnston and the Army of the Tennessee in the campaign for Atlanta.       Based in relatively quiet northern Mississippi, General Nathan Bedford Forrest bided his time waiting for a Federal advance from Memphis. Earlier in the month, General Samuel Sturgis led a brief campaign into Mississippi but Forrest was sure Sturgis would venture out again. In the meantime, he tried to keep his reorganized command intact despite persistent demands from his superiors that he return the absentees and deserters who inflated his ranks (nearly 1,000 in number) to their original commands.      Around this same time,  an old acquaintance from Me...

W riting back to his brother in Fosters, Alabama, Private Joseph Maharrey of Co. H of the 3rd Georgia Infantry described a little known engagement remembered as the " Chicamacomico Races" which took place near Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the North Carolina coast in early October 1861.       After roughing up the camp of the 20th Indiana on Chicamacomico Island, the 3rd Georgia pursued the Federals by boat and by foot for over 20 miles until closing in on the Federal position near Cape Hatteras.  " Our company took the lead all the time. I do not know whether I killed any or not, but I assure you I did my best and kept old “Bettie” pretty warm at times," Maharrey wrote. "I helped take some prisoners. There was only about 150 of us in the advance and when we came near the lighthouse, the others having broken down. We did not eat anything until we commenced a retreat which we were compelled to make from the bad condition we were in, having eaten nothing and ha...

T he struggle for the colors of the all-German 24 th Illinois at Perryville was an intense, hand-to-hand affair as remembered by Surgeon William Wagner. The line, thinning at each discharge of musketry, was starting to crumble away “but our center, grouped around the regimental colors, refused to give way,” Wager wrote. “I received the flag to carry it on to victory, never shall an enemy see my back” cried Joseph Broesch, the color bearer, ready to die at his post. But immediately afterwards he, too, sank down, holding the flag staff bravely aloft as the flag had already been shot to tatters.”   “Quick as a thought, a Rebel officer sprang forward from the column of the enemy (which was only a few paces from ours) in order to conquer our palladium, but a ball from Corporal Vogelberg’s rifle laid him low at the same moment. However, the gallant corporal, too, was struck down by the deadly lead. The enemy’s flag was only 20 paces from ours and twice the bearers of it were shot down...

T he first word Mary Root of Buffalo heard from her son Colonel Adrian Root commanding the 94th New York after Gettysburg was this short note written from Washington, D.C.  "During the action of the 1 st instant, I was unhorsed by the explosion of a shell directly in front of me, and by which I was so stunned as to have remained quite helpless for several hours,” the colonel began. “During this time the 1st Corps was driven back a mile with heavy loss, leaving me a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. I was however treated with great kindness during the five days of my captivity, and when the enemy retired, I was left on parole. With the exception of severe pains in my head consequent upon concussion of the brain, I am in good condition, although not fit for duty. I hope to be soon exchanged and able to again lead my brave Regiment in the field. Have no fears for my safety.” A week later, Colonel Root recovered sufficiently to provide a more detailed description of Gettysburg;...

S ergeant Major Rufus Haughton of the 123rd Illinois may be forgiven for terming the Federal victory during the March 20, 1863, engagement at Vaught Hill's near Milton, Tennessee as "one of the most brilliant achievements of the war."      The engagement pitted a small brigade under the command of Colonel Albert S. Hall against several thousand cavalrymen belonging to General John H. Morgan's cavalry command. Hall's troops had some combat experience but it was of the unnerving kind: the brigade, then under the command of General William R. Terrill, had been driven off the field during the opening moments of the Battle of Perryville. The fight at Milton gave the men of the 123rd Illinois a chance to prove themselves.       " The battle at Vaught’s Hill on the 20 th  instant has fully established our right to a place on the list of the fighting regiments of this Department," Sergeant Major Haughton stated. "And although we deeply deplore the loss of...

S hortly after graduating from Hillsdale College in 1862, Francis Wayland Dunn enlisted with his older brother Newell in Co. A of the 64th Illinois Infantry, also known as Yates' Sharpshooters. Scarcely a month after he enlisted, Francis recorded his impressions of the regiment's fight during the Second Battle of Corinth on October 4, 1862.     " Our battalion was under fire only a short time, but of the 230 that went into the fight, 74 were either killed, wounded, or missing," he said in a letter to the editors of the Hillsdale Standard . " It is a horrible scene, a bloody battlefield covered with dead and wounded men. It seems like an exaggeration to talk of men being piled together in heaps, and quite often it is, yet the explosion of a shell or a charge of grape will make it literally true. Around a little earthwork five or six rods long raised for the protection of a little battery of three guns were 37 dead Rebels.  The firing lasted but a short time and th...

W riting from a hospital bed in Washington, D.C. three weeks after his regiment’s fight at Turner’s Gap, John Costigan of the 6 th Wisconsin recalled “the affair was a mixed-up mess of confusion. We fought on the brow of a steep hill among rocks and logs and all sorts of obstructions. The enemy tried to flank us when Colonel [Edward S.] Bragg yelled to change front forward on the first company.” “I could hear the Rebel brigadier holler “Shoot low, prick the toenails of the damned Yankees!” The bullets flew like hail among us and sounded like bees swarming. The Rebels made me a present of three pieces of lead a little above the right knee. It tickled some, I assure you. I dug out one chunk with my jackknife the next day,” Costigan stated.           Costigan’s letter first appeared in the October 15, 1862, edition of the Daily Milwaukee News .

Stones River Stories J ames Urie McClenahan of Co. B, 15 th Ohio Infantry wrote the following journal account of the Stones River campaign. Left behind in Nashville with the baggage trains, McClenahan recalled that “during the battle no one was allowed to leave the city – might as well try to get out of the penitentiary. At the close of the first day’s fighting, stragglers came in large numbers into Nashville circulating all sorts of doleful rumors, and those who had friends especially were very anxious, asking the stragglers in order to justify their own cowardly actions had put a high coloring upon their reports.”           A few days later, orders came for McClenahan and the other teamsters to haul a load of provisions to the army at Murfreesboro which introduced him to the devastation wrought by the battle. “After passing eight miles from Nashville, the remainder of the way appeared one continued battlefield to Murfreesboro, fences des...