Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

T he Confederate line had buckled and was in full retreat at Nashville on December 16, 1864, when Corporal Virgil Harris of the 111 th Ohio saw a “chance to earn his $13 a month.”           Not far ahead, he spied a Confederate trying to haul away a “beautiful artillery piece.” He wrote, “I rushed upon the man with the cannon and seized one of his horses by the rein and ordered him to dismount. This he declined to do and proceeded to rap me over the head with the loose end of the reins at the same time urging his team forward to break loose from a heavy wagon against which his wheel had caught. By this time, Barr had arrived and stood near me and I felt then extremely bold. The man making no demonstration calculated to convince me that he intended to dismount, I determined to use the whole power vested in me by the Constitution of the United States. Accordingly, I gave him a blow which sent him tumbling over between the horses. My gun not ...

I t is Monday morning, June 2, 1862. The day after having his right arm amputated at the Battle of Fair Oaks, General Oliver O. Howard met a fellow amputee at Fair Oaks Station, General Phil Kearny. “They dismounted and stood near us while Kearny and I grasped hands,” General Howard remembered. “He had lost his left arm in Mexico. To console me, he said in a gentle voice, “General, I am sorry for you, but you must not mind it. The ladies will not think the less of you!” I laughed as I glanced at our two hands of the same size and replied, “There is one thing we can do, general. We can buy our gloves together!” He answered with a smile, “Sure enough!” But we did not, for I never met him again. He was killed at Chantilly on September 1, 1862.” General Howard’s reminiscences of the fighting at Fair Oaks and its aftermath are drawn from his autobiography published in 1907.

I n November 1900, R.A. Miller, formerly a Confederate line officer, wrote a short note to the local newspaper editor advertising for the return of a sword he had captured during the Civil War. “I have a sword captured in the battle of Murfreesboro on the 31 st of December 1862,” he wrote. “The name on the scabbard is I. Abernathy, lieutenant, 37 th Indiana Volunteers. I was wounded severely a few minutes after. I was a lieutenant in command of Co. B, 24 th Mississippi Volunteers. The sword will be returned on application of parties interested.”           To start off, who was Lieutenant R.A. Miller of the 24 th Mississippi, and how did he come to be wounded on the battlefield of Stones River? And who was I. Abernathy of the 37 th Indiana and what was his fate? Let’s explore those questions a bit.

A s he watched the remnants of the Army of the Potomac fall back after being defeated at the Battle of Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862, the confidence of Hospital Steward William L. Berry of the 16 th Michigan in the generalship of George McClellan suffered its first blow. “The thought came to my mind: what did all this mean? Was McClellan surprised and was the vast army that the government had been so carefully nursing for the past year suddenly to be put to rout and driven back? Was all the admirable plans to be defeated and was the enemy to still hold their sway? I pondered over it all night and could come to no reasonable conclusion why we should be so defeated and driven from the ground that we had held for so long a time. I’ll confess that for the first time, my confidence in McClellan was shaken but felt satisfied that all would turn out for the best,” the Canadian wrote home. Hospital Steward Berry’s account of Gaines Mill first saw publication in the July 25, 1862, edition o...

T he 2 nd Minnesota fought on four separate occasions during the two days of the Battle of Chickamauga. One soldier recalled that the hottest fighting occurred on the morning of September 20 th when the regiment was trying to hold the left of the Union line. “Here the Rebels came up on our left flank,” he noted. “We changed front to meet them with the 9 th Ohio in advance and were immediately ordered to lie down. Here was the hottest place for bullets I ever saw. It seemed as though we could have held up our hats and caught a hatful. The 9 th Ohio broke, but rallied in our rear and for a few minutes, the fighting was terrific, the Rebels hurling mass after mass to the front but in vain. Our Minies could go through four ranks at short range but they could not stand the slaughter and fled."      "The 9 th Ohio and 87 th Indiana charged across the field in front, the 35 th Ohio passed on and we, according to orders, caught up the rear. At the edge of the woods in fr...

S tationed in Fort Wood in Chattanooga as officer of the day, Lieutenant Alfred Pirtle of the 10th Ohio enjoyed a grandstand seat of the Army of the Cumberland's daring and successful charge upon Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863.     " At 3 o’clock or later, orders were issued from Orchard Knob, General Thomas’s headquarters, for the line in front of Missionary Ridge to advance. It is beyond my powers of description to give any idea of the excitement we all felt at Fort Wood, from our heart of hearts, as we heard the first shots that told the hot work that was coming.   The firing broke forth at all points almost at the same moment. Fort Wood joined in, with the heaviest guns on the batteries at Bragg’s headquarters, more than two miles away on the summit of the ridge. The enemy’s batteries threw shells at our men, who were charging across the open at the entrenchments, while we could see the Rebels rushing from behind the crest of the ridge to line the breastwo...

T he Chattanooga Campaign might not have been the hardest fought one the 84th Illinois ever participated in, but the scenery proved awe-inspiring as recalled by Lieutenant Lewis N. Mitchell of Co. A.       " The morning of November 25 th  dawned clear and beautiful but cold. We were at such an elevation that the surrounding country lay fair to view. Chattanooga, the Tennessee River in its devious course, and our camps; oh, how beautiful the sight! But what do we see to our left? The Rebel works and camps are in plain view and there are long lines of bluecoats advancing across the plain towards Missionary Ridge. Now we see their colors and now the boom of artillery and the rattle of musketry and they are hidden from view.  The old flag waves from Lookout Point and cheer after cheer rolls off across the valley below," he wrote.           Lieutenant Mitchell’s diary of the Chattanooga campaign, featuring insights ...

S ergeant French Brownlee of the 36th Illinois never explains how he kept his journal during the rain-soaked Tullahoma Campaign in June-July 1863, but one gets the sense of the ebullient spirits of his regiment in the midst of a miserably uncomfortable march.     On June 27th, the regiment marched about 20 miles " but were kept on our feet for 15 hours. Part of the time, the sun shone hot and others the rain fell in copious showers. We camped for the night in an orchard. The 36 th  boys came into camp singing “We are going home to die no more.” A few days later while crossing the a ford of the Elk River, Brownlee observed " the current was rapid with water to the armpits with cartridge boxes on the end of our rifles. The boys halloed and shouted “This is all for the old flag.”             Sergeant Brownlee’s journal entries concerning the Tullahoma campaign first saw publication in the July 31, 1863, edition of the Monmo...

D r. Andrew J. Traver of Andersontown, Pennsylvania lived a mere 300 yards from the advance of Jeb Stuart's cavalry in the days before the Battle of Gettysburg. In this extraordinary letter written 9 days after the battle, he describes to friends in Illinois the carnage left in the wake of the costliest battle of the Civil War.     " Over thousands of acres and for miles the ground was covered with dead and dying," he noted. "Broken cannons and caissons, rifles, muskets, knapsacks, cartridge boxes, blankets, hats, caps, boots, shoes, canteens, beef, crackers, and cooking utensils, dead horses, broken ambulance wagons, ammunition wagons, etc., all mixed and mingled in one mass of ruin. In many places the ground was covered with blood and water shoe deep and along the sloughs, the blood and water ran in streams."     " I returned home on Friday [July 10], one week after the battle, and some portions of the field were yet covered with dead Rebels who had not b...

A mong Ohio’s regiments during the Civil War, none traveled further west than the 11 th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. While most of their Buckeye trooper brethren served east of the Mississippi River, the 11 th Ohio (and for a portion of the war the storied 2 nd Ohio Cavalry) served in the western territories. Rather than fighting the Confederacy, the 11 th Ohio Cavalry served to buttress the Federal military presence along the Oregon Trail and at other points protecting the flow of emigrants who sought their fortunes in the Far West.           “To be sure, we are not engaged in as active service as those in the armies in the east or southwest, yet at the same time, we are in the service of the U.S. and the position we occupy is of far more importance as that of any troops in the field,” one trooper stated. “These western forts have to be garrisoned by some troops, and why not us?” Fort Laramie in Idaho Territory in 1864 as depicted by Lieute...

S truck early on the morning of May 16, 1864 by a Confederate attack that broke the Federal line near Drewry's Bluff, Virginia, Private Charles Burdick of the 39th Illinois shared his experiences in a letter he wrote home the next day to his mother.      "Our company was out on picket on the left of the regiment," Burdick noted. "We knew they were trying to drive us back. They attacked us and drove us, wounding four of our company. Then we rallied and drove them but we soon had to fall back and it became a regular retreat for a short distance. Then we halted, faced about, and drove them back in the field. We could hear heavy musketry and cheering on our right but could not tell which army it was. We soon found the Rebels had charged on our boys of the 39 th  Illinois and drove them out of their pits and the order was given to retreat, but our company did not hear it. We were attacked by two regiments and we skedaddled as fast as our legs could carry us. The bullets f...

D uring the Battle of Stones River, both the Army of Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland featured regiments led by “boy” colonels. 20-year-old Colonel James Brown Forman led the 15 th Kentucky Infantry, part of Colonel John Beatty’s brigade of Lovell Rousseau’s division, and the story of his demise has been previously shared on this blog [see " Swallowed by the Cedars: A Day with the 15th Kentucky "].       It wasn’t until recently, however, that I came across a couple of letters from the other “boy” colonel which fleshes out the story of this extraordinary soldier.  Lieutenant Colonel John Edward Murray led the 5 th Arkansas Infantry with much acclaim throughout the Battle of Stones River. As part of General St. John R. Liddell’s all-Arkansas brigade, Murray’s regiment fought throughout December 31, crossing swords with Colonel Philemon Baldwin’s brigade in the fighting near the Jenkins woodlot in the morning and later against elements of Van Cleve’s divisio...

I n writing about the March 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, Captain Eugene Payne of the 37th Illinois took special care to note how the men of his company fought the battle. Operating contrary to their training, the men didn't stand side by side in serried ranks; they took cover and fought while lying prone upon the ground.       " For half an hour did our brave lads pour the deadly contents of their Belgian rifles into the enemy," he observed. "Lying upon the ground our boys would load, then turn over, get upon one knee, pick out a secesh, and blaze away. Our guns did fearful execution as the rows and heaps of dead and dying secesh testified afterwards in front of where our regiment lay. At this first stand of our regiment was where we lost most of our boys. Our right wing suffered the most, it being nearer the enemy than the left."           Captain Payne’s description of Pea Ridge first saw publication in the March 29, 1862...

A round dawn on December 30, 1862, General Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry brigade fell upon a Federal wagon train along the Jefferson Pike not far from LaVergne, Tennessee. Private William C. Dodson of Co. G, 51st Alabama Partisan Rangers recalled the chaos of the scene as Wheeler’s men put the wagons to the torch. “Prisoners running this way and that, hunting somebody to surrender to, army wagons blazing, guns opposing, mules braying, etc. Some of the wagons were loaded with ammunition and some were set fire to while the teams of 4-6 mules were yet hitched to them, and as the fire commenced to scorch the wheelers and the ammunition to explode, you can imagine about as wild a stampede as you can conceive of. When I first rode into the circus, I noticed a pair of miles that had broken loose from a wagon. They were still hitched to the double-tree; one had got entangled with the harness and was down with the other dragging him. As I rode out, I encountered the same pair of miles, one having ...

B y the time the gunboat U.S.S. Mound City made it down the Red River in May 1864, the ironclad had to dump much of its armor and 13 guns to get through the low waters. Reading the following letters from Engineer John Harnett, his determination and simple faith in success come through strongly, as well as a sense of the surreal.       A prime example is his description of how the Mound City got over the falls of the river at Bailey's Dam. "The fall was eight feet; the break just large enough for the boats to pass through," he said. "As ours was the first boat over the falls, we were the first ordered over the dam. We went out into the stream and got a good start and headed all right, put 150 lbs of steam to her, and down she went, burying herself completely and striking the rocky bottom with such great violence that she immediately stopped. Our rudder unshipped and the water roared over us in a perfect torrent. Had we not taken the precaution to close and batten al...

W orking in the darkened engine room of the gunboat U.S.S. Mound City , Engineer John M. Hartnett recalled the experience as his gunboat ran the batteries at Vicksburg on the night of April 16-17, 1863. “For about 30 minutes there was a constant stream of shot whizzing and shells screeching over and around us, mostly over,” he noted. “No person that has never been under fire of batteries can have any idea of the charming sensation produced by these shells. My position, of course, was in the engine room as it was of all the other engineers so that in case should be killed or disabled, another could take his place. We were obliged to handle the engine in the dark as no lights were allowed on the ship, which made it very disagreeable for us as we could not see anything that was going on outside but could hear distinctly the shots as they passed and those that struck us.”           Engineer Hartnett’s account of running the batteries at Vicks...

A s experienced in the 3rd Vermont, the fighting at Spotsylvania Courthouse ranked among the closest fighting of their war.       "It was a hand-to-hand contest," recalled Lieutenant Frank Rew. "Our brigade, in fact our division, fought 8 hours with only a rifle pit between them and the enemy. Each party would point their guns over the breastworks and fire down at random much of the time for every man that rose to fire was sure to die. Very many here were killed with the bayonet and clubbed musket and each party would throw stones and rails over upon the heads of their opponents. One man showed me a bayonet he wrenched from a Rebel gun as it was thrust over to be fired."           Frank Rew regularly sent missives back to his parents in Illinois throughout the war starting with his regiment’s first engagements outside Yorktown, Virginia in April 1862 which was featured recently on the blog. This account of Spotsylvania C...

P ulled from guard duty at Camp Bradford in Maryland on July 4, 1864, Private Charles Wise and 99 of his comrades of the 159th Ohio were detailed act as mounted infantry to help fend off Jubal Early's invasion of the state.       By July 9th, the detachment found itself on the far right of the Union line at the Battle of Monocacy opened. " The Johnnies formed their skirmishers in line and we did the same. Our company was ordered to advance and formed our line of skirmishers which we occupied until 4 o’clock in the afternoon when were ordered away from our posts by the captain. When we came upon the road, we found ourselves surrounded on all sides by the Johnnies and were cut off from the rest of the command. We knew not what to do, so the captain said, ‘Boys, let’s get out of here.’ We made a charge up the pike and went through the Johnnies and their fire all right and safely without harm.  We retreated down the pike on the way to Baltimore. We were ordered to c...

A t the end of chapter 3 of Hell by the Acre , I tell the story of the military executions that took place at Murfreesboro on December 26, 1862. Three soldiers and one civilian were slated for execution that day, most famously, that of Private Asa Lewis of the 6 th Kentucky whose execution became a cause celebre within the Orphan Brigade. The story of the second soldier, Edward P. Norman of the 28 th Alabama, was also described in the book “while the final deserter from the 24 th Tennessee received a reprieve from Bragg just as he was about to be executed.” It was not until recently that I learned the story of how this Tennessean was saved at the last possible moment by the intrepid efforts of a Confederate enrolling officer. A total of three executions took place in Murfreesboro on December 26, 1862. The first was a civilian spy named Gray who was hung near the railroad depot. The military executions took place in an open field south of town where just a few weeks before Presiden...

B y the time the 51st Illinois arrived on the field of Chickamauga on the afternoon of September 19, 1863, the battle had already been raging for hours and, at least in the part of the field the regiment arrived upon, the battle seemed to be going against the Army of the Cumberland. As a matter of fact, the Confederates had just overrun the 8th Indiana Battery.  "We were surprised to see the enemy in such force, but as we were ordered to advance and take back the battery, there was no time lost in thinking the matter over," stated Orderly Sergeant Charles Strickland of Co. G. "The 22 nd  and 42 nd  Illinois regiments were ordered to advance and as the brave veterans moved steadily forward, we could see the enemy unfurl their battle flags and cheer after cheer filled the air with repeated echoes which was followed by their shells which came screaming through the air. The distance was not half a mile and as they advanced, the enemy fired with great rapidity."   ...

P ositioned in the left center of the Federal line at the Battle of Franklin, Colonel John Casement's brigade bore some of the heaviest attacks of the engagement. Captain James S. Putnam, serving on Colonel Casement's staff as acting assistant adjutant general, wrote three letters home to his wife in Illinois describing his experiences.  "The enemy formed under cover of a wood and advanced in columns driving in our front line without firing," he wrote. "As soon as they had all got inside our works and when the enemy was within 200 yards, we opened a murderous fire of musketry, grape, and canister that from the batteries plowed at various points along the lines.  Still, they continued to advance till in many places they actually reached our works. At the 23 rd   Indiana Battery, they came right into the embrasures and were knocked down by the men with the spikes of the guns. The 104 th   Ohio, a regiment of the First Brigade placed on our right, gave way at one ti...

F or Corporal Walter B. Smith of the 3 rd Georgia Infantry Battalion, the ending of the fighting at Stones River replaced the horrors of combat with a perhaps unexpected menace: a band of roving hogs. His brigade had gone into bivouac in the cedar forest and as “the fighting now ceased for the day on the part of our division we soon found that we had a far different enemy to contend with- a drove of wild hogs had commenced to devour the dead and wounded,” Smith recalled in 1902. “They seemed perfectly crazed by the taste of human flesh. The writer saw several fighting over the arms and entrails of the dead. The wounded and dead were soon gathered up and it was necessary to put guards around them with fixed bayonets in order to keep off the hogs.” Confederate burial details started work that night, in part to get the bodies underground before the hogs could get at them as Smith observed. Corporal Smith’s gritty memoir of Stones River first saw publication in the June 15, 1902, edit...

S ergeant Frank Rew of the 3 rd Vermont served with the Army of the Potomac from its beginnings through Appomattox, but his first harsh introduction to combat didn’t arrive in a large battle but in a fierce skirmish that took place on the siege lines of Yorktown in April 1862.           Four companies of the 3 rd Vermont were tasked with crossing the Warwick River at Dam No. 1 and seizing the Confederate rifle pits beyond which their commanders thought had been abandoned. They were quickly disabused of the notion. “The creek is about six rods wide and into it the brave fellows dashed, some sinking to the waist and others to the arm pits which of course wet much of our ammunition," Sergeant Rew recalled. "When about midway, the Rebels poured in a blinding volley upon them, mowing them down like grass, but on rushed the rest in the face of 3,000 enemy riflemen and dashing up the bank drove a whole regiment from their first rifle pit. The od...

A fter waiting all afternoon to go into action at Sabine Crossroads, Dan Dickinson and the 2nd Massachusetts Light Artillery were quickly overwhelmed once the action began.      " At every discharge, terrible gateways were made in their ranks and the shells we plunged into their midst scattered death and destruction far and wide," he wrote. " Their bullets swept the hill upon which we were posted in perfect showers but happily they aimed too low and none on our piece were killed, though two men were mortally wounded and eight of ten cannoneers were wounded. I am one of the lucky two who were not wounded though how I escaped is a miracle and a great wonder to me. One ball went through my pants at the knee, another struck my belt but did not penetrate. We brought our limber forward when there was no longer any hope of support or succor coming to aid us, limbering our gun when the Rebels were only 75 feet or so from our cannon. Five of the six horses attached to the limber ...

N early three weeks after the Battle of Mobile Bay, Lieutenant Edward N. Kellogg of the U.S. Navy stood outside Fort Morgan as part of the contingent of Federal officers chosen to accept the surrender of Fort Morgan. It proved an impressive ceremony. "At 2 o’clock that afternoon most of the naval and army officers landed at the fort to witness the raising of the old flag over the stronghold that has kept us so long at bay,” he wrote. “The Rebel troops, 560 in number, were marched out and stacked arms, and equal number of our own marched down in front of the line, the band playing “Hail Columbia,” the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and “Yankee Doodle” among other patriotic airs till they were abreast when they halted and faced the graybacks at a distance of ten feet. The American colors were now run up on the flagstaff and the Rebel flag hauled down. The band again struck up, the whole fleet fired a salute, the vessels in succession according to rank and a battery of two field pieces on...

D isabled by a shot that blew her starboard boiler, the U.S. steamer Oneida drifted helplessly in Mobile Bay as the Rebel ironclad Tennessee slowly steamed around her stern then let loose with a devastating broadside. “Three men were killed in my division and six wounded, but I escaped unscathed although covered with a shower of splinters and the brains of my unfortunate Marine bespattered my face,” Lieutenant Edward N, Kellogg wrote to his father. “Three of our men had their heads shot off and the pieces of skull bones flying around actually wounded seven or eight men. The shell that took off the captain’s arm took off the head of a Marine at my 11-inch gun and wounded both captains of the gun as well as the first loader, besides slightly wounded several others by scattering around fragments of bones which are now buried so deep in the brackets as makes it impossible to get them out but by cutting the wood.” Lieutenant Kellogg’s letter, written two days after the Battle of Mobil...

C omparisons of who was the best soldier in either army during the Civil War have long served as conversational fodder for many an armchair historian, but Captain James Kincannon of the 41 st Mississippi staked such a claim for one of his soldiers, Alfred J. Worsham. Worsham as he was called was hardly an imposing physical specimen: “He was box-ankled, knock-kneed, angular, and disjointed all over. He could not stand up straight and was never in line in the company’s formation during the entire term of his service. His energy was wonderful, his will indomitable, his courage superb, and his powers of endurance supernatural. He was never on the sick list, was always at roll call, never shirked any duty, and did more extra service than all the rest of the brigade put together. He was never idle, slept but little, and was always ready to volunteer for any hazardous work that was wanted. He was truly a wonderful man and seemed to have been made purposely for the place which he filled in ...

O ne of the most important roles played by cavalry during a battle was to serve as provost guards, providing security behind the lines by stemming the flow of men from the battle line. Sergeant Willard Burnap of the 2 nd Iowa Cavalry told how his company prevented a rout at the Battle of Corinth in October 1862. “We received orders to station ourselves in the rear of the line of battle and stop all soldiers and officers from going to the rear unless they were wounded or belonged to the medical staff,” he wrote. “This is one of the most important positions that can be assigned to a company on the battlefield. We were scarcely in line when the 80 th Ohio regiment, broken, demoralized, and panic-stricken, came rushing back like frightened sheep. Other regiments, missing their support and knowing the danger when their line was broken, seemed ready to follow. That regiment must be stopped or the day is lost! I was nearest to them and putting the spurs to my horse was soon among them. In...

F iling this one under the category of "I wish I had this when I wrote Hell by the Acre ..."       Writing nearly 50 years after the Battle of Stones River, Private Edward A. Smith of Co. A, 29th Mississippi recalled the intensity of the fighting as his regiment approached the northern end of the cedar forest around midday on December 31, 1862.       "Our brigade  had driven the Federals slowly but steadily through what is known in the history of the battle as the cedar grove. When the Federals reached the back side, they found a field 500 yards wife which, with the leaden hail we were throwing at them, they knew it was death to cross. Their officers got them halted and they turned on us with the fierceness of a lion at bay.  They had no idea of going further and we had an idea that they must go further and there we stood 125 yards apart belching death at each other with all our might. In the meantime, Lieutenant Wilkins called my attent...

R ichard Shatswell joined the 15 th Illinois in January 1864 when the regiment was home on veteran’s furlough. He was an unusual recruit- the 47-year-old Massachusetts native was twice the age of the average Union soldier. Leaving behind a farm in Waukegan, Illinois, he joined the 15 th Illinois along with his son George and soon was on the road to join Sherman’s army in northern Georgia. The regiment’s first assignment was guarding Allatoona Pass. They could hear the guns of the front in the distance but relative quiet allowed the men to focus on improving the defenses and their living quarters.   “We are encamped on a very high hill which commands the pass through these hills,” he wrote. “We have little huts built in the side of the mountain about eight- or nine-feet square. Three or four men sleep together. Our huts are made of good, planed boards and if you would like to know where we got our lumber, I would refer you to the frame of a large flouring mill and dwelling house...

C orporal Charles Willey of the 122nd Ohio sustained the second and third of his four wartime wounds when his regiment charged the Confederate line during the last day of the Battle of the Wilderness. Located on the far right of the Union line, the Ohioans charged the works held by John Pegram's Virginia brigade.      " On the morning of the 6 th  our brigade made a charge on the Rebel works," he stated. "They held their fire until we were about 100 yards from them. When they opened on us, such a sight I  never  want to see again. It seemed as if every other man had fallen, either killed or wounded. It was terrible to see the brave boys falling on every side. I had fired but a few shots when a ball came through my haversack, striking me on the hip. I first thought I was badly wounded but I found I was only bruised. In a short time, another ball struck me on the left leg just above the knee and about two inches from the wound I received at Winchester. The ba...

T o Lieutenant William H.H. Isgrigg of the 4th Indiana Cavalry, the blunders of McCook's cavalry raid in July 1864 occurred after the cavalrymen had completed a round of destruction, then waited around for hours before moving on to their next mission. The excessive delays gave the Confederate forces time to gather their troops and eventually corner the Federal horsemen. By July 30th, they were well and truly trapped.      "W e attempted to go around them but were only led into a trap where some of the hardest cavalry fighting of the war took place," he wrote. "Up to this time, I had not lost a man but here I lost eight men captured on the first charge. In a few minutes afterwards, they charged our pack train and I lost four more men.  In this charge, they cut off our brigade entirely from our force. We made several charges to gain the command, but finding it useless, we had to give up that part of the work and look for some way to get out of the country and to keep f...

M oses Farnsworth, a former infantryman with the 15th Illinois, joined the crew of the ironclad gunboat U.S.S. Benton in the spring of 1862 as part of the deck force. What he saw in the aftermath of the Battle of Memphis underscores that service in the brown water Navy was just as bloody as fighting upon land.       Describing the C.S.S. Beauregard, he wrote "the steam from the boilers scalded four poor firemen in a most shocking manner. One who went on board immediately after the fight says the spectacle afforded by these sufferers exceeded anything he ever saw before and was enough to tear the most unfeeling heart. They implored him to give them relief, but all the relief which could be afforded was produced by the application of flour, sprinkled very lightly upon them. So completely had the steam penetrated the flesh that it hung in shreds upon their bones, the least touch or motion causing it to fall off entirely! As we passed her, she was sinking rapidly w...

W hen the Ohio National Guard was federalized in May 1864, it was done with the understanding that the men would be utilized as rear area troops, performing garrison and guard duty and by so doing, freeing up veteran troops who would be sent to the front. Little did they know that some of the Guardsmen would go to the front, too. But that was the case with the 134 th Ohio.           Raised from the guard companies of Champaign, Shelby, and Hancock Counties, the 134 th Ohio originally was deployed at Cumberland, Maryland guarding the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. But in early June, the regiment received orders to move to Washington and from there, sailed to Bermuda Hundred in Virginia. On the night of June 16 th , a portion of the regiment was sent to the front as pickets and the following day found themselves in a hot fight near Port Walthall.           “During the whole day, we had to fight...

I t was noon on July 22, 1864. Quartermaster Sergeant Charles Wiles of the 78th Ohio was well behind the lines with the divisional wagon train, or so he thought.       " At noon while our teams were corralled in the rear of our brigade, we were somewhat surprised at the appearance of a battery taking position on a hill just above us and the forming of a line of battle by a detachment of the 16 th   Corps," Wiles observed. "The sight was really beautiful, but foreboding of a fight, the character and approach of which we as yet knew nothing about.  We were at once on the alert with everything in the wagons awaiting orders from our brigade quartermaster to move out. Five minutes had scarcely elapsed when we were ordered to move; the whips cracked sharply over the mule’s backs and we were moving hastily to the rear (if any there was) while the above mentioned battery started throwing its deadly missiles among the ranks of the advancing Rebels."   ...

I t is rare thing that an actor becomes a witness to an event that changed the course of a nation’s life, but on the evening of April 14, 1865, Philadelphia-born actor Harry Hawk had the stage to himself at Ford’s Theater, until President Lincoln’s assassin fell upon the stage and brandished a knife. "I was playing Asa Trenchard in Our American Cousin ; the “old lady” of the theater had just gone off the stage and I was answering her exit speech when I heard the fatal shot fired,” Hawk wrote to his father shortly afterwards. “I turned, looked up to the President’s box, and heard a man exclaim, “Sic semper tyrannis!” I saw him jump from the box, seize the flag on the staff and drop to the stage. He slipped when he gained the stage but got upon his feet in a moment and brandished a large knife saying, “The South shall be free!” He turned his face in the direction I stood and I recognized him as John Wilkes Booth. He ran towards me and I, seeing the knife, thought I was the one he ...

C orporal Samuel Van Horne of the 77 th Illinois spoke the sentiments of many of his comrades in the ranks when he found the generalship of Generals Nathaniel Banks and William B. Franklin lacking in the spring of 1864. Thinking specifically of the Battle of Sabine Crossroads, Van Horne opined “I don’t suppose you will ever get a true account of the affair as it was so miserably managed all through. Generals Banks and Franklin will never have it published. It seems to me that any private in the ranks would have done better. I tell you it was poorly managed and there is not a soldier in this department but will (or do rather) curse Generals Banks and Franklin.” Such sentiments are understandable when Van Horne shares that of the 460 men of his regiment who went into action at Sabine Crossroads, only 160 came out and many of them (himself included) were wounded. His account of the battle first saw publication in the May 16, 1864, edition of the Zanesville Daily Courier .

O n June 1, 1864, General Samuel Sturgis led an expedition totaling about 10,000 men in northern Mississippi. His force consisted of twelve infantry regiments, ten cavalry regiments (or portions of regiments) and six batteries (or sections of batteries). The march lasted ten days before the resulting Battle of Brice’s Crossroads sent Sturgis’s column tumbling back towards Memphis in defeat. A frequent question asked by students of the battle centers around the types of arms carried by the boys in Blue during this campaign. Early in the war, state governments, scrambling to gather whatever arms they could secure, sent their troops off to war carrying a mixture of domestic smoothbores, converted rifled muskets, and any European arms that state agents could procure ahead of their Federal (and Confederate) competitors. By the summer of 1864, those days were long gone and the Federal ordnance department had made great strides in standardizing small arms for the infantry. The following l...

A mong the more extraordinary incidents of the Battle of Crossroads was the artillery charge by Captain John W. Morton and his battery. The 21-year-old, General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s chief of artillery, recalled the charge in a letter to his father a few days after the engagement.           “About 1 o’clock, everything, artillery and all, was ordered to charge,” he noted. “Our line moved promptly with a deafening shout and hail of bullets and balls which told terribly upon the enemy which broke their lines and put them in perfect confusion and rout. I charged with the batteries nine times. Once I had two pieces a little in advance of the others and with them in a charge was 20 or 30 yards in advance of our line when we drove the enemy. Just before we captured their wagons, they made a desperate stand and with their reserves concentrated, charged our right flank which gave way and fell back upon the two right pieces of my battery. The en...

A s his two-gun section of the 7 th Wisconsin Battery rolled towards Brice’s Crossroads, Mississippi on the afternoon of June 10, 1864, Private Isaac Denny grew perplexed at General Sturgis’s troop deployments. “Sturgis evidently was unaware of the presence in great force for he kept his trains moving to the front, even after the battle opened,” Denny noted in a letter to his brother back home in Wisconsin. “The wagons and ambulances were jammed right in among us and it looked to me as if he intended to charge the enemy with his supply train. After we had fought five hours and the retreat was ordered, upon going a few rods we found that the damned supply train was still there. A regular stampede ensued. The roads were so blockaded that we were obliged to take to the fields. We started with both of our guns but got stuck in the mud and abandoned one of them.” Federal artillery accounts of Brice’s Crossroads are rare as hens’ teeth, so it is with pleasure that I share Private Denny’...

T he 144th Ohio Infantry, a hundred days' regiment, arrived in Maryland in May 1864 and was promptly dispatched in detachments across the state. While Grant and the Army of the Potomac and Lee's Army of Northern Virginia hammered away at each other, Co. F found itself with light duties and time on their hands at the little town of Annapolis Junction.      " Our duties are light, and at their leisure the boys have reconnoitered the surrounding country on private account, and been rewarded by the discovery of the abundance of cherries and mulberries-of which we are welcome to all we choose to pick," recalled Private Henry S. Chapin. "The consequence is that some of our company keep up a continual skirmishing with the cherry trees and up to the present time the advantage has invariably been in our favor that we have all the fruit we can eat-which, by the way, is no small amount. There is also any quantity of blackberries and huckleberries within easy range of our ca...

"I am now seated on the lap of mother earth, my left knee serving the purpose of a writing desk under the artistically constructed roof of what is in the army usually denominated a shebang," began one soldier of the 83rd Indiana in describing the night of June 21, 1864.  "I am seated in a shebang where on the whole I am rather comfortable everything considered and quite secure from the rain which at present is falling thick and fast and pattering musically- a regular rub-a-dub-dub on everything around me. And this has been its practice with brief intervals during the present month scarcely a day going by without more or less rain. This under the most favorable circumstances makes soldiering disagreeable and especially so on an active campaign when tents are bygone luxuries and one has to cook, eat, and sleep out of doors."       The misery would reach new heights a few days later when the 83rd Indiana took part in the assault on Kennesaw Mountain, a day " ...

S herman Hendrick of Battery C, 1 st Ohio Light Artillery had fought as part of the Army of the Cumberland since its inception. But at Bentonville, North Carolina in March 1865, he saw something he had rarely seen on a battlefield: the 14 th Corps running away from a fight.           “Soon after our arrival, we heard a great uproar towards the front and saw pack mules, baggage wagons, and part of a battery coming back in great disorder,” he recalled. “Our advancing brigades had been flanked by an overwhelming force and came back in awful confusion. The command was given, “Right wheel into battery!” At 3:15 p.m., we were in good shape for callers. We were no sooner in position than the 14 th Corps brigade came running through our line, one captain crying out, “Lee’s whole army is after us! Run for your lives, boys, run!” The 14 th Corps boys were not in the habit of running away from a fight, so we knew that there must be something ahead...

G eneral Ulysses S. Grant recalled in his Memoirs how “when it was first proposed to run the blockade at Vicksburg with river steamers [in April 1863], there were but two captains or masters who were willing to accompany their vessels and but one crew. Volunteers were called for from the army who had had experience in any capacity navigating the western rivers. Captains, pilots, mates, engineers, and deck hands enough presented themselves to take five times the number of vessels we were moving through this dangerous ordeal. All but two of the steamers was commanded by volunteers and all but one so manned.” The only vessel with an all-civilian crew was the steamboat Forest Queen under the command of Captain Daniel Conway. As the fleet tried to drift past Vicksburg, alert Confederate gunners discovered them and after lighting a house on the opposite side of the river afire, pounded the fleet with shell after shell. Billy Blanker, clerk aboard the Forest Queen , proudly gave the follo...

R iding into Gettysburg on June 30, 1863, one trooper of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry of Colonel William Gamble's brigade of Buford's cavalry division remembered how the townspeople greeted his regiment with cheers and songs.       " As we passed through the city, we were gladly welcomed by the inhabitants who flocked in numbers to behold the advance of our troops," he wrote. " The farther we advanced the denser the throng became and when about half the length of the street was passed, a large number of young ladies had congregated and greeted us with the soul-inspiring air, “The Star Spangled Banner.” Another square further and the “Red, White, and Blue” rang merrily from a hundred fair singers. Just as the termination of the street was reached, when every nerve was strained in preparation for the charge, hundreds of voices blended sweetly in their earnest tones and “The Union Forever” inspired the men to the highest degree of patriotism."     The following day...

A s General John Pope’s Army of Virginia prepared to fight the Battle of Cedar Mountain, the men of the 7 th Indiana delighted in the exploits of one of their comrades.           Captured in the aftermath of the Battle of Port Republic, Sergeant Harry Fisk was imprisoned in a barn with dozens of other Federals that night when he saw something that didn’t belong: the captured colors of the 29 th Ohio. “During the night, the thought entered Harry’s head that they had no right to that flag, so suiting actions to his thoughts, he waited until all got quiet,” Captain Alexander Pattison recalled. “Then he tore the flag from the staff and sewed it up between the cloth and linen of his jacket and cut up the staff with his pocketknife. The next morning, great inquiry was made for the flag. The commander of the guard offered $30 for its recovery but no one knew anything about it. The next day, the prisoners were taken on to Lynchburg where they hav...