Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

L ocated just north of the Mason-Dixon line, one resident of Greencastle, Pennsylvania had a ringside seat to the beginning and end of Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863. He took especial note of the Confederate generals who accompanied the columns.           “General Lee and staff passed immediately in the rear of General Hill’s corps,” he noted. “His bodyguards were well mounted, well dressed, and well equipped. They numbered about 50 fine looking men. General Lee appears old and had a troubled, careworn countenance. He wore a blue mantle over his gray suit with an ordinary slouch hat and was mounted on a fine black horse. He did not converse with anyone but appeared to be in deep meditation. General Ewell was reserved in conversation and dignified in appearance. General A.P. Hill was more communicative and agreeable but had a very poor opinion of the generals in the Union army- in fact, a general denunciation of the Uni...

W riting to his father while aboard the steam sloop-of-war U.S.S. Brooklyn , Assistant Second Engineer James Atkins desired to correct some of the misinformation that he saw in the newspapers regarding his ship's fight at Forts Jackson and St. Philip in April 1862.      " At about 3 o’clock in the morning, as soon as we came round the point in range of their guns, they opened upon us and for an hour and a half the shots were flying around us like hail," he recalled. "In the height of the noise and confusion, the horrible shrieking of shots as they passed over the ship, the groans of the wounded, and the necessary noise attendant upon working and firing the guns, the long-dreaded ram the veritable  Manassas  struck us just amidships. With a heavy crash, the ship reeled over to port and the ram passed under our stern over towards the shore. Before she could come round again to renew the attack, the old  Mississippi , playing the ram, ran into her and with tre...

Indiana at Chickamauga  I n part two of the 84 th Indiana at Chickamauga series, Thomas Addington provides his experiences on Sunday, September 20, 1863, when his regiment was ordered to support General Thomas's line atop Horseshoe Ridge.         " Up until 11 o’clock Sunday morning, we remained idly in camp enjoying ourselves in such pastimes as are known to all soldiers while Thomas was breasting the storm hurled upon him with relentless fury," Addington recalled. "Then the sharp, quick notes of the bugle called us into line. Chickens were abandoned half dressed, fresh pork partly cooked was thrust hastily into haversacks, sweet potatoes were left roasting in the fire, guns and cartridge boxes were looked over to see if all was in order and away we went on the double quick. Up hill and down, across fields and through the woods, for three miles we hurried on, the roar of battle growing more terrific all the time till at last, panting for breath and drippi...

Indiana at Chickamauga I n part one of the 84 th Indiana at Chickamauga series, Thomas Addington, then serving as a private in Co. A, describes his regiment’s efforts to hold their position on the Union far left defending the army’s road connection to Chattanooga on Saturday, September 19, 1863. In a fight that developed that morning near Peavine Creek, Addington said “just after crossing the creek, we began to hear scattering shots from our skirmishers, replied to vigorously by the enemy, while spent balls began to drop in our midst. Hurrying forward, we took up a position behind the fence where we had laid the night before. Here we waited for our skirmishers to fall back into line; we did not have long to wait. They soon came straggling through the weeds and briars with which the fields were overgrown. A bluecoat would be seen to pop up, fire at the approaching foe, then drop down among the weeds and continue his retreat. Arriving at the fence, a final shot would be fired and then o...

T he initial moments entering combat at Cedar Mountain were anything but encouraging to the men of the 14th Georgia. The regiment had scarcely entered the field when the colonel suffered a wound in his hand, forcing him to turn over command to the lieutenant colonel Once the men got into line, the sight before them dripped with peril as remembered by one veteran.       "Emerging from the woods near the road by which the brigade had approached the field, it was met by General Taliaferro’s brigade, Jackson’s division, falling back before the advancing enemy," he wrote. "The 14 th  was cut off from the brigade by Taliaferro’s retreating men. Some of the men of the 14 th  faltered for a moment. The danger of a panic was imminent. The enemy, encouraged by the retreat of Taliaferro’s brigade and confident of victory, were advancing and about reaching a point at which their line would have prolonged our battleline and were within a stone’s throw of and on the flan...

B y any measure, the 27th Illinois had already performed a full day's work during their fighting south of the Wilkinson Pike on the morning of December 31, 1862 at Stones River. The regiment had helped repulse multiple Confederate attacks on their position and retreated by General Phil Sheridan's command around 11 a.m.       Moving north along the Nashville Pike in search of ammunition a few hours later, Major William Schmitt now commanding the regiment found himself in the presence of General Rosecrans. The commanding general of the Army of the Cumberland was in a tight spot and needed the 27th Illinois to help hold the line along the Nashville Pike. Schmitt replied that he was nearly out of ammunition but would use the bayonet. Rosecrans agreed and told him to go at the Rebels "quick, quick."      "After retreating over a mile, we struck the road running directly from Nashville to Murfreesboro where we halted and seeing the enemy coming to meet us, w...

F or future Congressman William H. Calkins, the sight at dawn on February 16, 1862, repaid manyfold the privations and sufferings he experienced during the days in front of Fort Donelson.     " The first gray streak of daylight displayed a white flag streaming from off the tops of the surrounding breastworks," he noted in a letter to the editors of the Lafayette Journal & Courier. "If you can imagine the feelings of our troops when they saw the rattlesnake flag fall and the glorious stars and stripes waving in triumph over the Rebel fort. It paid us tenfold for our suffering. To pay us for our gallant bravery, we had the honor to march in front of the long line of troops into the fort.  General Floyd escaped as did General Pillow, but Generals Buckner, Johnson, and West were captured. There were from 10,000-12,000 prisoners taken and a rough-looking set I tell you."     A member of the 14th Iowa Infantry, Lieutenant Calkins' description of the victory at Fo...

O n Thursday, November 5, 1863, Captain Warren Parker Edgarton of Battery E of the 1 st Ohio Light Artillery married the widower Julia Daly Olwine in Nashville, Tennessee. It was apparently a quiet wedding- outside of being recorded in the record of Davidson County, Tennessee marriages, no mention was made of the nuptials in any period newspapers. Wartime marriages were hardly uncommon during the Civil War, but the circumstances of how a Massachusetts-born artillery officer from Ohio met one of the most beloved actresses of the American stage is history (quoting the History Guy) that deserves to be remembered. To start, let’s introduce the couple. Captain Edgarton is a familiar soldier to readers of the blog; the story of how his battery was captured during the opening moments of the Battle of Stones River has been recounted in several previous posts. (See Comanche Versus the Professor ,  Receipt in Full in Red Ink , An Intimate View of Battery E's Demise , and  Captured En...

T he last week of August 1862 may have been the busiest in the history of the 21st Georgia Infantry's history during the Civil War. The Georgians fought in five separate engagements over the course of a little more than a week: Freeman's Ford on August 22nd, Manassas Station in the early morning hours of August 27th, Groveton on the evening of the 28th, Second Bull Run throughout August 29th and 30th, then Chantilly on September 1st.       The engagement at Groveton on the evening of August 28th against a portion of the Iron Brigade of the Army of the Potomac was a particularly hard fight for the regiment. " We carried 240 men into the engagement and advancing with our brigade, some became hotly engaged," one veteran recalled. "Onward we went to a fence, the enemy falling back before us. Whilst fighting here under a heavy crossfire, our regiment and the 21 st  North Carolina suffered unusually. Owing to some mistake, the 15 th  Alabama and 12 th  Georg...

O n Saturday morning July 26, 1862, the editors of the Atlanta Southern Confederacy heard a ruckus in the streets and looking outdoors saw that a large and visibly angry crowd had gathered in front of Hunnicutt & Taylor’s store. Hanging above the window was a “very large and handsome Lincoln flag,” the editors later remembered. “In full view from our window, spread to the breeze waving to and fro was the beautiful flag of the once powerful and honored, but now broken and disgraced, United States.”           The stars and stripes had not flown in Atlanta since January 1861 when Georgia became the fifth state to secede from the Union. And now this hated emblem floating in the center of Atlanta? Lieutenant Robert Graham, serving in Co. H of the 2 nd Georgia Cavalry, soon provided an explanation- the flag was the regimental flag of the 9 th Michigan Infantry, captured during the recent engagement at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The “rising wr...

O n the morning of July 13, 1862, a cavalry command under Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked and compelled the surrender of the Federal garrison at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Among those taking part in the assault was Private John C. Ellington of the 2 nd Georgia Cavalry who in this brief letter to his father back home in Jonesboro described how his company, the Clayton Dragoons, took the Rutherford County Courthouse.           “The enemy kept up a continual crossfire from the windows,” Ellington stated. “We were ordered to charge on foot. At the first effort, they poured a volley of balls into our ranks, killing R.S. Henderson and F.M. Farris while severely wounding D.P. Morris and Robert Payne, all men from the Clayton Dragoons. We got an axe and charged from another corner and succeeded in reaching the courthouse and broke down the door. About this time, all of them went to the upper story so we went in and built a fire. This they co...

C haplain Lark S. Livermore of the 16th Wisconsin had already endured a Sabbath unlike any he'd ever experienced before when on the afternoon of April 6, 1862, he witnessed the frightening breakdown in morale amongst his comrades in the Federal army.  He was starting to dress the wounded arm of his colonel when "a few shells from the enemy dropped amid the promiscuous crowd of thousands on the bank and got up a regular stampede. The whole side hill seemed in motion, making a break for the boats which began just then (as all had steam up) to back off from shore amid the deafening cry, ‘the Rebels are upon us!’ The backing off of the boats heightened the alarm.  I handed the Dr. Torry the bowl I was using to catch the blood from the arm of Colonel Allen, fearing for the safety of Charlie with the horses on shore in such an alarming stampede. The gangplank was literally hemmed full and men crowded off into the river in a rush to get on board the boats and away from the advancing ...