Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

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 " ...