Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

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...