Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

A few weeks after the Battle of Stones River, a trio of gentlemen from Salem, Ohio traveled to the battlefield to retrieve the bodies of some of their townsmen who died during the battle. In an extraordinary account from the editor of the Salem Republican , he described the sad scene that marked the arrival of the bodies at the town hall.   “The rough boxes containing the dead were placed side by side on the platform of the hall and were opened as speedily as possible,” he stated. “The first box opened contained the body of Captain Bean; the next was Hale’s, and so on until all were opened. Among the few men present was an aged father whose son lay in a rude coffin before him. How eagerly he gazed at his boy and said, “That’s my son!” and left the room.” “Few of us present on this occasion ever saw such a sight as was here presented. There lay the bodies of four young men in the pride and glory of manhood, three of whom has been buried on the battlefield just as they fell and ...

C aptured in the aftermath of the City Belle disaster in May 1864, Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Rutishauser of the 58th Illinois described the elation of his Confederate captors in the aftermath of their successes against General Nathaniel Banks' army.     " They took us to their camp, which was more like a bandit camp, such as I had seen in Italy in previous years, than a military camp," he relayed. "Here I was immediately surrounded by several Rebel officers, all of whom expressed their joy at their victory, which they had just achieved over Banks's mistakes. They mocked this general, called him their commissary, and claimed to have cut off and surrounded the Union army in Alexandria and could now starve them out." And so began the colonel's lengthy imprisonment; eventually he would be delivered to Camp Ford, Texas, and remained there for nearly six months. Lieutenant Colonel Rutishauser’s account first saw publication in the November 16, 1864, edition o...

O n one of the last days of the Civil War, Captain William Saxton of the 157th New York recorded his impressions of the April 9, 1865, fight at Dingle's Mill, South Carolina. His regiment, formerly part of the 11th Corps, had been pummeled at both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg before being sent to South Carolina in the summer of 1863. They were a veteran unit and when they deployed through the swamp at Dingle's Mill, Captain Saxton spied a pair of Confederate artillery pieces in his front and resolved to take them.      " I immediately formed my company in line, a few of the 56 th  New York boys falling in line with me, and marched them hurriedly to the edge of the woods, showed them the guns, then said, “Boys, let’s take them. Now, every man for himself as fast as you can go. Forward march!” And away we went. How rapidly a man’s thoughts will come to him under certain circumstances. I remember I thought as we were running forward that the muzzles of those guns wer...