Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

N ighttime attacks were rare during the Civil War but on the night of Monday, December 29, 1862, Colonel Charles G. Harker’s brigade of the Army of the Cumberland received just such a directive and the consequences proved a near disaster.           Colonel Michael Shoemaker of the 13 th Michigan was part of Harker’s attack and recalled the night as one of a missed opportunity. “I have always been of the opinion that if our advance had not been stopped by order of our own superior officers, we would have surprised the enemy before they could have formed their ranks and would have driven them from their position,” he wrote in 1878. “This would have left Murfreesboro open to us without further fighting or opposition. The Confederates would have retreated to the Tennessee River without giving us battle.”           Colonel Shoemaker’s description of the events of December 29, 1862, is derived from ...

F or First Lieutenant Edwin Nicar, serving as aide-de-camp on the brigade staff of General George D. Wagner, General Rosecrans surprise appearance at brigade headquarters in Chattanooga on the afternoon of September 20, 1863, was indelibly etched in his memory. “The fugitives streamed back towards and into Chattanooga and by 4 p.m. on the 20 th we knew, or rather believed, that our army was beaten,” he wrote. “Rosecrans himself with a single staff officer arrived at our headquarters about the hour mentioned looking as white as a sheet and had to be helped from his horse. His staff officer, Captain Drouillard, gave us to understand that all was lost but cautioned secrecy.” The following passages about the Chickamauga campaign come from Captain Nicar’s memoir of the war published just as the U.S. was about to enter World War I and published in the pages of the South Bend Tribune . His story picks up in late August 1863 as Wagner’s brigade is marching towards Chattanooga: