Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

I n May of 1862, General Stonewall Jackson's Valley army pushed the Federal forces under General Nathaniel Banks out of the Shenandoah Valley. It was a discouraging defeat that set off something of a panic in Washington, but Captain Andrew Clark of the 3rd Wisconsin felt certain that the troops were not to blame.        " There was something wrong somewhere in withdrawing so many troops from General Banks and leaving him with so small a force so far in the enemy’s country," Captain Clark wrote. "We were three months driving the Rebels from the valley and have lost all we gained and considerably more in three days, which makes it rather discouraging for us who have worked night and day. But we have one consolation: we have done our duty and cannot be blamed for the disaster."           Captain Clark’s missive describing the First Battle of Winchester and the subsequent retreat of General Banks army from the Shenandoa...

L ooking back on the Battle of Chickamauga, Lieutenant Colonel Ole Johnson of the 15th Wisconsin lamented to his brother that " there was great mismanagement somewhere during this battle is evident to everyone but to point where the blame rests may not be quite so easy. On Saturday, our brigade was hurried into the fight entirely unsupported on either flank and the result was that after desperate fighting and heavy losses we were driven back and then another brigade would be sent in in the same manner, and thus we were defeated in detail."      Continuing his story of what happened to his regiment on September 19th, he wrote, "W hen the 25 th   Illinois had passed to the rear, we became immediately engaged with the enemy and the line in our rear (after the 25 th   Illinois passed over them and probably thinking that they were the last of the our troops in front of them) immediately opened fire and we were thus placed between the fires of friends and foes, suffer...

F ollowing the publication of General Lew Wallace's article about Fort Donelson in Century Magazine , Morton M. Casseday, the son of deceased Confederate officer Alexander Casseday who had served as assistant inspector general on General Simon B. Buckner's staff, shared the following private letters from his father giving his perspective of that historic engagement.      Morton wrote as an introduction, "Among the earlier war papers of the Century Magazine was one from General [Lew] Wallace, describing the battle of Fort Donelson. It was then that it occurred to me that the contemporary letters of my father, Major Alex Casseday, who was an officer of General S.B. Buckner’s staff [assistant inspector general], could at least furnish an interesting account of the policy and conduct of one of the Confederate leaders in that memorable contest. Major Casseday was familiar with the proceedings of the councils of the general officers at Donelson and led the 14 th Mississippi w...

M icah C. Saufley, a Confederate veteran who served in the 6 th Kentucky Cavalry and rode with John Morgan, wrote the following letter to his daughter on Christmas day, 1906 giving his reminiscences of Morgan’s raid through Indiana and Ohio and his capture shortly after Buffington Island. It was shared at a United Daughters of the Confederacy meeting in Knoxville on January 16, 1907, and subsequently published in the Knoxville Sentinel .

In the late 1890s, the survivors of the 16 th Michigan endeavored to recover a set of regimental colors that the regiment had lost in battle more than 30 years prior during the Battle of Gaines Mill, Va. The effort resulted in a number of articles published in both Confederate Veteran and local newspapers which provided both Blue and Gray perspectives of how the colors were captured on the evening of June 27, 1862.

A month after the events of Stones River, Lieutenant David Franklin Embree of the 42 nd Indiana remained haunted by the death of one of his comrades.           In response to a question from his sister about how men feel in battle, Embree related this grisly tale. “The ball came obliquely from the left and front, passing several feet in front of me. It seemed that I could hear it singing almost from the time it left its bed in the Rebel’s gun. As it came swiftly I knew where it was going by the sound. Suddenly, I heard the same ball go crash against something and I knew by the sound that it had burst a human skull,” he wrote. “I barely had time to look around to my right and then I saw Sergeant Chauncey Glassmith quivering and dying. This happened when we were not very hotly engaged and when our men were not firing else I could not have heard the singing of the bullet. Every one of us could not refrain from casting a glance at the dying...

T he 14 th Wisconsin conducted four charges on the second day of Shiloh fighting for possession of a Confederate battery. It was after the fourth charge that Lieutenant Absalom Smith was struck down by a shell.             “We fought for about two hours when I was struck by a piece of shell, knocked down, and had to be helped off the field,” he wrote. “The missile struck me in the left side, tearing my clothing and paralyzing my side. It proved not to be as dangerous as first apprehended. Before I received this, I made several narrow escapes; one ball passed through my coat sleeve and when I mounted a captured cannon to rally my men, another ball took off my cap cover.”             The following account of Shiloh, penned by Lieutenant Smith, first saw publication in the May 24, 1862, edition of the Milwaukee Morning Sentinel . The letter was written to his brother Rev. J.C....

Rain. Impassable Roads. Endless Mud. Victory.       Private William F. Stegamiller of Co. C wrote the following letter to the editors of the Aurora Journal in July 1863 giving a fine account of the Tullahoma campaign. Like most regiments in the Army of the Cumberland, the 37 th Indiana’s part was largely confined to marching and surviving in the endless rain and mud as the army moved south.            Private Stegamiller’s letter first appeared in the July 30, 1863, edition of the Aurora Journal . Unfortunately, he would not survive the war, being killed in action the following May at the Battle of Pickett’s Mill in northern Georgia.  Regimental colors of the 37th Indiana Volunteer Infantry  Decherd Station, Tennessee July 17, 1863           Permit a soldier of the 37 th Indiana of the Army of the Cumberland to make a few statements as to what has occur...

A fter a long winter of relative inactivity, the war in the Kanawha Valley of western Virginia opened with a bang in May 1862 with a series of engagements at Giles Courthouse, Princeton, Charleston, and Lewisburg. Sergeant Major Phocian Way of the 11 th Ohio missed all of the action, tasked with guarding stores at Raleigh. But the stern realities of war rolled into town on the evening of May 26.           “Last evening, 63 of the men wounded at Princeton were brought here in ambulances and placed in the courthouse which has been fitted up as a hospital,” he wrote to the editors of the Clinton Republican . “I saw the poor fellows as they were carried into the building. Some had one leg shot off, some were minus an arm, and others exhibited ghastly saber cuts. One of them, Lieutenant Bluher of the 37 th Ohio, had his leg amputated and it is feared that he will not survive the operation. The sight of these suffering men brought me fully to r...

C harging the Confederate works at Fort Donelson on the afternoon of February 15, 1862, Andrew Nichols of the 2nd Iowa recalled the intensely personal nature of combat. "The enemy did not fire a shot until we got within about 50 yards," he wrote. "As for me, I held my head as low as possible and ran my best for they were shooting high until I got within about 10 feet of the ditch. I saw a man stick his gun under the log as they had laid logs on top of the breastworks with just room to shoot under. I saw him just about to shoot; I thought I was just about as sure of him as if I was inside so I blazed away at him. He went out of sight and I jumped into the ditch and loaded. When I got loaded and over there was a good many ahead of me.  The first shot I got inside was at a fellow in butternut clothes who slipped out from behind a tree about 30 yards off and was going to shoot at one of our boys. I was just about to pull when another one stepped out to shoot over his shoulde...

A setting sun silhouetted the charging Confederates as they broke the first line of Federals at Pleasant Hill on the evening of April 9, 1864. Chaplain Francis Evans of the 35th Iowa observed their approach from the second line and marveled at the response of his fellow Iowans.     " While the Rebels were charging up the field and the troops in our second line were sitting and lying on the ground waiting for orders, a shell from a Rebel gun struck Peter Harrison of Co. A on the head, knocking one side of it entirely off, and then passed through the breast of Captain Henry Blanck of the same company, killing them both instantly," Evans wrote. " The Rebels continued to advance until within about 200 yards of our main line when our boys, receiving orders to charge, sprang up with a wild cheer and poured into the Rebels such a deadly volley that they paused in their defiant advance to anticipated triumph and began gradually to fall back. Our brave boys advanced rapidly upon...

W atching the sun set after the first day of Shiloh, Sergeant Harold White of the 11 th Iowa “commenced musing over the affairs of the day and you may well suppose my musings were not of a very agreeable character. The prospect was most decidedly blue- not the bright cerulean tings of the summer sky, but a dark, despairing, deplorable blue.”           “That we were whipped was certain. That on the morrow we should all be taken prisoners was more than probable. Nothing but the appearance of Buell could save us from utter destruction. Fortunately, Buell was near at hand and all night long we could hear the constant splashing of the steamboat wheels as regiment after regiment was brought over the stream. During the night, as if nature was disposed to add to the general gloom, a furious storm came on, which continued for several hours.”           Sergeant White’s detailed recounting of his regimen...

A fter most of the officers and men of the 16 th Indiana Infantry had been captured at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky on August 30, 1862, they were given battlefield paroles and sent back home. They soon found themselves in military limbo, stuck at Camp Morton, kept under tight guard, their days filled with endless drill. Morale suffered accordingly.             “This is the most unpleasant camp I have ever been in,” one soldier from Co. E complained. “Several of the paroled men refused to drill, the feeling being much warmer in the 12 th Indiana than in the 16 th . Indeed, there appeared to be whole companies of the 12 th who were taken to the guardhouse while there was only two men in our company who suffered that punishment for refusing to drill.”           The following missive, first published in the October 9, 1862, edition of the Aurora Journal, was written by a “high private” ...

A fter the fall of Fort Donelson in February 1862, Colonel Morgan L. Smith secured a company flag taken from Co. F of the 23 rd Mississippi and sent it back to his home state of New York for presentation to the City of New York. The New York Daily Herald shared the following story in their February 26, 1862, edition.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Hatchie Bridge in October 1862, Captain William H. Bolton commanding Battery L of the 2 nd Illinois Light Artillery was presented with the flag of the Clark County Farmers, Co. D of the 7 th Battalion Mississippi Infantry, by the order of his divisional commander General Stephen Hurlbut. Captain Bolton proudly sent the flag back to Chicago for presentation to the city little knowing that a fellow Illinois captain would hotly dispute his battery’s claim to the flag. The story, convoluted as it may be, requires a touch of explanation.

D uring the Battle of Stones River, the Army of the Cumberland suffered heavy losses in artillery, particularly by the Right Wing under the command of Major General Alexander McCook. Colonel James Barnett, chief of artillery for the Army of the Cumberland, reported total losses of 28 guns which are spelled out below.

W hile recuperating in an Atlanta hospital after suffering a hip wound on the last day of the Battle of Chickamauga, Sergeant Hugh Wilson, Jr. of the 19 th South Carolina cobbled together his notes and assembled the following campaign diary for the editors of the Abbeville Press and Banner . It is a remarkable chronicle of the movements of the Army of the Tennessee in the days leading up to its victory at Chickamauga.           During that campaign, Wilson’s regiment (part of the 10 th /19 th Consolidated South Carolina) was part of General Arthur M. Manigault’s brigade, General Thomas C. Hindman’s division, of Polk’s Corps. His account first saw publication in the October 2, 1863, edition of the Abbeville Press and Banner.

S tanding atop Missionary Ridge on the afternoon of November 25, 1863, Lieutenant William M. Boroughs of the 24 th Alabama described the approaching Federal attack as  "the grandest array of blue ever witnessed by the veterans on the ridge.  As soon as the Federal lines appeared about midway through the plain, shells and shots went screaming over our heads and we could see by the white puffs that they exploded right in the midst of the enemy. When the Federals arrived within 200-300 yards of the base of the ridge, they moved at a double quick which soon broke into a run and as line after line came up, they lay down at the foot of the ridge and now the work of death began. They had now gotten within range of our small arms, but our artillery could not be sufficiently depressed to reach them."  Later, in “one of those incomprehensible things happened which so frequently turned the tide of success to one side or the other during our civil war,” a Union regiment surged over ...

S tunned and nauseated after the explosion of one of his battery’s caissons, a member of the Macbeth Light Artillery of South Carolina stumbled back into the streets of Sharpsburg while the battle of Antietam was at its height. “As I passed along the streets in the western suburbs of Sharpsburg, I saw the most horrible scene that I witnessed during the war: a Confederate soldier lying on the street with the top of his head shot off,” he wrote. “It had evidently been done by Federal guns on the eastern side of the Antietam a mile away. His blood and brains were scattered on the ground and a hog was reveling in them as though the battle was for the special benefit of hungry brutes. On the crest of a high hill just beyond this scene, I saw General Lee, almost alone, with his glasses to his eyes intently watching his center that had already been broken without the slightest apparent indication of alarm.” The following article, part of a lengthy series describing the wartime services of...

L ooking back on the ferocious fighting at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, Captain William H. Kinsman of the 4th Iowa called it "a perfect hurricane of death howling through the woods."   " The weather was splendid and the smoke, instead of hanging murkily among the trees, rose rapidly and rolled away over the hills in dense, sulfurous masses. The thunder of the artillery was terrific as the shot and shell hissed and screamed through the air like flying devils while the infantry with their rifles, shotguns, and muskets kept a perfect hurricane of death howling through the woods. The Rebels fought well but generally fired too high and their batteries, although getting our range accurately, missed the elevation much of the time. Their poor shooting was our salvation. Had they done as well as our men with the tremendous odds against us, they must have annihilated us," he wrote.            Captain Kinsman’s description of ...

F ollowing his army’s victory at the Battle of Iuka, Mississippi on September 19, 1862, General William S. Rosecrans lavished praise on numerous regiments of the command for their steadfast fighting. One regiment, however, was called out: the 17 th Iowa Infantry.           Burt Axton, reporting for the Cincinnati Commercial on September 23 pointed out that “censure is cast upon the 48 th Indiana, 80 th Ohio, and 17 th Iowa for misconduct in action, but how far their fault is attributable to the incompetency or poltroonery of the officers remains to be investigated.” The subsequent investigation by Rosecrans’ staff absolved the 48 th Indiana of misconduct noting that regiment posted on the left of the Union line “held its ground until the brave Eddy fell and a whole brigade of Texans came in through a ravine on the little band and even then only yielded a hundred yards until relieved.” The 80 th Ohio was similarly absolved of blame. ...

I llinois gunner Thaddeus Hulaniski, writing his mother after the Battle of Hatchie Bridge, described the intense moment when he nearly lost his life. "The enemy knew the position of the bridge which we had to cross and kept up a perfect shower of shot, shell, and canister, together with the musketry and thunder of artillery- a scene awful and sublime,” he said. “All our forces were engaged here except two batteries. Here our gun axle was cracked, disabling the gun and a shot sent into our limber chest which contains ammunition. I was standing by the side of it, that being my position. The shot broke two shells inside but luckily did not explode otherwise I would not be here to write this letter.” Private Hulaniski’s description of the fight at Hatchie River/Davis Bridge first saw publication in the October 27, 1862, edition of the Daily Gate City published in Keokuk, Iowa.

Colonel Daniel McCook of the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "Colonel Dan" to his troops, fell at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia on June 27, 1864 while leading his brigade in a charge upon the Confederate works.  W hen on August 21, 1862, I joined Captain James Taylor Holmes company en route to Camp Dennison, Ohio, it was on the condition that 7 members already enrolled must be rejected by physical examination or join other companies. To explain to those who have grown up since the close of the war, as well as to refresh the memories of those we became identified and part of the 300,000 more of 1862, I will state that if a volunteer chosen to select his associates in an Ohio company or regiment there were qualifications other than patriotism precedent to being sworn into the army.           I recall one experience of my attending a war meeting in an old log Methodist meeting house, dimly lighted with tallow-dip candles held in place by tin r...

O n April 11, 1862, Federal forces under the command of Brigadier General Ormsby M. Mitchel captured Huntsville, Alabama in a surprise move upon the vital Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Troopers from the 4 th Ohio Cavalry galloped into town at dawn, quickly seizing the post office and railroad depot. Among the papers of the telegraph office, they discovered a dispatch from General P.G.T. Beauregard dated from two days before at Corinth, Mississippi. Upon receiving this dispatch, General Mitchel’s staff set to work deciphering the document. “It is a simple and easy cipher which required General Mitchel and his aides about 20 minutes to translate,” a reporter from the Cincinnati Gazette noted. But how did they actually crack the code? And why was this seemingly important document sitting on a desk in Huntsville? This article explores those questions. 

C orporal Henry Gage of the 96th Illinois recalled the dramatic moment on the morning of November 25, 1863 as the members of the 8th Kentucky raised their flag atop Lookout Mountain.      "Before daybreak, the brigade started to scale the wall and the 8 th  Kentucky of our brigade swung the first flag over the “spur” and old Whitaker was close behind to swing his hat. Boys yell some when they make a successful charge but that noise that rose from the side of that mountain that time was as artillery to small arms. The shout from our lines to Hooker’s men who crossed to help us and was caught up on the other side of the mountain and so died away in the distance. Now that we had the mountain, our regiment and the 8 th  Kentucky came up to hold it and the rest of the brigade went on. We did not lose many in the scrape," he noted.           The following letter, published in the December 19, 1863, edition of the Waukegan...

I n 1896, Illinois veteran John Wiesman visited Atlanta and wrote of his disappointment at the degradation of the battlefield and the "disgraceful" monument to his fallen army commander General James B. McPherson.      " In walking over the field, I found only one bullet but the natives have quite a stock of relics on hand and are disposing of them at a fair price. I was surprised to find nailed high up to a pine tree where General McPherson fell, a sign reading “Gen. John B. McPherson, killed July 22, ’64.” How or by whom such a blunder was made I cannot understand. One would suppose that anyone who was in the least familiar with the history of the late war and our generals, especially one so prominent as our beloved McPherson, would know it was James B. and not John B.  The monument erected where General McPherson is a disgrace to our government. It is a condemned cannon enclosed by a cast iron rail fence about the size of a hen coop. That is all that marks the sac...

C rippled by a lame foot, Lieutenant Benjamin Blandy of the 25th Ohio missed out of his regiment's fight on Chinn Ridge at Second Bull Run but watched the events unfold from the regimental hospital wagons.     " Our regiment was on the left flank and our brigade was ordered out to support a battery. Nearly all our forces were stationed away on its right. The enemy concentrated his entire force on the left (the weakest point) and hurled them against us like a thunderbolt. They marched up like mad men, not at a charge, but marched up in solid column without firing a shot. As fast as one regiment was mowed down like grass by the scythe, another stepped up in his place. I know that our brigade killed and wounded more than their own number, but the Rebels still advanced with their heads down and took the flag from the color sergeant of the 73 rd  Ohio. At such conduct, our boys became panic-stricken and fled," he wrote.          ...