A Lead Miner at Fort Henry
O n the evening of February 4, 1862, Lieutenant Colonel Jasper Maltby of the 45 th Illinois gathered the commissioned officers of his regiment together to give them a pep talk. After more than two months of service at Camp Washburne, Camp Douglas, and Cairo, there was finally the prospect that the regiment would see action on the morrow. Ten miles south of them lay Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. “He said that we were about to meet the enemy and he expected that everyone would do his whole duty,” recalled Second Lieutenant Henry H. Boyce of Co. I. “He also said that by placing our trust in the God of battles and our good guns we would surely conquer. We would assist in making the future history of our country and he wanted it to be such a history as our children should not be ashamed to read.” Duly encouraged, the regiment marched out on February 6 th as they heard the ...