Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

R eading Sergeant Thomas Organ’s letter after the seizure of Cumberland Gap in September 1863, one gets the sense that the Ohio sergeant felt a sense of deliverance from not only avoiding death in battle but from no longer being under the command of Colonel John F. DeCourcey.           “The colonel (little DeCourcey as the boys term him) was a foreigner by birth and having been educated in and the breathed the atmosphere of tyranny and oppression, they had become so perfectly instilled into his innermost being that it forms the predominant part of the man. He seemed never so happy himself unless those around him were miserable,” Organ complained. DeCourcey’s command of the brigade terminated once Cumberland Gap was secured. “Colonel DeCourcey had his feathers cut some for disrespectful language toward General [James] Shackelford and was sent back to his regiment. General Shackelford had attacked the Rebs on the Tennessee side of the Gap b...

C olonel Robert L. McCook of the 9 th Ohio Infantry was wounded in the right leg during the Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky on January 19, 1862. Writing from a hospital bed at Camp Hamilton, Kentucky two days afterwards, one of his first tasks was to notify Gustavus Tafel back in Cincinnati that his brother Hugo had been killed in the Battle of Mill Springs. He also explained how he came to be wounded. “My horse received three wounds from shots: one ball passed through my overcoat and the fifth struck me in the leg. I received a severe wound in the leg below the knee. I hope the leg is but slightly injured. You will see from this that we were in the midst of a fiery shower of balls. Had I left the field immediately it would perhaps been better for me. I remained in the field, however, and pursued the enemy at the head of my brigade a distance of twelve miles, of which I was compelled to make three miles on foot in an ankle-deep morass,” McCook wrote.      ...

I n early August 1862, General George Morgan, commanding Federals forces holding Cumberland Gap, acquired intelligence indicative of increased Confederate activity in eastern Tennessee. To smoke out Confederate intentions, he dispatched a 1,500-man force under Colonel John Decourcey to march towards the Clinch River. DeCourcey’s men were in camp at Tazewell, Tennessee on the morning of August 6, 1862, when Kirby Smith’s army made their presence known and attacked the Federals. The resulting ‘Battle’ of Tazewell lasted through most of the day, eventually sent DeCourcey retreating to Cumberland Gap, and cost each side roughly 70 casualties.           Among the Confederate forces at Cumberland Gap were several regiments of Georgians; today’s blog post features detailed accounts from an unknown soldier in the 40 th Georgia, writing under the nom-de-plume of Stilesboro, likely named after a small farming community west of Cartersville in Bartow...