Memories From a Cot Bed: A Word From Lyman B. Foster of the 26th Ohio

In the run-up to the Presidential election of 1872, a disabled Union veteran named Lyman B. Foster, formerly of the 26th Ohio, wrote a letter to the Chicago Inter Ocean recalling a few tidbits of his wartime services buried within what amounted to a political letter. During the war, Foster was the “bullet magnet” of the 26th Ohio as he was wounded on four separate occasions: Stones River, Missionary Ridge, Kennesaw, and finally at Franklin where he was permanently disabled.

I particularly enjoyed how he recalled the strong bonds of friendship that existed between his regiment and the 100th Illinois. “The two regiments fought side by side in so many battles that it resulted in a strong attachment. Each sympathized with the other in its joys and sorrows,” Foster noted. “I have not forgotten how keenly the 26th felt the loss of the brave colonel of the 100th Illinois at Chickamauga [Colonel Frederick Bartleson]. I still hold in pleasant memory the manifestations of sympathy from members of the 100th for my own misfortune at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee on November 30, 1864, when I lost the entire use of my lower limbs. In a few days afterwards during the battles in front of Nashville, the major of the 100th [Rodney S. Bowen] was mortally wounded and I was lying near him in the hospital when he breathed his last.”

His letter, or rather a shortened version focusing on his wartime recollections, I share here first appeared in the June 21, 1872, edition of the Chicago Inter Ocean.

 

Lyman Brackett Foster's story is one of grim determination. Born in New Hampshire in 1827, by the outbreak of the war he was working as a school teacher in Butler County, Ohio when he enlisted in the 26th Ohio. He started the war as the orderly sergeant of Co. A and was successively promoted to second then first lieutenant. At Stones River he was shot in the leg; at Missionary Ridge a bullet badly bruised his ankle; at Kennesaw a bullet left a half inch gash in his neck but it was at Franklin that he finally knocked out of the war when a bullet struck his groin. He would be discharged the following May and carefully conveyed back to New Hampshire where he would marry, have a daughter, and continue to write and teach until his death in January 1882. He remained essentially bed-ridden the last 17 years of his life. 

Canterbury, New Hampshire

June 14, 1872

          Through the favor of a friend, I have had the pleasure of reading several numbers of your excellent paper. Please reckon on me as one of your subscribers as I am desirous of being posted with regard to Western politics during the Presidential campaign. Although a resident of New Hampshire, I feel well acquainted with the Western people. During my four years of war service, I belonged to the Army of the Cumberland which was made up chiefly of Western troops. I was a member of the 26th Ohio regiment which belonged to the same brigade as did your 100th Illinois.

          The two regiments fought side by side in so many battles that it resulted in a strong attachment. Each sympathized with the other in its joys and sorrows. I have not forgotten how keenly the 26th felt the loss of the brave colonel of the 100th Illinois at Chickamauga [Colonel Frederick Bartleson]. I still hold in pleasant memory the manifestations of sympathy from members of the 100th for my own misfortune at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee on November 30, 1864, when I lost the entire use of my lower limbs. In a few days afterwards during the battles in front of Nashville, the major of the 100th [Rodney S. Bowen] was mortally wounded and I was lying near him in the hospital when he breathed his last. [Bowen, like Foster, was actually wounded at Franklin and died in the officer’s hospital at Nashville on December 3, 1864.]

          I write, therefore, as a disabled western soldier- a complete wreck of the war- still lying on an army bunk or cot bed from which I have not been removed since it was built for me in June 1865 by two of the 40th Indiana boys to convey me from Nashville to my home in New England. In November 1868, I was carried on this same cot bed three miles that I might throw a vote for the electors of Grant and Colfax and I intend to be carried in the same manner next November that I may throw another for Grant and Wilson.

Let the Illinois soldiers, if possible, bring such a pressure to bear on General [John] Palmer as to switch him back on the old Republican track. It looks as though his case is hopeless. The general is in a far more dangerous position now than he was when he with Mrs. Palmer and a corporal’s guard of us were riding in 1863 from Tullahoma to Manchester, Tennessee in the caboose of a freight train and got stuck on an upgrade in a deep cut of the railroad. The general made the load too heavy for our locomotive and while sending forward to Manchester for more steam, we were delayed about two hours in a dangerous locality. We escaped capture, however, by Rebel bushwhackers and the general was saved to win his laurels a few weeks afterwards at Chickamauga and to get from a Rebel sharpshooter at Chattanooga an honorable scar.

 

Source:

“From New Hampshire: A Letter from a Wounded Federal Soldier to His Compatriots,” First Lieutenant Lyman Brackett Foster, Co. A, 26th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Chicago Inter Ocean (Illinois), June 21, 1872, pg. 3

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