Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles

W riting back to his brother in Fosters, Alabama, Private Joseph Maharrey of Co. H of the 3rd Georgia Infantry described a little known engagement remembered as the " Chicamacomico Races" which took place near Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the North Carolina coast in early October 1861.       After roughing up the camp of the 20th Indiana on Chicamacomico Island, the 3rd Georgia pursued the Federals by boat and by foot for over 20 miles until closing in on the Federal position near Cape Hatteras.  " Our company took the lead all the time. I do not know whether I killed any or not, but I assure you I did my best and kept old “Bettie” pretty warm at times," Maharrey wrote. "I helped take some prisoners. There was only about 150 of us in the advance and when we came near the lighthouse, the others having broken down. We did not eat anything until we commenced a retreat which we were compelled to make from the bad condition we were in, having eaten nothing and ha...

T he struggle for the colors of the all-German 24 th Illinois at Perryville was an intense, hand-to-hand affair as remembered by Surgeon William Wagner. The line, thinning at each discharge of musketry, was starting to crumble away “but our center, grouped around the regimental colors, refused to give way,” Wagner wrote. “I received the flag to carry it on to victory, never shall an enemy see my back” cried Joseph Broesch, the color bearer, ready to die at his post. But immediately afterwards he, too, sank down, holding the flag staff bravely aloft as the flag had already been shot to tatters.”   “Quick as a thought, a Rebel officer sprang forward from the column of the enemy (which was only a few paces from ours) in order to conquer our palladium, but a ball from Corporal Vogelberg’s rifle laid him low at the same moment. However, the gallant corporal, too, was struck down by the deadly lead. The enemy’s flag was only 20 paces from ours and twice the bearers of it were shot dow...

T he first word Mary Root of Buffalo heard from her son Colonel Adrian Root commanding the 94th New York after Gettysburg was this short note written from Washington, D.C.  "During the action of the 1 st instant, I was unhorsed by the explosion of a shell directly in front of me, and by which I was so stunned as to have remained quite helpless for several hours,” the colonel began. “During this time the 1st Corps was driven back a mile with heavy loss, leaving me a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. I was however treated with great kindness during the five days of my captivity, and when the enemy retired, I was left on parole. With the exception of severe pains in my head consequent upon concussion of the brain, I am in good condition, although not fit for duty. I hope to be soon exchanged and able to again lead my brave Regiment in the field. Have no fears for my safety.” A week later, Colonel Root recovered sufficiently to provide a more detailed description of Gettysburg;...

S ergeant Major Rufus Haughton of the 123rd Illinois may be forgiven for terming the Federal victory during the March 20, 1863, engagement at Vaught Hill's near Milton, Tennessee as "one of the most brilliant achievements of the war."      The engagement pitted a small brigade under the command of Colonel Albert S. Hall against several thousand cavalrymen belonging to General John H. Morgan's cavalry command. Hall's troops had some combat experience but it was of the unnerving kind: the brigade, then under the command of General William R. Terrill, had been driven off the field during the opening moments of the Battle of Perryville. The fight at Milton gave the men of the 123rd Illinois a chance to prove themselves.       " The battle at Vaught’s Hill on the 20 th  instant has fully established our right to a place on the list of the fighting regiments of this Department," Sergeant Major Haughton stated. "And although we deeply deplore the loss of...

S hortly after graduating from Hillsdale College in 1862, Francis Wayland Dunn enlisted with his older brother Newell in Co. A of the 64th Illinois Infantry, also known as Yates' Sharpshooters. Scarcely a month after he enlisted, Francis recorded his impressions of the regiment's fight during the Second Battle of Corinth on October 4, 1862.     " Our battalion was under fire only a short time, but of the 230 that went into the fight, 74 were either killed, wounded, or missing," he said in a letter to the editors of the Hillsdale Standard . " It is a horrible scene, a bloody battlefield covered with dead and wounded men. It seems like an exaggeration to talk of men being piled together in heaps, and quite often it is, yet the explosion of a shell or a charge of grape will make it literally true. Around a little earthwork five or six rods long raised for the protection of a little battery of three guns were 37 dead Rebels.  The firing lasted but a short time and th...

W riting from a hospital bed in Washington, D.C. three weeks after his regiment’s fight at Turner’s Gap, John Costigan of the 6 th Wisconsin recalled “the affair was a mixed-up mess of confusion. We fought on the brow of a steep hill among rocks and logs and all sorts of obstructions. The enemy tried to flank us when Colonel [Edward S.] Bragg yelled to change front forward on the first company.” “I could hear the Rebel brigadier holler “Shoot low, prick the toenails of the damned Yankees!” The bullets flew like hail among us and sounded like bees swarming. The Rebels made me a present of three pieces of lead a little above the right knee. It tickled some, I assure you. I dug out one chunk with my jackknife the next day,” Costigan stated.           Costigan’s letter first appeared in the October 15, 1862, edition of the Daily Milwaukee News .

Stones River Stories J ames Urie McClenahan of Co. B, 15 th Ohio Infantry wrote the following journal account of the Stones River campaign. Left behind in Nashville with the baggage trains, McClenahan recalled that “during the battle no one was allowed to leave the city – might as well try to get out of the penitentiary. At the close of the first day’s fighting, stragglers came in large numbers into Nashville circulating all sorts of doleful rumors, and those who had friends especially were very anxious, asking the stragglers in order to justify their own cowardly actions had put a high coloring upon their reports.”           A few days later, orders came for McClenahan and the other teamsters to haul a load of provisions to the army at Murfreesboro which introduced him to the devastation wrought by the battle. “After passing eight miles from Nashville, the remainder of the way appeared one continued battlefield to Murfreesboro, fences des...