History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 32

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 574

USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 32

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PRIVATES.

William C. B. Adams, Samuel Beckley, John M. Blank, Hamilton B. Booth, Francis M. Congdon, Columbus Caldwell, William Case- beer, William Crum, James Campbell, Albert Cordell, Devolson Cor- nick, Moses Chase, Hamilton Evans, William B. Fleming, Michael Harrigan, Adam Hloover, Charles Hoover, jr., James C. Haskins, George Kirkham, William J. Hendrick, Charles W. Mckinney, Alvi Megonigal, Edward E. Mulick, Augustus P. Osgood, Austin W. Per- kins, William T. Rich, Philip C. Smyzer, Alonzo Shurtliff, Henry H. Turner, Joseph Tures, Myron H. Woodward.

The company has furnished eight commissioned officers-Jacob Mil- ler, captain to April 9, 1863; O. Whitney, captain at the time the com- pany was mustered out of the United States service; W. G. Donnan, first lieutenant; George W. Smyzer, second lieutenant; C. I. Lewis, adjutant; Dr. H. H. Hunt, assistant surgeon Twenty-first Iowa infantry; George G. Gaylord, lieutenant of artillery; and Lieutenant A. M. Wilcox, whose resignation was accepted to enable him to accept the commission of captain and commissary of subsistence of United States volunteers.

As near as I can estimate, from the data I have on hand, the com- pany has travelled by steamboat over eight thousand miles, by railroad two thousand miles, and marched three thousand miles. The company, with the regiment, has visited the capitals of seven different States, and three times have built comfortable winter quarters without being per- mitted to occupy them, except for a few days. It has never been sur- prised on picket or whipped in battle; has burned a fair proportion of cotton; and its doings will compare favorably with any other com- pany in the regiment, or among General A. J. Smith's guerillas, in the number of pigs, sheep, turkeys, and chickens it has, from military ne_ cessity, appropriated to personal use.

1 am, very respectfully yours, O. WHITNEY.

A RESUME

of the history of the three regiments, Fifth, Ninth, and Twenty-seventh, which contained the four companies raised in Buchanan county, being selections and adapta- tions from three chapters of "Iowa and the Rebellion," by Lurton Dunham Ingersoll, published in 1866.

FIFTH INFANTRY.

The companies which formed the Fifth Iowa volunteer infantry were organized in their respective neighborhoods immediately after the receipt of intelligence of the fall of Fort Sumter; but the General Government, not then ap- preciating the magnitude of the conflict which was to ensue, gave no authority for their regimental organization till some time afterward. The companies were enrolled in the counties of Cedar, Jasper, Louisa, Marshall, Bu- chanan, Keokuk, Benton, Van Buren, Jackson, and Ala- makee, but other counties contributed to swell their numbers. They were organized into the Fifth regiment, and as such sworn into the service of the General Gov- ernment at Camp Warren, near the city of Burlington, on the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth days of July, 1861, at which time the command numbered nine hun- dred and eighteen robust men. William H. Worthington, of Keokuk, was appointed colonel; Charles L. Mathies, of Burlington, lieutenant colonel; William S. Robertson, of Columbus city, major; John S. Foley, adjutant; Charles H. Ranson, surgeon ; Peter A. Carpenter, assist- ant; Robert F. Patterson, quartermaster; and Rev. A. B. Madeira, chaplain. At the time of his appointment as second in command of this regiment, Lieutenant Col- onel Mathies was serving as captain of one of the com-

panies of our First regiment, then making forced marches from Boonville to Springfield, Missouri. The other offi- cers were taken directly from civil life.

The Buchanan county company took the letter of the alphabet corresponding with the order in which the coun- ty is named in the above list, and was known as company E. Remaining at Camp Warren, in the performance of drill and guard duties, about two weeks, the regiment proceeded to Fort Madison by steamer, and thence to Keokuk by rail. From this point, though not yet fully equipped, but using in part arms furnished by the city, a portion of the regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel Mathies, was engaged in an expedition into northern Missouri against the rebel leader, Mart Green. Colonel Moore had already routed the forces of Green, who was understood to be in retreat southward. Hoping to inter- cept and capture him, Colonel Mathies made a rapid march toward Dixie with his fresh recruits; and, though unable to overtake him, they achieved the glory of a first experience in real campaigning-bivouacking during the night in an open field, and receiving for their breakfast a peculiar cracker, which, though possibly not entirely dis- tasteful as a novelty and as a part of their initiation into the art of war, became, from too great familiarity, most undeniably prosaic, under the name of "hard-tack." The detachment returned to Keokuk the following day, and proceeded by steamer to St. Louis, reaching there on the twelfth of August.

At Jefferson barracks the men received their arms, and having been ordered to Lexington in company with other troops, commenced their voyage up the Missouri without loss of time. Three days afterwards, when some forty miles above Jefferson City, the troops upward bound were met by a regiment of three months' men whose time had expired, and from them received such urgent repre- sentations of the inadequacy of a force being sent into a country literally overrun by guerilla men and beset with masked batteries, that Colonel Worthington decided to return to Jefferson City and await further orders. Here, in response to his telegram to General Fremont, he was ordered to disembark and go into camp. A few days later, at Camp Defiance, the first instalment of the Gov- ernment uniform was received, as also cartridge boxes, canteens, camp equipage, etc.

From this time until near the middle of October, when the march on Springfield commenced, the headquarters of the regiment were sometimes at Jefferson City, some- times at Boonville, while much of the time was spent in the field, moving in various directions, a detachment be- ing kept for many weeks at the railroad crossing at Osage, some ten miles south of the capital, to protect a valuable bridge.

During this time a detachment under Colonel Worth- ington proceeded by steamer to Boonville, seized the confiscated stock of a shot tower, and other property, including a printing office, bringing the same to Jefferson City, with the specie from Boonville bank. Another ex- pedition ascended the river some thirty-five miles to Rocheport, and, in conjunction with several companies under Colonel Worthington, advanced from different

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points on Columbia, the object being to capture a body of rebels collected there under Major Harris. No enemy was found, and the regiment marched across the country to Jefferson City, having gained at least some wholesome experience in carrying knapsacks on the march.

Drilling and camp duties filled up the time until again, on the fourteenth of September, the regiment moved up the Missouri by steamer to reenforce a small body of home guards at Boonville, who had been attacked the day before by a considerable force of rebels under Colo- nel Brown. On the arrival of the regiment, on the morning of the fifteenth, they were met with the gratify- ing intelligence that the home guards had repelled the attack, killing and wounding some sixty of the enemy, Colonel Brown being among the killed. Ten days were spent here, adding to the duties of the camp, drill, and scout, much hard labor in improving and completing the fortifications which had been commenced by the lament- ed Lyon early in the summer. On the twenty-fifth the regiment moved up to Glasgow, where there was an easy crossing of the Missouri, to prevent the passage of forces to join Price, who had captured Lexington a few days before. This duty done, they returned to Boonville, where the regiment remained until the march toward Springfield commenced.

During the Springfield campaign the Buchanan men were attached to Colonel Kelton's brigade, in General Pope's division, which made a rapid march over wretched roads to Springfield, and returned to Syracuse, reaching there November 17th, having marched more than three hundred miles. During the remainder of the winter, Colonel Worthington was in command of a brigade with headquarters at Otterville, Lieutenant Colonel Mathies, with seven companies at Boonville, quartered comforta- bly in houses, and three companies at Syracuse, in an encampment of tents, patrolling the railroad day and night, until the close of January, 1862. On the first of February the three companies from Syracuse joined the other companies at Boonville. A week later the regi- ment crossed the Missouri, and after a day or two, took up the line of march for St. Charles. The weather was bad and the roads worse, but the march of one hundred and fifty miles was performed in ten days. Crossing the Missouri again, the regiment proceeded at once to St. Louis by rail. Reaching St. Louis, the men marched from the depot to the river, and were soon on their way southward. Landed at Cairo, remained a few days, then ascending the river debarked at Commerce, some thirty miles above Cairo. Here they received new tents, but halted in them but one day, marching on the twenty-sixth to Benton, nine miles distant, where the army of the Mississippi was concentrating under Pope. The march on New Madrid was commenced on the first day of March, the Buchanan troops being in the First brigade; Colonel Worthington commanding, Second division, Gen- eral Schuyler Hamilton. The army came in sight of New Madrid at noon of the third, the march having been over roads obstructed by the enemy, through swamps and drenching rains. In the operations which succeeded against New Madrid, Island No. 10, and

(after the brilliant success at these places) against Fort Pillow, the Fifth Iowa took an active part. Included in the onward movement by General Pope to reenforce Hal- leek at Corinth, our friends were embarked in a leaky steamer for Cairo, but making an exchange at that place, went on up the Ohio and Tennessee without note- worthy incident, and debarked at Hamburgh Landing on the twenty-second of April.

In the dull duties of this slow campaign and in the occasional reconnoissances which, under the direction of division commanders, relieved the monotony of the snail-like advance, our regiment bore its part, with be- coming resignation in the one case, and with distin- guished valor in the other. On the twenty-second of May the regiment and the Nation met with a heavy loss in the accidental death of Colonel Worthington.

Meantime, the regiment moved slowly from Farming- ton toward Corinth, which was evacuated by the rebels on the morning of the thirtieth of May, and entered the same day by General Halleck. A pursuit was at once instituted by Pope's division, but the Iowa Fifth, though one of the best marching regiments in the command, was delayed by rivers and creeks, the bridges over which had been destroyed, and by other obstructions, so that its progress was exceedingly slow, as the following state- ment will show: It marched but five miles on the day of the evacuation, but eight the next, and then, halting a day or two to receive Whitney rifles in exchange for its old arms, moved a dozen miles to near Rienzi, and the day afterward to Boonville, Mississippi, eight miles fur- ther south, where it went into bivouac and there re- mained until the tenth of June.

From this date, the time passed in marching and countermarching, drilling being the principal duty, until, on the fifth of August, the division marched to Jacinto, where it remained till the day before the battle of Iuka. Meantime Major Robertson had resigned, Lieutenant Colonel Mathies had been promoted to the colonelcy, Captain Sampson to the lieutenant coloneley, and Cap- tain Banbury was promoted to the rank of major.

The part of Iowa troops in this battle need not be re- peated here. The regiments which had particularly distin- guished themselves were the Sixteenth and the Fifth. "The glorious Fifth Iowa" says Rosecrans, "under the brave and distinguished Mathies, sustained by Boomer with part of his noble little Twenty-sixth Missouri, bore the thrice repeated charges and cross-fires of the rebel left and centre with a valor and determination seldom equalled, never excelled by the most veteran soldiery."

The Fifth Iowa, General Hamilton says in his official report, "under its brave and accomplished Mathies, held its ground against four times its number, making three desperate charges with the bayonet, driving back the foe in disorder each time, until, with every cartridge ex- hausted, it fell back slowly and sullenly, making every step a battle-ground and every charge a victory." And the correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial says that, "most of our troops engaged behaved in the most gallant manner ; particularly the Eleventh Missouri and Fifth Iowa. These two regiments stood the brunt of

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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY, IOWA.

the battle, as their lists of killed and wounded testify."

Colonel Mathies, in his report, states that high praise is due to all his officers and men, without exception. "In commanding my regiment before the enemy, he says, "I was nobly assisted by Lieutenant Colonel Samp- son on the right, Adjutant Patterson, acting major, on the left, and Lieutenant W. S. Marshall, acting adjutant, all of whom behaved most gallantly, repeating my com- mands, and steadying and cheering on my brave boys throughout the engagement." For his own gallant and meritorious conduct, Colonel Mathies was afterward promoted to the rank of a brigadier general. Of the four hundred and eighty-two officers and men of the Fifth Iowa, who were engaged in the battle, more than two hundred and twenty were killed and wounded.

Three days after the battle, the regiment reached its old camp near Jacinto, and there rested (if working upon fortifications can be so called) during the remainder of the month. On the first of October it marched to Corinth, and though, on the first day's battle which soon followed, it was so posted as not to be brought into ac- tion, it was engaged on the fourth day, from early in the morning till the defeat of the enemy about noon, but be- ing posted behind natural defences, it suffered but a trifling loss, though rendering valuable service, especially in the repulse of a charge on the Eleventh Ohio battery, which it was supporting on the left. To repel it, one regiment marched on the double-quick step to the threat- ened point, fired four volleys into the enemy, and drove them off in admirable disorder. In the pursuit of the rebels, after their terrible defeat, the regiment made some rapid marches, and returned to Corinth, going into camp on the evening of the eleventh, the men worn out with fatigue, many of them entirely without shoes, and scarcely one with suitable clothing. Here a brief season of rest was granted, before the regiment was again engaged, this time in conjunction with General Grant's forces organiz- ing to take Vicksburgh in the rear. No good, but much suffering resulted from this campaign. From the first of February, 1863, to the second of March, the division, General J. F. Quinby's, remained in camp near Mem- phis, a single day's scout, so far as the Fifth was con- cerned, being the only interruption of its quiet. On the second of March the regiment commenced its work in the Vicksburgh campaign; and, from that time till the capitulation of Pemberton, more than one hundred and twenty days afterward, its history forms a creditable part of the memorable events of that period, crowded with the most momentous achievements of the war. After the fall of the gallant Boomer, Colonel Banbury, pro- moted, took command of the regiment, and Adjutant Marshall was promoted to the rank of major.

In the campaign under Major General Sherman, which followed the capture of Vicksburgh, the brigade to which the Fifth belonged, performed valuable service, and was handsomely complimented by that general in his official report of the operations which resulted in driving Johnston out of the State, and in bringing the whole of it under the power of our armies. In the marches and countermarches of this active campaign, the Fifth Iowa

encamped two different times on the memorable field of Champion Hills, remaining there after the retreat of Johnston, from the seventeenth to the twenty-second of July. It then proceeded by leisurely marches to Vicks- burgh, and encamped within the works on the twenty- fourth, where it remained, in the performance of light garrison duties, for nearly two months, in common with the whole division.

On the twelfth of the following September, the division moved to Helena, Arkansas, for the purpose of reenforc- ing General Steele. That officer, however, had captured Little Rock on the tenth, and needed no more troops. While these troops were awaiting transportation back to Vicksburgh, General Rosecrans met with the reverse at Chickamauga. General Sherman commanding the Fif- teenth corps, was ordered to reenforce the army of the Cumberland; and, that he might do so the more promptly, the division of the Seventeenth corps at Helena was exchanged into his command, in place of one of his divisions near Vicksburgh. The Fifth accord- ingly moved with the division to Memphis by river, and thence by rail to Corinth, reaching that place of varied associations on the afternoon of October 4th,-just one year from the great victory which it had helped to win. Here it was employed for a month in rebuilding the rail- road toward luka, and in other ways preparing for the march to Chattanooga, which began on November 1st, and ended on the twenty-fourth, with the division, now the Third, Fifteenth corps, in face of the enemy on Missionary Ridge.

In the remarkable contest which ensued, called in history the battle of Chattanooga, which was in fact a series of grand combats from the banks of the Tennessee to the tops of mountains above the clouds, our regiment well performed its part near the northern extremity of Missionary Ridge. Here, near Tunnel Hill, frowning with rebel batteries, the regiment fought the afternoon of the twenty-fifth, but was overcome near evening by an overwhelming force of the enemy. Many were captured, including Major Marshall and Adjutant Byers. The colors also fell into the hands of the enemy, whilst the men who escaped, passed through a shower of balls, and were heedless of the rebel yells to "halt." The regiment went into the action with two hundred and twenty-seven men and twenty-one officers, and lost in killed, wounded, and captured, one hundred and six, of whom quite a large proportion were captured.

Colonel Banbury thus closes his official report :

1 can not feel justified in closing this report without bearing testimony to the nncomplaining manner in which my brave men have performed the hard labor, and endured the severe deprivations of the campaign just closed; especially during the week ending November, following immediately upon the long fatiguing march of over two hundred miles. They were up at midnight of the twenty-third fortifying, and manœuvr- ing for battle all day of the twenty-fourth. On pieket-guard in the face of the enemy on the night of the twenty-fourth, fighting the enemy on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh (without rations or blankets, shivering around their camp fires during the nights, and marching through rain and mnd during the days), and returning to camp-twenty- two miles-on the twenty-eighth. All this in the dead of winter, and without a murmur.

When the regiment on the third, fourth and fifth days

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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY, IOWA.

of December marched to Bridgeport, Alabama, many of the men had nothing but parched corn in their haver- sacks. The command remained at Bridgeport, which is in the extreme northeastern part of the State, until the twenty-second, when it marched to Larkinsville, forty-five miles distant. Having halted there a day or two, it moved a few miles south to a mill, and remained there on guard duty, and engaged in the milling business for a week. On the seventh of January, 1864, the line of march for Huntsville was taken up. The command reached that place on the ninth, and there spent the re- mainder of the winter. Whilst at Huntsville, about one hundred and fifty members of the regiment, being the most of those present for duty, reenlisted under the orders of the War Department for the formation of an army of veterans.

The history of the veterans from this date has already been given in connection with the account of their recep- tion on their return to Independence in April, 1864.

The history of the gallant Fifth Iowa infantry as a dis- tinct command, virtually closed when the non-veterans were mustered out on the thirtieth of July, 1864. The term of its service was therefore, a little over three years. During this time it had marched, on foot, over two thousand miles in the States of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, participating in Fremont's campaign of one hundred days in southwestern Missouri in the fall of 1861 ; in the campaign against New Madrid, Island No. Io, and Fort Pillow, in the siege of Corinth, in the battle of Iuka, and that of Corinth soon afterward, in the campaign in central Mississippi under General Grant, the Yazoo Pass expedition, in the grand campaign against Vicksburgh, in that of Chattanooga, closing an eventful, honorable history with its ranks so thinned that it was compelled to yield up its separate organization-retired from the records of the war for the future, but with a past so well secured by many glorious services, undimmed by the shade of any unworthy act, that its memory will be kept green among our people till Iuka and Chat- tanooga shall have passed from their recollection, and much of the noblest heroism of the war have been for- gotten.

NINTH INFANTRY.

In July, 1861, on the day of the battle of Bull Run, the Hon. William Vandever, then a representative in Congress from the second district of Iowa, which at that time embraced the northern half of the State, went to the Secretary of War and tendered a regiment of volunteers, to be recruited and organized by himself in his district. His proposition was accepted at once by Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Vandever speedily returned to Iowa and went energetically to work in the matter. Early in August the first company went into rendezvous at Dubuque, and in a few weeks the regiment was fully organized. It was mustered into the service on the twenty-fourth of Sep- tember, with the following officers: William Vandever, colonel; Frank J. Herron, lieutenant colonel; William H. Cayle, major; William Scott, adjutant; F. S. Win- slow, quartermaster; Benjamin McClure, surgeon; H.

W. Hart, assistant surgeon; Rev. A. B. Hendig, chap- lain. Company C, Buchanan county, Captain J. M. Hord.

The regiment remained in rendezvous but a day or two after being sworn into the service. From Dubuque it went directly to St. Louis, where, at Benton barracks, it went into camp of instruction. By the middle of October its camp was advanced to Pacific City, on the Pacific railroad, and the duty of guarding the southwest- ern branch of that road, between Franklin and Rolla, was assigned to it. Here, during the next three months, all of the troops composing the armies of the west, so designated for convenience and not officially, were pre- paring for that grand forward movement, which, com- mencing soon afterwards, swept with irresistable force, not often long retarded, over the whole domain claimed by traitors, and at last hurled them to destruction. Many of the Union troops engaged in this glorious work, in aid of its complete accomplishment, marched, skir- mished, fought the entire circuit of the confederacy; and among these, the Iowa Ninth holds honorable rank.

On the twenty-second day of January, 1862, the vari- ous companies of the command left their camps along the railroad and joined the army of the southwest, con- centrating at Rollo, under Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis. Marching to Lebanon, some sixty miles south- west of Rolla, a week was there spent in organization and preparation. The army was composed of four divisions : the first, commanded by General F. Siegel ; the second, by General A. Ashboth; the third, by Colonel Jefferson C. Davis; and the fourth, by Colonel E. A. Carr. The troops were from the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. Colonel G. M. Dodge, Fourth Iowa, commanded the First brigade, Fourth division, con- sisting of his own regiment, the Thirty-fifth Illinois and the First Iowa battery. Colonel Vandever was in com- mand of the Second brigade, consisting of the Ninth Iowa, Twenty-fifth Missouri, Third Illinois cavalry, and Third Iowa battery. Two battalions of the Third Iowa cavalry, Colonel Bussey, were also in the army, but not assigned to any particular division, so that all the Iowa troops participating in the campaign were in Colonel Carr's division.

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History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 32

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902 Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers Number of Pages: 574

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 574