USA > Ohio > History One hundred and eleventh regiment O. V. I > Part 1
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Gc 973. 74 0h3th 1657229
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00824 6743
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W. S. THURSTIN, CAPTAIN CO. D.
1
History
ONE HUNDRED
AND LEVENTH
REGIMENT O.V.L. 2
BY CAPTAIN W. S. THURSTIN.
TOLEDO, OHIO: VROOMAN, ANDERSON & BATEMAN, PRINTERS. 1894.
1657229
DEDICATION.
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To the memory of our comrades who died in hospital, in rebel prison pens, in camp, and on the field of battle, loyal and true to the starry symbol of our nationality. in every emergency, I very respectfully dedicate this story of their campaigns.
Respectfully,
W. S. THURSTIN.
PREFACE.
COMRADES :- At the first meeting of the surviving members of the rith O. V. I. in 1878, held at Perrys- burg, Ohio, the duty was assigned to me of writing the history made by our Regiment during the War of the Great Rebellion.
Colonel Brailey requested me to make my history of the regiment, as entertaining to the survivors, as truth would permit, and continue to give my readings at annual reunions of the regiment, as one of the chief features of the contemplated entertainments.
The purpose in the beginning, was not to write a history for publication; and what I have written com- memorative of the part which the members of my regiment bore, to work performed by the grand armies in the field, was not designed upon the lines of historical severity, in the treatment of the subject matter, but rather in the lighter vein of enjoyable reminiscenses of army life.
I have not had access to the orders of Commanders in the field, which to some extent have doubtless been preserved among the archives of the Adjutant General's
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HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
office at Columbus, and in the War offices at Washington. These' will be found to some extent, in the more or less authentic histories of the War, to which most of us can refer.
I have written what I saw, as I saw it, without con- scious intention of building monuments for any individual, or detracting from any one, that to which he is entitled.
As well as I could, I have made it a regimental history of achievements, of which any member of the old regiment may. well be proud. I have sought to preserve some humorous incidents of army life, and in doing so, have taken the liberty of using names, and trust that the persons so distinguished, will understand that the refer- ence has no significance, other than pleasantry.
In some passages, I recognize some floridity of ex- pression ; but the times of which I write were rather florid, and I will let them go together.
With the warmest feeling for the great body of men constituting our Regiment; with thorough conviction that the sacrifices they made, had no thought of selfishness behind it, I can treat with the utmost complaisance, the . few who will not bear that classification : "Time makes . all things even."
Very truly yours,
W. S. THURSTIN.
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CHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY.
CHAPTER I.
ORGANIZATION OF THE IIITH REGIMENT OHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY AT TOLEDO, OHIO, FOR THREE YEARS OR DURING THE WAR .- CAMPAIGNS IN KENTUCKY DURING 1862-3, AND MORGAN RAID, ETC.
1 On the 5th and 6th days of September, 1862 the One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment was mustered into service, at Toledo, for three years or during the war.
Of the companies composing the regiment, Wood county furnish- ed Companies B, D, and the greater part of I and K ; Companies A and G came principally from Sandusky county ; Company C, from Fulton and Williams; Company E, from Defiance and Lucas; Com- pany F, from Fulton and Defiance; Compiny H, from Lucas County ; and were officered as follows :
Co. A.
( Captain, John V. Beery, of Fremont, O., 1 2nd Lientenant, Orrin P. Frary, Sandusky County, O.
1st Lieutenant, Joseph H. Jennings, Sandusky County. O.
Co. B. 1 Captain, Thos. C. Norris, Wood County, O. Ist Lieutenant, William H. Beal, Wood County, O. 2nd Lieutenant, Moses Dubbs, Wood County, O.
1 Captain, Albert A. Archer.
Co. C. Ist Lieutenant, Rufus Bates. (2nd Lieutenant, Samuel S. Smith.
Co. D. '
Captain, John E. McGowan, Tontogany, O. 1st Lientenant, George E. Van Blareum, Tontogany, O. (2nd Lieutenant, John H. Campbell, Grand Rapids, O.
Captain, Benjamin F. Southworth, Defiance, O.
Co. E. 1st Lieutenant, Daniel F. Waltz, Weston, O. 2nd Lieutenant, Elijah Karnes, Defiance County, O.
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HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
Captain, John E. Hill, Williams County, O. Co. F. 3 1st Lieutenant, Solomon Callender, Fulton County, O. 2nd Lieutenant, Hiram Meeks, Fulton County, O.
Captain, Henry J. McCord, Sandusky County, O.
Co. G. 3 1st Lieutenant, Mordecai P. Bean, Sandusky County, O. 2nd Lieutenant, George W. Moore, Sandusky County, O. Captain, John W. Smith, Lucas County, O. Co. H. 1st Lieutenant, Patrick H. Dowling, Lucas County, O. 2nd Lieutenant, Oresten Holloway, Lucas County, O. Captain, John Yeager, Perrysburg, O.
Co. 1. 1st Lieutenant, Daniel W. Poe, Perrysburg, O. 2nd Lieutenant, John Bader, Perrysburg, O.
Captain, Deming W. H. Day, Bowling Green, O. Co. K. 1st Lieutenant, Joseph O. Allen, Fulton County, O. 2nd Lieutenant, Jeremiah Bowlin, Weston, O.
The Regimental officers at the organization were as follows : Colonel-John R. Bond, . . Toledo, O.
Lieutenant-Colonel-Ben. W. Johnson, .
Perrysburg, O.
Major-Moses R. Brailey, . . Swanton, O.
Adjutant-Isaac R. Sherwood, . Bryan, O.
Surgeon-Lyman A. Brewer, .
Adrian Mich.
Assistant Surgeon-David H. Silver, .
Assistant Surgeon-Caleb M. Chalfant
Regimental Quartermaster-Finlay S. Strong,
Cha; lain-Ambrose Hollington, . Wood County. Sergeant-Major-Henry T. Bissell, . . Toledo, O.
Quartermaster-Sergeant-Benjamin F. Hollister, Perrysburg, O. Commissary Sergeant-Leander R. Hutchinson,
Hospital Steward-Joseph B. Escott, . Principal Musician-Albert N. Cole, . Toledo, O.
You all remember how we gathered together in the barracks upon the northern outskirts of Toledo, and how we spent the first days of our camp life between taking our primary lessons in infantry tactics and French leave of the guards on our way down town. Perhaps some of you remember the first issue of army clothing- when we packed up our citizen clothes and put on the bine. How the small men found their clothes a world too wide, and the large men felt how awkward it was to be above the regulation size. Fort hwith the camp was turned into a tailor shop, and by dint of trading round, cutting down and letting out, we at length were able
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OHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY.
to appear on parade, feeling, however, as though we all belonged to the awkward squad in more senses than one.
Do you remember, when the news came to us that the rebel General Bragg had by a series of flank movements forced our army of the West back to the Ohio river, and was threatening our State with desolation, with what enthusiastic cheers we received our orders to move to the front ? And do you remember, when about nineteen months afterward we were pushing through the underbrush along the eastern side of Rocky Face Ridge until we had passed far in advance of the rebel line of battle on the ridge, when to the right of us, to the left of us and to the front of us, within almost a stone's throw, stood the rebel double line of battle behind earthworks, flanked by bastioned forts, and the order came from the General, a mile in the rear, to unsling knapsacks and prepare to assault those works, nearly surrounded as we were by that line, which needed but the cheer of our charge to become an ampitheatre of fire? How you piled your knapsacks, wondering how many of you would have any use for those knapsacks after that day's work was done ? My im - pression is that we did not cheer that order-"circumstances alter cases."
We left Toledo in freight cars over the Dayton & Michigan Railroad, stopping at the town of Perrysburg long after dark. Have any of you forgotten how the ladies came with lunch baskets, bouquets of flowers, and words of kindness, giving us here in the darkness of night an ovation, of which the chief magistrate of the land might have been proud? and how when we moved away cheer after cheer bade us Godspeed on our mission ?
When we reached Cincinnati, how the people came and pressed us to eat and drink and make their homes our homes so long as we should stay. The hands extended to us were not the hands of char- ity, but every citizen seemed to regard it a privilege, to contribute to our comfort.
Have you noticed in these later years, that those who were then in their embryo period of citizenship, are now exclaiming, that "this Old Soldier business is played out." "That the country is being ruin- ed by the military pension roll ! "
Do they stop to think that the average pension of $96.00 per year, is the interest at 7 per cent. on only $1,372, and that the aver- age judgment of juries in personal injury cases, in claims for dam.
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HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
ages amounts to four times that sum, and that in personal injury cases, no element of patriotism enters, but simply a matter of business in getting payment for an injury not contemplated by the employ- ment ?
At the time I mention the homes of Cincinnati were in peril. Now the invader has turned to peaceful pursuits under the coereive influence of our shot and shell, and with the departure of the peril thankfulness has also departed. Can a nation afford to be truthfully charged with the sin of ingratitude !"-Manifestly "circumstances alter cases."
On the 14th of September we crossed the Ohio River on a pon- toon bridge. We remember the fact more distinctly, because many of us purchased a very poorly executed wood-cut engraving, repre- senting the One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment in the act of cross- ing that pontoon bridge. The same wood cut has been used to represent a like event in the history of nearly every regiment that crossed that bridge, and answered just as well for one regiment as another. We formed in line of battle upon the heights opposite Cincinnati, and there with pick and shovel took our first lessons in military engineering; and I think that I may safely say that if all the ditches dug by the troops of the Twenty-third Army Corps had been dug in Wood County, it would now be one of the upland counties of the State, and as safe from spring overflow as though it had been roofed over.
On the 17th day of September, 1862, we made that forced march to Crittenden, Kentucky, a distance of twenty-five miles. As I afterward learned, we were sent out as a corps of observation, and as usual the One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment performed its full duty in that regard. We observed that the enemy left Critten - den a short time before we got there; we observed that twenty-five miles was a very long tramp for raw troops carrying about twenty- . five pounds to the man ; we observed that the thermometer marked up in the nineties, and that when we unslung our knapsacks at the end of our return march the next day, that the blisters upon our backs very nearly represented the size of our respective knapsacks.
We observed, also, that the average knapsack contained many articles not absolutely necessary to a soldier. Those knapsacks were overhauled. The dress suits looked very fine with their wealth of brass buttons; and "while we felt doomed to move about
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OHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY.
the world like camels, with humps upon our backs, we made those humps as small as possible." The dress suits were abandoned. In that steaming hot weather we could see little use for blankets, so we made two out of one and abandoned the balance. That hill was, for a day or two, a very paradise for a second-hand clothing man.
We also made some observations about the red whiskered brigadier, General Gilbert, who commanded us upon that expedition, which were more forcible than polite. We did not fully understand that we were in training for real service, and hardening for a future hard campaign.
September 19, we went to Louisville ; October 2, to Shelbyville; October 4, to Frankfort, and on the 14th of October, started upon our march to Crab Orchard, near the base of the Cumberland Moun- tains, and dogged the rebel rear guard out of the State. From there we marched to Bowling Green, Kentucky. We will always remem- ber those cheerless marches, barren of results so far as we could see or know ; the clouds of suffocating dust, the pitiless Southern sun, the intolerable thirst which drove us to fill our canteens at horse ponds polluted by dead and dying mules.
Then came our winter camp life, with nothing between us and the frost and snow except the sheet of canvass. Men were packed in tents "like sardines in a box," sleeping upon the ground., Epi- demics raged throughout the eamp. The graveyard threatened to become more populous than the eamp itself: and when spring came, over two hundred men out of the original one thousand had died, or been discharged, because of physical disability. Never, in the his- tory of the regiment, was the mortality so great in the same length of time.
Here the order came requiring us to drive beyond our picket- lines all contrabands who had come to and been employed by us in duties about the camp. We did not comply with the order, and as a consequence the regimental and company officers were ordered to report to the Post Commander under arrest. We reported. The order was read, and a lecture with it, upon our duty as soldiers to obey. We returned to eamp and obeyed the order literally, but we furnished the contrabands with navy revolvers and instructed them in their uses. We furnished them with hard-tack and bacon, and told them that the orders required us to put them outside, but there was no order against their returning again; that their late masters
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HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
were hovering around the picket-lines watching an opportunity to recapture. them.
They were guarded beyond our lines, and then we reported the order had been complied with. Then the colored boys returned. We had enlisted to put down the rebellion, and not to enforce the fugitive slave law. We understood our duties better than those who were exercising a brief authority over us. The nation had not then comprehended that the death of slavery was an inexorable requisite to the preservation of the Union. .
Brigadier General Judah, then commanding the Post, was a regular army officer and theoretically a good disciplinarian; but like many officers educated at the expense of the government, he was not born to be a commander. His conduct did not command the respect of his subordinates, and without respect his orders had no force, except so far as the American judgment of the rank and file approved them.
During the occupaney of Bowling Green, Kentucky, by the Confederate forces they camped upon and around College Hill, upon the South-eastern outskirts of the town, and left the grounds in the usual filthy condition.
Here we were kept, during that long trying winter. We had bivouacked at night, when on the march, without tents and found ourselves covered with two inches of snow in the morning ; but that was clean snow and bore no taint of contagion about it. It would have been incomparably better for the health of onr command, if we had been kept upon the march all winter, taking the winter storms as disguised blessings, instead of the dangerously deceptive comforts of College Hill. In the matter of sanitation our commander had as little wisdom, as he exhibited later in tactics, when he ordered us to charge the impregnable entrenchments at Resaca, without cover of artillery fire.
On the 30th of May, 1863, we left Bowling Green, Kentucky, . marched to Glasgow, thence to Scottsville, then to Jimtown, then to Tompkinsville. July 4th we started upon our chase after John Morgan. Going by rail to Louisville, when we took boat up the Ohio River.
Upon an island in the river we intercepted a portion of Morgan's command who some how had got entangled in Mason and Dixon's line, and who surrendered without resistance when we had beat
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OHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY.
them out of the weeds and bushes in which they lay concealed. With. this detachment of Confederates, about 50 in number, we captured a considerable 'number of horses. Some of these horses were for many moons conspicuous, marching at the head of the column under loyal colors. Their former riders did not look like men who were able to furnish forage for them, and hence the horses were mustered in upon our side. We then steamed up the Ohio River to Portsmouth, for the purpose of intercepting Morgan in his efforts to recross the river. There we learned of the capture of his command and returned to Cincinnati in time to furnish a military escort to Johnson's Island and Indianapolis, where the prisoners were sent for safe keeping. We then returned to New Market, Kentucky, where commenced our preparation for the East Tennessee campaign. Before this time we had been assigned to the Second Brigade, Second Division of the Twenty-third Army Corps, in which organization we remained during our term of service.
During the advance through Kentucky, our regiment suffered severely from all of the diseases usnally incident to early army life. Captain Day commanding Company K, consented to a suggestion made, that his company might be supplied with transportation for their knapsacks, by sending a detail of men to impress a rebel team. The detail left the camp early on the following morning, and taking a road parallel to the future line of march of the command came to a little valley among the hills, where the rebel cavalry had been foraging the day before. Upon telling an old colored man of the object of the expedition, he invited them into his master's home and related the following :
About noon yesteday we seen a passel of Suthe'n gentl'men comin' up dat lane, my masser had a bull yard full o' mules and hosses, sah! He was a old man, sah! but he was a good union; and we seed that they was a steerin' for the stock yard, sah! Massa got down his ole deer gun from the hooks, and he went out by the baun and as the suthe'n gentl'men rid up, he done sed, " now I want you uns, to get right onten hyar. Cos the fust man that gits off his critter, is gwine to be ded, shnah." "Then they just up and pops massa over, an' dun tuck every las' huff on the place sah." Upon entering the house we saw the owner, lying unconscious upon a bed. The bullet hole in his breast. through which at every inspiration the air from his lungs escaped, showed that the wound was mortal. There was no white person there to care for him, and the colored
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HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
servants were so panic stricken that they did not know what to do.
Learning that a rebel citizen lived on the farm adjoining ; the party called upon him and requested a temporary loan of wagon and mnles with a driver. He protested against such an invasion of his rights and property, declaring that it was unlawful and unconstitu - tional and all that. He was reminded that the proceedings of his friends of the day before, was a much better subject of criticism if he really wanted a subject. but he did not care to discuss the event. It ended by his giving the detail a conveyance with a saddle colored young man for a driver. When Company K saw "Bill Hill" coming down the Franklin Pike with the team in vigorous motion, they announced their satisfaction with a yell, and the knapsacks were left along the roadside without a ripple in the ranks. Our extem- porized transportation did good service on the march to Crab Orchard, where the colored man was supplied with bacon, hard tack, coffee and sugar, and a suit of Union blue and directed to return home. He hinted to us that if he could get his young wife across the Ohio River he should "jine the sojers."
Some six months later we saw the Twelfth Pennsylvania cavalry riding by fours through the streets of Knoxville, and just in rear of the regiment, upon the best of that span of mules, rode our colored master of transportation. He met Company K with enthusiasm, saying that "he had done. quit workin' for that Kaintucky Rebel, and jined the army 'for shuah'."
Between the upper millstone of enlightened northern public sentiment, and the nether millstone of uncompensated toil, the institution of human slavery was being ground. Looking back across the field of twenty-five intervening years, we now wonder, how any man could have doubted the result. "The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. Though with patience he stands waiting. With exactness grinds he all."
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CHAPTER II.
THE EAST TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN.
On the 19th of August, 1863, the Second Division commenced its march toward East Tennessee. In the spring of the year 1863, General Burnside was placed in command of the Department of the Ohio, with the following described forces : Two Divisions of the 9th Army Corps, which Corps he had commanded in the Potomac Army, and the troops distributed throughout his Department which were organized into the 23d Army Corps. The regiments so organ- ized were made up largely from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. The divisions of the troops of the 9th Corps who went to the assist- ance of General Grant at Vicksburg, delayed the contemplated moven.ent into East Tennessee for over two months. The capture of Vicksburg permitted the return of the 9th Corps Divisions, but they came back so decimated by casualties of battle and disease, that the advance was made by the 23d Corps alone in three columns. General Hartsuff was assigned to the command of our Division.
The three columns passed the mountains by Emory Gap, Winters Gap and Big Creek Gap. The most desirable route through Cumberland Gap was at the time held by the Rebel General Frazer with about 2500 Confederates, who were cut off by our movement, and surrendered on the 9th of September to General Burnside.
Our column formed the right wing of the advance described. You followed the crooked valleys running southeasterly among the foot-hills of the Cumberland Mountains. Through the clear, cold, swift waters of the Cumberland River, running breast-high, you waded and reformed upon the other side-then up and up, along that zigzag winding road toiled that line of blue, its long wagon
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HISTORY 111THI REGIMENT
train with white canvas-covering following in the rear, until one after another, your regimental colors of blue and gold, flanked by the stars and stripes, were planted on the mountain summit,-and there, the burnished barrels of five thousand ritles, touched by the slanting rays of the midsummer sun, glinted back toward the North- land, that promise of substantial service in the Union cause, which you so well redeemed thereafter.
After two days' rest upon the mountain top, our bugles blew the advance again, and we commenced descending the eastern slope of the mountains. We passed along the narrow roadway, dotted upon either side with sharp-peaked, dormer-windowed houses-so like the peasant houses of the Bernese Alps that the modern tourist would have felt quite at home among them. When we had reached the long open stretches of pine land, we commenced that system of foraging for subsistence, which was afterward adopted by General Sherman in his famous march to the sea.
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You will remember how eagerly you 'responded to a detail to accompany a wagon-master on a foraging expedition, and how unwillingly you responded to a detail to do fatigue duty in camp. Here your home experiences as farmer boy's came into play. You could tell at a glance whether a potato-patch would pay the labor of digging. You could dress a beef, veal or mutton so soon after it was killed that no professional butcher was required.
. Jo. Gingery never used to wait to smoke a swarm of bees out of its hive. He simply wrapped his dog-tent around the whole institution, put it on his shoulder and proceed to camp on an air line; and he never needed a civil engineer to blaze his way. Jo. never disappointed a friend, and-for that matter-never disappoint- ed a Rebel, who expected to lose the last chicken from his hen-roost.
At last our command reached Loudon on the Holston River, and there we went into camp. In the ranks we had engineers who could run railroad trains; we had millers who could run saw-mills and grist-mills, and bakers who could make up the flour into bread.
The Rebel residents along the beautiful Holston valley had harvested their wheat; we proceeded to thrash and grind it into flour. In short, we started into housekeeping on a grand scale.
No body of settlers in a new country were ever able to obtain quicker returns upon agricultural investments than we. With Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad bank bills, all things were possible. That
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was the great inflation period. If any Rebel presumed to doubt the legal-tender qualities of that money he was laughed to scorn; was informed that his early financial education had been neglected, and, as a punishment for his dense ignorance on the subject, his property was taken without money and without price.
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