USA > Ohio > The Forty-first Ohio veteran volunteer infantry in the war of rebellion. 1861-1865 > Part 1
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M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 00825 1297
WILLIAM B. HAZEN.
Captain 8th Infantry. U. S. A .; Colonel 41st O. V. I .; Brig. Gen. U. S. Vols .; Maj. Gen. U. S. Vols .; Colonel 37th Infantry, U. S. A. Brigadier General U. S. A.
THE FORTY-FIRST
OHIO
Veteran Volunteer Infantry IN
The War of the Rebellion.
1861-1865.
BY
Robert L. Kimberly and Ephraim S. Holloway,
With the Co-operation of the Committee of the Regimental Association. .
CLEVELAND, OHIO: W. R. SMELLIE, PRINTER AND PUBLISHER. 1897.
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012
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1657263
PREFACE.
It is the aim of this book to show, first, of what material the regiment it commemorates was composed; and second, the life of the regiment apart from its marches and battles. These latter are matters of official record, but the real life of the regiment, its per- sonnel and characteristics, are nowhere given in connected form.
As to material, the regiment came from the Western Reserve of Ohio, and from counties south and west of the Reserve. The Reserve, largely settled by New Englanders, was a hotbed of anti- slavery sentiment always. It was the home of Giddings and Wade, of national repute in the abolition agitation days. Its only city, Cleveland, was the scene of several notable contests under the fugi- tive slave-law; and at one time, a popular frenzy which made the soberer ones tremble was quieted only by the majestic presence and admirable tract of Salmon P. Chase, then governor of the state. A slave girl, Lucy, claimed in Wheeling, W. Va., was confined in the county jail, awaiting the process of the United States court for the Northern District of Ohio. A mass meeting was assembled, companies coming from the Giddings district, forty miles to the eastward, and from Oberlin, to the westward. The Giddings dis- trict men carried hickory sticks, the bark removed, in imitation of the Connecticut colonists who met and turned back the king's stamp act commissioner, near Hartford. This demonstration was so threatening that Gov. Chase was summoned, and, coming by special train from the State capital, arrived when the crowd had been wrought to madness over the use of the county jails to serve the purpose of the hated fugitive slave-law. The governor mount- ed the platform in the midst of the multitude on Monument Square, and stood, uncovered and unannounced, before the frenzied peo-
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PREFACE.
ple. At the moment, a committee was on its way to take the slave girl from the jail. With a word, Chase, the born ruler, turned the furious mob into an orderly assemblage of sober citizens. "Fellow citizens," he said, and paused. "Lawabiding fellow-citizens of the Western Reserve!" What more he said inattered not; he had call- ed them to their senses, and the Giddings district "Peeled Stick Brigade" went quietly homeward with the rest.
I give this prominence to the incident because it is luminous in illustration of the character of the people. A people slow to anger ; but, once aroused, equal to martyrdom. A people who would suf- fer long before unsheathing the sword; but the naked steel, in hand at last, never to be returned to the scabbard except in victory.
Through that section of the country, in the years before the war, one might travel day after day without the sight of a pauper or a family not comfortably and decently provided for. And one might travel twice as far without seeing a soldier or any hint of war. In the regiment, as it was organized, there was but one man who had seen so much as a battalion in the field, and I am not able to say whether that one had ever witnessed a battle. A solitary militia company was maintained at Cleveland, but it was seldom seen. The gathering of a thousand men out of such a population, putting them into a rigid army organization, and taking them through the great campaigns in Kentucky, Tenr essee, Alabama and Georgia, would necessarily bring a multitude of diverse exper- iences, all new to the men of the regiment, and many of them worth preserving for succeeding generations. Some of these experiences show thrilling heroism; others are impressive by the patient en- durance they disclose; still others are touchingly pathetic; and in some there is a savor of piquant drollery. All these went to make up the life of the regiment during its term of service. It is this life which is sought to be recorded in this book. The bare military record of marches and fights has been written many a time, and is a part of the records of State and national governments. The real life of the regiment, as outlined above, is nowhere preserved in records.
If the purpose of this book be achieved, the survivors of the regiment will find here many a well remembered scene and incident;
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PREFACE.
a later generation will see in its pages a story of patriotic service well performed; and some will recognize the tales heard from the lips of fathers long since gone to the eternal camping ground.
It is proper that acknowledgment be made here of the patient effort of the late Gen. E. S. Holloway, from whom some of the statistical matter has come. For the narrative, the writer is wholly responsible; but very valuable help has been received from many comrades. For all this aid, the writer gratefully returns thanks.
R. L. K.
Cincinnati, September, 1897.
Regimental Association Committee on History,
DR. ALBERT G. HART, WILLIAM J. MORGAN, WILLIAM R. SMELLIE.
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The Forty-first Ohio Infantry.
CHAPTER I.
MAKING THE REGIMENT.
The news of the disaster at Bull Run, the first general engage- ment of the Civil War, came upon the Northern Ohio communities as a stunning shock. Incredulity and consternation were the con- tending emotions among those who heard the earlier news by wire from Washington. The night was a long one to such as waited hour after hour for some contradiction of the story of defeat and rout. But the people quickly roused themselves to face the situa- tion and retrieve what had been lost. The abiding effect of the disaster was to open the eyes of all to the fact that the armed de- fiance of the national authority was not to be put down by anything in the nature of a brief excursion to the South by fifty or seventy- five thousand men. The immense gravity of the contest that was now fairly opened was thoroughly appreciated, and among all classes the belief spread that the loyal States would be called upon for all their military strength.
Under these circumstances, the President's call for three hun- dred thousand volunteers came as a relief rather than as an unwel- come demand. Few were disposed to count the cost. The one solemn fact in every mind was that a victorious enemy of the gov- ernment was bent upon its overthrow. The old-fashioned Fourth of July was still familiar to the people, with its patriotic panegyrics upon the glorious Revolution; and all schoolboys had heard Patrick
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
Henry's speech. The common patriotism, indeed, was almost an abstraction. Except for the friction arising under the fugitive slave-law, these people would hardly have been conscious of a na- tional government at any time, so lightly had its functions touched them. Not many had ever seen a United States soldier, or any insignia of national authority. The actual government, its person- nel and operation, was to them little more than a myth. But very real, and very close to their hearts, were the deeds of 1776 and 1812; and when it seemed that a domestic foe was about to obscure the lustre of the old heroism and throw away its fruitage, these people rose in defence with none silent or dissenting.
Militia companies from Cleveland had responded to the first call for volunteers. That was when the contest appeared likely to be short and trifling. When half a million men were ordered for three years service, Ohio came promptly to the front. Several gentlemen of prominence and influence with the Governor became actively interested in the military organization going rapidly for- ward,-among them, George B. Senter, Bushnell White, George A. Benedict, and some others. An order was secured from the War Department, giving leave of absence to Lieut. William B. Hazen, of the Eighth U. S. Infantry, to take command of a volunteer regi- ment to be raised in Cleveland. Many enlistments had been made, and several companies were in camp, when Col. Hazen arrived to take command. Among those who were most active in the regi- mental organization before Col. Hazen's arrival were Col. John J. Wiseman, who had been a member of a New York militia regiment, and who was made Lieutenant Colonel of the Forty-first; George S. Mygatt, who had been on the Governor's staff, and who became Major of the regiment; and Junius R. Sanford, a Cleveland militia- man, who was commissioned Adjutant. In various counties around, the work of enlistment was pushed by energetic men, and the first full companies at the rendezvous came from Geauga county, many miles away. In other counties, and as far away as Wayne and Columbiana to the southward, and Lorain and Ottawa to the west, recruiting was urged forward by Wiley, Leslie, Steele, Toland, Bushnell. Mitchell and a score of others. Many of these names do not appear in the records of the regiment's active service; the
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MAKING THE REGIMENT.
rigorous requirements of the West Point colonel causing them to be set aside for other men, not more patriotic, but better adapted to the service. Not the less are these active and willing organizers to have their meed of praise, because the work they did was in pre- paration, and not the deadly work of war. Some further references to this earlier work will be found in the sketches of companies in this volume.
The arrival of Col. Hazen to take command at the rendezvous, Camp Wood, in the Cleveland suburbs, brought an immediate trans- formation. In his first order, announcing himself as commander, he laid out the full process of turning recruits into soldiers. Drills, study, recitations, camp police duty, the cut of the hair and cleanli- ness of person. roll calls, meals, reveille and tattoo and taps, ab- sence from camp or from any duty, sick calls-calls of all kinds and recalls almost as numerous-every minute detail of the daily routine and life, from sunrise to the putting out of lights at night, was specified and prescribed with the precision of a disciplinarian, until the men began to wonder if two days' work was not crowded into the twelve-hour program. Bugle calls for the various duties were incessantly sounded, and exercises trod on each other's heels in the ceaseless labor of each day. The commander seemed as in- sensible to fatigue as a threshing machine, and to think his men were like thirty-day clocks, wound up to run a month without stop- ping, and then wind up again. But. if the colonel sometimes seemed to err in his driving, it is to be said that he knew, better than any other in the command, the tests to which the regiment would be put, and also that the time for preparation would be far too short, crowd it how he would. It is to be said further that he put most work where there was most responsibility. Besides drilling the men, the officers had their special studies and drills. It was a tremendous pace the colonel set in this business so entirely new to the recruits- too fast for some to endure, and they, good men, but unable to keep up, were left behind, dropping out one after another. For lack of willing disposition, Hazen had no mercy; but to simple lack of adap- tability he was widely charitable and considerate.
The work of instruction never ceased in any command of Col. Hazen's. Before a year was over, the officers of his regiment were
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
provided, in addition to army regulations and tactics, with Jomini's work, Napier's Peninsular War, special books on field fortifications, instructions in topographical drawing and some other subjects; and had received teaching and practice in minor engineer work, the fixing of distances, the method of marching troops, and a score of things outside the regulation tactics. For the men, there was a return, whenever brief occasion offered, to rudimentary instruction, the school of the soldier.
Summing up, it may be said that the inflexible army discipline, coming suddenly upon men unused to associated effort, at first be- numbed the minds of many, as if they went through prescribed motions like automatons. But this wore away, leaving the men practiced, alert and obedient, with no loss of spirit. So, too, the strict regulations as to care of the person were sometimes galling; now and then a man felt a degradation in inspection with shirt un- buttoned and bared feet; but this feeling also vanished as the wis- dom of the regulation forced itself into recognition.
But what a change from all anticipations! Where was "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war?" Not in the unending drudgery of drill; or in sweeping dirt paths with brush brooms day after day; or in the sentinel's lonely pacing through the dead of night; or in the detail for fatigue duty; or in keeping rust off a Springfield rifle barrel and rubbing up buttons and brass plates; or in eating the little-varied army rations month after month, until the soldier would give a farm for one of his mother's pickles, and a year of life for a bite of home-made pie. Pomp and pageantry were scarce. There were no waving plumes for officers or men- rot so much as a feather. There was a dearth of prancing steeds, pawing the earth and scenting the battle afar off. Let alone pranc- ing, the field officers' horses evidently thought the whole business a bore, and had no heart in it. Even the fifes and drums palled on the musical ear while the drum corps rattled off four hours a day just beyond the parade ground.
Ideas of organization in those early days of the war were somewhat crude, even among regular army officers. Thus, the Forty-first was to have a battery of artillery and a full brass band.
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MAKING THE REGIMENT.
Both were organized. Every old member of the regiment will re- member little Wetmore, captain of the battery, a thoroughly in- structed West Point man; slight in frame and smooth-faced, and with a permanent physical disability; courteously reserved in man- ner; full of kindness of heart, but full also of official dignity when on duty-one of the picturesque figures of those weeks at Camp Wood .. But only of those weeks. Wetmore's battery went into the field, but not attached to the Forty-first. Army organization was growing rapidly, not only as to numbers, but also as to methods; batteries were not to be attached to infantry regiments.
The band lasted longer as an attachment to the regiment, though its life was shorter. Jack Leland's band had a name . in Cleveland long before the war. The leader joined and enlisted his men, and all entered with good heart upon the service. But the army band practice was not the same as that which the men were accustomed to, and when, some months after the regiment had gone to the field, the colonel called for a detail to blow the bugle, the leader explained that such service would "spoil the lip" of the man detailed. The colonel failed to appreciate the nicety of this ob- jection, and a discouragement came upon the band. Another break- er of musical hopes was the regulation for hospital service, the re- quirement of instruction in bearing stretchers and caring for the wounded. All this made band life in the army very different from band life at home. Then again, the first winter out was passed in Camp Wickliffe, Kentucky, where nothing but mud and sickness abounded. No place could be found better calculated to take the spirit out of the men whose idea of duty comprehended a march over smooth streets, wearing clean uniforms and heading a showy pro- cession of some kind. Nevertheless, Leland and his men held bravely on; but the War Department soon learned as part of its first practical lesson that one of the things to be dispensed with, in such service as its armies were in, was the full regimental band. The less pretentious drum corps succeeded Cleveland's crack band in furnishing music for the Forty-first.
Yet another disenchantment came-this to the chaplain. A pious and worthy gentleman had been appointed to the place; but, the regiment once in the field, he failed to find the expected oppor-
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
tunities for his holy office. But this was not perhaps the worst. The opportunities provided him were wholly unexpected in their de- mands; and when it came to inspecting the soup kettles of the com- pany messes, the chaplain broke down. Perhaps he was not fond of soup made in big black kettles over open fires, and from cakes of desiccated vegetables. The good man gave it up, mildly pro- testing in the interest of his palate and his stomach.
Among other delusions common throughout the regiment at the time of assembling, was the notion that it was a good thing to have a little private arsenal in addition to the arms furnished by the gov- ernment. Some of the men brought with them Colt's revolvers, often the gift of friends left behind. The regimental order which required the men to divest themselves of such extra armament and rely wholly on the regulation supply, was a great surprise. After- ward, plodding along roads ankle deep in either mud or dust, and participation in a battle or two, was abundant vindication of the colo- nel's wisdom in stripping his men of useless loads. Many articles be- sides pistols went the same way-with no little heartache, when the prohibited things were the loving gifts of fathers, mothers or sisters.
Colonel Hazen took command at Camp Wood on the 16th of September, 1861. He found two full companies, and the others still recruiting. On the 29th of October the regiment was mus- tered into the service with a total of 931 officers and men. A week afterward the regiment left its rendezvous on the way to the front. It had not yet received its arms, but had been drilled with two hundred old muskets belonging to the State.
From Cleveland the regiment was taken direct to Camp Den- nison, near Cincinnati, received its arms and spent some uncomfort- able days there. Everything was strange about the quarters, if not entirely new. It was far enough to be away from home, and yet too near to afford the relief of novelty. Nobody was sorry when the transport steamer Telegraph No. 3, took the command aboard at Cincinnati to go up the Ohio river to Gallipolis. In this river town the people and surroundings were not so familiar, and some of the men began to feel that they were really off to the war at last. None of them knew that for a few days the destination of the regi-
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MAKING THE REGIMENT.
ment was in some doubt. The colonel knew it and was concerned for the outcome. He had no desire to come under the command of Gen. Rosecrans, then in West Virginia. A more inviting field of operations opened up to his imagination on the line south from Louisville, where the operations promised to be on a grander scale than was possible in the West Virginia wildernesses. The home of a rebel, Colonel Jenkins, was on the southern side of the river a few miles below Gallipolis, and there were reports of some Confederate activity in that region. The regiment was taken there by boat one day, and a short march was made to the Jenkins place, without result. The colonel hurried his regiment back to Gallipolis that night, to escape possible complications with Rosecrans. The matter did not pass unnoticed by the latter, but Col. Hazen was soon gratified by an order to Louisville to report to Gen. Buell, then organizing the Army of the Ohio at that place.
The camp just out of Louisville was a great improvement. The grounds were pleasant, and near enough to the city to be visited by the people there. The Forty-first began to get some satisfaction out of drills and dress parades before audiences from the city, which included some ladies of the loyal families. The men were becoming better accustomed to the close association of army organization ; and, though the work of instruction was not intermitted for a day, it had beconie less onerous and tiring. The soldiers were coming to handle their guns with confidence, for it was not until they were pitted against the Confederate Enfield rifles that the uselessness of the Greenwood rifled muskets became apparent. This latter was the arm which had been furnished by the government, sorely pushed to outfit its gathering armies. The camp at Louisville was one of the bright spots in the record.
At Louisville the Forty-first was assigned to the Fifteenth bri- gade, Nelson's division, and, when this was done, it was fairly in the field for three years' service. Already it had a character peculiarly its own, and this distinction was helped by several outward signs. The men never wore the regulation army cap, but were supplied with the neater cadet cap. The manual of arms in which they were drilled was that of the old Scott tactics, sometimes called the "heavy
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
infantry manual." The most noticeable feature of this manual, in comparison with the later "light infantry drill," was the position of the piece at shoulder arms. It was carried in the left hand, the barrel to the front-a much better show of arms than is given by the light infantry position at shoulder arms. This manual was adhered to throughout the service, and always marked the regiment for notice at reviews, parades and when marching with shouldered arms. There may have been other regiments using the old Scott manual, but the Forty-first fell in with none such.
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DOWN TO THE FRONT.
CHAPTER II.
DOWN TO THE FRONT.
The march from Louisville southward to the vicinity of New Haven, Kentucky, was made under the careful and precise detailed orders of Gen. Don Carlos Buell, a master of the art of moving troops, as he was of the army system of organization. The Forty- first felt his directing hand while in Louisville very slightly, for the reason that the preliminary instruction of the regiment had been as thorough and painstaking as the time would allow. When it came to a march of some length, however, the case was different. It was a new experience. Each day's march was carefully marked out; times of halts for rest were prescribed; cautions as to speed of marching were given: directions for filling canteens were laid down; inspections were ordered to make sure that the raw soldiers did not over-load themselves, beyond the regulation outfit; and very little detail seemed to be prescribed. As a result, the first continued marching of these troops was done with comparative ease and pre- cision, and there was very little straggling.
The camp in which the Forty-first spent the winter of 1861-2 was named Camp Wickliffe. Whatever the ground may have been in the summer season, during that winter it was almost continually a slough of mud. The regiment went to this camp as a part of Has- kell's Fifteenth Brigade, Nelson's Division, Army of the Ohio. Not long after its arrival a new brigade, the Nineteenth, was organized, and Col. Hazen was assigned to the command of it. The brigade was made up of the Forty-first, the Sixth Kentucky, and the Forty- sixth and Forty-seventh Indiana. This organization was short- lived. The Indiana regiments were commanded by Colonels Fitch and Slack, prominent politicians of Indiana before the war; and these gentlemen, for some reason not discoverable by others, were the reverse of favorites with imperious Gen. Nelson. He made them uncomfortable, and even put some petty slights upon them. They
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
soon secured the transfer of their commands to more congenial as- sociations.
The fighting, that winter in Camp Wickliffe, was continuous, but it was fighting a more potent foe than the Southern army. Dis- case of various kinds played havoc with the men, and no precautions served to avoid it. Measles was perhaps the most calamitous visi- tation; many men who recovered from the direct attack were left to fall into some other ailment more or less serious. Battles of great note have been fought with less loss than was sustained by the troops at Camp Wickliffe. The medical staff of the Forty-first was well qual-
ified professionally and well instructed as to army duties. The colonel's watch was upon this and the other regiments of the brigade; everything was done that was possible in caring for the men's health; but the season and the ground were not to be withstood. All in all, no more uncomfortable and dismal camp was ever occupied by the Forty-first.
The work of instruction was not given up, but the interference with drill, through storm and mud. was very great. This was the dreary season that sent the Chaplain home in disappointment, and sickened the regimental band. Many changes occurred among commissioned and non-commissioned officers. The losses in half a dozen fights would hardly make so great a change, in this regard, as had come over the regiment since it left Cleveland. Everything at Camp Wickliffe seemed untoward, if not calamitous-a very rough initiation into army life in inclement winter weather. Even the jokers and wits among the companies felt the depression, and their efforts were but half-hearted. No one was sorry when, with the approach of spring, orders came to march.
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