USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 37
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Military operations in Kentucky did not begin until September and later, when the Confederate troops occupied Columbus and Bowling Green and a force under Zollicoffer came through Cumber- land Gap on the old Warrior's trail. Then the Clermont county boy, Ulysses S. Grant, who had been comparatively unnoticed so far, but had been given a brigadier's commission because of his old army training, advanced to Paducah with Illinois troops, and Robert Anderson, by this time also a general, and in command of the depart- ment of the Cumberland, ordered the Ohio and Indiana troops across the Ohio river, where they took position to guard Cincinnati, and hold the railroads against the enemy. In a few weeks William Tecumseh Sherman, who had been made colonel in the regulars, and brigadier-general after Bull Run, where he was cool in the midst of confusion and panie, succeeded Anderson. Sherman, in this new position, was nervous, irritable and extremely free in expressing his opinions. An interview in which he asked two hundred thousand men to make a successful campaign, caused his removal. The Cincinnati Commercial published a famous editorial beginning: "The pain- ful intelligence reaches us in such form that we are not at liberty to discredit it, that Gen. W. T. Sherman, late commander of the depart- ment of the Cumberland, is insane. It appears that he was at times, when commanding in Kentucky, stark mad." MeDowell, a man of strict abstinence, had already been written down as a drunkard; the same fate awaited Grant, and MeClellan before long found himself libelled as a traitor. But General Sherman had a faithful brother, and was not long overwhelmed by calumny. If insane in the fall of 1861, his reason appears to have resumed its throne at a later date.
While the Ohio regiments were advancing to meet the enemy in Kentucky, Rosecrans and Cox made a successful campaign in West Virginia against an army under Gen. Robert E. Lee, which attempted to regain command of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad and the Kanawha valley. This was considered an important campaign and engrossed the attention of the nation. Floyd's Virginians moved against Cox in the Kanawha valley. Cox's advance was com- manded by Col: E. B. Tyler, of the Seventh Ohio, and this regiment
* Hazen, a native of Vermont, was reared in Portage county, Ohio. Ap- pointed to West Point from Ohio, he was in the regular army six years, until he took command of the Forty-first.
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was surprised at Cross Lanes August 26th, and a considerable num- ber killed, wounded and captured, a reverse that occasioned much excitement in Ohio. Then Lee made his first move against the Union troops at Cheat Mountain, and the Twenty-fourth figured prominently in his repulse, as it did in the operations that followed in that quarter through the winter, losing a number of killed and wounded. This maneuver completed, Rosecrans and Lee concen- trated in the upper Kanawha valley. Rosecrans, moving to join Cox, with three brigades of Ohio regiments, under Gen. H. W. Ben- ham, Col. Robert L. MeCook and Col. E. P. Seammon, attacked Floyd in intrenehments at Carnifix Ferry on Ganley river, Septem- ber 21st, and gained a position that compelled the Confederate retreat. In this attack fell the first Ohio field officer killed in battle, Col. John W. Lowe, of the Twelfth, and Col. W. H. Lytle was wounded. In the Ninth, Tenth, Twelfth, Thirteenth and Twenty- eighth regiments, MeMullin's battery and Ohio cavalry, 17 were killed and 141 wounded, the Tenth suffering most severely. That position won, Rosecrans and Cox advanced and confronted Lee at Sewell mountain, but, no battle resulting, fell back to the falls, and ronted Floyd, who followed, on Cotton hill. Meanwhile the Fourth and Eighth and other Ohio commands held the Baltimore & Ohio railroad in West Virginia, occasionally skirmishing, and perform- ing arduous service that caused the death of some brave men, among them the patriotic college president, Lorin Andrews, colonel of the Fourth.
The result of the campaign, holding West Virginia against a large army directed by the ablest Southern general, encouraged the North. Lee was relieved of command and sent to take charge of a depart- ment on the coast. Rosecrans, says Pollard, "was esteemed at the Sonth one of the best generals the North had in the field." He was thanked by the legislatures of Ohio and West Virginia. 1 year later Lee and Rosecrans, in different fields, were in command of great armies, one invading the North, the other the South, and both manifested, at Antietam and Stone River, unshaken heroism in the face of great danger and heavy loss. For yet another year, the two continued in somewhat parallel careers, making a second set of inva- sions, further north and further sonth ; but though Rosecrans had more success in Georgia than Lee in Pennsylvania, his fame was overshadowed by that of Grant. Probably Lee would have given way at the same time to some successful Southern general. had there been one. Virginia had lost Stonewall Jackson, and beyond the two, Lee and Jackson, the old Dominion did not seem as fertile of great generals as her daughter, Ohio.
At the time when the political parties in Ohio nominated candi- dates for governor in 1861, Governor Dennison was blamed with all the errors that had occurred in the raising of an army in Ohio greater
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than the whole United States had ever before put in the field. He had organized twenty-three regiments for three-months service and eighty-two for three years. IIe left the State credited with 20,751 soldiers over and above the demands of the general government. Besides that he had shown military wisdom in regard to the occupa- tion of West Virginia and Kentucky. In financial administration, when the appropriations of three millions by the legislature were tied up under the construction of the law followed by Treasurer Tay- Ior, he adopted the bold plan of collecting money due the State from the general government by his personal agents, and using it for the desired purpose. In this way he kept out of the State treasury, and where it could be used, over a million dollars that was absolutely necessary for war purposes. In all this work he had been efficiently aided by such civilians as George W. MeCook, Edward Ball, Noah HI. Swayne, Joseph R. Swan, Aaron F. Perry, Julins .J. Wood, Richard M. Corwin, Alfred P. Stone and William A. Platt.
Yet his party dropped him# and nominated, partly to retain the favor of the Democrats who supported the war, David Tod, of War- ren, who had been the Democrat candidate for governor in 1844, for five years served as minister to Brazil, and in 1860 was president of the Baltimore national convention that nominated Douglas. He was an ardent supporter of the war for the Union. Benjamin Stan- ton, the abolitionist, was named with him, for lieutenant-governor. They received nearly 207,000 votes, and the candidates of the Demo- cratie party, Hugh J. Jewett and John G. Marshall, about 152,000. Jewett, a lawyer at Zanesville, had begun in 1857 a very prominent career as a railroad man, as president of the Ohio Central. He was a conservative war Democrat.
In the fall of 1861 the country was restive and impatient for action at the front, a sentiment that was voiced by W. D. Gallagher, for thirty years a poet and editor of Ohio, in a poem that became innnensely popular, "Move on the Columns!"
After the elections, and near the close of the year, came the first campaign in Kentucky. The sudden eclipse of General Sherman had given a chance to Gen. Don Carlos Buell, another Ohio gradu- ate of West Point, who was given command in eastern Kentucky in November. He rendered services of great value in organizing an army and winning by diplomaey the good-will of the State he oceu- pied. The first active campaigning in Kentucky was when Col. James A. Garfield, of the Forty-second Ohio, was sent in command
*"With the end of his service he began to be appreciated. He was the most trusted counsellor and efficient aid to his successor. Though no more than a private citizen, he came to be recognized in and out of the State as her best spokesman in the departments at Washington. Gradually he even became popular. The State began to reckon him among her leading public men, the party selected him as president of the national convention at Balti- more, and Mr. Lincoln called him to the cabinet."-REID.
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of a brigade to drive out Humphrey Marshall, and George HI. Thomas to repulse Zollicoffer. Both were successful, and the young Western Reserve colonel was made a brigadier-general. At Logan's Cross Roads, January 19, Thomas won the most decisive Union vie- tory so far, east of the Mississippi, in which Col. Robert L. McCook, commanding a brigade, and his regiment, the Ninth Ohio, were par- ticularly distinguished.
Justice John McLean, whose honorable career covered the first fifty years of the statehood of Ohio, died at Cincinnati, April 4, 1861, and in February, 1862, as his successor in the United States supreme court, President Lincoln named Noah H. Swayne, whose early career has already been noticed. He held this high office, with unquestioned ability, until his resignation in 1881, three years before his death.
In the early days of Tod's administration, in the beginning of 1862, the first serious onslaught was made on the Confederacy. It was begun by General Grant, who cleared Kentucky of the enemy by moving up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, and taking Forts Henry and Donelson in February. In this movement Ohioans did not take a conspicuous part, but the Fifty-eighth, Sixty-eighth and Seventy-sixth regiments were present at Fort Donelson, under the command of Gen. John M. Thayer, of Nebraska, and lost twenty-seven killed and wounded. Grant, pushing forward rapidly, occupied Pittsburg Landing in March, near the north boundary of Mississippi, and there on an April Sunday morning, was assailed by the concentrated forces of the Confederacy that he had crowded out of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as reinforcements from all over the gulf states.
Buell's army, by this time, had begun to show the distinctive organization of the great Army of the Cumberland. The First divi- sion was commanded by George H. Thomas, with Col. R. L. McCook leading one brigade, and nearly half of all the regiments from Ohio. The Second division was under the command of Alexander McD. MeCook, the first commander of the First Ohio, now a brigadier- general. Three of MeCook's regiments were from Ohio. O. M. Mitchel, who had been a class-mate of Robert E, Lee at West Point, and had left his astronomical studies to become a brigadier-general and commandant at Cincinnati, fortifying the city through the sum- mer of 1861, was given command of the Third division, in which there was a strong Ohio brigade, including the Third, Thirty-third, and Twenty-first, with Col. Joshua W. Sill in command : a brigade half Ohioans, and several other Ohio regiments. Colonel Ammen commanded a brigade in Nelson's division. With this army, Gen- eral Buell had moved southward, by Bowling Green and Nashville, supporting Grant's advance on the Tennessee river, and was close at hand when the fighting began at Shiloh.
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General Sherman had been appointed to succeed Grant at Cairo, and as Grant moved south, he brought along a division that was mainly Ohio regiments. Two brigades, under Colonels Hildebrand and Buekland, were all Ohio soldiers,# and half of the other two were Ohioans. They were encamped in the most advanced position, and upon them fell the first blow of the attack, April 6th. They were pounded back, and part broke in confusion, but Sherman was still fighting at the close of the day, with a reninant of two brigades. He was shot in the hand, three horses had been shot under him, but his gallantry and cheering influence had been such that General Hal- leck reported that "Sherman saved the fortunes of the day." Ilis division, with seven thousand men in battle, lost 325 killed, 1,277 wounded, and 300 captured, nearly two thousand in all. Among the killed was Col. Barton S. Kyle, of Miami county.i
Outside of this the Ohio troops did not have much to do in the first day's battle. Gen. Lew Wallace, it will be remembered, did not arrive until late in the day, and Thayer's brigade, with him, and Col. Charles Whittlesey's brigade,$ were not in the fight of the 6th. Col. Thomas Morton commanded Me Arthur's brigade of W. II. L. Wallace's division, and his regiment, the Eighty-first Ohio, lost 23; the Fifth Cavalry had some active service, though it was not a car- alry battle. Burrows' Ohio battery fought gallantly until over- whelmed and their guns captured. But it should not be forgotten that Jacob Ammen's brigade, the vanguard of Buell's army, was on the field before dark, and reinforced the Union line at a critical moment.
Through the night, the rest of General Buell's army arrived, Alexander McCook and Thomas J. Wood commanding two of the divisions, and William II. Gibson, William B. Hazen, William Sooy Smith and James A. Garfield among the brigade leaders, and there was a strong reinforcement of the Ohioans on the field as the battle was renewed next day. There was warm fighting, as the Union army pressed forward to drive the enemy back to Corinth. The First regiment lost 50 killed and wounded, the Fifteenth 75, the Forty-ninth 40, the Sixth 9, the Twenty-fourth 76, the Forty-first (under Hazen ) 133, the Nineteenth 55, the Fifty-ninth 57, the Thir- teenth 66, in this second day's battle, but the Confederates were beaten, and Sherman was entrusted with the pursuit.
* Hildebrand's brigade. Fifty-third, Fifty-seventh and Seventy-seventh Ohio; Buckland's brigade. Forty-eighth, Seventieth and Seventy-second regiments. Fifty-fourth and Seventy-first in T. Kilby Smith's brigade and Forty-sixth in J. A. McDowell's brigade.
+ Col. Thomas Worthington's regiment. the Forty-sixth, lost 185 killed and wounded. The Fifty-fourth lost in the same way 139 and the Seventy-first 44. The casualties of Hildebrand's brigade were 221 and of Buckland's 203. Besides, over two hundred Ohioans were captured.
# The Twentieth, Fifty-sixth, Seventy-sixth and Seventy-eighth regiments.
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Shiloh was a battle of great carnage, but a decided victory, and if Grant had been left in charge, would have been speedily followed by the occupation of Corinth, but, unfortunately, the people at home treated it as a defeat, and Halleck took direct control of the army. As soon as the news of the losses in killed and wounded reached home the great heart of Ohio throbbed with sympathy. The Sani- tary commission, Mayor Hateh of Cincinnati, and Governor Tod, hastened to send steamers down the rivers, laden with supplies, surgeons and nurses. "Ohio boats removed the wounded with ten- der care to the hospitals at Camp Dennison and elsewhere within the State ; the Ohio treasury was good for expenditures for the comfort of the sick and wounded which the general government did not pro- vide for." At the close of the year Ohio had paid out over $50,000, the expenses of eleven steamboats and many surgeons in this work of mercy.
While Grant and Sherman and Buell made such a great advance toward the heart of Rebeldom and held their ground, it was quite different in the east with that other son of Ohio, MeDowell, and her protegé, Mcclellan. Before they could grapple with their antagon- ist, their plans were disarranged by the fierce activity of Stonewall Jackson, a son of that Scotch-Irish breed that opened up the Ohio valley, a type of that large element in the Southern army that makes it idle to attempt to classify the Southern and Northern fighters on any basis but the flags they bore. Six Ohio regiments," a squadron of cavalry and two batteries of Ohio troops had the honor of assist- ing in a repulse of Jackson at Kernstown in the Valley, losing 250 killed or wounded, half the Union loss : but at MeDowell, Va., May 8th, General Sehenek and General Milroy (of Indiana), suffered a severe defeat. The Twenty-fifth, Thirty-second, Seventy-fifth, and Eighty-second, under Sebenek, lost 210 killed and wounded, and the Seventy-fifth, Twenty-fifth and Thirty-second, under Milroy, 153. In fact, on the I'nion side, it was almost exclusively an Ohio battle, and it was characterized by great gallantry, but the superiority of numbers defeated the Ohioans, after they had inflicted a loss of nearly five hundred on their enemy. Rosecrans, it may be noted, was no longer in command in this region. He had been called away for some inscrutable reason and the romantic Frémont put in his place. If it had been Rosecrans, instead of Fremont and Shields and Banks, against Jackson, that industrious Confederate might not have made his sudden leap to glory.
While Jackson was sweeping the valley elean of "Yankees," there was great alarm for the safety of Washington. In obedience to a call from the capital, Governor Tod called for volunteers. At Cleve- land a publie meeting was hastily called, at which two hundred and
* Eighth, Sixty-seventh, Fifth, Sixty-second. Seventh and Twenty-ninth.
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fifty men enlisted, among them nearly all the students of the law school : at Zanesville the fire bells rang alarm, and three hundred were enrolled, among them the judge of the cour. then in session and the lawyers, and all over the State there was the same spirit, so that five thousand men reported at Camp Chase within a few days. Under these eireumstanees the Eighty-fourth regiment was sent to the field in ten days, and the Eighty-fifth, Eighty-sixth, Eighty-sev- enth and Eighty-eightli soon afterward filled. All the other regi- ments, eighty-two of infantry and six of cavalry, had been filled in February and March and sent out of the State, except the Forty- fifth, Fiftieth and Fifty-second, that recruited during the summer.
As has already been noted, Jackson's exploits in the Valley dis- arranged the operations of MeClellan and MeDowell. The enemy did not stand for them to slowly approach and grapple the Confeder- aey by the throat, but by a lightning shift, crushed the unfortunate Mcclellan and hurled his splendid army back from Richmond. Then came upon Ohio the necessity of raising seventy-four thousand more men. Under the law the state militia was liable to draft for half of this foree. To avoid the apparently harsh methods of the draft, which would bring in all able-bodied men without regard to their patriotism, the plan was at this time adopted of apportioning the quota to the counties, according to population, and calling upon the communities to enconrage enlistments in the most effective man- ner possible. Up to this time 115,000 voluntary enlistments had been made, and of these 60,000 three-years troops were in the field. This was not a very serious depletion of the State's military resources, but it was deemed best by Governor Tod and those who were apparently best qualified to judge, to use extraordinary means to secure enlistments, and the practice was begun of paying bounties. Beginning in the summer of 1562 and continuing until the latter part of the war, over $50,000,000 was paid in local bounties in Ohio to secure enlistments, while in the South a much larger proportion of the able-bodied population was put in the field withont such expense, by means of draft or conseription. In spite of all that was done in this way in the summer of 1862, the State had furnished but 151,301 voluntary enlistments on September 1, 1862, and a draft was necessary to raise 12,000 more. The draft was a failure prac- tically, for it resulted in adding only 2,400 men, but voluntary enlistments were renewed afterward, so that the State was by the end of the year eredited with 171,000 men, besides the first three-months men, recruits for the regular army and enlistments in the navy. It was evident that some strong anti-war influence had temporarily ocenpied the publie mind in the summer. Before the military situa- tion was very serious the arrest and imprisonment, at the suggestion of Governor Tod, of Dr. Edson B. Olds, of Lancaster, for making
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speeches discouraging enlistment, showed the tendency of reaction against the government.
Despite the Confederate successes in Virginia there appeared nothing threatening to Ohio in the West in the early summer of 1862. Buell was making a campaign toward Chattanooga, in the course of which General Mitchel, in command of a division, occupied Huntsville, Ala., had some skirmishing, and sent Colonel Streight on the raid to cut the railroad between Atlanta and Chattanooga, in the course of which the Third Ohio was captured by Gen. Nathan B. Forrest. Part of Mitchel's command actually bombarded Chatta- nooga. Suddenly the air of peace which had settled over the Ohio valley was disturbed by the irruption of Gen. John II. Morgan and his cavalry into Central Kentucky. Cincinnati was reasonably alarmed by the news and the frantic appeals of Boyle, the Kentucky general on guard in that state. Public meetings were called in the city, George E. Pngh leading the effort for defense, Governor Tod sent arms and convalescent soldiers, followed by other troops in the State, and these and the city police force were sent to Lexington, Ky., to meet the enemy, but Morgan retired after recruiting his brigade and destroying a great amount of military supplies.
When this period of excitement had passed, the people were dis- couraged by the Second Manassas campaign, which forced the Union army in Virginia back to Washington. On August 9th Geary's Ohio brigade # behaved with great gallantry in the serious drawn bat- tle of Cedar Mountain, Va., losing 465 killed and wounded.
The Ohio brigade of Sigel's corps, the Twenty-fifth, Fifty-fifth, Seventy-third and Seventy-fifth infantry, and Haskins' battery, under the command of Col. Nathaniel C. MeLean, son of Judge John MeLean, had an active part in the Second Bull Run battles and marches, and lost 434 killed, wounded and captured. General Schenck, their division commander, was wounded. Twenty of the First Ohio cavalry, acting as escort for General Pope, were gobbled up by Jeb Stuart in his famous raid. In the fierce battle of August 29th the Eighty-second Ohio suffered terribly, losing over a hundred men, and Colonel Cantwell was killed. The Sixty-first, in the same battle of Schurz' division, lost 35, and two Ohio batteries and the Sixth cavalry were participants in the struggle.i
This was soon followed by disaster in West Virginia and the car- rving of the Confederate flag into Ohio. General Cox's army on the Kanawha, in June, 1562, was made up of one West Virginia brigade,
* Fifth, Seventh. Twenty-ninth and Sixty-sixth regiments.
+ At Second Manassas a brigade was creditably commanded by Gen. A. San- ders Piatt, of Logan county, colonel of an Ohio regiment in the West Virginia campaign. His brother. Donn Piatt, noted as an author and editor. served on the staff of General Schenck in Maryland, and created considerable com- motion by an unauthorized order permitting the enlistment of slaves as sol- diers. It practically put an end to slavery in that State.
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and three Ohio brigades, the latter Col. E. P. Scammon's, including the Twelfth, Twenty-third and Thirtieth regiments and MeMullin's battery : Col. George Crook's, including the Eleventh, Thirty-sixth, Forty-fourth and Forty-seventh, and Col. A. Moor's, including the Twenty-eighth, Thirty-fourth and Thirty-seventh regiments. They occupied the Kanawha valley as far east as the Greenbrier gap. Yet it was impossible to keep the district entirely free from invasion. A party of Confederate raiders struck Guyandotte, on the Ohio river, in November, 1861, and captured a number of Ohio citizens. In the spring of 1862 Cox and Crook and their Ohio regiments had some brisk fighting in the West Virginia mountains, in the region of the New river narrows, but hekdl their positions until Cox and the main part of the division were ordered to Washington. The Con- federates heard of this movement by the capture of General Pope's letter-book at Manassas, and a large force of the enemy was at once sent to sweep the Kanawha valley clean to the Ohio. They found in the Kanawha valley, besides some West Virginia troops, the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-fourth Ohio, under Col. E. Siber, and the Forty-fourth and Forty-seventh under Col. S. A. Gilbert. Gilbert and Siber made a gallant resistance, losing a considerable number of men in their fighting, but were forced back to Point Pleasant. Before their arrival there, a dashing Confederate raider, A. G. Jen- kins, had forded the river September 4th, and carried the Confeder- ate flag for the first time into Ohio." He made an exeursion in Meigs county and reported that he was at times welcomed with cheers for Jeff Davis.
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