ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, March 25, 1862

The Unbearable Lightness of…Nothing

A slow day. There’s no combat, aside from those never-ending flashes here and there of pickets and scouts popping off at each other. In Washington, President Lincoln visits the Navy Yard. In Tennessee, Federal reconnaissance missions crisscross Tennessee, which is beginning to slip away from the Confederates.

In southwestern Tennessee, Grant is still thinking about a pre-emptive strike against the Confederate forces gathering a few miles away at Corinth, Mississippi. He is wondering where Buell’s reinforcements are. Buell’s Army of the Ohio is moving ever so slowly in Grant’s direction. In St. Louis, the ever-anxious Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck is trying to savor his expanded span of control, which is most troops west of the Appalachians. He, too, worries. Among forces on both sides there’s a sense that something is going to happen—but when? And how?

With Gen. Lew Wallace’s division a few miles from Pittsburg Landing, Pvt. Andrew Altman of the 68^th Ohio begins scratching out, with difficulty, another letter to his family in Henry County, Ohio. “We are expecting a battle,” he writes. “A [Secesh] gave him self up [and said] “they are getting a little down in the mouth.”

After complaining about a lack of mail from home “(I want you to wright to me as son as posible,”) Altman took note of the local weather: “It is very warm and the peach trees are in blossom.”

It was very different in the hills and valleys of western Virginia, where the occupying Ohioans are suffering from boredom and bad weather. No battles seem imminent, although there is hope of aggresive leadership from John C. Fremont, who is taking command of the newly christened Mountain Department, formerly the Department of Western Virginia. The only military activity here is the slow, hard, dangerous search for bushwhackers. The quality of the soldiers' food has degenerated: “Our living is hard, the grub I mean,” Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes of the 23^rd Ohio writes. “and not likely to improve. Salt pork and crackers [the almost inedible hardtack issued by the army]. “The armies have swept off all fresh meats and vegetables. A few eggs once in a great while.”

The weather—blamed on the “equinox,” marking the change from winter to spring—is getting tiresome as well. Hayes notes that it has been snowing since the previous Friday afternoon. On Saturday, it was “still snowing. What a snow-storm is blowing. Whew!” On Monday, “It is snowing still. What a climate!” In a letter that day to his uncle, he adds, “We have had about enough of the snows, winds, and rains of the mountains.”

The snow will end by Thursday, and then the deep mud season will begin. More delays, more tedium. The desperate search for something—anything—to enliven the day as a subject for conversation and letter writing. Fortunately, regimental surgeon Dr. Joseph T. Webb, Lucy’s brother and Rutherford’s brother-in-law, brings back a good story, one that will probably be told and re-told to the accompaniment of much thigh slapping.

Dr. Webb loves children and always stops to talk them and, according to Rutherford, “generally manages to get them on his knee.” Stopping at a farmhouse and spying a three-year-old, he approached the child, who, he soon discovered, could not speak very clearly. “Come, my fine little fellow. I want to talk to you,” the doctor said. The little boy turned, saying something the doctor did not understand. “On a second approach,” Colonel Hayes wrote his uncle, “the doctor made it out ‘Go to Hell, you dam Yankee!’ This from the little codger was funny enough….”

And that, for several days, was the high point of life in the mountains for Colonel Hayes.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Monday, March 10, 1862

The Sun Will Rise for Grant

Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant doesn’t realize it yet, but his removal from active command by his jealous, self-seeking superior, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, is about to end. Halleck is getting what he wanted from Washington, so today he composes a telegram to Grant. Unaware of the machinations and jockeying going on at higher levels, Grant busies himself on the sidelines at Fort Henry. He is limited to forwarding troops and supplies to the Tennessee River expedition he was originally supposed to lead but, it will be a sunnier day for Grant tomorrow.

Elsewhere in the Western Theater of the war, soldiers take time out from their duties to write home.

Nineteen-year-old Pvt. Andrew Altman of Company D, 68^th Ohio, now heading southward through Tennessee, is writing his father in Ohio a promise: “I will do my best Durty tricks to Shoot a Reble.” Freed from the grinding monotony of farm work, Altman is one happy soldier: “I are a Seting by a little oak tree by a fire a rosting potatoes. That is nice food for me. I an engoy my Self very much here. All the boys are brothers to me and I to them.”

Altman’s letter closes with the soldier’s typical plea: “Write soon as you can and I will always be ready to receive them. When you write, Send all the war news that you can. We cant get no papers to read here a toll.”

Meanwhile. Capt. Emerson Opdycke of the 41^st Ohio, still occupying Nashville, is writing his wife about his idea of Manifest Destiny: “What a military power this war will leave us.I for one hope that our invincible columns will not be disbanded until our eagles perch upon the walls of Quebec, and our banner floats triumphantly over every inch of British North America.”

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Saturday, Feb. 22, 1862

Letters home

Capt. Emerson Opdycke [pictured] of the 41^st Ohio has a headache. Until yesterday, Opdycke’s regiments and others in Hazen’s Brigade were in steamboats “going up and down the [Cumberland] river,” killing time while awaiting orders. They had arrived too late to participate in the battle of Fort Donelson. Finally coming to rest at Paducah, Opdycke rushes off the boat and into a photographer’s studio.

The captain’s wife, Lucy, has been pestering him for a picture, so a peevish Opdycke spends a frustrating morning at the studio trying to get a good one taken. The best he can get “is so outrageous, I shall have a notion to pitch it into the Ohio [River]; I would do so, only I know I shall never have any peace until you have a picture of some kind.”

Because of all the fussing in the studio, Opdycke returns to his boat with a headache that “came near to sending me to bed.” By evening, he feels better about the picture, so he turns to fretting about something else. “I am sick of doing nothing, while others are doing so much. Our arms are winning glorious triumphs, which are but the beginning of the end of the rebellion,” he concludes, fearing he will lose out on the action.

Others are writing as well. Near Fort Donelson, Pvt. Andrew Altman of the 68^th Ohio uses his knapsack as a writing desk (“It is a poor place for to wright”). He tells a younger brother, Isaac, “You must not cut up” in school and asks him to “tell all the scholars at school that I think of them every day and hope they may do well.”

In Cincinnati, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes is enjoying a final day or two of furlough at home. He writes his mother that the “recent victories [meaning Grant’s triumphs at Forts Henry and Donelson] convince everyone that the Rebellion can be conquered. Most people anticipate a speedy end of the war.”

This evening. Grant himself writes his wife, Julia, to tell he has just learned he is being promoted to major general. “There is but little doubt but that Fort Donelson was the hardest fought battle on the continent. I was extremely lucky to be the commanding officer.

“I have no doubt but you have read of Fort Donelson until you have grown tired of the name so I shall write you no more of the subject. Hope to make a new subject soon.”

And he would.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, Feb. 18, 1862

The guns “cracked as fast as popcorn”

Pvt. Andrew Altman, a farm boy from Henry County, Ohio, and a member of the 68^th Ohio, has been having the time of his life in the army, compared with what must have been a threadbare existence on a small farm in northwestern Ohio. At Camp Chase in Columbus, he reveled in the abundant food and ample clothing provided by the army. And then there was the excitement of going to war for his country and the possibility of “shootin’ a rebel.”

A few days ago,, the 68^th had been rushed from Camp Chase to Halleck’s Western Department and now Altman and his regiment find themselves at Fort Donelson, if only in a support role. The 68^th sees no action in this battle and takes no casualties, but, writing home today and four days later, Altman reports he had a front-row seat from which to view the battle (Pictured above.). “We were in sight all the time and the canon ball came torde us and some of the boys dug it out of the ground. There is dead men a laying a round here yet over the ground.”

Ohio is amply represented Fort Donelson by its son, Brig. Gen.Ulysses S. Grant, but of the estimated 24,090 Union infantrymen present, only about 2,190 are Ohioans, distributed among four regiments. (Most of Grant’s army comes from Illinois.) Of the battle’s approximately 2,600 casualties (killed, wounded, or missing), only 19 are Ohioans. Ohio’s sacrifice will soon enough, however.

In the meantime, Ohioans like Altman are excitedly writing to tell their families what they saw. “The 58^th [Ohio regiment] charged bayonets on [the Confederates] and you ought to a seen them run over the [breastworks]. They went like deer,” wrote a proud Altman.

Four days later, he wrote his father, “I would liked if you had been here when the fight commenced. The guns cracked gust as fast as though you would put pop corn in [the] ovin.” Having had time to ponder what he has seen, Altman now mixes a bit of bravado with stoicism. “Oh if I ever get home, I would feel like going a gain. If it is my lot to be shot, so it be and if not so mutch the better.”

Elsewhere in the vicinity of Fort Donelson, General Grant continues with the tedious follow-up work of battle. Perhaps the most dramatic incident of the day occurs when some Union soldiers gather around the jail in the nearby town of Dover, angry over what looks, at first glance, as if several of their fellows had been bound and gagged, then shot. The rumor spreads throughout the area, gathering so much force that it alarms Confederate General Simon B. Buckner. He quickly sends a message to General Grant, warning that fears are mounting that angry Union soldiers are threatening revenge to their Confederate prisoners.

The situation at the jail is investigated quickly. It clearly appears that the four bodies there were NOT tied and, in fact, had been laid out for burial. They were fully clothed, their wounds bandaged, and showed no signs of abuse. They simply were combat fatalities whose fellow soldiers had placed the bodies in the jail to shelter them. End of story.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg