Part 2

We had not been long in Franklin before our experience in transportation, heretofore referred to, began to have its deadly effect. The typhoid fever and camp diarrhœa became alarmingly common. Our men sickened and were sent to the general hospital at Nashville, where very many died, and many were discharged, as unfit for further military duty. Not any one of the hard fought battles of our campaigns so depleted our ranks as our stay at Franklin. The water was of the limestone formation, and did not seem to agree with those that were comparatively well, much less those that were sick. I think that every old soldier will agree with me that the march, while more fatiguing, is more healthful than the camp.

While at Franklin we had the misfortune to be under the command of one General Gilbert, a regular army officer. A man that the government had educated at great expense at West Point, and had kept in service for years after, and yet had no process of determining that he had no sense.

This man, that might possibly have commanded a company under a careful colonel, was placed in command of all the forces around Franklin. I am sorry to say it was under the command of this imbecile that we first met the enemy. Colonel Coburn's brigade, which was composed of the 85th and 33d Ind. V. I., the 19th Mich. V. I., the 22d Wis. V. I., the 2d Mich. Cav., a part of the 4th Ky., and a part of the 9th Pa. Cav., with a light battery of six guns and a small train of wagons for forage, was ordered in the direction of Columbia. Our regiment accompanied the expedition as train guard. We moved a short distance the first day out and went into camp, having seen a few rebel cavalry, and having received the fire from a rebel gun or two that did no damage to us, save the breaking a musket stock for one of our men. The next morning we moved out of camp, and I remember watching the 19th Mich., it was such a large, fine looking body of men, and moved down the pike toward Thompson Station. Colonel Coburn soon developed the enemy in force, and so reported to General Gilbert, who sent back an order for him to advance and engage the enemy, intimating that the commander of the brigade was a coward. Colonel Coburn then advanced and engaged the rebels, but his little force was outflanked on either side by the superior numbers of the enemy, and though fighting heroically, were soon surrounded and captured, save the battery that ran over the rebel infantry, and a small part of the 22d Wis., a part of one company, the cavalry force; and had it not been for our good luck in being on duty with the wagons, we would also have been taken. As it was, nothing saved us but the best of running, and in a long race at that. We came into camp that night badly used up, and very much disgusted with our old granny Gilbert, having seen and run away from the battle of Thompson Station. The government expended Colonel Coburn's brigade and the lives of many brave men to learn, what every soldier about Franklin knew from the first, that Gilbert was not fit to be in the command of anybody.

While at Franklin we built a very fine fort, situated northwesterly of the village, and near our camp. The fort was built of earth, regularly laid out with angles, and a deep moat surrounding the entire work. The embrasures were well protected with gabions made of cane bound in bundles, and in the center a fine magazine was constructed.

Heavy guns were brought from Nashville, and mounted _en barbette_. Why the fort was built none could tell. The chances that it would ever be of use to the cause of the Union were one thousand to one against the proposition, but at the battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864, it paid large interest on the investment. Those big smooth-bore guns shelled the cotton field, south of the village, over which the rebels charged, in a manner which was fearful to behold. We that had worked so many days on that fort, felt that we were well repaid for our toil.

While the fort was building, it occurred to Colonel Payne that the "contraband of war" might be useful in this work, so he ordered Lieutenant Raidaie to take a detail of men, and go forth and bring in such of the bondmen as he could find that were able to do the work required. So the lieutenant sallied forth in the direction of Roper's Knob, and he was rewarded by finding large numbers of the aforesaid "contraband," as the slave owners of Kentucky had sent their slaves into Tennessee, to keep them as far away as possible from the union lines. These slaves we kept in camp until the fort was completed, and all that desired were permitted to return to the places from whence they were taken; but many of the younger ones stayed with us, and engaged themselves as servants to the officers. But it was wonderful with what alacrity these poor ignorant colored people performed the work required of them. They seemed to realize that they were working for themselves.

March 9th, 1863, we left our camp at Franklin, General Gordon Granger in command, and marched to within about a mile of Spring Hill, passed by and over the battle field of March 5th, Thompson Station, but saw no evidences of the late unequal, but sanguinary contest, save a few broken guns and some dead horses. We went into bivouac at night, having no tents with us. We marched thirteen miles. The next day it commenced raining and we were all wet to the skin, but nothing daunted, we went at work and fixed up shelter, and at about ten a. m. we had marching orders. We marched about three miles, it raining all the time. Company B received a detail to furnish twenty-five men for picket duty, which was filled with healthy men, and quite a number of sick men in camp, and the number ailing in the regiment was far from being inconsiderable. But we found the next day that this movement toward Columbia did not mean anything, and we were ordered back to Franklin, which was only a march of seventeen miles, but we came into camp that night as stiff and sore as foundered horses. We had no battle, we had lost no men, but take it all in all, we were the better soldiers for the experience we had gained.

We had now been in Franklin three months, and had put in the time in all the ways in which a soldier's life is made up. Now, hardly a day went by that the rebel cavalry did not appear at our picket line, and frequently a lively skirmish would occur between our cavalry and a detachment of that of our enemy. The losses of the rebels were always enormous(?) while ours were entirely insignificant. The early part of April the rebels made a raid on our rear, and destroyed a bridge on the railroad about six miles north of Franklin, which caused us very much annoyance, for at that period in our history, as soldiers, we thought we were badly treated if we did not get our letters regularly from home.

June 2d, 1863, was our last at the camp at Franklin. Here, we had learned very much of the duties of the soldier. We had not been slack in our work, and had become quite proficient in the company, regimental, and brigade evolutions. Here we had bidden good-bye to very many of our men, and our companies were small compared to what they were when we came to this camp; but our colonel consoled us by insisting that the fighting number of one hundred men, for all causes, was about sixty, and we found afterwards that the estimate of our young colonel was not far from the mark. This day we struck our tents, and marched to Triune, a distance of but thirteen miles, but the weather was so excessively hot that our men suffered a great deal; but we had learned some wisdom from our former experience, for our knapsacks were not nearly as large as when we left Nashville. We remained in Triune until the twenty-first day of June, during which time we were stirred up by skirmishes very frequently, but the skirmishing was done mostly by the cavalry, on the respective sides, and the usual large stories were told in camp of our immense superiority over the enemy. While at Triune, one of our fellow citizens from Ohio, C. L. Vallandigham, was sent through our lines "to his friends in the south," as Mr. Lincoln humorously put it. We were usually very glad to see anyone from home, but we were not at all proud of this representative from Ohio.

We now saw what we regarded as indications of a general advance on the position of the enemy, and it seemed to be our fate to be compelled to march to the extreme left of the army to join the brigade to which we had been assigned while at Triune. We were assigned to what was called Hazen's brigade, composed of the 41st O. V. I., the 9th Ind. V. I., the 93d O. V. I., the 6th Ky. V. I., and our regiment, commanded by General Wm. B. Hazen, the first colonel of the 41st, an officer in every way qualified for the command assigned him. This day we marched over the battle field of Stone river, through the dense cedars that figure so conspicuously in the descriptions of that terrible engagement of the closing year of 1862. We marched through the village of Murfreesborough, and out one and one-half miles east of the town, and went into camp, having come that day a distance of twenty-two miles, with less fatigue and suffering than any we had formerly made. The next day we marched to Readyville, a distance of twelve miles, and found our brigade. Here we fixed up a nice camp, and were informed we would stay for some time. This was as desolate a part of the south as it was ever our fortune to tread over. It did not seem to be inhabited to any great extent, and was as woodsy as Ohio seventy-five years ago. On the twenty-fourth of June we broke up our camp and marched directly south through Bradyville, a city consisting of three houses. We saw the burning of a great amount of provisions before leaving Readyville that we concluded had to be abandoned for lack of transportation. We marched this day about seven miles in a very severe rainstorm. We were now informed that we were after General Bragg, and we might expect a general engagement at any time. The next day we marched not to exceed six or seven miles, and came to a very long, steep hill that gave our artillery and train great difficulty in the ascent. The roads we came over this day were the worst we had so far encountered, but when we were on the top of this hill we were on a broad shelf or table-land lying directly west of the Cumberland mountains that seemed good for nothing, save to illustrate the great variety of the works of Almighty God. The next day we stayed in camp all day, waiting for our train to come up. It rained almost all day long. The next day, June 27th, company B was detailed to help the train along. They came to what is called the Long Branch of the Duck river, and the men had to build a brush bridge across the stream, and after getting mired in the quicksands time and time again, they finally succeeded in getting the train over. This company did not get in to join the regiment until the next morning, and then came wet, weary, and not in their usual sweet temper.

The next day, Sunday, we marched but four miles and camped in a wood (I do not remember of seeing any fields); but one thing justice requires to be said for this table-land country, the water was simply exquisite. We were now reported to be within forty-two miles of Manchester, and we were informed that we were now making a grand flank movement that was to cut off the retreat of Bragg, and by which we were to capture his entire army, and, in fact, we were making this grand flank movement at the rapid(?) rate of from seven to ten miles per day. On the twenty-ninth we crossed the east branch of Duck river and did little but get our train over this miry stream. This same weary marching continued until the fourth day of July, and finds us on the Elk river, at Morris Ford, awaiting the arrival of the pontoons. It had rained almost incessantly for the last fourteen days, and very many of us had not had our clothing dry in that time, but the weather was warm and none of us seemed to take cold; I remember one day of this march that it was so very hot that the men fell out in great numbers, and when we halted at night, no company of the regiment could show more than one stack of muskets; but before morning the good faithful boys came in, and the next day were ready to resume their arduous duties. On July the 8th we arrived at Manchester, and found that General Bragg had escaped us, and had crossed the mountains into the valley of the Tennessee. We had not seen a rebel since leaving Triune, and owing to the condition of the country and roads, if we had seen one he must have been dead, for we did not move fast enough to overtake a live one. No battle had been fought, though one day we heard heavy firing in the direction of Tullahoma.

And so ended the summer for the 124th O. V. I., and also, in fact, for the Army of the Cumberland. Although General Rosecrans had not succeeded in bringing Bragg to an engagement, he had driven him from middle Tennessee, the great rebel recruiting ground for men, animals, and supplies, and while the victory was bloodless, it was in no small sense important to the union cause. The unionists of east Tennessee saw in it their coming deliverance, while the depressing effect of a retreat told upon the confederate forces. Since leaving Franklin our regiment had marched over one hundred and fifty miles, which, considering the weather and the state of the roads, was an accomplishment that had a tendency to increase our confidence, and prepare us for the more arduous duties that fell to our lot after we crossed the great mountains and commenced operations in the valley of the Tennessee—the key to the conquest of the confederacy.

SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CAMPAIGN OF CHATTANOOGA AND THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.

If you ask, to-day,[1] the young man of twenty-five years, married and his little ones growing up in health and peace about him, what he recollects of the war for the suppression of the rebellion, his answer must be "nothing." He will say, "I was not born until after the war had been on one year. I remember nothing about the war, as you call it, for the suppression of the rebellion."

Footnote 1:

Written in 1887.

If you ask the man of thirty years, in full business life, a leader of society, the same question, his answer will be undoubtedly, "I remember but little about the war; I was but four years old when the war broke out. I remember sometime during the war seeing the soldiers, in their blue coats and bright buttons and arms, as they marched along to the station _to go to the front_, as they said. I remember hearing the _drumbeat_, I recollect feeling the _heart-throb_, as I saw the flag which they bore aloft. I was but nine years old when the war ended. I remember that when the boys came back, battered and scarred, in their dirty and faded uniforms, their flag in tatters, their faces bronzed and burned by the southern sun, that of them that met them at the station many wept, because so many that went away with them _returned not_."

And so, to the majority of those to-night, the war is but a matter of history and legend of story and of song.

The recollections of those years from 1861 to 1865 are, in many minds, as indelible as though graven on brass, or chiseled in marble.

Those of you who have personal recollections, as well as those familiar with the history of those times, will remember that the summer of 1863, so far as the Army of the Cumberland was concerned, was spent (as was at one time said of the Army of the Potomac) in "masterly inactivity;" and although after the battle of Stone river the army occupied a line as far south as Franklin and Murfreesboro, Tenn. And though the army, under the now immortal Grant, had captured one entire rebel army, and had opened the "Father of Waters," so long closed at Vicksburg; and though the gallant Meade had met the invaders at Gettysburg and hurled him back, in defeat and confusion, to his old lair beyond the Potomac, the Army of the Cumberland, under General Rosecrans, as late as August had barely gained the foothills of the Cumberland mountains.

The Cumberland mountains run in a direction south of west and north of east, and for most of the way are composed of two considerable ridges, some two thousand feet above the valley of the Tennessee. These ridges are broken at Chattanooga by the Tennessee river, and so bold and abrupt is Lookout mountain on the south side of the river, that one can almost conclude that some great convulsion of nature had reft it asunder from its corresponding ridge on the north side.

This chain of mountains, this deep and broad river, lay between our army and that of the enemy when the march commenced southward in August, 1863.

The corps to which my regiment was attached, the 21st, under General Crittenden, and the 14th Corps, under General George H. Thomas, crossed the mountains above Chattanooga, while General McCook's Corps, and the Reserve Corps under General Gordon Granger, crossed at and below Chattanooga.

And while in the effort of crossing this great mountain range and river, the right and left wings of the army must have been seventy-five miles apart, and neither near enough to aid the other in case of an attack. I am almost at a loss to know how the Army of the Cumberland was put south of mountains and river; whether by the ability of Rosecrans, or the stupidity of Bragg, the feat was accomplished.

And while there was many a mountain defile that would have answered for a modern Thermopylæ, happily for us the _three hundred Spartans_ seemed to be wanting.

The early part of August, 1863, found us encamped at Manchester, Tenn., at or near the head waters of the Duck river after the close of the Tullahoma campaign, if it is proper to call that a campaign, that was simply a retreat on the part of the confederates, and pursuit on the part of the federal forces.

Manchester is situated on what is known as the table-lands of Tennessee, and though high and supplied with the most delightful water, very many of our men were sick by reason of the exposure on the campaign just closed, and had to be sent back to hospitals or sent home on furlough, which latter was very seldom done; and when accomplished costing great pains and anxiety. If our national policy had been to furlough our worthy sick, instead of sending them off to the inhospitable hospitals, to be experimented upon by the graduates, fresh from our medical colleges, to pine away with homesickness, be crowded together in great numbers "into the wards of the whitewashed halls, where the dead and dying lay," when a few days and weeks at home with its cheering influences and home diet, _something mother could fix up_, would have restored, without doubt, thousands of brave men to health and duty, that by reason of the narrow, niggardly, treat-every-man-as-a-coward policy of the government, went down to needless and untimely graves.

I have read accounts of the neatly arranged graves of these men with the beautiful marble headstones, furnished at the expense of the government, in our great national cemeteries; but I never think of those great armies of the dead but I think, _how many might have been saved_. Very many of those headstones are more monuments to the lack of good sense on the part of the government, than a noble and patriotic generosity. Nearly all of our soldiers that died of disease in hospitals, could and should have been sent home and saved. I remember very well it was never any trouble to procure a leave of absence for a sick or wounded officer, but to procure one for a poor private in the ranks was altogether a different matter.

It may not be out of place for me to give you a brief account of an effort that I made to procure furloughs for three most worthy sick men, while at Manchester, just before we started on the Chattanooga campaign.

These men were afflicted with that terrible disease, that with the aid of the government and its surgeons has slain its tens of thousands, known as camp or chronic diarrhœa. I made out an application for furloughs for these men, knowing full well that the time was very brief, that we must leave these brave men to the care of entire strangers—men that did hospital duty, as they did any other, because they were ordered to; and knowing full well that, in all human probability, they would never return to the regiment if they were sent to the hospital, I determined to make a great effort to save them. I procured a very earnest indorsement from our regimental surgeon, Major Dewitt C. Patterson, than whom a more competent or kinder hearted surgeon never had the health of a regiment in charge, also the very favorable indorsement of our colonel; but he refused to give me leave to carry the application to brigade headquarters, for good reasons, no doubt, as he informed me that the application must go through the regular channel. I told him "the application might get back in time to attend the funeral, but never to do these men any good." I immediately went to the headquarters of the brigade commandant; he examined carefully the application, wanted to know the urgency of the matter, and after I had explained to him all I could, and after I had urged everything I could think of that I thought would help the case of the sick men, he coolly took the application from my hands, indorsed it "disallowed," and ordered me to my regiment, saying, "we are not granting furloughs on the eve of starting on a campaign."

I was somewhat disheartened, but not altogether discouraged. I immediately repaired to General Palmer's headquarters, who commanded the division. The general treated me with great politeness, heard all I had to say, and then informed me that no furloughs were being granted; said "he would excuse me for bringing up the application without leave," kindly ordered me to my regiment, and advised me "give up the enterprise, if I wished to save myself from the disgrace of a court- martial," which, as we soldiers all know, is a _court organized to convict_.

I then turned my steps toward the headquarters of General Crittenden, commanding our corps; he treated me with great brusqueness, not only refusing the indorsement I so much desired, but severely censured me for not sending the application through the regular channel. He gave me the usual complimental (?) order, "Immediately repair to your regiment, sir!" I was "cast down, but not destroyed;" I had just one ground of hope left me, and that was centered in "Old Pap Thomas."