'Gobbling up': What happened to 22nd Wisconsin at Brentwood, Tennessee?

22nd Wisconsin soldiers (Wisconsin Historical Society)

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We often make the short trip from our little Nashville enclave to Brentwood — for groceries, for chicken tenders at Waldo’s, for the tuna fish sandwich at my favorite deli. It’s an easy, familiar drive.

But lately, after some deep dives into old newspaper accounts of the long-forgotten Battle of Brentwood, fought March 25, 1863, I won’t be making that trip quite the same way. I’ll be thinking about the 22nd Wisconsin soldiers who were captured there — on ground now buried beneath subdivisions and shopping centers. They had been guarding a depot, while two miles south, comrades held a stockade and a railroad bridge near the Little Harpeth River.

A lone historical marker on the heavily
developed Brentwood battlefield.

It’s almost impossible to picture the Brentwood battlefield now, with traffic humming and parking lots filling and emptying, while virtually nothing along Franklin Road hints at what happened here. Only one out-of-the-way historical marker, roughly 10 yards from a service station, commemorates the Brentwood battlefield. 

Yet the soldiers left us something better than markers or monuments: their words.

“One of the best camping grounds that the 22nd has had the good fortune to encamp on,” a soldier in the 22nd Wisconsin — signing his letter “Goldower” — wrote home in early March 1863 about the small Union garrison at Brentwood. His account appeared in a Racine newspaper, offering a glimpse of life before the battle.

Another soldier in Company F wrote home: “Do not feel alarmed about us, as we have a good stockade to rally on and plenty of cold lead for the rebels.”

But neither cold lead nor the Brentwood stockade protected the 22nd Wisconsin, whose Middle Tennessee experience can best be termed a nightmare. At the Battle of Thompson’s Station on March 5, 1863, Nathan Bedford Forrest captured dozens of 22nd Wisconsin soldiers (and other Midwesterners); at Brentwood, “The Wizard” finished the job. Few U.S. soldiers were killed or wounded, but more than 300 became POWs. 

“Gobbling up,” a Wisconsin soldier wrote of the Brentwood mass capture — words we could use today about real estate developers and Middle Tennessee land.

1863 map of Brentwood stockade that guarded a railroad bridge at the Little Harpeth River.
(Library of Congress via Wikipedia)

“Dear Brother,” paroled Private Edward Pullan of Company E wrote, “I write you to let you know I am still in the land of the living.” He went on to tell a harrowing tale of quietly cooking breakfast when the Rebels attacked. 

“We had barely formed line of battle, with skirmishers thrown out in front, when the rebels, in overwhelming numbers … pounced upon us,” Pullan wrote. I'll always wonder if this occurred near where my favorite oil change place now stands. 

In “dilapidated” Columbia, Tennessee, en route to Libby prison in Richmond, Pullan described sleeping among the “filth and vermin” in the courthouse and complained of “blistered feet, tired limbs and empty stomachs.”

Others told similar stories.

“We have seen hardships enough ... to make a young man old," wrote parolee Private Webster C. Pope, then about 19. He described being marched after his capture by the Rebels — “miserable sneaking whelps,” he called them — “across lots and every other way, half the time on the double quick.” He’d be amazed at all the tony Brentwood neighborhoods he’d pass on his way over that ground today. 

The Brentwood stockade is believed to have stood in the middle distance at right,
beyond the railroad track.

But at least there was one ray of sunshine for Pope, who died of disease in April 1864.

“Through the kindness of a Union woman I got a cup of milk and some warm corn bread for supper,” he wrote.

In another letter to his family, Pullan — who said imprisonment turned him into "skin and bones" — vowed to get even. 

"I want to see you all in a few days," he wrote, "and then I am ready to fight those villanous rebels to the death."

"I know," he continued, "just how to hate them."

The obscure Brentwood battlefield 
was long ago lost to development.

Others focused on the embarrassment of the Brentwood surrender. 

“Mother, it was not my wish to surrender at Brentwood,” wrote paroled prisoner Claron I. Miltimore, an adjutant, adding: “We would rather die than surrender.” He also concluded: “I am somewhat wiser in the war question than I was a month ago.”

For some, the aftermath of Brentwood proved even more tragic.

One 22nd Wisconsin soldier pounded his loaded musket against a tree in indignation over the surrender; it discharged into his thigh, and he later died in a Nashville hospital. “Another Brave Boy Gone,” read the headline in a Wisconsin paper atop the story of death of John D. Morgan of Company F.

Others, though, were simply grateful to have survived.  

"Free! Free!" adjutant William Bones wrote after weeks of capitivity by "Jeff Davis' rebel horde." "Thank God we are free once more." 

Chaplain Caleb D. Pillsbury made a circuitous journey across the Confederacy before his release in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He seemed resigned to it. "War is war," wrote Pillsbury, who had no complaints about his treatment in captivity.  

By June, capture, parole and death were apparently distant, ugly memories for at least one soldier in the 22nd Wisconsin. For him, music had replaced mayhem.

“Having lost our instruments at Brentwood, Tenn., when captured, a subscription is being taken up for a new set,” he wrote, “and we shall again have fine music to enhance the pleasure of these fine evenings.”

Perhaps he played a tuba where the cooks now fry tenders at Waldo's.

---

SOURCES

• Janesville Weekly Gazette, April 21, 24, 1863 
• The Beloit [Wis.] Free Press, April 23, 1863
• The Manitowoc [Wis.] Pilot, April 3, 1863
• The Milwaukee Daily, June 13, 1863 
• The Racine [Wis.] Advocate, March 4 and 18, 1863 
• The Weekly Racine Advocate, April 8, April 27, May 20, 1863

Then & Now in Columbia, Tennessee: Where the armies slept

Beechlawn Then & Now: The mansion stands on Pulaski Pike, south of Columbia, Tennessee.
The sketch was drawn by 7th Minnesota Chaplain Elijah Edwards, who stayed at Beechlawn.

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Just before dark in December 1864, in the aftermath of the Battle of Nashville, Union soldiers rode up to a house on Pulaski Pike (present-day U.S. Route 31) south of Columbia and asked for shelter.

Among them was Elijah Evan Edwards, the 33-year-old chaplain in the 7th Minnesota Infantry. He recorded the experience in his diary and even sketched the house they made a temporary home: Beechlawn.

Chaplain Elijah Edwards
(Battle of Nashville
Trust)

Inside was the wife of a Confederate officer — her husband, Major Amos Wiley Warfield, apparently was off somewhere with John Bell Hood’s ragtag Army of Tennessee, retreating toward Alabama. She let them in.

"We accepted her hospitality as cheerfully as it was offered, posted a guard on the outside, and took our station within, where, for the first time in our campaigning, we were treated to the complete luxuries of civilized entertainment," Edwards wrote. 

Beechlawn had already served as headquarters for Hood during his advance on Nashville. Soon, Union General Andrew J. Smith would sleep here too.

Inside the circa 1853 home, a wounded Confederate told Edwards that Hood was a “butcher,” driving his men into slaughter at the Battle of Franklin. He had one leg left.

“[H]e could neither fight nor run away,” Edwards wrote. His war was over.

Here is the excerpt of Edwards' diary, as posted by the Huntsville [Ala.] Historical Review (April 1, 1973, Volume 3, No. 2).

---

Toward evening we reached Columbia and crossed the Duck River on a pontoon bridge. This is (at the present) a deep and rapid stream with high banks, and we had some difficulty in crossing. Columbia is an old town with a rather dilapidated appearance. There were many ornamental trees shading the streets, the most conspicuous being the holly and mimosa.

John Bell Hood made Beechlawn
his headquarters in the lead-up
to the Battle of Nashville.

As it was getting near evening, we began to look out for a camping place. All the dwellings in the town seemed to be inhabited, and we proceeded some distance into the country, hoping to find a deserted mansion like the one in which we had dined. But finding none, we drew up in front of a palatial brick home, the windows of which were already lighted, and applied for shelter. 

The tenant proved to be the wife of a Confederate Major Warfield, supposed to be somewhere in Hood’s scattered army. She received us most graciously, not only giving permission for us to remain, but cordially inviting us, assuring us that our presence would be a protection from the stragglers and robbers that were prowling in bands over the country.

We accepted her hospitality as cheerfully as it was offered, posted a guard on the outside, and took our station within, where, for the first time in our campaigning, we were treated to the complete luxuries of civilized entertainment. However, owing to the hard conditions of the war, the larder of our hostess was incomplete, we contributed liberally of our own, and spent a delightful evening in conversation.

U.S. Gen. Andrew J. Smith
slept in the Warfield mansion.

Facing page 41 is a hasty sketch of the Warfield Mansion. It has been well preserved from the fate that has been measured out to so many Southern homes, probably from the fact that, from its commodiousness, it has been generally selected as a headquarters for both armies. Thus, Hood, in his advance on Nashville, and retreat as well, made it his headquarters, and on the 24th Gen. A. J. Smith pillowed his weary head in the best bedroom.

Lastly came our squad of surgeons and chaplains. The building was thus protected from pillagers and from the torch. It has been used also in a small way as a hospital.

We found here a badly wounded Confederate soldier. He was quite friendly and communicative, and criticized his late commander Hood most unsparingly, pronouncing him a butcher for driving his men into the shambles at Franklin, where they were slaughtered like so many dumb animals. He believed for himself that the time for fighting was over. It certainly was for him, he musingly remarked, since he had but one leg left and could neither fight nor run away. He was a lieutenant.

There was a sick and badly disabled Confederate soldier in one of the outer buildings, that had been used as negro quarters (sic), whose feet were badly frozen. He told me that many of Hood’s soldiers were absolutely barefooted—and that, too, at a time when the temperature, a very unusual thing in the South, marked as low as 10 above zero. (I do not recall any such frosty weather as that, but can testify that while we were at Nashville it was frequently several degrees below freezing.) We left the Warfield home quite early this morning, with friendly adieus to the lady hostess and kind words to the wounded soldiers.

Podcast: Medal of Honor stories, Antietam insights with guide Jess Rowley

In Episode 58, Antietam battlefield guide Jess Rowley — a former National Park Service ranger — joins co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan for a freewheeling discussion about Antietam Medal of Honor recipients, famed Union Army officer Francis Barlow and interacting with the public. Plus, we learn about a New England regiment in which each soldier received a Medal of Honor.

A gruesome execution on Granny White Pike in Nashville

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Granny White Pike bore witness to its share of Civil War activity beyond the Battle of Nashville. Soldiers skirmished along its stretches, pitched tents beside it and stood at attention nearby for musters and reviews. But on May 15, 1863, the road became the stage for a grisly spectacle: a public execution.

That day, Private Julius Milika of Company E, 10th Michigan Infantry, faced a 12-man firing squad for desertion — “one of the gravest military crimes,” the Nashville Daily Union warned. The punishment was swift.

The Daily Missouri Democrat of St. Louis
 (May 16, 1863) was among the newspapers
that published accounts of the execution.

Around noon, about a mile and a half from Nashville, soldiers and townspeople lined the pike in tense silence. In their midst in a field astride the pike, Milika arrived in an ambulance, seated atop his own coffin. Later, kneeling in prayer, he appeared unnervingly calm.

"All the troops at this post were called out," an 18th Michigan soldier wrote. "The Battallions in position, formed three sides of a square, with the open side near a piece of woods. There was a small tree near the center of the square, under which the grave of the unfortunate man was dug."

The ugly event seared itself into the mind of William Painter of the 22nd Michigan. “Awful,” he wrote in a letter to his wife, adding: “The worst thing I ever witnessed in my life.”

Painter described how the Prussian-born Milika, blindfolded, prayed with four ministers, who then shook hands with the condemned man. Milika stood, saluted the firing squad and told his executioners that he was ready to die. Six of them had loads in their guns, six had nothing but powder.

“Take good aim, men; all is over now,” Milika said in German, his voice steady, according to the Daily Union. 

Then came the command — and the volley.

“One shot hit him in the mouth, two in the neck, one in the breast and one in the belly,” Painter wrote. “I did not learn where the sixth hit, but all six struck him, as the [executioners] stood only ten paces away.” Within thirty minutes, Milika had been placed in his coffin and buried. 

"[I]t is hard to think of the horrors of such a death, yet all acknowledge the justice of the law," the 18th Michigan witness wrote, "and I am sure that no man that witnessed the execution will ever forget the lesson."

Milika’s crimes were serious. About 30 years old, he had deserted his regiment, joined another for bounty money and deserted again. Arrested in Louisville, he was returned to Nashville to face a court-martial.

“Until he joined the army his habits were praiseworthy; but in the service, he neglected his religious duties, contracted intemperate habits, and grew fond of bad company,” the Nashville paper reported.

Rev. Herman Egger, who was present that day, later reflected that Milika accepted his fate as the will of God and seemed to hope his death might serve as a warning to other soldiers. The scene left such an impression on Egger that he resolved to make it the subject of his next Sunday sermon, posing a sobering question to his congregation:

“What brought Julius Milika to his untimely end?”

POSTSCRIPT: Despite his execution for desertion, Milika may rest today in Nashville National Cemetery in Madison. According to the government’s 1869 Roll of Honor, a “Julius Malika” of the 10th Michigan Infantry is listed among the dead buried on its vast grounds. If the entry refers to the same man, the condemned deserter now lies among thousands of Union soldiers who died in service. I have yet to locate his grave.

---

SOURCES 

• Jackson (Mich.) Eagle, May 23, 1863 
• Monroe (Mich.) Commericial, May 28, 1863
• Nashville Daily Union, May 16, 1863 
• Nashville National Cemetery “Roll Of Honor” 
• Painter letter (May 15, 1863) sold on Heritage Auctions, Dec. 6, 2020 

Podcast: William Griffing of Spared & Shared on transcribing, posting soldier letters

In Episode 57, William Griffing joins co-host John Banks (with Tom McMillan off this week) for a conversation about his remarkable transcriptions of Civil War soldier letters — including many tied to Antietam — which he shares on his Spared & Shared website. “Griff” has transcribed and posted more than 15,000 letters so far — and he types every single one, one-handed.

'Fatal blunders': A soldier's letter about Battle of Thompson's Station

An aerial view of the battlefield and a postwar railroad station. Midwestern troops
 — the 85th and 33rd Indiana— retreated from right to left. 

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On March 6, 1863, from a camp at Franklin, Tennessee, a soldier in the 22nd Wisconsin wrote about the disastrous defeat suffered by the U.S. Army the day before.

Along the wooded ridges and cedar-crowned hills at Thompson’s Station — ground many Middle Tennesseans now drive past without a second thought — his brigade had been surrounded and forced to surrender. What began as a reconnaissance south on the Franklin Pike ended in one of the sharpest U.S. Army defeats in Middle Tennessee.

His letter captures the terrors of combat — the “shrill scream of a flying ball,” the “demoniac sound” of rifled shells — and defends the courage of men who believed they had been sent into a trap.

Here are excerpts from that nearly 3,000-word account, published in The Racine (Wis.) Advocate on March 25, 1863 — the same day most of the 22nd Wisconsin became captives of Nathan Bedford Forrest at Brentwood, Tennessee. (See my video on that battle.) (The unknown letter writer, who avoided capture at Thompson's Station, may have been among them.)

"There are many personal incidents of the fight worthy of record," wrote the soldier from Company A about Thompson's Station, "but I fear my communication is already too long for your columns and must close."

'Another of those fatal blunders'

A cropped enlargement of an American Battlefield Trust map of Thompson's Station battle
shows the position of the 22nd Wisconsin near the Columbia Pike. (See the full map.)

It is my painful task to inform you of the details of one of the most terrible defeats ever sustained by any portion of the National army in the war. The 22d [Wisconsin] has made for itself a history — a glorious history — but that history has well-nigh ended where it began. Another of those fatal blunders of sending out a small force against an enemy ten times their number, for which this war is famous, has been perpetrated, and as fine a brigade as Gen. [William] Rosecrans’ army can boast has been utterly annihilated.

'Screaming missiles'

An aerial view of the battlefield.

The country here consists of a series of parallel ranges of hills, crossing transversely to the pike and covered, except in the cleared fields, with heavy timber, thus preventing the movements of the enemy to be seen for but a short distance ahead.

As we approached Thompson station, 9 miles from Franklin and 4 miles from Spring Hill, the firing by the skirmishers became rapid, and soon their cheers indicated that they had gained an advantage. On hearing this we advanced at a quick step and soon discovered that they had gained the top of a high hill crowned with cedars, and had there halted. 

On the right of this hill was another one of equal height, and between the two the turnpike and railroad crossed each other, while at their southern base was the little village of Thompson [Station]. The reserve cavalry with Col. [John] Coburn, his staff, and body guard, had just reached the R. R. crossing between the two hills when we were suddenly surprised by the report of cannon from the vicinity of the station, which caused a precipitate retreat of the cavalry from their dangerous proximity, and immediately thereafter another of the screaming missiles passed along close to the right of our ranks, causing the boys involuntarily to crouch to the earth to avoid their unwelcome visitor. 

'Leaden messengers about our ears'

The armies exchanged fire along the railroad track.

The boys would dodge as much for the shells from our own battery for those from the rebels, for I never heard a more demoniac sound than that made by a shell from a rifled gun. Soon, far to the left, a long line of rebel cavalry could be seen passing directly toward our rear, with the evident intention of outflanking us and capturing our train, while at the same time their battery could be seen taking a new position farther to the left, where nothing could prevent their raking the whole length of our regimental line.

Just here, too, the battery, by some unexplained want of precaution, ran out of ammunition, and were obliged to leave their position, when the alarm was given that a body of infantry were coming around the hill to outflank us. We were quickly moved out of our position and formed another line at right angles with our previous one, and just under the brow of the hill on which the battery had been, where, as the rebel battery had again opened, we were ordered to lie down.

Battle relics may be seen at Homestead Manor,
used as a hospital during and after the battle.

The design of that fire we soon saw, however, was to shell the pike, probably to prevent our retreat, though one shell exploded directly in front of Co. A, too far off, however, to do any damage. We had lain there but a few minutes when a rebel regiment appeared among the cedars on the opposite hill, and then the 22d fired its first volley at its country's enemies, and those who were in a position to see the rebel line say that it was a most effective one.

And the rebels were by no means idle, for whiz! zip! spud! came the little leaden missiles above one's ears, making music of a different character, but no more agreeable than the howling shells. But no one appeared too excited for perfect control of himself; the boys would run up to the top of the hill, take deliberate aim at the smoke among the cedars, (for no rebels were openly visible,) fire, and then return to the line to reload.

But not long could we remain here. The party which had attempted to flank us were now making for the pike to cut off the whole brigade, and we were ordered to fall back from our exposed position. The ranks being so broken by the boys selecting good positions for shooting, that the movement down the hill was accomplished in some confusion, but the line was reformed in perfect order behind the railroad bank at the foot, the right resting at the crossing of the railroad and pike.

'Fought like heroes'

Both armies used the railroad embankments for cover.

The 33d Ind. is Col. Coburn's own regiment and has been in service eighteen months, having been a part of Morgan's Cumberland Gap army. They were led by Col. Coburn himself in a charge on the rebel battery on the right of the station before the attack was made on our regiment. They had advanced nearly to the battery when a large body of infantry, whose presence they had not previously suspected, rose from behind a stone fence and poured a volley directly into their faces. 

They were compelled to retreat over a long stretch of low, wet land, exposed to the deadly fire of the enemy, and were, of course, terribly cut up, but formed their lines and fought like heroes, only surrendering when their cartridge boxes were empty. 

The whole Brigade fought gallantly, but they had been drawn into well laid trap, [Confederate Gen. Earl] Van Dorn's vastly superior numbers prevailed against the most obstinate bravery, and they were obliged to surrender as prisoners of war. 

Battlefield historical marker on Columbia Pike at Thompson's Station, Tennessee.

Lt. Col. [Edward] Bloodgood was the coolest man I saw upon the field; dressed in full uniform, his tall, commanding form was a conspicuous mark for rebel bullets, but he kept his seat upon his horse and gave orders with all the precision and coolness of a battalion drill. It seems almost a miracle that he was not struck as he rode down the pike in that tempest of bullets. ....

Our brave commander, Col. Coburn, is also a prisoner, and the country is thus deprived of the services of one of her noblest and best men. Whatever may be the opinion of others, such is the confidence that Col. Coburn's men have in his caution and skill as a General, that no news can be more welcome to us than to hear that he will again be our commander. 

The author of the disaster is undoubtedly Gen. [Charles] Gilbert, the commander at Franklin, who sent out so small a force against one he knew to be superior, and then refused to reinforce it. I learn that this miscreant has been placed under arrest, and if the facts are as reported, hanging is too good for him.

---

Postscript: The defeat was an embarrassing setback for Union forces operating south of Nashville and reflected poorly on Gilbert's command. He received no further significant field command.

Podcast: Author Brad Gottfried compares Antietam, Gettysburg

In Episode 56, prolific author/historian Brad Gottfried joins co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan for a discussion about his latest book, Lee Invades The North: A Comparison of the Antietam and Gettysburg Campaigns. In a freewheeling podcast, we hit all the big names — Lee, Lincoln, Meade, Burnside and McClellan. Plus, Gottfried dishes on guide exams and April's Antietam Institute conference.

'Hidden' Fort Donelson: A butcher who returned home in a coffin

Markers for 45th Illinois commissary sergeant John Travis in Greenwood Cemetery
in Rockford, Ill. (Find A Grave)

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John Travis, a 42-year-old butcher from Rockford, Ill., and commissary sergeant in the 45th Illinois, was carrying rations well behind the fighting at the Battle of Fort Donelson (Tenn.) on Feb. 15, 1862. But distance served as no protection. A Confederate grape shot tore through his right arm and chest, killing

him instantly.

“A squad of eight men, under Sergeant Jack Blaisdell, an old messmate, was detailed to bury the body,” the Rockford Register reported. “Upon approaching it, they found it had been rifled by some fiend incarnate of a gold watch and forty dollars in money.” 

A map shows the position of the 45th Illinois
on Feb. 15, 1862. Full American Battlefield
Trust map here.

Travis, much older than most soldiers at Fort Donelson, was born in New York and ran a meat market with a partner on State House Street, opposite the court house. The former Rockford street commissioner had earned the admiration of his neighbors as a man “universally respected for his many sterling qualities,” his hometown newspaper noted.

Wrote 45th Illinois Major Melancthon Smith:

 “Poor Travis fell a victim to this unholy war, but his death was the death of a brave soldier in a noble cause. No man was more respected in our regiment. As commissary sergeant, he performed his duty faithfully and with great satisfaction to both officers and men. His death is one we deeply sympathize with, along with his afflicted family."

Sergeant Travis left behind his wife of nearly 23 years, Amanda, and their three children: William, Hannah and Delphene. Back home in Rockford, rumors swirled — some “utterly destitute of truth” — about who had fallen on the battlefield. “The Rockford Band lost about half of their instruments on the field, but none of the Band were wounded,” the Register reported.

The 45th Illinois, the “Lead Mine Regiment,” saw fierce fighting positioned on the Union army’s exposed right wing — along the left portion of its brigade line. Even amid the chaos, soldiers of the regiment fought stubbornly. An Illinois soldier “fired as deliberately and coolly at the rebels as if he was shooting prairie chickens,” Smith recalled.

Court Street United Methodist Church
in Rockford, Ill. — site of 45th Illinois
commissary sergeant John Travis’
 funeral service following his
 death at Fort Donelson.
(Google Street View)

After confirmation of Travis’ death finally reached town, Rockford merchant Israel Sovereign — a dealer of stoves and hardware on South Main — traveled south to retrieve the body. In mid-March, after an arduous journey, he returned home with the remains. (Sovereign contracted typhoid fever during the trip, leaving him dangerously ill, but he recovered.)

Rockford held Travis’ funeral at the Court Street Methodist Church. The building filled early, and hundreds were turned away. The Rev. John H. Vincent, who ministered to Ulysses Grant himself in his final days, delivered the sermon, remembered as one of his finest. Newspapers described Travis as having died “the death of a brave soldier” and predicted his memory would long be cherished by Rockford’s loyal and patriotic citizens.

The next time I visit Fort Donelson — to search for eagles’ nests or to stand beside the massive guns at the Lower Battery — I hope to also visit the ground where Travis once unloaded rations. A small tip of the cap to the butcher from Rockford.

Fort Donelson claimed 17,000 casualties and is remembered as a major United States victory, but for Rockford, it was an early reckoning. John Travis went south to serve. He returned home in a coffin.

---

SOURCES

• Rockford (Illinois) Register, Feb. 25 & 27, March 13 & 20, 1862 
• Rockford (Illinois) Democrat, March 18 & 25, 1862

Tales from the road: Remembering 2nd Iowa fallen from Fort Donelson

On Feb. 15, 1862, the 2nd Iowa attacked Confederates at the outer defenses of Fort Donelson.

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On a gloomy-gray Saturday morning, we walk the steep ground where the 2nd Iowa charged at the Battle of Fort Donelson on Feb. 15, 1862 — a profound experience, especially near the battle’s anniversary.

Near the crest of the hill — perhaps along the lip of a Confederate trench marked today by a weathered historical tablet — the Iowans buried their dead, Private Newton Haldeman of Company C wrote. These poor souls were part of the roughly three dozen soldiers in the regiment killed that day: 

• Private George Washington Howell, the 10th of 13 children and son of a cotton-batting manufacturer.
• Captain Jonathan Slaymaker, whose obituary did not spare grisly detail: slivers of his pocketknife exploded by a Minié ball severed his femoral artery.
• Captain Charles Cloutman, son of a postmaster.
  

As I tramp the hallowed ground, Haldeman’s words bring the grim aftermath of battle to life: 

“I have read of the glaring eyes and gaping mouth[s] of dead soldiers, but here lay my friends asleep; the eyes are closed, the mouth retains its natural position. This is not like the dead of our homestead. I could not but kneel by some of those that I thought must still be alive, but their foreheads were cold; they slept the sleep that knows no waking. There in silent repose lay friend and foe side by side.”

But the story did not end on that hill at Fort Donelson. Families and neighbors journeyed from across Iowa to reclaim their loved ones. In the days and weeks that followed, towns came together for funerals marked by quiet processions, folded flags and overflowing churches.

From left, the gravestones in Iowa of 2nd Iowa Captain Charles Cloutman,
Private George Washington Howell and Captain Jonathan Slaymaker. (Find A Grave)

On March 8, Howell and the bodies of five other 2nd Iowa soldiers — all in “rough board boxes” — arrived in Davenport on the same train. A local newspaper called their joint funeral "one of the most solemn hours" in city history. The final journeys of Captains Slaymaker, the nephew of a Mexican War general, and Cloutman, the married father of four children, included a trip on the steamer John D. Perry.

“The corpse was as perfectly natural as we ever saw, though life had been extinct for the space of twelve days,” a local newspaper wrote of Slaymaker, 26. “Every feature was perfect and possessed no traces of severity which is said sometimes to settle upon the countenances of those who fall in battle.”

Nearly 100 soldiers escorted Slaymaker’s coffin to St. Luke’s Church in Davenport, packed for the occasion. A silver plate with his name, company and regiment inscribed adorned the coffin.

“Among the young men of our city,” the newspaper wrote, “he was in the first rank.” Howell’s death, it noted, “plunged into sorrow a numerous family, of which he was almost the idol.”

After his remains arrived by train in Ottumwa, the bullet that killed Cloutman was removed from his body, perhaps as a macabre memento. A local newspaper noted the 38-year-old officer never got to see his youngest child.

“It is an interesting circumstance that it was born on the morning after its father was followed to the grave,” the paper reported.

As we walk the battleground amid trees with barren limbs and piles of rusty-brown leaves, the 21st century seems so far away. These stories, once recounted in letters, diaries and newspapers, are now mostly forgotten. Yet they linger at Fort Donelson, waiting to be remembered.

---

SOURCES

• The Morning Democrat, Davenport, Iowa, Feb. 21, 27, 28, March 10, 1862
• Ottumwa Semi-Weekly Courier, Ottumwa, Iowa, Feb. 26, 1862

'Captain Bob' at Fort Donelson: Cowardice ... or the fog of war?

A section of the Confederate outer trenches at Fort Donelson, captured by the 2nd Iowa.

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One of my favorite rabbit holes is Newspapers.com, especially when it leads to raw, vivid soldier letters like the one 2nd Iowa Private Charles D. Rogers of Company C wrote after the Battle of Fort Donelson on Feb. 15, 1862.

Rogers’ letter, published in The Morning Democrat of Davenport, Iowa, on March 3, 1862, described charging up a steep hill under murderous fire, cheering his comrades and watching friends fall around him. He bragged a little — and then casually leveled a stunning accusation: “Capt. Bob Littler hid behind a tree and did not go up the hill. He is ‘gone up’” — Civil War slang meaning his reputation was finished.

Wait — what?

Captain Robert Littler of the 2nd Iowa
(Find a Grave)

With that single line, Rogers apparently ignited a small firestorm back home — and sent me deeper into the rabbit hole. 

Rumors swirled in an Iowa newspaper that Littler had shown the "white feather," “skulking away,” “not making his appearance until some time after the battle” and “wishing himself dead” because of it. That paper hoped “mitigating circumstances” would be developed, or else Littler would be “forever disgraced.” 

Another paper reported that "Captain Bob" and two Illinois officers might be shot for cowardice. One of those Illinois officers later scoffed at the rumors, writing, “The day of our execution has passed, and we still live,” deriding what he called “silly rumors” about Littler. Reports of Captain Bob's death in battle circulated as well.

Ah, the fog of war. 

The Morning Democrat — Littler’s hometown newspaper — responded with concern a week after publishing Rogers' letter: “We earnestly trust that his innocence of cowardice in that fearful struggle of our brave lads may be fully established.”

At least one soldier in the 2nd Iowa rushed to Littler’s defense. Musician Jules Meredith, a drummer in Littler's Company B, blasted the charge as “cowardly fabrications,” insisting: “From his conduct that day, I say he is no coward, but proved himself a brave man — the very man I should like to again enlist under in case of another war.”

In two separate letters, Littler defended himself.

A cropped enlargement of a Fort Donelson
battle map shows the position of the 
2nd Iowa on Feb. 15, 1862.
(American Battlefield Trust)

“I have no occasion to blush,” he wrote. In another: “My friends may rest assured that I did not disgrace them … I shrink from no investigation.” The newspaper eventually concluded: “Capt. Littler seems to be as popular with his men as he ever was, and they want to follow him whenever they have another.”

Whether formal charges were ever pressed remains unclear, but Captain Bob returned to duty. At Shiloh that April, a burst from an artillery shell took his left arm — an injury that likely silenced any lingering doubts about his courage. He resigned from the army on Aug. 4, 1863, but later served in various military roles.

“Whatever might have been the conduct of Capt. Littler at Fort Donelson — whether the reports concerning him were true or untrue — it is evident that he did himself honor at the Pittsburg battle,” the Davenport Democrat wrote on April 12, 1862.

After the war, Littler — once a patent medicine salesman and Davenport fire chief — worked as a newspaper editor and farmer and served as secretary of the Iowa Butter, Cheese and Egg Association. In October 1865, while serving as acting assistant provost marshal of Maine, he was arrested for alleged financial irregularities but acquitted of swindling $20,000 from the government.  

At home, Littler remained highly regarded. Davenport placed a statue of him atop the old city hall, and when Littler — then known as “Colonel Bob” —  died in 1897, the local paper lamented: “Davenport has lost one of its best friends.”

As for the Canadian-born Rogers — the soldier who lit the match — he faded from the historical record.

On Saturday, we walked the ground of the 2nd Iowa’s attack at Fort Donelson — my God, that hill is steep. We traced the line of Confederate trenches and stood where Rogers and his comrades climbed through brush and timber into a storm of lead. And I read Rogers' vivid battle letter aloud — the same words that apparently set off accusations, defenses and rumors 164 years ago.

The 2nd Iowa advanced upon this ground during the Battle of Fort Donelson on Feb. 15, 1862.

2nd Iowa Private Charles Rogers' letter about the Battle of Fort Donelson

BURR ANDREWS —Sir : Doubtless you have heard of the capture of Fort Donelson, and the particulars of the fight. I was in the thickest of it, but did not get hit with a bullet, though I was struck in the breast with the butt of a musket, which knocked me off the breastworks and disabled me for an hour or 20. Our troops bad been fighting on the right for three days, and were repulsed with great loss. Our regiment were stationed on the extreme left of the Division, the most important position, as it brought us close under the enemy's guns. 

The night before we made the charge was bitter cold, the worst that I ever experienced. We had nothing to eat or drink and could not sleep, as we had no blankets with us. When we got the order to charge on the breastworks at the point of the bayonet, we looked at each other, as much as to say, we are "gone up;" but as I looked along the line, I could see determination on the faces of the men to obey the order any cost. The left wing made the first charge, which brought our company to the front; and it was the first to go over the works. It was a desperate charge.

We had to go up a steep hill, over logs, brush and stumps. As soon as they saw our heads, they opened a most deadly fire on us. I did not think one of us could live to get to the works; but there was no faltering, but with a shout, we went on determined to take them or die. Here our best men fell — among them our Captain, the pride of regiment [Captain Jonathan Slaymaker]. My file leader and right hand man, both fell dead! Such calmness as our men displayed, I would not have believed if I had not seen it.

Ground upon which the 2nd Iowa advanced at Fort Donelson.

We kept cheering one another on — "go in, Davenport boys !" and such like. If the rebels had not been cowards, but had stood and took deliberate aim at us, there would not have been many of us left. We did not fire a gun, until we had scaled the works. As soon as they saw our bayonets on the works, they ran like so many sheep, and we began pouring the lead into them.

Gen. [Charles] Smith said we should have all the support we wanted; but we fought inside the works for more than two hours without any help. Every one fought on his own hook after we got inside — some behind trees and others behind stumps, driving the enemy foot by foot, and if we had had help in time we would have driven them out at the other side of the fort, The most of our officers behaved well. Capt. Bob Littler hid behind a tree and did not go up the hill. He is "gone up." (Italics and boldface added.) We held our ground that night, and slept on our arms.

The next morning the fort surrendered unconditionally, and the Iowa Second was the first regiment to march into the fort, and the first to plant its flag on the ramparts of Fort Donelson. As we passed by our own regiment, they sent up cheer after cheer — even the rebels themselves cheered us as we passed by their lines. Iowa need not feel ashamed of her troops. Gen. [Charles] Hamilton tried to disgrace the Second Iowa Regiment, in St. Louis, but he cannot do it.

We met the two best regiments in the South, and wiped them out — they owned it themselves, after we had taken them prisoners. They are a better set of men than Missourians, and they fought well, but nothing could stand our charge. The most of our boys wanted to get into a fight, but they are sick of it now. As for myself, I hope I shall never be called upon to go through scenes that I went through that day.

You have no idea of it; it must be seen to be appreciated; it is awful! Our flag was shot through thirteen times, and was shot down three times, but it was soon raised by brave men. Everything in the fort is in perfect confusion: piles of bacon, molasses, sugar, shoes, tents, rice, flour, guns, rifles, knives, pistols, dead rebels, etc. We will start for Clarksville to-day or tomorrow, and so to Nashville, if they do not show the Stars and Stripes. The gun-boats did not injure the enemy here. The rebels are getting pale; I think they will soon give up.

I have got no place to write, so you must excuse this letter. My respects to all.

Yours, CHAS. D. ROGERS. 

---

SOURCES

• Davenport Daily Gazette, March 11, 1862 
• Portland (Maine) Press Herald, Oct. 10, 1865
• The Davenport Daily Times, Jan. 25, 1897
• The Morning Democrat, Davenport, Iowa, Feb. 21 and 25, 1862;  March 3, 10, 11, 22, 1862; April 12, 1862, Nov. 30, 1865
• The Muscatine Journal, Muscatine, Iowa, Feb. 28, 1862
• The Evening Argus, Rock Island, Illinois, March 7 and 26, 1862

Podcast: First Corps at Antietam with author Darin Wipperman

In Episode 55, historian Darin Wipperman breaks down generals Joseph Hooker and Ambrose Burnside and explains the First Corps’ role at Antietam with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan. Wipperman is the author of First for the Union: Life and Death in a Civil War Army Corps from Antietam to Gettysburg and other Civil War books. (Plus, John riffs on a pig that crossed a Duck River railroad bridge in Tennessee in 1878.)

'Scalded': Death of a 'most careful' river man at Fort Henry

Harper's Weekly illustration of the U.S. Navy's attack at Fort Henry on Feb. 6, 1862.

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Marshall Ford wasn’t a general or a politician. He didn’t give speeches or issue orders that changed the course of the Civil War. He was a pilot — the kind of man whose job was to know the river better than anyone else.

A married father of four, 49-year-old Ford hailed from the scrappy Second Ward of Allegheny City, across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. His wife, Rebecca, was the daughter of a Revolutionary War soldier; her mother was a niece of John Hancock, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. History brushed close to their family, even if fame never did.

Wartime view of USS Essex
(National Museum of the U.S. Navy |
Public domain)

“A most careful and competent officer,” a local newspaper called Ford. Among river men, that meant something.

On Feb. 6, 1862, aboard the ironclad USS Essex, Ford stood at his post guiding the gunboat up the Tennessee River toward Fort Henry, about 100 miles northwest of Nashville. Pilots like him memorized currents, sandbars and bends the way other men memorized prayers. In the chaos of a naval bombardment — smoke, noise, iron screaming against iron — Ford’s job was steady hands and calm judgment. If the ship ran aground, everyone aboard was in danger. 

When a Confederate cannonball punched into the boiler of the Essex, superheated steam tore through the vessel in an instant. Dozens of sailors suffered horrible burns. Ford never left his station; he was found dead, clinging to the wheel.

“Scalded to death,” one account noted. Twelve others aboard the Essex — 11 privates and another pilot — suffered the same fate.

Ford wasn’t a career soldier. He was a river man, known up and down the Western waters as one of the steadiest, most skilled pilots around. Born in Virginia, he came to Allegheny City as a boy and was raised to the wheel, learning the rivers until piloting became second nature. He tried commanding boats for a time but always found his way back to what he loved most: steering them.

Marshall Ford rests in Union Dale
Cemetery in Pittsburgh.
(Find a Grave)

His last civilian job was piloting the Arago to Louisville. There, seeing Flag Officer Andrew Foote preparing a gunboat expedition, Ford asked who was in command and immediately offered his services. They were accepted on the spot. A few weeks later, he was dead.

Ford’s body was brought home to Allegheny City for burial, and river men, neighbors and friends felt the loss keenly. Outside the Pittsburgh Post, a United States flag waved at half-mast in honor of Ford — “a just tribute to an honest man,” the newspaper wrote.

In November, I stood along the eroding shore of Kentucky Lake, looking out toward the buoy that marks where Fort Henry once stood. Eagles circled overhead. The leaves burned brown, gold and yellow.

It was quiet in a place once filled with smoke, fire and screaming steam. When I return, I’ll remember that contrast — and a river pilot named Marshall Ford, steady to the end.

Remains of Fort Henry are in Kentucky Lake. 

---

SOURCES:

• New York Herald, Feb. 12, 1862
• The Daily Pittsburgh Gazette and Commercial Journal, Feb. 8, 1862
• The Pittsburgh Gazette Times, March 30, 1910
• The Pittsburgh Post, Feb. 11, 1862

Podcast: The Lower Battlefield, Antietam's forgotten front

In Episode 54, historian Robert Dunkerly joins co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks for a discussion about his book, The Lower Battlefield of Antietam: The Forgotten Front of America's Bloodiest Day. Dunkerly takes us to Burnside Bridge, the 40-Acre Cornfield and beyond. Plus, he dishes on John's favorite regiment (16th Connecticut) and recounts an epic hike to the battlefield.

Letters from Triune: 'No wish ... is too cruel for a traitor'

Photo illustration of newspaper clippings of accounts from wartime Triune.

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Third in an occasional series.

Writing from the Triune Hills in Middle Tennessee, "Harry D" of Battery C of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery opens with a moment of rare calm. Sundays along the Harpeth River, he says, can be almost peaceful — no inspections, no bustle — just enough quiet for soldiers to sit with a shingle or tin plate on their knees and write home. 

The Ashtabula (Ohio) Weekly Telegraph
published the letter from Harry D, either
Harry Dinhanan or Harry Dingman of
the 1st Ohio Light Artillery.

Harry D — probably Harry Dinhanan or Harry Dingman — also fumes over Northern politics, especially the nomination of Copperhead Democrats like Clement Vallandigham, reserving some of the letter’s harshest language for anyone he sees as disloyal to the Union. Soldiers, he warns, will remember — and vote. Loyalty, he makes clear, is the one unforgivable line to cross, and the army’s patience for traitors, whether in gray or in civvies, is long gone.

"No wish, however malignant, is too cruel for a traitor," Harry D writes in the letter published in the Ashtabula (Ohio) Weekly Telegraph on June 27, 1863. 

My recent visits to Triune — where the Union army built a network of redoubts, earthworks and rifle pits a 20-minute drive from Franklin, Tenn. — inspired this "Letters From Triune" series.

Union army-built earthworks at Triune, Tennessee

ARMY CORRESPONDENCE

Southwick's Battery, At the Triune Hills, June 14th, 1863

READERS OF THE TELEGRAPH: We have all heard of a "quiet on the Potomac," and many comments have been made upon it, by unthinking, misinformed, people. Here on the Harpeth there is not so much of quiet, although to day matters have assumed a Sabbath day quietude; not even an inspection to mar the tranquility of repose and season of reflection.

And better than all, these Sunday resting spells give the soldier an opportunity to write letters. Look which ever way you will there sits your lad with a shingle on his knee, perhaps an upturned plate, busily chalking down the talk on paper to the dear one perhaps, the one above all price inestimable. Or it may be to a mother whose all of hope and joy he is, and whose loss to her would make her evening of life a chilling blank, a woeful chaos of grief. 

On the face of another scribe you may note the glow of strong manly devotion for the wife in the far off northern home, and the tenderness and truth of filial love on the open page of still another face. Such is the study of faces, the lesson to be learned from the tablet of each one's heart is more difficult to get. Our private opinion is that many little romances could be read from the heart histories of these letter writers and receivers.

Clement Vallandigham
(Library of Congress)

Those readers of the Ashtabula Telegraph who feel an interest in the members of Southwick's Battery could not much better please them than by writing letters. Of course they should be kind and encouraging ones, not hissing with copperhead politics, or fault with the Administration, or any thing in the least degree tainted with treason. We're sure such will not come from Ashtabula, Lake, or Geauga counties, to this army. But in this day of our Nation's calamity, such strange things happen. We are never sure where the serpent will spring from.  

There is the envenomed hiss of corrupt politics on the winds that blow from the North as well as from the Sunny South land. And the keenest sting of all to us from Ohio is the recent nomination of [Clement] Vallandigham and [George] Pugh, by the Democratic party, or better named the snakes from the vomit of hell, sick by a surfeit of treason. Excuse such harsh terms; you would, if you could know how the soldiers in this army feel towards enemies at home. But friends if we are rightly informed, soldiers will vote, and woe betide any blasted home rebel who may be a nominee for office. He might as well crawl away into the inlet to perdition and draw the hole in after his nasty carcass, eternally hiding the filthy thing from the face of earth. No wish, however malignant, is too cruel for a traitor.

Be we ever so merciful to other evil doers, and forgiving to those who wroug us many wise else than by treason, we would even pray for the total and immediate extermination ot traitors from this Free America, that is to be. In this Battery, a unanimity of loyal sentiment and patriotic principle is our platform of politics.

While officers of regiments with which we come in contact show a disregard for the sacred cause of liberty, by fawning about traitors in women's garb, that attract [unreadable] by the witchery of womanly prettiness; the officers of our battery pass them by in silent contempt and perhaps regret, that the sweet creatures were not favor of Union. We feel an honest pride in such officers and in there [sic] example to us is invaluable.

An aerial view of the site of one of the three United States Army redoubts at Triune.

Here at Triune are fields so large that divisions can drill together, and Captain [Daniel K.] Southwick takes the three batteries of his command and drills them together. It is a splendid and exciting spectacle to witness. The command consists of our battery in the 2ud Brigade, the 4th Michigan in the 1st, and Co. I, 4th Regulars, in the 3d Brigade. 

To say that the Captain can handle the three Batteries and do it well is but giving him the due meed of praise; and he would not have been appointed chief of Artillery in the 3d Division if his military abilities were not of a high order. 

We are encamped in a beautiful grove of noble trees, on a slight eminence; the infantry being costly placed in regular rows of tents just down the slope of the hill and on the plain below. Setting under the wing of these lofty maples at night, and looking at the brightly illuminated city of tents, reminds us of a city lit up for the reception of some idol of the people, or for some festive sports.

Apart from all there is in war to sadden us, we have much to make us happy, if we only let contentment be our rule of life. As the eye turns involuntary upward at these silent preachers of the grove pointing Heavenward, the heart grows heavy with a sense of woe; — grows weary of a war we could not shun with honor. And as the sweet and ever present beauties in nations ministry, lead us homeward through the pleasant meads of memory and imagination; the fire of patriotic ardor is newly kindled in our souls.

We are ready for the bloody work of war, and when it comes to us, you will not be ashamed of Battery C.

Yours truly, Harry D