Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 2: November 1863-June 1865

uestioned--Ordered away--Succeeded by Captain Anderson--Robert Ande

lection--Great majority against Vallandigham--The soldier vote--Wish for field service--Kinglake's Crimean War--Its lessons--Confederate plots in Canada--Attemp

rps in front of Knoxville, and became part of the organization with which my fortunes were to be united till the end of

his administrative duties. He was punctilious in his performance of duty, and was especially averse to having his military conduct seem in any way influenced by political motives. Like many other officers of the army, he made his devotion to his government as a soldier the basis of all his action, and disclaimed any interest in politics. But in the summer of 1863 politics in Ohio became too heated to allow any neutrality or even any hesitation in open declarations of principle. Vallandigham was a candidate for governor, although an exile under the judgment of the military court. Local politicians were not always discreet, and some of them demanded avowals of Major McLean, which he refused to make, not because of any sympathy with Vallandigham's partisans, but because he thought it unb

his near kinsmen gave striking evidence of the earnest and militant patriotism of a loyal Kentucky stock closely allied to a well-known Ohio family. The roster of the members of the family who saw military service is an exceptional one. [Footnote: Colonel Charles Anderson, brother of the general, was in Texas when the Civil War be

became a captain in the Fifth U. S. Infantry and colonel of the Eighth Califo

records: (1) Nicholas Longworth Anderson was adjutant, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel of the Sixth Ohio Infantry. He wa

me sergeant-major and second lieutenant. He was then appointed assistant-adjutan

in in the Fifty-second Ohio Infantry. He was wounded at J

irst lieutenant in the One Hundre

ved without commission as volunteer aide-de-cam

ns in the war service: (1) Thomas McArthur Anderson was captain in the Fourteenth U.S. Infa

s, ten kinsmen supported the flag of the country in the field. Suc

wn that upon his doing so, the alternative in his sentence would be enforced, and that he would be sent to Fort Warren for imprisonment. Mr. Pugh, who had been induced to accept the nomination for lieutenant-governor with him, made a visit to Windsor, i

was of course the duty of the military authorities to prevent this by arresting deserters and holding them to military service and discipline under their enlistment. A common form of fraud was for a well-grown young man to offer himself as a recruit, take the oath that he was of lawful age, receive the hundreds of dollars of bounty, and then bring forward his parents to claim him as a minor enlisting without their permission. We always

ring the recruit to Cincinnati, where Judge Leavitt's writ could reach him, and to submit the case to the United States District Court. The following letter will illustra

DISTRICT OF O

ptembe

at it is practicable to fill up the place of minors and invalids as fast as they can be got rid of, I would like to have the case looked into at once, and unless some reason unknown to me exists, have him sent to report to Colonel Boone at Kemper Barracks,

fully, your

d) J.

Comm

n. Davis

c., Covin

of the United States Supreme Court in Ableman v. Booth, in which Chief Justice Taney had delivered the opinion. These instructions directed that in cases arising under the conscription and recruiting laws, the writ of habeas corpus should be obeyed only when issued by United States courts. With full knowledge of these instructions and of the Supreme Court decision which had been a party shibboleth in the fugitive-slave cases before the war, the Probate

part of the Probate Judge of the county to produce a collision between

ich the writ was issued to Lieutenant-Colonel Boone, One Hundred and Fifteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, commanding a

ers of a State court. Lieutenant-Colonel Boone further attached to his answer and made part of it the instructions from Washington and the order of Major-General Burnside promulgating the same, and it was thus made matter of record in the court that the case was one directly affecting the government of the United States. The judge was also notified by counsel that it was the purpose

order in General B.'s case, but directed the sheriff of the county to arrest Lieutenant-Colonel Boone and bring him before the court. The sheriff went to Colonel Boone's quarters and was there informed that the writ could not be execute

t the judge and himself and hand them over to the United States courts to be tried for treason. I likewise expressed my surprise that in a matter which was avowedly an undisguised attempt to bring the State authorities into open conflict with the National government, he had not appealed to the governor of the State, its chief executive (he being himself but a subordinate), for instructions. As he professed embarrassment as to his duty, I told him I would state what in my opinion a loyal sheriff should do in such a case; and that was to make a written return upon the writ saying that it could not be obeyed without levying open war against the United States, and was th

to the Secretary of War for his informa

him in a forcible attack upon the United States troops in barracks, and knew that a call upon the posse would be responded to by nobody but ruffians of the criminal class who might like an opportunity to gather as a mob with a pretext of lawful authority. He complained to me with a comical distress that the judge had taken advantage of him to gain with the extremists of his party the credit for bold defiance of the government, whilst he, the sheriff, was left t

t always easy to draw a satisfactory line in dealing practically with such powdery elements and social conditions as those of 1863, but the best results seemed to come from carefulness not to provoke unnecessary collision with political prejudices and not to interfere with personal liberty more than was necessary, w

line to keep our men as patient as we wished them to be. One day a wrangle began, and one of the city "rowdies" pulled a pistol and fired upon a soldier. We arrested the criminal, but whilst we held him, an indictment was found against him in the local court, and he was demanded by the civil authorities for trial. We knew very well that in a

drew his weapon was instantly shot down. There was now a demand for the soldier to be tried by the local civil court; but I said that the boot was on the other foot. The charge against the soldier was for an act performed in the line of his military duty, and of this our military courts had cognizance. The case was investigated by a military tribunal and the m

e the gravity of the situation and to realize that it must be soberly and thoughtfully met. Hosts of men who would willingly have been in opposition to the administration party on questions of economy or of details in the conduct of the war declined to vote for Vallandigham, whose utterances had been the great matter of debate during the canvass, and whose disloyalty being thus brought home to the voters in every neighborhood, had repelled all but the most passionate of his party friends. John Brough, the Union party candidate, himself a "war democrat," was elected governor by an unprecedented majority of over a hundred thousand. The soldiers' vote had helped to swell this majority, and as re

ing of the Rebellion and the restoration of the Union. There was a noticeable crystallization of public opinion after it. Reasonable men in the defeated party found it easy to acc

ts, and Halleck was watchful to give the full weight of his official influence in favor of such a one. It was, perhaps naturally, assumed that a volunteer would be assisted by political friends, and if he did not make use of such influence he would fall between two stools. After my first appointment I was never aware of receiving any help from these personal influences, and had gotten whatever recognition I had from my immediate commanders in the field. Burnside had intimated that if Hartsuff's ill health should make that officer retire from the command of the Twenty-third Corps, he would assign me to it in the expectation that the corresponding rank would

reserve which gave the book its peculiar value. I found Lord Raglan and his subordinates intelligent men, feeling their way through doubts and mistakes to a new experimental knowledge of their task. I compared them and their work with what I had seen in our own service when a great army had to be organized and put in the field and everything had to be created anew. I saw that we had been no worse off than our neighbors, and that our tuition in the school of experience had gone on quite as rapidly as theirs. I thanked Kinglake in my he

of armies as they had depots of military stores, and true organization in every department had to be effected after a declaration of war. Studying it in 1863, it seemed to me that the only advantage England or France would have had over us at the outbreak of the Rebellion would have been in the greater number of men partly drilled and the greater quantities of arms and ammunition in store. Kinglake taught us that others would have had to go through most of the discouragements we had experienced, and that our aptitude in learning had been perhaps greater than theirs would have been. His unreserved disclosure of the errors and the miseries of the siege of Sebastopol was infinitely more instructive than any history

nders to confess, and there was no room for over-confidence; but the book prompted every earnest soldier among us to believe that we could make still better use of our experience, and to feel bolder in relying on his own judgment and courage in drawing new expedients from our peculiar circumstances and in developing new adaptations of military science to our own

, giving warning of what was more explicitly reported in one of the 10th, saying that he was positively informed that within forty-eight hours two ar

tance, if successful. The island lay in Sandusky Bay, within a few hours' sail of several Canadian ports. Its garrison consisted of a single regiment which had all the employment it needed to furnish the ordinary prison

ed me to take energetic action to defeat the expected raid. The dispatch reached me at nine o'clock in the morning, and as it would be necessary to consult with the governor and get him to call out a force of State militia, I telegraphed him that I would go to Columbus on the half-past-ten train from Cincinnati, and asked him to be ready to call out the militia as soon as I could see him. I then sent messages to the commandants of militia regiments near the railway line, requesting them to call out their men at once in anticipation of an order from the governor to proceed to Sandusky. I also communicated with my s

ia regiments which I had warned before leaving Cincinnati. My regular train had gone on, but Mr. Woodward had provided for a special one from Columbus, and we were soon speeding on in the hope of making the connection with a train going West on the Lake Shore Railway. The connection was made, though it became necessary to make what was then r

d severe winter weather was likely to come at any time. Competent officers had to be selected to take responsible charge of each of the supply departments, including arms and ammunition. A battery of Parrott-rifled cannon was ordered to report to me as well as some heavy coast artillery. The first organization of means t

s and runs very close to Cedar Point, the extremity of the long, low sandy cape which separates the eastern part of the bay from the open water. A lighthouse on the point and range lights near it give direction to vessels approaching, which run from the northwest, head on, till they seem almost ashore at the foot of the lighthouse tower, w

es amid the fields, and with a gently undulating surface which gave it an agreeable variety and a picturesque appearance. The landing at the island was on the bay side, three or four miles from the city wharves. If a hostile force should land on the peninsula at Marblehead, it could not reach the

I found cordially ready to work with me in the most perfect harmony and mutual understanding. I lost no time in transporting my two rifled batteries to Cedar Point, and throwing up hasty earthworks to cover them. From the moment they were in position it was certain that no unarmed steamboat could enter the harbor. A part of my infantry was encamped in rear of the batteries,

d had chartered two steamboats which were to meet them at the mouth of the Detroit River. The assembly of such a body of men attracted the attention of the Canadian authorities, and information was sent to Lord Lyons at Washington. Our officers at Detroit also got wind of it, and employed the police and detectives to ferret out the facts. The raide

in the War of 1812, and although we found no trace of the threatened raid, the circumstances which took us there added to the interest with which we examined the scene of Perry's glory. On my return I reported to the Secretary of War that all present danger had passed, and asked to be allowed to send the militia home. The weather had become stormy, and the State troops naturally became im

t I chafed at the circumstances which seemed to tie me to the shore of Lake Erie when I longed to be on my way to East Tennessee. I laid the matter before the War Department by telegraph, and begged to be allowed to go. Mr. Stanton answered on the 22d that I could not yet leave Sandusky. I hurried the work to be done there with all possible energy, so as to remove the cause of delay

s, which lead to serious maladies. It would be hard to find a more salubrious site for a camp than Johnson's Island. Naturally well drained, diversified with grove and meadow, open to the breeze from every quarter, washed by the pure waters of Lake Erie, it is to-day, as it was then, a beautiful and attractive spot. The winter there is not usually severe. The vast body of water comprising the Great Lakes modifies the climate and tempers it so that the autumn is generally prolonged and pleasant. Winter begins late, but is apt to be changeable and disagreeable, and a raw an

A large square on the sloping hillsides was surrounded with a high wooden fence. O

beds of straw. The shelter and accommodation was decidedly better than that which we made for our own troops at Camp Dennison, our first camp of instruction. Through most of the year there was no ground for complaint. In winter, and especially on winter nights, it would be impossible to keep up anything like a steady temperature, and the thin shell of the building would soon chill through in a nipping and frosty air. We had to meet this difficulty in all winter quar

osure in front of their barracks, the lack of interesting occupation, home-sickness, and general discomfort,--these were the ills of which they spoke. Among the prisoners was General Jeff. Thompson, of Missouri,--the ranking officer among them, as I recollect,--and I sought an introduction to him and talked with him in regard to the prison life. He was depressed and ailing, though not consenting to go into hospital, and spok

ssion and as a citizen. I had absolute confidence in his uprightness as well as his ability. His statements fully corroborated the conclusions I drew from my own observation. I was fully satisfied that the garrison adm

ays. Since the war I have conversed with business men of that town who personally knew of these arrangements, and who have given me details of remittances and credits furnished to prisoners, and of some considerable investm