Footprints Through Dixie- The Review

I must preface this post with a disclaimer:

I am not very adept at presenting my opinions to others which is what a book review really is, so bear with me.

If you read my post of July 25, 2012 you already have my recommendation as to the value of this book to those searching for members of the 104^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. At the time of that post I had barely read one third of it, and could not give much in detail for others to spend the time to read it. Now that I have finished reading it I can honestly say that I highly recommend Footprints Through Dixie to anyone interested in the common soldier. The soldiers lot was pretty much the same on both sides. Neither side had a corner on the market of travail.

What sets this book apart from the pack is the blend of Private J. W. Gaskill's diary and his later reflections many years after the war, told with a natural story tellers ease. One can almost taste the dust of the march, or see two friends buttoning their shelter halves together after a long day, then settling down to argue some point of strategy, dogs, cooking or what have you. Gaskill tells of a pair that would argue to the point of fisticuffs before the sergeant stepped in to soothe tempers. The pair would remain friends but would start another argument about another subject much to the irritation of company B. An additional strong point of the book is the narrowness of focus the author maintains throughout the book and he rarely delves into incidents that do not “fall under his observation”. He devotes his pages to the subject of company B in particular and the 104^th OVI generally and thus he is able to weave a highly readable, sometimes amusing, other times heart wrenching tale.

The 104^th was another Western regiment that spent considerable time in Kentucky and Tennessee chasing, for the most part, Confederate partisans such as John Morgan or the myriad loose knit bands that were a constant irritant to the Federal armies in the west. Hard duty to be sure for the infantry. In late September 1863 the regiment arrives at Knoxville Tennessee, and stays there through the long winter of '63-'64, enduring siege and bitter winter cold. It is about here in Gaskill's narrative that the tenor changes, imperceptibly at first, from a light, jovial tone to one of deepening despair. I have read many soldier diaries, regimental histories, and letters but never have I noted such a profound change in the authors writing. It is as if the author upon re-reading his diary and expounding upon it he is actually reliving the time. He is not afraid to let some emotion show. His experiences at Franklin and Nashville are the depth of his gloom. One really gets a sense of his anguish in the recounting of these experience. Beyond there and almost as imperceptibly as his descent, his reminiscences begin to brighten again on through to the end of the war. This book truly does allow some insight into at least one soldiers experience.

The Depths of Gloom

One weakness the book has is that some of the battles the 104^th was involved in the author does not name. This mostly occurs with battles with Hood when he headed for Tennessee whilst Sherman was marching through Georgia after the fall of Atlanta. This is a minor sticking point since the book is not intended to be history. The author relies mostly on his diary in these areas without much addition either in recollection or use of the current histories of the time.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the book is a treasure for the genealogist. As a bonus Gaskill lists the names of men from the 115^th OVI that were on board the transport steamer Sultana when she exploded. They were:

 

 

 

 

 

Lieutenant Jacob Shaffer

F.A. Clapsaddle

William Smith

Thomas Rue

Charles Detrick

Adam Hendricks

Alexander Laugheter

Robert Roath

Thomas Spencer

Benjamin Crew

All perished save for Shaffer and Clapsaddle. They were men of company F, of the 115th and from Stark county Ohio, the same county the 104^th company B was raised from.

Footprints Through Dixie is one fine piece of work and makes a great bookend for Sam Watkins' Company Aytch.

See? I told you I wasn't very good at book reviews!

The Picket.

Source

Footprints Through Dixie, Gaskill, J.W., 1919 retrieved from http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007659991

Sultana victims page 179

Battle of Franklin lithograph, Kurz and Allison 1891 retrieved from The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/pga.01852/

Footprints Through Dixie

Footprints Through Dixie is the diary of J.W. Gaskill, a private in Company “B”, 104^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. It was published in 1919. The author states that the volume is compiled from his diary and it reads as though it has been edited for style and clarity but does not leave out the dates and places pertaining to his narrative of the war.

I am not finished reading it yet; I am only about a third of the way through the 186 pages, but I would recommend it to anyone interested in old diaries.

The main reason I am posting this before completely reading the book is because of the wealth of personal information contained in it. Anyone that has an ancestor that served in the 104^th Ohio should definitely read it.

Here are a couple of examples:

“During this skirmish, Elias Haines of Marlboro,shot a finger from his hand while drawing a load from his gun. After recovery he is detailed for duty with the supply train where he served until December 29, (1862) then deserted while we were encamped at Richmond, Kentucky. He afterward enlists in a cavalry regiment and serves until discharged from the army.”

And this:

“The first death in the company is that of Joseph Holibaugh of Marlboro. On the morning of November 28,after coming off guard duty he walked to the company cook's quarters and while standing there he suddenly and without warning fell forward into the fire. He is quickly removed by comrades and the surgeon is called, who pronounced his death due to apoplexy. Comrade Holibaugh's body is sent to his home and buried near the village of Marlboro.”

These are only two of many such pieces of information that fill this book. The author states in his introductory that he tried to write something about every man in the company, and also as much as he could of other men in the regiment. Besides his diary he also used the company Orderly Sergeant's records to fill in some of the information. This is an important little work for genealogists. If you are looking for a deserter though you may not find him. Gaskill relates incidents of desertion but as far as I have read he does not name names. Officers are also highlighted, the good and the bad, and even transient officers are mentioned. The book gives details one will not find in the cold records usually searched in the hunt for ancestors serving in Civil War armies. It is interesting to see details relating to the death, discharge, promotion or transfer of the individual soldiers.

The regiment was mustered in August 12, 1862, at Massilon, Ohio and served until June 28, 1865. The 104^th saw action in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina as part of the 23^rd Army Corps, Army of the Ohio.

The Picket

Source

Footprints Through Dixie, Gaskill, J.W., 1919, Pages 28 and 34, Retrieved from

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007659991

A Year of Turning Points: July 4th, 1863, In Diaries

Gettysburg. Vicksburg. Names that would go down in American history, remembered for the frightful cost in lives they exacted on the two sections of the divided United States.

Gettysburg is often referred to as the turning point of the war, but at the time it had yet to gain that distinction. Battered, hungry, and tired, on July 4, 1863, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Mead's Army of the Potomac eyeballed each other. Sporadic musketry would break out on occasion but it was of little consequence. Lee would slip away late in the day under cover of darkness and rain.

Vicksburg, Mississippi had been been the target of Ulysses Grant's Army of the Tennessee for several, unfruitful months. After finally getting below the city and over to the east bank of the Mississippi River, Grant was able to chase Confederate John Pemberton's Army of Mississippi back into the defenses of the town after fighting at places like Champion Hill and Big Black River. After two bloody assaults on the citys works May 19 and 22, the siege of the city began. Vicksburg fell this July Fourth.

Needless to say, the events at these two places dominate many of the diaries and letters for this July 4 and the days following, but not all of them.

William Bircher had difficulty even entering the army in the summer of 1861 due to his age and small stature. In October, with the aid of the captain of company K, Second Minnesota Volunteer Infantry and the permission of his father who also joined, the lad entered the service as a drummer.

The Second was a part of William Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland and was engaged in the Tullahoma Campaign. July 1-3 had been passed marching and fighting Braxton Bragg’s rear guard. His diary entry of July 4, 1863, gives little indication that he knew anything about the happenings at Vicksburg or Gettysburg:

“My seventeenth birthday. A salute of one hundred guns was fired—not on account of my birthday, but the birth of the republic. Marched four miles out on the Hillsboro road.”

Bircher would not mention Gettysburg at all in the next few days, but wrote that rumors abounded in camp that Lee had been captured with 2500 men. He does not acknowledge the fall of Vicksburg until his entry of July 8. In fact he gave more notice to John Hunt Morgan and his excursion through Indiana and Ohio during the same month than to either of the major Union victories.[1]

Ebenezer Wescott of the Seventeenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry had a front row seat at Vicksburg and in a letter to his mother dated July 7 he writes:

“...the Rebels marched outside their breastworks, stacked their arms and laid their colors across them then marched back again. We had guards in the line. They marched up and took possession of their arms, and we formed our line and marched into the city to the music of more than three hundred cannon, beside fife, and drum, and brass bands.

It was the finest Fourth of July celebration I ever attended and will probably never attend another equal to it.” [2]

The two above accounts show that patriotism was alive and well in Federal ranks, but Wescott of Wisconsin most likely could attribute much of the fanfare to the victorious end of a long, hard campaign, but the significance of the day was not lost on the troops.

Mrs. Henrietta Fitzhugh Barr, the Confederate lady from Ravenswood, West Virginia, is still

keeping her diary. Her angst toward the Federal soldiers is unabated from 1862.

“Saturday, July 4. A new Co. from Parkersburg (Captain Devin's) are here to drill the militia (a sort of a trap to get the poor men to enlist to fight for the Union.)

Not a word about July 4 until, almost as an afterthought, she sets down the following:

“Sunday, July 5. Yesterday passed off so quietly I hardly knew it was the “Glorious Fourth”. People have to much to occupy their attention in these diggings to think of celebrating the anniversary, etc. The Yanks have all left today and we are once more in possession of our homes, which was not the case while they were with us. A rumor reaches us of a great battle at Gettysburg. Of course Gen'l Lee is victorious although the Yankee papers are not willing to give him full credit for it. We also hear that a division of the Southern Army is at Beverly where they had an engagement with the enemy and crushed them. A report that Vicksburg has fallen I do not credit. I must have better proof than mere hearsay.” [3]

Even in 1863 the Confederacy was still clinging to the hope of their own eventual independence. Why would any “true Southerner” doubt that their armies had been victorious? For that matter why would they believe “rumors” of disaster befalling their armies? It is an interesting aspect to the times that people would still cling to their cause and beliefs despite mounting evidence otherwise. In the days following Mrs. Barr still had trouble believing that Gettysburg was less than a Confederate victory and that Vicksburg had indeed fallen. She dismisses the notions as false due to the fact that the sources of such talk were “Yankee”.

Captain Stephen Minot Weld, leaves us a most poignant reflection on this Independence Day, 1863. His diary entry for the day laments:

“This year I expected to spend the Fourth in a battle, and find myself instead in Philadelphia. Were it not for the errand that brought me here I should have enjoyed the day very much.

We started for Mr. Landis's house, 1829 Spruce Street at 6A.M. From here the body was taken to the Lancaster depot, and placed in a private car. Only the generals brother and sister and staff were present. We reached Lancaster at about 12 M., and there found an immense crowd of women, men, and children waiting at the depot. We got into some old wagons and drove to the cemetery. Here a chapter of the Bible was read, and prayer delivered, and then poor General Reynolds disappeared from us for some time to come.” [4]

Weld was an aid to Major General John F. Reynolds at Gettysburg. Reynolds had dispatched him with a message to Major General George G. Meade to hurry the Army of the Potomac along. The Confederates were advancing, in strong force, and beginning to drive Brigadier General John Buford’s cavalry pickets in along Chambersburg Pike to the north and west of town. Reynolds was ahead of his troops (First Corps) but would bring them up as quickly as possible. He declared he would fight the Rebels, through the streets of Gettysburg if necessary, but Meade must hurry. Weld covered the 14 miles to Taneytown in one hour and twenty minutes on a blown horse and delivered the message to Meade. On the return trip he met the ambulance bearing Reynolds' body. The general had been killed shortly after Weld had left him.

“A braver man or a better soldier than General R. never lived.”  Weld would declare in a letter to his father dated July 3.

Perhaps at this point in the war the observance of Independence Day was getting a little shopworn. Although two of the soldiers record “national salutes” that day in their diaries, there is not much beyond that. As we see, the lady rebel forgets the day, and the next day states the people are just to busy to observe it. It must be remembered that she was in the minority in the town of Ravenswood, but she makes no mention of the Unionists marking the day with celebration either. It had “passed quietly”. It appears that two years of bloodshed had taken the luster from it. 1864 would be little different, and in ways, much worse.

The Picket

Sources

1- Bircher, W. (1889) A Drummer Boys Diary, St. Paul, Minn. St. Paul book and stationary co. Page 67

2- Wescott, M. Ebenezer (1909), Civil War Letters, 1861-1865, [Mora? Minn.] Letter No. XIII

3- Barr, H. Fitzhugh, The Civil War Diary of Mrs. Henrietta Fitzhugh Barr (Barre), 1862-1863, Ravenswood, Virginia (West Virginia): Marietta, Ohio :Marietta College, 1961 Page 26

4- Weld, Stephen W., (1912) War Diaries of Stephen Minot Weld, 1861-1865, Privately printed, The Riverside Press, Cambridge Mass.

Sources 1-3 retrieved from http://www.hathitrust.org/

Source 4 retrieved from http://openlibrary.org/

July 4th, 1862, in Diaries

By the Fourth of July, 1862, the citizens of the United States and Confederate States had came to the realization that the war was not going to close soon. Since 1861 the casualty lists had lengthened dramatically since the battle at Bull Run/ Manassas (First). That July's casualties seemed miniscule when compared to the bloodletting at Shiloh in Tennessee and the battles outside Richmond during McClellan's Peninsula Campaign (Gaines' Mill and Fair Oaks to name two). Yet there were still many relatively new regiments in the armies of both sides that had yet to see much of the war outside of camp life, and some had yet to even fire their muskets in anger in so much as a skirmish. And of course there were still regiments from the summer of '61 that had “seen the elephant” up close and more often than they cared to see. Some of their thoughts concerning Independence Day made their way into diaries, letters, and regimental histories just as others had in the summer of 1861. The following are examples of such thoughts.

On July 4, 1862, Young Samuel E. Nichols of Brookfield, Massachusetts, wrote a letter to his brother Alpheus. Samuel was then attending school at Amherst College.

“And another reason why I should settle up everything this term is that the possibility is I may never come back to college. Have you not thought within the past few days, days undoubtedly of disaster to Union Arms and awfully destructive to our brothers in the field, days whose results seem almost inevitably to decide a policy unfavorable to us from arrogant, intermeddling and jealous nations, have you not thought, I repeat, that it was our imperative duty to take the places of our fallen soldiers, to meet the expectations of whom we have bidden Godspeed, and who are now in extreme peril and also to increase the original strength of the army, which with all its actual strength has nevertheless proven to weak? “Not men enough.” is the cry that passes from lip to lip. Now where are the 15 regiments that are to be formed in Massachusetts to come from, unless such men as you and I signify our willingness to go? I do not expect to go but I think it is my duty” [1]

Clearly Nichols is expecting to enlist despite his claim in the last line. He is but 20 years old, and he is expecting to go to the war and he brings up the “arrogant, intermeddling and jealous” nations, Britain and France, to coax his brother into joining also. Disaster on the battlefield and the threat of foreign intervention was a strong inducement to take up arms to defend the Union.

In less than three weeks, Samuel Nichols would enlist in the 37^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry at Northampton. By his letters it does not appear that Alpheus joined his brother in the ranks.

In stark contrast to the exuberant Nichols is the diary entry of Corporal James E.Hall of the 31^st Virginia Infantry. By this July 4 he had over a year of marching and fighting in Western Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. He was 20 years old as well. He writes:

“We have been marching all day, but I am lost as to the country about here. Damn such a way of spending the Fourth. I am so awfully tired of war I hardly know what to do.” [2]

Hall at this point was down on the Peninsula but seems to have missed some of the fighting due to illness.

Mrs. Henrietta Fitzhugh Barr, relates the following in her diary July 4, 1862:

“Formerly the anniversary of American Independence. The Union Sunday School assisted by the abolition friends are having a picnic, speeches,etc. in the woods.” The speeches were

interrupted by a guerrilla attack at a nearby town. The Federal soldiers in the crowd, a small cavalry unit, flew to their aid. She continues:

“I hear the picnic turned out (as such affairs usually do) stale, flat, and unprofitable. The ball that was to come off in the evening was indefinitely postponed. By a paper and dispatches we gladly welcomed the gratifying news of the success of our arms near Richmond. The information is very scanty coming as it does through Federal sources.” [3]

Mrs. Barr was a Confederate sympathizer living in Ravenswood, Jackson county, West Virginia. The Fitzhugh family had founded the town and at the beginning of the war they were one of only 13 families in the area to hold to such sympathy. From the Fitzhugh mansion she said she could look into “Yankee-Land”, or Southern Ohio. The “success of our arms” she refers to is the Seven Days Battles of June 25- July1 1862.

Kate Cumming, a nurse who attached herself to the Army of the Mississippi, (later Army of Tennessee) was at Mobile, Alabama when she wrote:

“The day that a few years ago by us was commemorated with so much pride as a nations anniversary for liberty won,now how changed! Part of that nation seeking to enslave the other!”

Ironic.

Independence Day, 1862 and the people of the land North and South still remembered the day but with wide and diverging views as shown in particular by the words of the two Southern ladies. Soldiers attitudes are changing somewhat, but patriotic fervor still lingered to a degree, although Confederates were under conscription since April. The year still held the promise of foreign intervention on behalf of the Confederacy and it was in the forefront of thought in the minds of the people in the North as well.

But it was only July 4. Although Shiloh, Pea Ridge, and The Seven Days battles had cost much in the way of treasure and blood, the sequel to Manassas, Antietam, Stone's River, and Fredricksburg lay ahead. The divided United States had seen nothing yet.

The Picket

Sources

1- Nichols, S. Edmund, Underhill, C. Sterling.(1929) Your Soldier boy Samuel: letters of Lieutenant Samuel Edmund Nichols,Amherst '65, of the 37^th regiment Massachusetts Volunteers.[Buffalo]: Priv. Print. Page 14

2- Hall, J. Edmond, Dayton, R. Woods, (1961). The Diary of a Confederate Soldier: James E. Hall.[Lewisburg ? W. Va.] Page 62

3- Barr, H. Fitzhugh. (1963). The Civil War Diary of Mrs. Henrietta Fitzhugh Barr (Barre): 1862-1863, Ravenswood, Virginia (West Virginia). Marietta, Ohio: Marietta College Pages 9-10

4-Cumming, K. (1866) A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee Louisville, Kentucky. Page 37

All retrieved from http://www.hathitrust.org/