Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863 — John Shaqi
Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
History
Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863
Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives
A very different character was Joshua W. Sill, who was sent to us as
ordnance officer. He too had been a regular army officer, but of the
younger class. Rather small and delicate in person, gentle and
refined in manner, he had about him little that answered to the
popular notion of a soldier. He had resigned from the army some
years before, and was a professor in an important educational
institution in Brooklyn, N. Y., when at the first act of hostility
he offered his services to the governor of Ohio, his native State.
After our day's work, we walked together along the railway,
discussing the political and military situation, and especially the
means of making most quickly an army out of the splendid but
untutored material that was collecting about us. Under his modest
and scholarly exterior I quickly discerned a fine temper in the
metal, that made his after career no enigma to me, and his heroic
death at the head of his division in the thickest of the strife at
Stone's River no surprise.
The two regiments which began the encampment were quickly followed
by others, and the arriving regiments sometimes had their first
taste of camp life under circumstances well calculated to dampen
their ardor. The Fourth Ohio, under Colonel Lorin Andrews, President
of Kenyon College, came just before a thunderstorm one evening, and
the bivouac that night was as rough a one as his men were likely to
experience for many a day. They made shelter by placing boards from
the fence tops to the ground, but the fields were level and soon
became a mire, so that they were a queer-looking lot when they
crawled out next morning. The sun was then shining bright, however,
and they had better cover for their heads by the next night. The
Seventh Ohio, which was recruited in Cleveland and on the Western
Reserve, sent a party in advance to build some of their huts, and
though they too came in a rain-storm, they were less uncomfortable
than some of the others. Three brigades were organized from the
regiments of the Ohio contingent, exclusive of the two which had
been hurried to Washington. The brigadiers, beside myself, were
Generals Joshua H. Bates and Newton Schleich. General Bates, who was
the senior, was a graduate of West Point, who had served some years
in the regular army, but had resigned and adopted the profession of
the law. He lived at Cincinnati, and organized his brigade in that
city. They marched to Camp Dennison on the 20th of May, when, by
virtue of his seniority, General Bates assumed command of the camp
in McClellan's absence. His brigade consisted of the Fifth, Sixth,
Ninth, and Tenth regiments, and encamped on the east side of the
railroad in the bend of the river. General Schleich was a Democratic
senator, who had been in the state militia, and was also one of the
drill-masters of the legislative squad which had drilled upon the
Capitol terrace. His brigade included the Third, Twelfth, and
Thirteenth regiments, and, with mine, occupied the fields on the
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