From the December 2022 American Battlefield Trust calendar.
DECEMBER 6, 1865
** The 13th Amendment ratified, officially abolishing slavery.
DECEMBER 7, 1862
** Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
DECEMBER 11, 1862
** Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, begins.
DECEMBER 12, 1862
** USS Cairo sinks in the Yazoo River, Mississippi.
DECEMBER 15, 1864
** Battle of Nashville, Tennessee, begins.
--Old Secesh
DECEMBER 12, 1862
The USS Cairo strikes a torpedo and sinks in the Yazoo River, Mississippi.
DECEMBER 15, 1864
The Battle of Nashville, Tennessee, begins.
DECEMBER 18, 1865
The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, becomes a part of the U.S. Constitution.
*************************************
DECEMBER 24, 1864
The first attack on Fort Fisher, North Carolina, begins.
DECEMBER 26, 1860
Major Robert Anderson evacuates Fort Moultrie for Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
DECEMBER 26, 1861
The U.S. releases Confederate commissioners Mason and Slidell, ending the Trent Affair.
DECEMBER 31, 1862
The Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro), Tennessee begins.
--Old Secesh
Late in November 1864, the 7th Minnesota arrived at Nashville, Tennessee and joined Genera; George Thomas' army who were fighting Gen. John Bell Hood's Confederates.
On December 15, Thomas' troops attacked the Confederate lines outside the city. The 7th Minnesota's brigade charged a gun position and captured three cannons. Unfortunately, Colonel Sylvester G. Hill, the brigade commander, was killed. The 7th's Col. Marshall then took command of the brigade.
The Union forces renewed the attack the following day which was rainy. The 7th and their comrades charged over soft rain soaked ground across a corn field and captured the Confederate works. Union forces were successful all along the line and Hood's army was all but destroyed.
The 7th had six men killed and fifty-four wounded in the two-day battle. One of those wounded was Henry Mills.
Following the Battle of Nashville, the 7th served in Tennessee and Mississippi.
In March and April, 1865, they fought in Gen. E.R.S. Canby's campaign against Mobile, Alabama. This was the last campaign of the 7th, and they returned home and were mustered out of service on August 16, 1865.
--Old Secesh
From MNopedia.
The 7th Minnesota Infantry served on Minnesota's troubled frontier in the summer of 1862 and into the first half of 1863. The regiment eventually headed south, taking part in a key battle that essentially destroyed a Confederate army. They also participated in one of the final campaigns of the war.
They fought in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 and were at the Birch Coulee and Wood Lake battles.
Then, they went south and fought Confederate Gen. Forrest's cavalry at the Battle of Tupelo July 14-15. Then they pursued Confederate Gen. Sterling Price's army across Arkansas and Missouri.
Late in November, they arrived at Nashville where they joined Union Gen. George Thomas's troops facing Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee.
--Old Secesh
The collections at the Minnesota Historical Society are filled with items like the shirt.
Objects like this ordinary shirt, worn and frayed and dark with blood of its last two owners.
If you look closely , you can see faint embroidery on the pockets, spelling out the initials J.B.
Maybe these initials were stitched by a mother or a sweetheart. Maybe some future historian will be combing through the casualty lists of the Battle of Nashville and put a name on the Confederate soldier who never came home.
"This shirt saved the life of a Minnesota soldier, said Sondra Reierson of the Historical Society. The fact that even with the shirt, Mills was able to survive his battlefield wounds in that day and age is only matched by the shirt surviving.
The Mills family kept the shirt safe and beautifully preserved for 157 years, donated it to the Minnesota Historical Society last week. It will go on display at the new visitor center opening next year at the Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote.
The story of Henry Mills, who was about 31 years old at the Battle of Nashville, had many more chapters after his Civil War years. He came home, raised a family and lived to see a brand new century. He served as a state arsenal keeper, ran a grocery and was elected Justice of the Peace.
Born in 1833, he died in 1925 at the age of 92.
--Old Secesh
From the July 3, 2021, Minneapolis Star Tribune "Minnesota Historical Society looks to the future" by Jennifer Brooks.
I wrote about the shirt that may have saved Henry Mills' life at the Battle of Nashville in 1864 earlier this month. It is now housed in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. Here is some more information on it.
Henry Mills held on to the shirt that saved his live for the rest of his long life.
It was a dead man's shirt. Likely taken off a dead Confederate soldier on the icy Battle of Nashville on a bitter day in December 1864. Mills took the shirt and wrapped it tightly around the bleeding bullet wound in his leg.
He ended up losing the leg, but kept the shirt. After the war, it came home with him to Minnesota -- first to Fort Snelling, where Lt. Henry Mills mustered out of the 7th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, then to his home in St. Paul.
No matter how many times the Mills family washed that shirt, the blood stains would not come out. But, instead of burning it or cutting it into strips for rags so he wouldn't be reminded of its story, Mills carried this bit if his past into the future.
--Old Secesh
In July 2 I wrote about the newly acquired "Bloody Shirt" of Henry Mills of the 7th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. He used it to staunch the flow of blood from a wound he received at the Battle of Nashville in December 1864.
I am going to be doing some more research on this event.
From Wikipedia. The Union Order of Battle for the Battle of Nashville.
The 7th Minnesota was part of a detachment serving there from the Army of the Tennessee under Major general Andrew J. Smith.
They were in:
FIRST DIVISION under Brig. Gen. John McArthur
THIRD BRIGADE under Col. Sylvester G. Hill (killed), then Col. William R. Marshall.
12th Iowa-- Lt.C. John H. Stibbs
35th Iowa-- Major William Dill, Capt. Abraham N. Snyder
7th Minnesota-- Col. William R. Marshall, then Lt.C. George Bradley (Marshall took command of the Third Brigade after the death of Col. Sylvester G. Hill.
33rd Missouri-- William H. Heath
Battery I, 2nd Missouri Light Artillery-- Capt. Stephen H. Julian
--Old Secesh
From the June 30, 2021, Red Lake Nation News Recently acquired Confederate shirt and 1906 cavalry uniform speak to expanded military stories at historic Fort Snelling."
The Minnesota Historical Society recently acquired a Confederate shirt used to bind a wound received by a Minnesota soldier.
On the second day of the Battle of Nashville on December 16, 1864, Henry L. Mills, a sergeant in the 7th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was shot in the leg. In an effort to staunch the flow of blood, Mills grabbed the shirt of a slain Confederate soldier and used it as a tourniquet.
The shirt remains stained with Mills' blood.
Mills mustered out of Union service at Fort Snelling and returned to St. Paul, where he recovered and lived to the age of 92.
--Old Secesh
Sherman's 60,000-man army was divided into two wings: half were in the left wing marching through Aversaboro and Bentonville and the other half, the right wing were marching on a parallel route to the southeast of Slocum's wing.
Sherman's objective was Goldsboro, where he was going to meet an additional 40,000 troops and supplies. Union forces had no idea that Johnston had been able to scrape together any sort of resistance, but he had.
Johnston's force numbered some 21,000, including what was left of the shattered Army of Tennessee after Hood's Nashville Campaign.
After their initial success on March 19, the Confederates were unable to beat the Union Army and early on March 22 they began to withdraw toward Raleigh. The Union Army did not pursue them. The action was the largest battle to be fought on North Carolina soil during the war.
--Old Secesh
