McHenry County CW Round Table Discussion Group Meets Sat., July 24

The McHenry County Civil War Round Table discussion group will be meeting Saturday, July 24 at Panera Bread in Crystal Lake, Illinois, at the corner of Main Street and US-Highway 14 (Northwest Highway).

And, even better, IT IS IN PERSON.  None of that Zoom stuff.

The time is 10 a.m. to noon.

The topic:

The Lincoln Conspirators.

All welcome, even non-members, so if you have an interest in the war and especially the Lincoln assassination, be there.

Should Mary Surratt have been executed?

Come On By.  --Old Secesh

Poltroons, Patriots & Buffoons: Oh Those Generals-- Part 4: Military Experience and Civilian Inexperience

Continuing with Bruce Allardice's statistical look at Civil War generals:

Again, the first number is Union, second Confederate.

Officers in Foreign Armies:  20  //  3

Mexican War/Other War Experience;  62  //  58

TOTAL WITH EXPERINCE 

395  (66%)  //  272  (64%)*

INEXPERIENCED CIVILIANS

188  //  153

TOTAL   

583  //  425

*  Modern research shows that Warner missed the prewar state militia service and military school attendance of a number of Southern generals.

--Old Secesh

McHenry County CWRT June 8-- Part 3: Poltroons, Patriots & Politicians

Our speaker was Bruce Allardice and his topic was "Poltroons, Patriots & Politicians:  Civil War Generals.  Well, I had to look up "Poltroons" to see what it meant.  In case you also don't know, it means an utter coward.

So, we were going to hear about Civil War generals.  This presentation could also have been called "Civil War generals:  The Good, the Bad & the Ugly."  After hearing the talk, it was amazing that these generals could have fought their way out of a paper bag, even with some help.

But, anyway, he handed out a Civil War Generals Fact Sheet and is was of interest, so I will write it down here.  These numbers taken from Ezra Warner's "generals in Blue" and "Generals in Gray" with, as he says, slight modifications.

********************************

PREWAR MILITARY EXPERIENCE   The first number will be Union generals and the second Confederate.

West Point Graduates:    217  //  146

West Point Non-Graduates:     11  //  10

Attended Other Military Schools:      9  // 23

Regular Army/Navy Officers:    36  //  22

State Militia:    40  // 10

And More.  --Old Secesh

McHenry County CW Round Table Meeting, June-- Part 2: The Portabella Burger Incident

And, even better, eight of us met up at Checkers II restaurant in "downtown" Union (there isn't much of a downtown) before the meeting and enjoyed conversation and good food, including me being "trucked" by what they called the Portabella Burger. 

It was listed under handcrafted sandwiches (which also included burgers) and I figured it was a hamburger paddy topped by a huge mushroom and it also included three of my favorite things on any sandwich, but especially on a burger and that would be  sauteed onions, peppers and melted bleu cheese.  All served on a pretzel roll.

Wow, my mouth watered at this prospect.

But, when I got it. there was no hamburger.  A huge slice of portabella mushroom took the place of the burger paddy.  Disappointed, but I bit into it and boy, was that good.  I'd order it again, even without a burger.

We then adjourned over to the McHenry County Historical Society Museum for the meeting.

Everyone was required to wear face masks and social distancing was practiced.

--Old Secesh

Finally, an In-Person McHenry County Civil War Round Table Meeting in June-- Part 1: Back in the Saddle Again

Little did I know when I attended the McHenry County Civil War Round Table Meeting in March 2020, but that was going to be the last one until June 8, 2021.  And, you know why.  Our usual meeting place, the Woodstock Public Library (Illinois) was closed and still is until sometime in the fall for meetings.

Now, we had had several meetings with presentations via Zoom, but since I don't do Zoom, I was left out (by my own choice of course).  We did have several discussion group meeting in person starting in the summer and fall of 2020.

Because there were no meetings, it was decided that anyone who had paid dues for 2020, did not have to do so for 2021.

Sadly, in the interim, we lost several members who died and several who have moved away or in extremely poor health.

I tell you, this virus has been rough on all history groups.  Of course, a big part of  the problem is that history groups tend to be a bit long in the tooth if you know what I mean.

Anyway, out president is a member of the McHenry County Historical Society and he was able to arrange to have their museum in Union, Illinois, open for a Tuesday night meeting on June 8, 2021.  That is about a 30 mile drive for me, but, as they say, I was "chomping at the bit" to get back with history.

Welcome Back.  --Old Secesh

7th Minnesota Infantry, Henry Mills' Outfit-- Part 2: Battle of Nashville and the End of the War

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

7th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, Henry Mills' Outfit-- Part 1

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

Henry Mills' Bloody Shirt-- Part 2

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

Henry Mills' Bloody Shirt-- Part 1

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

Further Research on the 7th Minnesota, Henry Mills and the 'Bloody Shirt'

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

Civil War Events in July: Draft Riot in New York City, First Manassas, Emancipation Proclamation and the Crater

JULY 11, 1864

Battle of  Fort Stevens.  Confederates fail to capture Washington, D.C.

JULY 13, 1863

Riots erupt in New York City in protest of the draft

JULY 18, 1863

the 54th Massachusetts attacks Fort Wagner near Charleston, S.C.

JULY 21, 1861

First Battle of Manassas, Virginia (or do you say First Battle of Bull Run?)

JULY 22, 1862

President Lincoln presents the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet

JULY 24, 1864

Second Battle of Kernstown, Virginia

JULY 28, 1864

Battle of Ezra Church, Georgia

JULY 30, 1864

Battle if the Crater at Petersburg, Virginia

--Old Secesh

Civil War Events in July: Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Port Hudson

From the American Battlefield Trust July 2021 Calendar.

JULY 1, 1862

Battle of Malvern Hill, Virginia

JULY 1 1863

Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, begins

JULY 3, 1863

Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania concludes with Pickett's Charge

JULY 4, 1863

Confederate surrender Vicksburg, Mississippi

JULY 7, 1865

Conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln executed

JULY 8, 1863

Surrender of Port Hudson, Louisiana

JULY 9, 1864

Battle of Monocacy, Maryland

--Old Secesh

Battle of Gettysburg

From the American Battlefield Trust July 2021 calendar.

GETTYSBURG, PA.

1,183 acres saved.

On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederates under Gen. John B. Gordon attacked the position of Brig. Gen. Francis Barlow's division of the Union's Eleventh Corps on a small rise known as Barlow's Knoll.

In 2020, the Trust commemorated the anniversary of the 1863 battle by transferring 35 acres at Barlow's Knoll to the National Park Service as a permanent addition to the Gettysburg National Military Park.

A photograph of Barlow's Knoll by Noel Kline accompanied the month.

--Old Secesh

Kentucky Union Soldier Gets New Gravestone-- Part 3: To the End of the War

The men made their way back down the mountain to their horses and were dismayed to find that the horses had starved to death where they had been tied.  

Incidentally, the volunteer who had allowed himself to be captured to start the ruse, was never seen or heard from again.

The situation was turned around when Gen. Joseph Hooker and two corps of Union soldiers arrived to relieve the besieged Gen.  William Rosecrans. They drove the Confederates off the mountain in what is called "The Battle Above the Clouds."

The Union forces seized Chattanooga and gained control of the Tennessee River and cut off the Confederate supply line and paved the way for the decisive Battle of Missionary Ridge.

On May  31, 1864, Johnny Lobb was injured at the Battle of Burnt Hickory near  Kingston, Georgia, when a minie ball struck his right arm above the elbow.  After treatment in a hospital, he returned to his company.  He was honorably discharged on March 19, 1865,  and returned to Hammonsville and began farming.

He was born on February  25, 1844, and died Jan. 2, 1911.

--Old Secesh

Kentucky Union Soldier Gets New Gravestone-- Part 2: Trapped on a Mountain and Then, a Ruse Works

John Robert Lobb served in Company e, 27th Kentucky Infantry (Union).

In late November of 1863, he and several comrades were trapped for eighteen days by Confederate soldiers on Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga, Tennessee.

With the Confederates in hot pursuit, the Union soldiers rode their horses as far up the mountain as they could, then dismounted, tied their horses and continued further up on foot.  Food and water became scarce and they were reduced to half rations and the  to five men to one man's ration.

After fifteen days, their captain asked for a volunteer to carry a message down the mountain with plans to be captured by the enemy. indicated that there were a thousand or more Union soldiers on their way to reinforce and resupply the men on the mountain.

A volunteer was found and within about 24 hours, John Lobb and his fellow soldiers could see the Confederates  retreating and that their man had been captured by them.  The ruse had worked.

--Old Secesh