War Stories for my Grandchildren

War Stories for my Grandchildren
John Foster

John Watson Foster

War Stories for my Grandchildren

PREFACE

As they were growing up, I was frequently importuned by my grandchildren to tell them of my experiences in the Civil War for the Union; and now as the great-grandchildren are coming on, their parents are asking that these experiences be put in some permanent form, as their children may never have the opportunity to hear the narrative from me. I naturally shrink from giving general publicity to my personal experiences, especially as the field has been already so fully covered by comrades in arms; but I have consented to prepare such a narrative on condition that its circulation be confined to the family circles.

In preparing the narrative I have not thought it wise to trust to my memory of events which happened more than half a century ago; and fortunately I have at hand my many letters written to my wife, giving in detail my experiences during my entire service in the army, and while they are in some respects too intimate and confidential for general publicity, they have the merit of freedom from studied preparation and constitute an account of events as they occurred.

In this preparation I have indulged the hope that through it our children of this and coming generations may be inspired by a greater devotion to the American Union, for which their forefathers hazarded their lives and endured the hardships of war.

    John W. Foster

I

INTRODUCTION

After the inauguration of President Lincoln, March 4, 1861, much discussion followed in Washington and in the North, and plans were proposed respecting peaceable adjustment of the troubles occasioned by the secession of the Southern States from the Union. But the first hostile gun fired at Fort Sumter and the National flag, on April 12, put an end to all peace proposals, and solidified the North in favor of restoring and preserving the Union by force of arms. As one of our statesmen of that day expressed it, yesterday there had been difference of opinion, to-day there was unity.

When two days afterwards the President's call for seventy-five thousand volunteers for three months' service was issued, my first impulse was to respond to that call; but before any movement for enlistments could be made in our locality the quota of Indiana was filled to overflowing. I was content for several reasons to await the progress of events.

I cherished no desire for military glory, and distrusted my special fitness for the life of a soldier. In my college days I had contracted a horror of war and regarded it as the most terrible and futile of human follies. Shortly before my graduation I had delivered a public address for my literary society on peace and war, using as its title Charles Sumner's well-known oration – "The True Grandeur of Nations." I regarded myself as a peace man.

I had only recently entered upon the practice of my profession, and was ambitious to make a reputation as a lawyer. But, most serious of all, I had just established a modest home with a young wife and our first-born babe of less than a year old. It would be a terrible strain upon my affections and hopes to break these dearest of all ties for a life in the military service.

I, with the great body of the people of the North, entertained the hope that the seventy-five thousand men, who constituted the army so quickly formed, would prove sufficient for the reëstablisment of the Federal Union. But the battle of Bull Run, July 21, dispelled that delusion, and the President's call for three hundred thousand afterwards increased to five hundred thousand volunteers for three years' service indicated that a long and bloody war was in prospect. I resolved no longer to delay my entrance into that service.

Two days after that battle I wrote my wife as follows: —

"I intended to have written you a long letter last night in reply to your good one received yesterday afternoon, but I had no heart to write. The terrible and disastrous calamity to our army has made me sick. A thousand times rather would I have given my life and left you a widow and my darling child fatherless than that this defeat should have happened. I think I shall go to Indianapolis to-morrow to urge my immediate appointment in our new regiment. I want to help retrieve our lost fortune. I have no fear of our ultimate triumph."

When the President's second call for volunteers was issued, a movement was at once set on foot to organize a regiment at Evansville, my home, and the Governor of the State had intimated his intention to appoint me major of this new regiment. On August 9 my appointment as major was made. The next day I sent my wife's brother, Alexander, to Glendale, near Cincinnati, where she was visiting her mother, to notify her of the event and give her details of the situation. He bore her a letter in which I wrote: "Zan [Alexander] will explain the cause of his coming. I want to be with my wife as much as I can before I go, so you must hurry home as fast as you can… While you are a loving wife, remember to be a brave woman and your husband will love you the more."

I had gone to Glendale some time before to talk over with my wife my intention to enter the army, and she had given her consent; but when the time came for me to take the final step she seemed to hesitate and draw back. It was a terrible trial to contemplate, her solitary lot with her little babe and I away in the army. In answer to her letter I wrote: "You seem in your last letter to be about to withdraw your consent to let me go. That was the special reason of my late visit to Glendale, and I thought it was agreed. I have a very honorable and, to me, very flattering position, and in some degree removed from danger; and of course I shall, for the love I bear my wife and child, be as careful of my life as my duty will permit. The President has called for four hundred thousand men, and of that number it is my duty to be one. I regard this as important a war as that of the Revolution, the issue is the life and maintenance of the Government, and I would be ashamed of myself, and my children should be ashamed of me in after years, if I declined so honorable a position as that tendered me. Be of good courage."

In response to my call she came at once to Evansville, and soon entered into the spirit of my work in organizing and outfitting the regiment, and, as will be seen later in these pages, she remained to the close of my service my faithful and devoted supporter.

II

THE MISSOURI CAMPAIGN

The organization at Evansville became the Twenty-fifth Indiana Infantry Regiment of Volunteers. On August 22, thirteen days after its official staff was appointed, the regiment was ordered to St. Louis, Missouri. It was a notable farewell the citizens of Evansville and the surrounding country gave the regiment on its departure. The deportment of my wife I refer to in one of my first letters to her from St. Louis. I copy it at some length because it reflects the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of other soldiers: —

"I felt proud of you as my wife and loved you the more for the manner in which you acted on the departure of our regiment from Evansville. While I know that no wife loves her husband more than you do me, yet you could let me go off, for how long you know not, to brave the dangers of the battlefield, because I thought it my duty, without a murmur or reproach or entreaty. And now that I am away, I hope you will be the true woman still. You know that our separation is not harder for you to bear, surrounded by home and all its comforts, your darling child and dear mother, than it is for me deprived of all these. You must be hopeful and cheerful. I am here because duty prompts me, and you would be ashamed of me if I were not here.

"I will try to do all I can to preserve my health and so far protect myself from dangers as my duty and honor will permit. You must remember that there are tens of thousands of wives who bear the same lot as you do. It would make me very unhappy to know that you were disheartened and lamenting my absence and exposure to danger; and, on the contrary, it would lighten my trials to know that you were bearing it like a brave, true-hearted woman. I know you are my devoted wife, and I know you will act your part nobly."

Our regiment was ordered to St. Louis because the State of Missouri was in a critical condition and in danger of being swept onto the side of the rebellion. St. Louis had been placed on the side of the Union by the daring and promptness of Frank P. Blair and General Lyon, the commander of the arsenal and barracks, in the seizure of the rebel Camp Jackson, and dispersion of the State Guards stationed in the city. But before our arrival the Union forces had met with a disastrous repulse at Wilson Creek, and General Lyon killed, one of the most promising of the Union generals. Soon after we reached St. Louis, the Confederate General Price captured Lexington, took the entire Union force prisoners, and was overrunning the greater portion of the State. General Frémont had been assigned to the command of the Department, and troops were being rushed forward to enable him to clear the State of rebels.

The Twenty-fifth Indiana remained at Benton Barracks, St. Louis, for three weeks, while Frémont was organizing his army to drive General Price and his forces out of the State. How we occupied our time is in part shown by my letters. James C. Veatch, the colonel of our regiment, was appointed largely because of the service he had rendered in the campaign for the election of Lincoln, but it proved a good appointment. The lieutenant-colonel, William H. Morgan, had seen some service with the three months' volunteers and as a member of a military company had acquired some knowledge of drill and tactics. He was the only person in our regiment of 1047 officers and men who knew anything about military affairs.

After being in camp at Benton Barracks a few days, I wrote: —

"Our colonel is doing all he can for the comfort and convenience of his men. Ever since we arrived, he has been stirring up headquarters in our behalf. In a day or two he will have us paid off, which will be decidedly acceptable; and is now bent on having us supplied with good guns before we leave here, and though good guns are scarce here, he thinks he will succeed.

"Colonel Morgan is invaluable as a drill and camp officer. He devotes three hours each day to the instruction of the officers, and two hours to battalion drill, besides his other duties. He has the officers recite to him daily from the Book of Tactics. Our regiment is under excellent discipline and very orderly, and I am satisfied if they will give us a few weeks to drill and good guns, that we will do honor to the State and country."

In the same letter to my wife, I wrote of myself: —

"Although the place of major may be one of ease, if an officer desires he may keep himself busy and be quite useful in regulating the camp, seeing that the officers and men do their duty, looking after the wants of the men, assisting in battalion drill, etc. And I am the more busy, because in addition I devote from two to five hours in study and recitation of the tactics. I accepted the position in our regiment, not as a sinecure, but because I thought my country needed my services, and I have resolved to leave nothing undone that will fit me to discharge my duties properly, and so prepare myself that if it should ever happen that the lives of a thousand men should be placed in my keeping, I might, as Dr. Daily would say, be competent for an emergency. So that now the time does not hang heavily on my hands. Personally I am getting along very well in camp."

A few days later I report that the regiment has received its first payment, and I make a remittance to my wife of $130 in gold.

My father, then in his sixty-second year, was an ardent defender of the Union, and took great interest in the organization of our regiment, to which he contributed two of his sons, my brother, next to me in age, being the quartermaster of our regiment. He had ordered to be made the flags of the regiment, and as they were not finished before it left Evansville, they were presented at Benton Barracks, of which I give the following account to my wife: —

"We had the ceremony of the Flags' Presentation yesterday at dress parade. Colonel Veatch read father's letter and made some very appropriate remarks, and the thanks of the regiment were unanimously tendered to him for his appropriate and valuable gift. The National flag is very fine, but I think the regimental flag is the best and most elegant I ever saw. There is no regiment from Indiana and I think none in the West that has as fine a stand of colors as ours. The men are very proud of them."

The following extract describes a treat at Benton Barracks, the like of which we had more than once during the year, as we were on or near the Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers within easy reach of Evansville: —

"Your box of good things came on Sunday and was opened immediately. That evening we had what your Cincinnati cousin would call 'a sumptous tea.' William, our cook, got out all his dishes and I furnished him with a new tablecloth and he got up a table in fine style with your dainties, with the aid of the bouquets and fruits our kind neighbors here had sent. Not only Aleck and I, but all our mess have enjoyed your treat very highly."

One of the matters that troubled me about giving up my affairs at Evansville was the continued maintenance of a large Mission Sunday School which I had organized and kept up in a flourishing way for some years. I did not get encouraging news as to its condition, and I wrote my wife about an efficient superintendent: —

"I hardly know whom you can get in my place. There are very few men who will take the trouble and have the patience and perseverance to keep the school up through the hot summer and cold winter successfully as I have done for four years. But it ought not to go down."

The school was maintained for some time, but it was discontinued long before the war closed.

Some of the embarrassments attending my new and untried duties are described in the following letter: —

"I was detailed to-day as field officer of the brigade, and have been kept busy all day, in the saddle almost continuously from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., and am tired enough. I went over this morning and reported myself to the general for duty, and the first thing he said was that the adjutant-general was away and I would have to mount the brigade guard. As I had never even mounted a regimental guard, you may be sure it rather stumped me, but like a soldier I did my best, and in the presence of the general, the officer of the day, and other officers I performed the duty and passed the guard in review satisfactorily."

After three weeks of instruction and comfort at Benton Barracks we received orders to go to the front, and fearing my wife might be disturbed by the movement, I wrote her a consolatory letter: —

"We have orders to leave to-morrow for Jefferson City. Of course we are in great hurry and have very little time to write letters, even to dear and loving ones at home. We left our homes to fight our country's battles, and naturally we are glad to see a prospect of that kind of work before us. You must not be unduly solicitous or alarmed. You may hear reports of the Twenty-fifth being entirely cut to pieces or all prisoners, even before we are in sight of our enemy. Don't place any confidence in vague rumors. If anything serious takes place, Aleck or I will send early word home, or some of our friends will for us, and if you do not hear, you may be certain we are busy or out of telegraphic or mail communication, and you need not think we are dead or prisoners. Be a true, brave woman. Act worthy of a soldier's wife, and put your trust in God, remembering that He does all things well."

The trip to Jefferson City was one of many railroad rides the regiment had, all more or less uncomfortable. I wrote, September 16: —

"I have only time to write you a pencil note at the dépôt. We arrived here safely yesterday at noon, but tired and in bad condition. As we began our march from Benton Barracks a hard rain set in and so continued half the day. Reached the dépôt at 3 P.M., but did not get off till 10 P.M., in crowded cars, little sleep, rain all night, with leaky cars. It took us fifteen hours to run to this place, one hundred and twenty-five miles. Just as we reached our camp it commenced to rain in torrents again and so continued nearly all night. We got the tents out in the rain. If we get through safely with our first experience in hardships of soldiering we will do pretty well."

Our regiment had been ordered to Jefferson City to form part of the grand army with which Frémont was expected to sweep Price and his forces out of Missouri, and for the next three months and more we were engaged in marching and counter-marching with hardly any fighting worth recording. One of the not unusual experiences of camp life, when the enemy were supposed to be near, I gave my wife while at Jefferson City: —

"The news here to-day is that Lexington is taken by the secessionists. If that is so we are going to have some warm work in this part of the country. Night before last several shots were heard in the direction of our pickets two or three miles out, which caused the alarm to be sounded and brought out all the regiments of the brigade into line of battle. Some of them came out with a great deal of noise and confusion. Ours came in perfect order and to our full satisfaction; a person fifty yards from our line would not have known that there was any disturbance at all going on in our camp…

"I get along tolerably well in daytime, as I keep so busy with other matters I don't have time to get homesick. But last night I had such a sweet dream about little Alice; and then when I woke and found it only a dream, how I wanted to be at home just a little while to see you and her. But let us be of good cheer and hope. I will be with you again."

This is a frequent topic of my letters. A few weeks later I write: —