Battles and Military History – Page 8 – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

Bragg vs. Rosecrans at Stones River, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

By Dale Thomas
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2001, 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the winter of 2001.

The Battle of Stones River took place between December 31, 1862 and January 2, 1863. The fighting started as it had at Shiloh, the previous spring, and the casualties were similar. On the morning of New Year’s Eve, the Confederate attack surprised the Federals who were still eating breakfast. The map shows the course of the fighting during that first, bloody day. The next day saw little significant fighting, but there was no celebrating of New Year’s Day. The two armies held their ground and tended to the wounded and dead.

Fort Ward: Bastion Against the South

By Daniel J. Ursu
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2016, All Rights Reserved

Fort Ward is one of the 68 forts eventually built by the North during the Civil War that ringed Washington, D.C. as protection against southern invasion and raids.

Governors Island

By Dale Thomas
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the winter of 2002.

I was stationed on Governors Island during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. Lying 500 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan, the 170-acre island was at the time First Army Headquarters. A few years later, the base became a Coast Guard station until being closed down in 1997. After a great deal of government red tape, I was able to tour the closed base in the summer of 1998. The next day my son, Geoffrey, and I looked down on the island from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower. Tragically, the skyline of lower Manhattan again resembles what I remember from my Army days. Governors Island, which had been a U.S. military post since the Revolution, will be turned over next year to New York City and reopened as a park.

The Deadliest Enemy

By Dale Thomas
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the spring of 2001.

Civil War enthusiasts know well that combat deaths and deaths resulting from battlefield wounds were major factors in the over 600,000 Civil War deaths. But the wartime experiences of the 5th Illinois Cavalry demonstrate that as deadly as combat was, something other than this was the deadliest enemy.

Grierson’s Raid

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved

After again watching the 1959 film The Horse Soldiers, I decided to revisit Grierson’s Raid. The movie starred John Wayne (as a stand-in for Col. Benjamin Grierson) and William Holden as the surgeon assigned to his brigade for the raid. John Ford directed. Unfortunately, the film veered considerably from the actual raid. It was based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Harold Sinclair. The film included: conflicts between Wayne and Holden over the latter’s medical practices, a love/hate relationship between Wayne (a self-described railroad builder) and a southern belle and plantation owner, a fictional battle at the Newton Station railhead, and another fictional battle based on a caricature of that of New Market, Virginia (May 15, 1864) involving young VMI cadets. (This battle is featured in the Summer 2010 issue of the Civil War Preservation Trust’s Hallowed Ground magazine.) Presumably, these were included for audience appeal. The movie did contain at least some of the actual elements of the incredible Grierson raid.

The Battle of Cedar Creek

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2014, All Rights Reserved

This October 19 marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It was one of the most dramatic events in the entire Civil War. Riding his horse Rienzi (memorialized in the stirring poem by Thomas Buchanan Read – “Sheridan’s Ride”) from Winchester, an inspiring Phil Sheridan re-organized and rallied his almost defeated Army of the Shenandoah in a few hours to defeat the rebel army of Jubal Early (Robert E. Lee’s “Bad Old Man”), who had launched a successful surprise attack in the fog that morning in Sheridan’s absence.

The 51st Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the spring of 2001.

The 51st Ohio Volunteer Infantry was formed from the Dover/New Philadelphia area of Ohio in October of 1861. After training, the unit was sent to Louisville, Kentucky. Their first casualty was a private who fell off the steamboat and drowned in the Ohio River. The 51st was at the Battle of Perryville but saw no action.

The 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2012, All Rights Reserved

During the 2009 Cleveland Civil War Roundtable field trip to Gettysburg, our group laid a wreath at the monument honoring the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (OVI). This Ohio regiment, known as “The Fighting Fools,” is perhaps best known for its role in helping to repel the Pickett-Pettigrew charge on July 3, 1863. The 8th OVI was part of the “Gibraltar” brigade of Alexander Hays’s division, in Winfield Hancock’s II Corps of the Army of the Potomac.

Hickenlooper’s Ohio Artillery Anchors the Hornet’s Nest at Shiloh

By Daniel J. Ursu
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2017, All Rights Reserved

Not only did the abolitionist John Brown, the “Meteor of the Civil War” as proffered by poet Walt Whitman, live part of his life in the northeastern Ohio Village of Hudson, but did another military leader of the Civil War actually hail from Hudson – that being Andrew Hickenlooper, Captain of the 5th Independent Battery Ohio Light Artillery.

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