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“The history of this corps is a particularly varied one .
.. much might be said of the injustice rendered this brave body of
soldiers.”
— Beers 1888 History of Clark County
SPRINGFIELD — In three years spent researching the Civil War service of the 71st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Martin Stewart discovered that standard local histories “romanticized to a certain extent” the role their boys in blue played in the Civil War.
So when the 1888 Beers History of Clark County calls the history of the unit originally led by Springfielder Rodney Mason “particularly varied,” it’s a historian’s red flag.
The title of Stewart’s book, “Redemption,” describes his own well researched view of the unit’s record. But with extensive use of soldiers’ letters and newspaper accounts, the Troy native — an engineer by profession — presents more than a judgment. He gives us a textured view of the soldiering experiences of men from Mercer, Auglaize, Miami and Clark counties.
‘Sober to a man’
Stewart writes as fall of 1861 neared and it became clear the Civil War was going to last, “Ohio, like the other northern states, was ill-prepared to raise an all- volunteer army.”
With permission of Ohio’s Adjutant General, “individuals doing the recruiting were typically local politicians, civil leader or prominent businessmen, and those who were successful ... were often appointed officers.”
Although Rodney Mason had had a poor showing that July at the Union’s “devastating defeat” at Bull Run, Stewart said Mason was not alone: “Everybody’s actions were questioned that day.”
So when the son of the Springfield lawyer and longtime Republican politician Samson Mason (Stewart wrongly identifies him as Samuel Mason) expressed his desire to lead the 71st, he seemed a logical choice.
New Carlisle-born attorney Elihu Stephen Williams, 26, helped Capt. James Carlin with recruiting in Miami County. Recruiting spots in Springfield included George Spence’s law office, the J. Petticrew carriage shop and Ransom & Rogers Bookstore, where Solomon J. Houck, a 31-year-old gas works agent, led the efforts.
The unit assembled in Troy that fall, and the Springfield Daily News reported that after partaking in a “grand dinner” given by the citizens of Piqua, the 71st “returned to camp sober — to a man.”
After a parade in Cincinnati, the 71st traveled to Paducah, Ky., where they saw the first Southern sympathizers they would live among for years and the first Union wounded from the battle of Fort Donelson.
“They are an awful sight to see,” wrote one soldier, “some with part of an arm off, some a leg, some shot in the face. They are cut up in every way.”
A faltering start
The 71st’s first action came as it guarded the Lick Creek crossing on the Hamburg Road near the Tennessee River.
“Even after 150 years, it is not possible to determine exactly what happened to the 71st OVI at Shiloh on Sunday, April 6, 1862,” Stewart writes.
The Confederate attack came Sunday morning as Union soldiers were preparing their breakfasts. And although Lt. Barton Kyle was mortally wounded, one of 57 killed and 51 listed as missing — too many for a unit that was accused of running en masse toward safety — “the men of the 55th Illinois certainly felt that they had been abandoned by the 71st,” Stewart writes.
In the Northern press, Stewart notes, the 71st, and other Ohio units “were accused of cowardice.”
Returning to New Carlisle, Lt. Elihu Williams wrote that although “quite unwell,” he would be more than willing to travel to Troy to counter the “slanderous reports” with “a plain, unvarnished tale” of what happened.
But in his memoirs, Gen. Ulysses Grant recalls Col. Mason being “mortified at his action,” coming “with tears in his eyes” and begging “to be allowed another trial.”
Mason’s failure at that next trial sealed his reputation and, for a time, sullied that of the 71st.
Sad surrender
At Clarksville, Tenn., on Aug. 18, 1862, Mason thought himself facing a superior force commanded by Col. Adam Rankin “Stovepipe” Johnson. At first rejecting his advice to surrender, Mason gave up his force of 125-200 men to a force of 200-300 Confederates without a shot.
The Western Standard of Celina, a largely Democratic paper, replied with withering editorial fire.
“The cowardly Colonel of the 71st regiment ... went into the service not from motives of patriotism, but to win a name and fame that would carry him into the Halls of Congress, and his record is made.”
Four days later, by order of the president, Mason was cashiered “for repeated acts of cowardice in the face of the enemy.”
An Ohio Congressional delegation appealed to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who told them reinstating cashiered officers would demoralize the army.
Of the junior officers, only Clark County’s Solomon Houck was “quickly reinstated,” Stewart reports, although he does not explain why.
The remainder of the 71st soldiered on.
Rebels, runaways
In July of 1863, the unit was assigned to Gallatin, Tenn., where General John Hunt Morgan and his raiders were harassing the union in a battle for control of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.
With the Emancipation Proclamation in effect, “hundreds of runaway slaves were living at makeshift camps in Gallatin,” Stewart writes.
In a letter to the Bryan (Ohio) Union Press, Capt. W.A. Hunter said recently emancipated slaves were slaving away at army work, having been given “just as much right to do the drudgery of war as the white.”
Gallatin was also a place where the 14th United States Colored Infantry was formed. Giving way to practicality, Stewart writes, “the families ... were allowed to stay in the contraband camp.”
Private John M. Piles of the 71st’s Company E wrote: “I say arm every Negro to kill every Rebel.”
At Gallatin, Springfield’s Capt. Sol Houck was provost marshal, heading the police force. Dealing with many Tennessee natives at the time, Houck befriended a couple of them and sent their thoroughbred horses temporarily to his Ohio farm “when these valuable horses were going to be pressed into service.” Houck returned them after the war.
With Ohio’s Clement Vallandingham and former Union General George McClellan campaigning for peace with the South, politics continued to impose itself on the unit.
Celina’s Western Standard complained that “had any abolitionist accomplished one half” of what Capt. Elihu Williams had accomplished, “official military honors would have been heaped upon him; but, being a Democrat, the captain must be content with ... having well and truly performed his duty.”
Redemption
In February of 1864, five companies of the 71st went to fight guerillas in Tennessee, an action that would help revive its reputation.
In a letter home to Miami County Col. Henry McConnell wrote: “Our boys chased the rebels into caves in the mountains and then lit candles and went in after them. We can beat the rebels bushwhacking in their own country.”
That August, near Jonesboro, Ga., Sgt. William T. Hunter sent another glowing report: “Half of the 71st were on the skirmish line and behaved first rate.”
Both actions proved a prelude to the Battle of Nashville, where Capt. William McClure recalled troops piling up their knapsacks for a charge they knew would be so hazardous that “big strong men I never knew to flinch would turn white around the mouth, swallow their Adam’s apple.”
The unit officially took 122 casualties at the battle, including two officers and 19 killed, five officers and 96 men wounded.
“However,” adds Stewart, “many of the 71st OVI wounded died in Tennessee hospitals after the reports were written.”
The unit was in Tennessee still when news came of Lee’s surrender to Grant and, on its heels, Lincoln’s assassination.
“My heart is very sad over the death of our president in cold blood,” Private John Piles wrote to his wife, Sarah. “How sad every heart is as we have lost one of the noblest men we will ever see.”
Backing Mason
Unit members were involved in landmark events at war’s end. Surviving the infamous Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Major James Carlin was killed when the steamer Sultana exploded near Vicksburg on its way home. Lt. John Davis, also an Andersonville veteran, survived the blast.
Among the other soldiers of the 71st, writes Stewart:
• Solomon Houck, who had broken his leg at the Battle of Nashville, returned to Springfield to be a traveling agent.
• Amos E. Duncan, a hospital steward associated with the unit (and who pronounced Confederate raider John Morgan dead) returned to Yellow Springs to practice medicine and teach at Antioch College.
• Col. Rodney Mason, who never resumed his military career, married a wealthy woman from Sackett’s Harbor, N.Y., and worked as a patent attorney in Washington.
From Iola, Kansas, where he’d relocated from New Carlisle and served as a treasurer, postmaster, councilman and mayor, William McClure wrote a letter to his unit’s 35th reunion at West Milton about events at Shiloh.
In it, he said “no particular officer was to blame that day and Col. Mason was not the coward he was made out to be,” Stewart writes. “A resolution was passed by the group endorsing (the) letter.”
And at least for the surviving members of the 71st, that set the record straight.
Martin Stewart’s “Redemption: The 71st Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War” (258 pages) is available at Around About Books, 8 W. Main St., Troy, and by
e-mailing
Stewart at mstewart4@woh.rr.com. The cost is $35.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
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