Ozaukee County's
War History
by Daniel E. McGinley

as extracted from THE PORT WASHINGTON STAR
July 25, 1896



The Ozaukee Rifles
Chapter 5

The Union army remained in its camps on the battle field of Shiloh nearly three weeks after the fight, awaiting reinforcements and preparing for a forward move toward Corinth, Miss., where the defeated rebel army lay nursing its wounds and recruiting its strength. Gen. Halleck, or as he was more appropriately called, "Grand Mother Halleck," the most incompetent army commander of the war, was then in command of the department, and after the battle assumed personal command of the combined armies of Grant and Buell. Under his orders great preparations were made before the forward movement began, and when the advance did begin it was conducted in the most dilatory, timid manner possible.

The movement began on or about the 23d of April, portions of the army moving their camps forward two or three miles. On the 25th the Sixteenth struck its tents and moving two and one-half miles toward Corinth again encamped. May 1, it moved four miles further, and after two or three days it made a similar "advance." These tactics had to be followed by the different organizations of the army and before it had traversed one-half of the distance to Corinth, and when yet many miles from the enemy, the army was ordered to fortify with earthworks every new camp. Continuing to advance at a snail's pace and to dig up the whole country thereabouts, the army finally came within cannon shot of Corinth, when the enemy leisurely removed his stores and evacuated the place on May 29th. While on this campaign the Union army carried along its bulky "Sibley" tents and an enormous amount of camp equipage and baggage, the wagon train of a brigade being much larger than that of a division in the latter years of the war; and the officers and men who survived often in the latter years referred to the tactics, camps and trains of the Union army in the "siege of Corinth," with much amusement.

But there was one phase of the "siege" that was anything but amusing, and that was the ill health of the Union troops. Before the battle of Shiloh the sick list had become a long one, the exposure to the elements during the battle had greatly added to it, and the continuous rains and poor drinking water encountered during April and May swelled the army of invalids to an alarming proportion. The number of deaths from disease soon outnumbered the loss at Shiloh, and the Ozaukee Rifles had its share of the affliction. Many a brave fellow who had come through the great battle safely here met death in another form, and went down before the relentless attacks of disease, dying for the old flag as heroically as his comrades had died on the field of battle.

Lyman W. Chapman, the youngest of the patriotic Chapman brothers of Saukville was the first of the Rifles to die of disease in Dixie, passing away in a hospital at Pittsburg Landing on the 18th of April. Four days later the boyish, slender Augustus Hyde, of Fredonia, died in the same place. It was said by his comrades that his death was undoubtedly hastened by a blow received by him a few days previous, from the flat side of a sword in the hands of Capt. Williams, who had begun to show his utter unfitness to have the command or care of men. The manly Charles H. Townsend, of Mequon, died in a hospital at St. Louis, Mo., May 17, and John Turner of Dane county, died at the same place about the same time. James Wilson No. 2, of Sheboygan county, died in a hospital in camp, May 23d, and on the 28th William E. Pierce, of Port Washington died in the same hospital. Pierce was a brother-in-law of the Chapman boys, and his widow died in Port Washington but a few months ago. On June 2, brave, boyish William Goggin, who had left school in the town of Saukville the previous winter to join his brother, John, and uncle, Richard, in the Rifles at Camp Randall, quietly breathed his last in a hospital at Monterey, Miss.

The robust William Cooper, of Grafton, father of George and brother of Ephriam, battled with disease for some time, but it finally conquered him and he died in a hospital at Corinth, Miss., June 13th. In the same hospital brave Charles A. Ayers, of Port Washington surrendered his life on the 2nd of July; and on the 9th Richard J. Powers, of Milwaukee, died in the regiment's hospital. Charles Wesley Chapman of Saukville, breathed his last in a hospital at Corinth, July and Fred C. Kerner, of Port Ulao, the man who had lain sick in the camp during the battle of Shiloh, was relieved from pain by death in a hospital at St. Louis, Mo., July 31.

The following named members of the Rifles were discharged from the service on account of disabilities resulting from disease contracted in the field. In June, David B. Raynor, of Saukville, and Luther E. White, of Port Washington, both on the 30th. In August, Jonathan W. Pulford, of Plymouth, on the 11th; Patrick Walsh, No. 1, of Port Washington, and John Bristol, of Grafton, on the 14th; John J. Vincent on the 22nd; John Cody, of Grafton, on the 25th; Sergt. Lorenzo Osgood, of Port Washington, on date unknown; Andrew J. Cowen and Nils Livson, of Grafton, on the 26th. On September 6th, Richard C. Kann of Port Washington.

Immediately after the evacuation of Corinth by the enemy, the Sixteenth, with the balance of its division, went into camp near the town where it remained doing picket and guard duties during the months of June, July and August, and the first part of September. On September 17, the Sixteenth accompanied its division, Gen. John McAurther commanding which formed a part of the left wing of the Army of the Tennessee, that, under Gen. Ord, marched by a circuitous route to Iuka, Miss., to co-operate with the forces under Gen. Rosencrans in an attempt to entrap a large rebel force under Gen. Price. After marching and countermarching, deploying in line of battle and skirmishing heavily, the affair was so mismanaged that Price and his troops escaped and joining a larger force under Van Dorn, at Ripley, the combined rebel forces advanced against Corinth. Back to Corinth the Union army hurried and succeeded in reaching that place before it was invested by the enemy.

In the Iuka affair the Sixteenth acted with promptness, coolness and great gallantry. The Rifles were thrown forward as skirmishers one day, and boldly advancing into a large forest in which they had been told they would find the enemy in force, they, fortunately for themselves, traversed it for a long distance without meeting a foe. The whole regiment, acting under orders, made certain evolutions under fire with coolness and precision that wrung from its veteran commander, Gen. McAurther, the exclamation "Well done, Sixteenth!"