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From: "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>
Subject: [IA-CIVIL-WAR] Civil War Memories-1889
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 07:57:07 -0600

IOWA HISTORICAL RECORD
VOL. V. JANUARY, 1889. No. 1.

WAR MEMORIES.

By the favor of Gov. Kirkwood I was appointed Assistant Surgeon of the
11th Iowa Infantry Volunteers on the organization of that regiment. I joined
it at Camp McClellan, the place of rendezvous, three miles above Davenport,
on the Mississippi river bluff. The Colonel, A. H. Hare, lived at Muscatine,
and had not yet joined. The Lieutenant Colonel, William Hall, was in
command. Hall's home was in Davenport, where he had been a young attorney.
He was about thirty years old, wore his dark hair, parted in the middle,
long and streaming over his shoulders. He had a full dark beard and a pale
intellectual face. He was kind-hearted, generous, gay with his friends,
impulsive and brave. He had a fine mind, lodged in a small frail body. He
labored under a chronic nervous disease, which made his legs unreliable. In
walking, when he threw forward his foot to take a step, it was sure to go
too far forward, or to one side, or perhaps backwards, while the other, when
it came its turn to progress, would execute movements opposite and contrary.
This unfortunate infirmity, which was temporarily benefited by stimulants,
often occasioned him to be wrongly accused of intoxication when he was
sober, and credited with sobriety when he was toned up with whiskey. The
parents of Col. Hall's wife, Mr. and Mrs.Higgins, had an elegant and
hospitable home on one of the hills back of the city, and here, just before
leaving camp McClellan for the south, Hall took all his officers one evening
to tea. Our table zests are much enhanced by the recollection of delicious
flavors relished when hungry youths, and the rich aroma of Mrs. Higgin's
coffee has often lent for me a sweet flavor to bad decoctions of rye and Rio
since that evening.

It was a cold snowy November day on which we left Davenport on a
steamboat. The men murmured at being crowded on one boat and exposed to the
weather, and Gov. Kirkwood being aboard he obtained additional
transportation when we landed at Burlington, and half the regiment was
transferred to another boat. We took aboard Col. Hare at Muscatine, and the
Major, J. C. Abercrombie, at Burlington. The Major, who proved himself a
very trusty and gallant soldier, had command of the battalion on the boat I
was on. Soon after leaving Burlington supper was served on the boat, the
cabin of which was assigned to the commissioned officers. At this hour a
great many of the men reported themselves sick. I requested the steward of
the boat in such cases to supply them with cabin fare and allow them beds in
the state-room. Pretty soon the long dining table in the cabin was lined on
either side with sick soldiers disposing of the cabin viands at a rapid
rate. Abercrombie, who had had experience as a soldier in the Mexican war,
took me aside, and told me those men at the table were evidently not sick,
and that if I did not use more discrimination I would soon have the whole
battalion in the cabin. After promising more care, I soon learned from the
Major that he was familiar with the place of my residence, which he said he
often had visited on business during the sessions here of the legislature,
but, as I divined from the drift of his conversation, to pay his addresses
to a young lady at the Crummy House.

Col. Hall's ill health made his temper irritable at times. After the
battle of Shiloh, in the slow march from Pittsburg Landing to Corinth, we
were for some days encamped in a dense swamp, devoted previously to our
coming entirely to the uses of owls and ticks. One night Hall lay there in
his tent unable to sleep. He had issued strict orders against noise in camp
after taps. On this night the orders seemed to be ignored. To hoo, to hoo,
sounded a voice, very distinct and very human, and to a nervous man could
easily be transmuted to Tough Hall, Tough Hall, to h-l, to h-l, or anything
else disrespectful. The Colonel called the guard who was pacing in front of
his tent, sent for the officer of the day, and had many suspects arrested.
But the offender was not detected till dawn revealed the culprit roosting on
a pine bough over the Colonel's tent, in the form and semblance of a screech
owl. The Colonel accepted the apologies of the bird, who sent his regrets in
a parting to hoo, to hoo, and Hall devoted his attention for some time
afterwards to extricating himself from the toils of a huge tick.

It was during this short campaign that the "scratches" became so
prevalent as to suggest to a casual visitor the idea that the regular
old-fashioned itch was raging in the army as an epidemic. All soon became
familiar with the pests which occasioned the discomfort. On one occasion
when the camps of the 16th and the 11th joined, Surgeon Wm. Watson of the
11th, visited a friend in the 16th, to which I had by this time been
transferred. He began to chafe his friends of the 16th with the prevalence
of "grey backs" and their large size in the 16th, claiming that the 11th was
comparatively exempt from the nuisance. At this moment Capt. Alpheus Palmer
of the 16th, by the light of our rail fire detected an enormous one crawling
on the cape of Watson's overcoat. This so turned the jest against Watson
that he shunned the camp of the 16th for sometime afterward

. It was about this time that the Government having authorized an
additional assistant surgeon to each regiment, the new medical officers
began to join their regiments. Dr. D. C. McNeal, of Clinton county, was
appointed to the 16th. McNeal was a man of varied abilities. In addition to
his professional qualifications, which were good, he had been a Methodist
minister and an editor, and was an amateur actor, musician and
ventriloquist. He wore a full beard and his goatee reached to his belt. Soon
after he joined the 16th I made a visit to Chaplain Estabrook, of the 15th,
and in the course of conversation remarked on the arrival of McNeal.
Estabrook was a very social man, and distinguished himself in his brave
ministrations to the wounded on the field during the battle of Shiloh. On
this occasion he was sitting on a camp stool at an improvised table where he
had been writing. At the mention of McNeal's name, he laid his face between
his hands on the table, and I could see by the convulsive motions of his
sides that he was indulging in a fit of silent laughter which he could not
suppress. After a while he raised his head, and, gave me some account of
McNeal's varied accomplishments, which I soon afterwards learned for myself.

It was while we were at Grand Junction, just previous to the beginning
of the Central Mississippi campaign, that McNeal, tucking up his beard,
changing his dress, and disguising his voice, deceived Capt. Turner, of the
16th, into the belief that he, McNeal, was Judge Thayer, then of Muscatine,
but now editor of the Clinton Age, who was expected daily on a visit with
others from Iowa. Turner was seated on a canvas stool, taking a hand in a
game of old sledge, by the light of a tallow dip, on an inverted candle box,
but was so completely deceived that he deserted the game, shook hands, and
entered into conversation about home matters with the supposed judge.

It was before this, and while we were at Bolivar, that Col. Add. H.
Sanders, of the 16th, now editor of the Davenport Tribune, who was
near-sighted, mortified himself before a squad of comrades. We had just gone
into a new camp, and the tents were pitched irregularly. Sanders had
everything in his tent always in precise order. In this instance he came
into Capt. Palmer's tent, supposing it to be his own, and flopped down on
the cot, and began to give directions how those present should conduct
themselves while there. "I don't want you, captain," he began, "to smoke
that strong pipe in here, nor you, doctor, to put your feet on that stool."
Pretty soon some one intimated to the colonel that he was in the wrong pew,
when he hastily beat a retreat. Sanders, however, was not given to
retreating before the enemy. He was brave to rashness, and if commissioned
officers had been included in the competition for prizes for bravery, he
would have given Sergeant Duffin a hard tussle for the gold medal. I
recollect how disappointed he was after the battle of Iuka because he had
not been wounded. Two weeks afterwards we had another battle at Corinth,
where Sanders was more fortunate. The first day's fight was nearly over and
Sanders was still unwounded, though wooing the enemy's lead. Finally, in
desperation, he rode a long way in front of his regiment, as if to
reconnoitre, and the coveted bullet came, carrying away a good-sized slab of
flesh from the outside of his thigh. With all his bravery he dreaded pain,
and while being taken to the rear expressed some anxiety to know whether the
ball was lodged and would have to be cut out which proved unnecessary, as
the- missile, after laying bare his thigh bone, which glistened like a
smooth quarter, had gone on, perhaps to kill another less lucky man.


Cathy Joynt Labath
Scott Co, IA USGenWeb Project
http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/index.htm
Iowa History Project
http://iagenweb.org/history/index.htm

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