OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 26 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 March 28, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits - part 26 from notes of S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ part 26 Major General James B. McPherson Major General James B. McPherson was one of the idols of the Civil War. Perhaps he may have been one of the most popular in the Western Reserve. He was a native of Sandusky, Erie County and was born November 14, 1828, and was killed in action July 22, 1864, while at the head of the Seventeenth army corps on the eve of the fall of Atlanta. His life had been a brave and faithful fight from boyhood, where by the death of his father, the support of mother and younger children depended on him. After attending Norwalk Academy, Huron county, for two years, he entered West Point, in 1853. graduated at the head of his class, taught in the academy, and until the outbreak of the war, served as a military engineer on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. He entered the war as lieutenant of engineers and was on Grant's staff at Forts Henry and Donelson. General McPherson was in the front of the fiercest and grimmest fighting at Shiloh, Corinth, and Iuka, and commanded a corps at Vicksburg and before Atlanta. It was during the reorganization of Grant's army in 1863 that he was appointed to the command of the Seventeenth corps, which held the center of the Union army at the siege of Vicksburg, and at the surrender of that city, so conspicuous had been his part that he was appointed one of the commissioners to arrange terms with the enemy. He was now brigadier general within a year and a half. When Grant turned over his command in the West to General Sherman, McPherson succeeded the latter as the head of the army of the Tennessee; and when General Sherman set out on his Atlanta campaign. McPherson followed him in person with about 25,000 of the 60,000 comprising the command. Shermans army was before Atlanta and he was extending his left flank, commanded by McPherson , to envelop the city. In the mentime the Confederate general Hood had passed completely around this division of the Union forces, and on the morning of July 21 the unexpected storm broke while Sherman and McPherson were conferring as to the advisability of occupying Atlanta. What followed is told in these words: " With the first scattering shots in the direction of his rear, McPherson was off--- riding with his soldierly instinct toward the sound of battle. He found the Sixteenth corps in position, struggling manfully against an assult of unprecedented fierceness; the Seventeenth still holding its ground firmly, but danger threatened at the point where the distance between the position of the corps, lately reserve and that on the front, had left a gap not yet closed in the sudden formation of a new line facing left flank and rear. Hither and thither his staff were sent flying with various orders for the sudden emergency. Finally the postion of the Sixteenth army corps seemed assured and, accompanied by a single orderly, he galloped off toward the Seventeenth, the troops as passed saluting him with ringing cheers. The road he followed was almost a prolongation of the line of the Sixteenth; it led a little behind where the gap beween the two corps was, of which we have seen that he was apprised. The road itself, howver, had been in our hands-- troops had passed over it but a few minutes before. As he entered the woods that stretched between the two corps, he was met by a staff officer with word that the left of the Seventeeth -- the part of line to which he was hastening-- was being pressed back by an immensely superior force of the enemy. He stood for a moment of two closely examining the configuration of the ground, then ordered the staff officer to hurry to General Logan for a brigade to close the gap, and showed him how to dispose it on its arrival. And with this he drove the spurs into his horse and dashed up on the road toward the Seventeenth corps. He had scarcely galloped a hundred and fifty yards into the woods when rose before him a skirmish line in gray! 'Halt!' rang out sternly from the line, as the officer in general's uniform, accompanied by an orderly, came in sight. He stopped for an instant, raised his hat, then, with a quick wrench on the reins, dashed into the woods on his right. But the horse was a thought too slow in doing his master's bidding. In that instant the skirmish line sent its crashing volley after the escaping officer. He seems to have clung convulsively to the saddle a moment, while the noble horse bore him further into the woods-- then to have fallen, unconscious. The orderly was captured. In a few minutes an advancing column met a riderless horse coming out of the woods, wounded in two places and with marks of three bullets on the saddle and equipments. All recognized it as the horse of the much beloved general commanding; and the news spread electrically through the army that he was captured or killed. Then went up that wild cry, ' Mcpherson and revenge.' The tremendous assault was beaten back; the army charged over the ground it had lost, drove the enemy at fearful cost from its conquests, and rested at nightfall in the works it had held in the morning." The body of the dead general was found about an hour after he disappeared in the woods, and the official announcement of his death by General Sherman was a paper of mingled tenderness and eulogy. " History tells us," he says, " of but few who so blended the grace and gentleness of the friend with dignity, courage, faith, and manliness of the soldier." +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Major General Quincy A. Gillmore Major General Quincy A. Gilmore was born in Black River ( now Lorain ), Lorain county, February 25,1825; was a West Point graduate and earned an international reputation as an organizer of seige operations and a revolutionizer of naval gunnery. His greatest achievements were at the siege of Charleston and Fort Pulaski. At the final operations in Virginia he was in command of the Tenth army corps. General Gilmore died at Brooklyn, New York, April 11, 1888. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Major General Jacob D. Cox Major General Jacob D. Cox was a native of Montreal, Canada, born of American parents 1828. The following year the family removed to New York. The young man graduated fron Oberlin college in 1851; in 1852 removed to Warren, Trumbull county, as superintendent of the high school and in 1854 began the pactice of the law at that place. In 1859 he was elected to the lower house of the state legislature, Mr. Garfield, at that time, representing Portage county in the senate. They were both young men and intimate friends; both close students and fine speakers, and acknowledged leaders in politics, as they were soon to be in military matters. General Cox assisted in the organization of the Ohio state militia; at the commencement of the war, he was commissioned brigadier general and commanded Camp Denison until July 6, 1861, when he was assigned to the command of the Brigade of the Kanawha in West Virginia. After clearing the state of Confederates, he was assigned under Pope, serving in the Ninth corps, to whose command he succeeded when General Reno was killed at South Mountain. He led the corps at Antietam, and in April. 1863, was placed in command of the district of Ohio, as well as of a division of the Twenty-third corps. He fought bravely under Thomas around Franklin and Nashville; was dominant at the battle of Kingston, North Carolina, and in March, 1865, united his troops with Sherman's army for the final campaign of the war. General Cox was elected governor of Ohio in 1865: was appointed secretary of the interior in 1869, but resigned a few months afterward and returned to Cincinnati to resume his law practice. He was sent to congress in 1876 and died in 1900. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Major General William B. Hazen Major General William B. Hazen was a native of Green Mountain state, born in 1830, whose parents moved to Huron, Portage county, when he was three years od. He went to West Point, from which he graduated in 1855. Soon afterward he was made a brevet second lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry and joined his regiment at Fort Reading, on the Pacific coast. He served throughout the Indian troubles in Oregon, and in 1856 built Fort Yamhill. As second lieutenant in the Eighth Infantry, he next served for four years in Texas and New Mexico, earning a fine name for bravery and ability during the Indian campaigns of that period. In 1860 he was brevetted a first lieutenancy, but was not allowed to enter active service in the Civil war until January, 1862, as he had not recovered from severe gunshot wounds received in a hand to hand encounter with a Comanche brave in Texas. At the time named, General Hazen took command of the Nineteenth brigade, Army of the Ohio, and in that succeeding April, while leading his command at Pittsburg Landing, captured two Confedrate batteries and a large number of prisoners. Later, he participated in the siege of Corinth, and his brigade especially distinguished itself at Mursfreesboro, which led to his rise to te rank of brigadier general. At Chickamauga his brigade was the last of the Union troops to leave the field. Transferred to the Army of the Cumberland in 1864, by his capture of Fort McAlister,while in the command of the Second division, Fiftheenth army corps, he became major general and was acknwledged to be among the ablest of Sherman's commanders. After the war General Hazen continued many years in the miitary service of the government, holding rank of brigadier general in the regular army. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Major General Mortimer D. Leggett. Mortimer D. Leggett, identified with both Geauga and Trumbull counties before he entered the army to start an upward path towards the stars of major general, has the honor of being one of the creators of the Akron School law, under which Ohio's present system of popular education was established. When sixteen years of age he came from his home at Ithaca, New York, and with other members of the family settled on a farm at Montville, Geauga county. He was a student in the Teacher's Seminary at Kirtland, Lake county, and was admitted to the bar in 1844, but did not commence to practice for six years thereafter.During this period he labored unceasingly in all parts of the state, with such men as Dr. A.D. Lord, Lorin Andrews and M.F. Cowdry for the establishment of a broad ad practical system of public education. With the earnest cooperation of such legslators as Harvey Rice, of Cleveland, Mr. Leggett saw his brightess hopes realized in the Akron School law. When twnty-eight years of age he commenced practice at Warren, Trumbull county, but in the fall of 1857, moved to Zanesville, where he not only practiced law but served as city superintendent of schools until the fall of 1861. In the following December he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the Seventy-eighth Ohio Infantry, and arrived with his regiment during the hard fighting at Fort Donelson of February 1862. Upon the surrender of the fort he was appointed provost marshal, and earned Grant's warm admiration and friendship for his services in that capacity. He was wounded at Pittsburgh Landing; participated at the siege of Corinth, and after the evacuation of that place ws placed in command of a brigade, which effected an important capture of the enemy's troops and stores at Jackson, Tennessee. At Bolivar, that state, he is said to have defeated seven thousand Confederates with his eight hundred men, so skillfully had he chosen his position and so unflinchingly did he defend it. As brigadier general,to which he was promoted in November, 1862, he fought command at the siege of Vicksburg and at the battle of Champion Hills, being wounded at both engagemants. On July 4, he was honored with the advance in entering the city. General Leggett commanded the Third division of the Seventeenth army corps from the seige of Vicksburg to the close of the war, except when he was at the head of the corps itself, which was not infrequent. The battle of July 22, before Atlanta, was fought principally by his division. General Leggett was on Sherman's march to the sea; was brevetted major general July 22, 1864; appointed full major general January 15,1865, and resigned from service July 22nd of that year. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ to be continued in tid bits part 27.