Chapter Eighteen:
Treason
"We have now passed through the more interesting part of the township's life, the era of its transmutation from wilderness into an agricultural community, and must proceed with greater speed over the remaining portion.
"In 1848, the western part of Euclid was annexed to the newly formed Township of East Cleveland, reducing the former to its present limits. By 1850, the township was well settled in all its parts, though still showing some of the marks of newness and roughness. In 1852 [sic], the opening of the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula Railroad (since become a part of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern road), extending through five miles and a half through the present Township of Euclid, gave it still greater similarity to an old settled country. By 1860, the transient observer would never have guessed that only forty years before Euclid was the congenial home of the deer, the bear, the wolf, and the deadly rattlesnake. All wore the appearance of smiling repose, and unbounded plenty.
"But treason and slavery, more deadly foes than wolf or rattlesnake, were about to assail the country, and Euclid, like all the rest of the land, was obliged to send forth her gallant sons to defend the nation's life."
—Crisfield Johnson, 1879
*
Three months after entering service, 18-year-old Joshua Seymour Mason of the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry wrote home to his mother and father in Northeast Ohio:
"Camp Gilmore, near Frankfort.
Frankfort, Ky., Nov. 22, 1862
My Dear Parents:
I received your letter last night, and was very glad to get it... I do not like to ask too many favors or to make too many requests at a time, but you said in your letter that you would send another box afterwhile, and wanted me to tell you what to send. So I thought I would tell you in this letter, and you can send it when you get a good chance. We would like to have a Christmas dinner out of the box, but you need not be to the trouble or go to the station 16 or 18 miles away on purpose to express it, and if you think I am too extravagant you must cut me off. Now what to put in:
Butter and strained honey, all that you can spare; some of that nice sausage E— spoke of in her letter would taste as good as anything; a chicken or two well stuffed and roasted; two or three mince pies well packed would come through safely, and all the cake you could send would be very acceptable; sponge and jelly cake would come through just as well as fruit cake. I assure you none of it would be obliged to keep very long once it gets here. Dried and canned fruit, such as you can spare, and in such quantities as your supplies will admit. But if you send dried fruit I would like some sugar to sweeten it with, for our rations of sugar are too small to use much for such purposes. A little tea, and if you can get such a tincup as I want, I would like it very much—one that would hold about a pint and a half, with a cover and a nose that I can make tea in and use for other cooking purposes over the campfire, and could carry in my haversack. If you could put in a little cheese and some apples I think the box would be complete...
One thing more. Some of the boys say, tell them to put in some fried cakes, as many as you are a mind to. Now if you think I am too extravagant in my requests I will say again, cut me down... I must close, for my candle is nearly out.
By the way, a few candles put in the box would be a good thing—yes, and another pair of stockings.
Give my love to all, and please write soon and often.
Your affectionate son,
J.S. Mason"
*
From the pulpit of his Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher gained national fame in the years preceding the American Civil War with a series of lectures and sermons denouncing slavery. His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, likewise pricked the national conscience in 1852, with the publication of her antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. And for two and a half years from May 1847, to December 1849, their brother, Rev. William H. Beecher, served the congregation of what was still called the Church of Christ in Euclid, the McIlraths' First Presbyterian Church in old Euclid Village, what the people of the new East Cleveland Township were still getting used to calling Collamer.
Two days after Christmas in 1851, fourteen members of the church led by the Ruple family petitioned their assembly to take a stronger stand against slavery. In one of the darker moments of the old and venerable Euclid Church, their fellow worshipers dismissed them.
Undaunted, and sure of their stance, the petitioners formed their own church, adopting the name of the Free Congregational Church of Collamer. Without an edifice they met for several years in a schoolhouse, until they completed the construction of a brick building in which to worship in the village. Their bold moral position attracted additional adherents, and their parish grew.
*
"Our first experience with the 'peculiar institution' was on the... march from Camp Wells to Lexington. Off on our left we saw some colored gentlemen picking apples in an orchard. Soon we saw a young darkie, perhaps fifteen-years-old, come running across the field to us, when he commenced asking the officers if they did not want a boy, and was told to come along and they would see. Soon his master came, and demanded the boy, but no one paid any attention to him, and he went back and procured an order from General Gilmore to our Lieutenant Colonel, who was in command that day, to deliver the boy to his master. Still no one paid any attention to him, but the master stepped in the ranks and took him and started back. When he came opposite Colonel Utley's regiment the boy struggled away and got among the men, when we heard the command, 'Halt! Front! Order arms! Fix bayonets!' and guessed immediately that the master had struck a snag, and so he had. The Colonel ordered him to keep out of his ranks, and made him understand he meant it. Soon after, when the General peremptorily demanded him to deliver the boy to his master, he positively refused, saying, 'My men were not enlisted to hunt slaves or deliver them to any one, and no one shall enter my ranks for that purpose.' He was immediately placed under arrest. The master didn't get his boy, but how the matter was finally settled between the General and the Colonel I never learned."
—N.L. Cotton, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
Pulitzer Prize winning Civil War historian James McPherson of Princeton University has called Northeast Ohio a hotbed of radicalism in the antebellum period, owing in large part to the New England origin of most of its first settlers. When abolitionist Yankees from Connecticut and Massachusetts came to the Western Reserve in the early years of the 19th century, many—though not all, as has been demonstrated in earlier pages—brought their loathing for slavery and passion for abolition with them, and inculcated their children and grandchildren with those values. One of those Connecticut Yankee immigrants was radical abolitionist John Brown, whose failed 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry in what is now West Virginia awoke the country to the tragic bloodbath to come. Brown grew up and developed his beliefs in Hudson, Ohio, just 20 miles from Euclid Township, and it was in Cleveland that he swore his life to the destruction of American slavery. In addition to the New England Yankees in the north end of Euclid Township, the German immigrant population of northern Ohio was renowned for their support for abolition and union, and members of that ethnic group dominated the southern part of Euclid in the 1860s. In this incubator it's hardly surprising that the antislavery candidate of the new Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, carried Euclid Township more than two to one over his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, 255 votes to 104 in November of that year.
The fractious presidential election of 1860 came at the end of an amazing half century of American territorial expansion. Each new acquisition—beginning with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, followed by Florida in 1819, Texas in 1845, the Oregon Territory in 1846, large portions of what is now the American Southwest after the Mexican War in 1848, and the much smaller Gadsden Purchase of 1853 which completed the assembly of the continental United States—threatened the delicate balance of power between the free Northern states and the slaveholding states of the South. Only careful compromise had thus far saved the nation from political chaos. Despite his assurances to the contrary, Lincoln's pro-abolitionist record convinced the slaveholding Southern states that his ascendance to the presidency meant that the ban to slavery that they had so long resisted had become inevitable. Six weeks after the election, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Following a tense New Year, January 1861 saw Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana swept along in the secession fever, followed by Texas on February 1. As Lincoln took the oath of office late that winter he still hoped to avoid a conflict, but Southern troops quashed those hopes when they opened fire on Fort Sumter, an island outpost in Charleston Harbor occupied by Federal troops on April 12, 1861. Three days later the new president declared an insurrection, and called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. With the war begun, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee followed the South from the Union before the end of the spring.
*
"In the summer of 1862 I made up my mind to enlist, and being but a mere boy, determined to run away from home and join the first company that would accept me... The morning of the 22nd I started for Cleveland, Ohio, alone and on foot, but luckily for me, was overtaken by a teamster who allowed me to ride with him to the city. Immediately after my arrival there I went to the first recruiting office I could find and presented myself to the Captain, telling him that I came to enlist and that I would like to be taken as a fifer (as I had while at home on the farm learned to play the fife by making my own instruments out of alder bushes with no tools but a school boy's jack knife, and had also taken the precaution to bring with me one of these much prized fifes), but the Captain told me a man had already enlisted who also wanted the same position, and for me to come to the hall after dinner and he would let us have a contest, and the one that could play the best would be taken. You may be sure I was there promptly, but my heart sank when I saw my competitor, who was a large, heavy man, much older than myself, and I thought surely I will stand no show with such an important looking fellow. We were ordered to play, and each took his turn, I on my home made fife, which amused the spectators, and after each playing a few tunes the Captain (I think Tibbits was his name) said abruptly, 'That will do, the boy is the best fifer,' and then told me I could enlist as such, and I don't believe any of our generals were more proud of their glorious achievements than I was at that moment over the results of that contest. I was then given a furlough of three weeks, and went up on the canal to Independence to visit my sister, Mrs. Green, but only stayed there that night, and started the morning of the 23rd for Bedford, which was about eight or ten miles distant... While walking down the street, to my great surprise, I saw my father coming towards me. He had been on my trail since I left home, and now, of course, I had to face the music. He pleaded with me to return home, but I refused, and said if he forced me to come I would only run away again at the first opportunity. But after talking the matter over, he promised that if I would go home and help him make hay during my furlough he would take me back to headquarters and give his consent to my going. I did this, and never worked harder for three weeks in my life than at that time, but he kept his word and went with me to camp."
—Ancil Perkins, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
Dedication of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Public Square in Cleveland took place at last in 1894 after nearly 15 years of planning, fundraising and construction. The Monument Commission responsible for erecting the tribute published a history of the project to coincide with its completion that same year. The appendix of this history contains a list of the soldiers included in the monument's Roll of Honor, etched on the walls of its tablet room, honoring the men of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, who served in the war to free the slaves and preserve the Union from 1861 to 1865, and from that list one can extract the names of the families of Euclid Township, and following their regiments it's possible to follow the men and boys of Euclid through the Civil War.
Albert McIlrath served as a private in Company E of the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and Lewis S. Dille as captain of Company G. Oliver McIlrath fought with the 124th Regiment. Newell S. Cozad joined as one of the eight corporals in Company D of the 129th OVI, and Joseph Q. and Lyman Oviatt volunteered for Company E of the 177th. Manson and James Husong and Warren Hendershot, along with Charles, Dudley and Harvey Ruple, all fought as members of Company E of the 188th Ohio. Cassius McIlrath and Samuel B. Ruple served in Battery B of the 1st Ohio Volunteer Light Artillery, and Morris N. Oviatt as the bugler and Sherman Oviatt a private for the 20th Battery of the same unit. Alexander Ruple led men of the 25th Battery as a 1st Lieutenant. Hiram Oviatt went into service as 1st Sergeant of Company K of the 2nd Ohio Cavalry; Archibald Dille joined up as a private in Company C of the 5th and S.H. Hendershot likewise in Company I of the 7th. The rolls include numerous Whites, Bishops, Norrises, Treats, Blisses, Grays, Days, Thorps, Welches, Taylors, Richmonds, Eddys, Murrays and Lees, but these names are too common to state with confidence that they came from the families of Euclid Township.
The first stop for many of these young men was the Federal recruitment office in Cleveland. The national government also established several training camps in the city along Woodland Avenue, in the area between what are now East 30th and East 40th Streets. The main camp, Camp Cleveland, was located on the bluff above the west bank of the Cuyahoga River, known at that time as University Heights, the site of the short-lived Cleveland University, which closed its doors in 1853 after just two years. This area is Cleveland's fashionable Tremont neighborhood today, and the names of the streets there—Literary, College, Professor, University—still echo its academic past. The 35-acre Camp Cleveland complex opened in July 1862, and during the course of the war trained over 15,000 Union troops. Euclid Township units also trained in and passed through Camp Chase in Columbus and Camp Dennison in Cincinnati on their way south to begin their war.
*
"There were three of us boys lived near each other, and who in winter months attended school in the same little red schoolhouse, and in the summer we took our schooling in the farm lots of our respective fathers, and when the echoes from the guns at Fort Sumpter awoke our people to the fact that war was upon us. We often met and talked it over, watching the older boys who quickly responded to the call, and soon we decided to enlist and went to Cleveland, Ohio... to enlist in Capt. Joe Shields' Nineteenth Ohio Independent Battery, which was being recruited in the Weddell House block in August 1862. But we were much disappointed to find out that the complement of men for the battery was about completed, and Captain Shields told us we were rather too young and light for battery service, which nearly broke our hearts. Whilst bemoaning our sad fate, we were interviewed by a recruiting officer who told us that the One Hundred and Third Ohio was to be a 'crack regiment, and Company A the banner company of the regiment,' and who invited us up to old Apollo Hall, No. 94 and 96 Superior Street, where headquarters were for Company A. We went and were soon enrolled as members, and went through the examination, which at that time was very thorough, passed all O.K., were told to report to camp on a certain day, and went home to get ready. So our soldier life commenced."
—Thomas H. Williams, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
With two notable exceptions, the overwhelming majority of the soldiers from Euclid Township began their service under the command of Gen. Don Carlos Buell in the Army of the Ohio. In the early spring of 1862, the Army of the Ohio joined more than 100,000 Union and Confederate troops in its first major engagement, in the fields and swamps surrounding a steamboat dock on the Tennessee River called Pittsburgh Landing, more commonly remembered for the name of the nearby Methodist chapel: Shiloh. The opponents bloodied each other there for two days, and casualties in the battle approached 24,000. The fight drove the Confederates out of western Tennessee, but the Northerners' elation was tempered after Shiloh by the realization that the war would require more than a single decisive battle to conclude the secession crisis. After Shiloh, everyone knew it was going to be a very long and very hard fight.
The Federals, including Buell and the Army of the Ohio, pursued the Confederates across the border into northern Mississippi, to the strategic rail junction of Corinth, 22 miles from Shiloh. Union forces, by then bolstered to over 120,000, advanced slowly on the town. Illness and casualties from the battle at Shiloh had weakened the Southern army occupying Corinth, and the Confederate commander, Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, sensing a looming disaster if he held out, evacuated his men. The Northern commanders claimed a victory with the capture of Corinth, but failed to pursue and destroy the Confederate army.
Ill health forced Beauregard from his command, and he was succeeded by Gen. Braxton Bragg. Bragg counterattacked into Kentucky in September, hoping a victorious Southern army there would lead the slaveholding but thus far loyal Kentuckians to revolt and join the Confederacy. Bragg drove Buell back to Louisville, and threatened a Northern invasion at Cincinnati, but his hoped for uprising did not occur, and Buell himself counterattacked the Confederates west of Perryville, Kentucky, in October, another brawl with another 5,000 young men wounded and killed, but it was the last time Southern forces entered Kentucky, one of the important border states.
Union leaders shuffled the Western theater command structure in late October, 1862, reorganizing the Army of the Ohio and placing the Euclid Township regiments into the new Army of the Cumberland and under the command of Gen. William Rosecrans. He met Braxton Bragg's army on New Year's Eve near the town of Murfreesboro, on the west bank of Stones River in Tennessee. With Rosecrans still preparing to begin the battle, Bragg struck him first and took the Union commander by surprise. Rosecrans put aside his plans for a devastating offensive against the Southern forces and assumed a defensive posture, struggling to defend his supply line with Nashville. Bragg concentrated on breaking the center of the Union line, but his opposite there, a loyal Virginian, Gen. George Thomas, held off the attack, with the Confederates suffering heavy losses as they threw themselves against Thomas' position again and again. The Union held the ground and the Confederates again retreated, at the cost of another 25,000 casualties. The victory cleared the way for Union forces to move against another strategic rail center at Chattanooga, but Rosecrans had only narrowly avoided defeat through the services of Gen. Thomas.
*
"...proceeded to Cumberland Gap, lay there a few days, and then returned to Tazwell. There provisions were very scarce. Here we did, however, succeed in finding a pig with a litter of young ones partially grown. We killed the little ones, and finally the old mother. There was not blood enough in her to bloody the knife when I cut her throat, and I declared I'd eat none of that hog. But Tom Kennell said, 'You'll be damn glad to eat some of that hog before we get away from her... we cut up some of that same old hog into pieces about the size of loaf sugar, put it into quart cups, and boiled it. We thickened this with sweepings from the mill floor, cornmeal, with which there were mixed pieces of brick varying in size from dust to the size of a kernel of wheat, and we ate this mixture without salt."
—J.G. Walton, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
In 1863 the battle for control of Tennessee moved south toward the new prize at Chattanooga, and became centered around Braxton Bragg's new defensive fallback along the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad at Tullahoma. Rosecrans spent the entire first half of the year preparing his offensive toward Chattanooga. Whether deliberate or not, it turned out to be a good strategy on Rosecrans' part, forcing the Confederates to hold their positions to defend the rail center for months after their supplies ran low and they'd foraged every morsel of food in the countryside, a delay that severely demoralized the Southern army.
Rosecrans finally moved from Murfreesboro on June 24, and in a brilliant series of maneuvers he took Chattanooga and swept the Confederates from central Tennessee in just two weeks, with remarkably few casualties. At any other point in the war the Tullahoma campaign would have been celebrated as an outstanding victory, but it climaxed nearly simultaneously with two other important Union victories east and west with the defeat at Gettysburg of Robert E. Lee—the son of Euclid's Jacob Coleman's Revolutionary War commander, Light Horse Harry Lee, an interesting fact likely not lost on the Colemans in Euclid—and the ascendance of Ulysses S. Grant at strategic Vicksburg in Mississippi. Furthermore, Rosecrans once again declined to pursue the beaten Rebels and destroy their army, condemning the West to further conflict.
Union and Confederate armies collided again on September 20, 1863, in northern Georgia, a few miles from a little creek called Chickamauga. There Gen. Rosecrans became confused as to the disposition of his forces. He ordered a division out of place to fill a hole in his line which did not exist, and doing so created a real one. Confederates under James Longstreet, just arrived from Gettysburg, poured into the gap, destroying the Union right. The Federal forces fled, Gen. Rosecrans with them, leaving Gen. Thomas to face a disaster. Thomas held the line though, and allowed the Union army to escape, earning him the nickname "The Rock of Chickamauga." The battle killed and maimed another 35,000 young Americans, one of the bloodiest clashes of the war. It was the Army of the Cumberland's worst defeat in the war, and the end of William Rosecrans' military career.
*
"It rained nearly every day, and I have been drenched to the skin time and again. It is still raining, with no more prospect of stopping than there was ten days ago... Frank Lindley was shot in a skirmish day before yesterday. He has lost his left leg just above the knee. It will be very hard for him. He has good grit, stood it well, and did not complain or utter one word of reproach. I helped carry him off the field. George Bagley also received a flesh wound in the leg, but I think not a serious one. One man from our company is reported mortally wounded. Ichenhower is his name. Co. D had two men killed on picket yesterday. The country is destitute of everything and of course the army can get nothing."
—Joshua Seymour Mason, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, whose successes, particularly the strategic victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi, had recently won him command of all the Union forces in the West, relieved William Rosecrans of the Army of the Cumberland, and replaced him with the cool commander who had snatched mere defeat from the jaws of annihilation at Chickamauga, Gen. George Thomas. On the defensive after the loss, the Union generals faced a Confederate siege at Chattanooga, and Grant moved to take away the enemy's positions on the high ground east of the city on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. In November Grant ordered Thomas to take the enemy rifle pits at the foot of Missionary Ridge. They did so, but once the men took the pits they were exposed to such fire from the Confederate guns above them that they moved without orders onward on the high ground. To the surprise of both sides, Thomas' forces charged up Missionary Ridge and broke the Confederate line, relieving Chattanooga and pushing the Rebels back into Georgia. In early 1864, Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland met the Confederates again at Dalton, Georgia, and were beaten back, however the engagement exposed weaknesses in the Southern line that would soon be used on a new Union campaign already under development to smash the heart of the Confederacy.
Grant assumed supreme command of all Union land forces a month after the skirmish at Dalton, and William Tecumseh Sherman took Grant's old place at the head of the armies in the West. At his headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sherman assembled 112,000 troops. On May 7, they marched into Georgia, following the Western & Atlantic Railroad toward the strategic rail center of Atlanta. The Confederates met them outside of the town of Resaca a week later.
*
"Commanded by Captain Hutchinson, we marched over that open field with nothing to shield us from the fury of the blazing sun, and with the batteries of the enemy belching forth a constant stream of iron hail, scattering death and destruction on every side. Our regiment being in the third line of battle, we could see the dead and wounded being carried to the rear, and it sent a thrill of horror to us as we realized that this might be the fate awaiting us. When we arrived at the foot of the hill upon which the enemy was entrenched we were ordered to lie down. Here we remained for nearly half an hour, with the leaden hail of death falling thick and fast, and shells bursting every instant with their awful noise in the air above us. At length came the order, 'Fall in One Hundred and Third!' 'Fix bayonets!' 'Charge!' and springing quickly to our feet, with a shout that sounded above the roar of the cannon and rattling of musketry, our whole line started swiftly forward. The enemy, thinking to drive back or check our movement, double loaded their cannon with grape and canister and poured into our ranks a rapid and wasting fire. On every side brave soldiers fell victim to the enemy's bullets and shells. But we were not repulsed. On and on we swept, with forms bent, and guns tightly grasped, resolved 'to be faithful to our duty even unto death.' Soon we saw our brave Captain Philpot fall, killed by a shell while gallantly leading forward his company. As if to avenge his death we fought even harder, and the next moment, Captain Hutchinson, who was in command of our regiment, was struck by a musket ball. His only words were, 'Boys, we are driving them.'"
—T. Metzger, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
During the Atlanta campaign Sherman moved constantly at the enemy's flank, trying to cut them off and crush them. When he threatened the Rebel supply line at Resaca they withdrew further south. The Confederates took up defenses on Kennesaw Mountain, where on June 27 they dealt Sherman a hard defeat when he tried to storm the strong position. The futility of the fight compounded its suffering. When Union forces again threatened the Confederates' supplies they abandoned the mountain and continued their fighting retreat toward Atlanta. The Rebels made a last attempt to save the city at Peachtree Creek on July 20, but Sherman's artillery and superior numbers overwhelmed them. For the next month Sherman's troops maneuvered to surround Atlanta, and, on August 25, Gen. Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland broke through the Southern lines and swept around the city, threatening to cut it off completely. The Rebels made a stand along the last open rail line at Jonesboro on August 30, but, vastly outnumbered, were beaten. The Southern troops abandoned Atlanta on September 1, 1864, and Sherman and the Euclid Township boys swept in.
*
One of the notable exceptions to the course of service of the Euclid men mentioned earlier was the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with which served Charles Dille and James and Phillip McIlrath. One of the first Ohio regiments to organize after the secession crisis of the winter of 1861, the outfit's ranks included two future presidents, Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley. It served under the Eastern command of the Army of the Potomac under Gen. George McClellan, and fought in the Shenandoah Valley and at Antietam in September 1862. Lincoln had been biding his time until a Union victory to deploy his next weapon against the Confederacy. After Antietam Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared enslaved people in areas still in rebellion would become free on the 1st of January, and thus took the crucial first step toward the complete abolition of slavery in America. William Rosecrans, who later commanded most of the other Euclid Township regiments at the head of the Army of the Cumberland, began his service with the 23rd OVI. A monument pays tribute to this regiment today in Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland, which stands very nearby to the locations of several of the recruitment and training camps of the 1860s.
The other notable exception earlier mentioned came with the service of James and Darwin Ruple who joined the 128th OVI, assigned to guard duty at a Confederate prison camp located on Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay which opened with the breaking of the lake ice in the spring of 1862.
Fifty years after the War of 1812, U.S. relations with Great Britain remained chilly, and fugitive Rebel prisoners often sought refuge north of the border in what was still British Canada. Surrounded by water, Johnson's Island provided the Union a highly secure prison far from the Confederacy, but still isolated from Canada within the confines of Sandusky Bay. The Johnson's Island prison held mainly officers, and as such had private rooms in many of the barracks and some of the best prison conditions in the war. Nevertheless, the continuing conflict soon led to overcrowding, and the addition of tents to shelter the overflow of prisoners by the summer of 1863. The 18-acre facility held over 3,000 men at its peak.
The island's proximity of sympathetic foreign territory, and the increasingly dwindling number of officers in the South as the war dragged on, were the inspirations for one of the most bizarre schemes of the Civil War. In the summer of 1864 a Confederate spy and naval officer named Charles H. Cole hatched a plan to seize the single gunboat patrolling the waters of the Great Lakes, the USS Michigan, with it free the prisoners on Johnson's Island, burn and loot Sandusky and Cleveland, then make their escape across the lake to Canada. He spent several months in Sandusky observing the boat and the prison, and adding details to his plan. He was also joined by John Yates Beall, another Confederate naval officer sent by the Rebel government to aid him in the coming raid.
Cole had been posing as an executive from the infant oil industry in Sandusky, and through lavish spending had established himself as a bon vivant of the town. He made acquaintances with the officers of the Michigan and was invited aboard to enjoy a wine supper on the evening of September 19, 1864. His plan: to drug the officers and seize the boat.
Earlier that day, Beall and 23 fellow conspirators boarded the lake steamer the Philo Parsons at Sandwich, on the Canadian side opposite Detroit. The boat passed down and out of the Detroit River and among the Lake Erie Islands, and as it passed Kelley's Island, just north of Sandusky, they hijacked it. With the Philo Parsons off her schedule, a second lake steamer, the Island Queen, pulled up alongside to investigate, and she too was captured by the plotters. They transferred all of the passengers onto the Island Queen, and all the fuel onto the Philo Parsons, and in the Parsons headed for the entrance of Sandusky Bay to await Cole's signal.
But Cole made such a mess of his part of the plan aboard the Michigan that her officers had discovered him and placed him under arrest. After a while with no signal from the Michigan, Beall and the conspirators on the Philo Parsons surmised their plot had been exposed, and turned their vessel for Canada with all the steam they could make. Cole himself became a prisoner on Johnson's Island, where he remained for the rest of the war. Beall made it to Canada but was later captured in New York and hanged as a spy in early 1865. The rest of the conspirators on board the Philo Parsons had tried to salvage something from the operation. They grounded the boat on the Canadian shore and attempted to loot its mirrors, chairs and bedding, even tearing a hole in its side to remove the piano. They were discovered and arrested by Canadian customs authorities for attempting to import goods without a license.
*
After resting his army for two and a half months in newly conquered Atlanta, Sherman resumed his dagger thrust through the heart of the Confederacy toward the vital Southern seaport at Savannah, the famous "March to the Sea." Leaving Atlanta on November 15, Sherman divided his force into two wings which swept nearly unopposed southeast across Georgia on a 50 mile wide front, destroying as much Southern property as possible along the way in an effort to demoralize Confederate resistance and to deny material support to the enemy. The Federals met a Confederate defense at Franklin, Georgia, on November 30, but the Rebels' ill-conceived frontal assault there cost them 12 generals and 60 regimental commanders, decimating the Confederate Army of Tennessee. From there they made an attempt on Nashville, well in the Union's rear by this point perhaps hoping to disrupt the Federal momentum toward Savannah. The attack failed to retake the city, and the defeat only further weakened the Southern forces. Sherman's army reached Savannah on December 9, and began preparations to attack the city, but the Confederates evacuated it on December 20. Gen. Sherman offered the victory to President Lincoln as a Christmas present.
*
"... the One Hundred and Third with the rest of the brigade moved up into the first line of works into the heights... The position assigned to the One Hundred and Third was immediately to the left of the road leading from the city across the pontoon bridge to the country south. This hill is between 300 and 400 feet above the river; we were, therefore, enabled to look over the city and had a plain view of our whole army on the north side. Every move of our troops and occasionally those of the enemy could be seen from our position. At night we looked over 500 or 600 acres of land thickly dotted with camp fires, among which could be dimly seen men, animals, and hundreds of the white covered army wagons, while flashes from the guns and bursting shell, the occasional rattle of musketry, and continued boom of the artillery, presented a panoramic exhibition, accompanied by the terrible music of war, which seemed so weird and thrilling, and so indicative of the carnage of war and the magnitude of armies, as to leave an impression that will be among the last to fade from the memories of those who witnessed these scenes and incidents of the great struggle being made for the preservation of the Union."
—C.B. Welton, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
At the beginning of the final year of the war, Sherman turned his army north, to continue his destruction of the South and link up with Union forces now hunting down the remnant of Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia. They plunged into the Carolinas, burning everything along the way. In the third week of March, 1865, what remained of the Southern forces opposing him attacked at Averasboro, North Carolina, then quickly fell back and struck again at Bentonville three days later. But the Confederacy was all but dead at that point. The battle paused, and Sherman traveled to meet with Lincoln and Grant to confer on the best way to end the war. Sherman returned to North Carolina and met with his battered opposite, Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston, at Durham Station on April 17. Sherman had always maintained during his storm through the South that his intent was merely to bring the speediest end possible to the war, and though he devastated Southern property on his March to the Sea and then northward into the Carolinas, his forces actually inflicted very few casualties. He backed up his dovish words with peace terms so lenient they were later rejected as too much so when sent for ratification by his civilian commanders. But Lee had surrendered at Appomattox by then, and Johnston saw the futility of continuing the war with Sherman and surrendered his army to the Union commander on April 26, 1865.
*
"Received the box you sent in good shape, except the can of sauce had burst open and spoiled the newspapers and wet some things. I was very glad to get it. Thanks. The onions are just the thing. Nothing could have been better than the butter, and it came just in time, as we had commenced drawing rations of bread. The tea is so much nicer than the black coffee made in the old iron kettle. When I can get a dish to stew the dried fruit in we shall live well for soldiers."
—Joshua Seymour Mason, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
"It is a grand sight to stand upon an eminence at early evening and look down upon an army at rest. The snow white tents, which were placed in rows with mathematical precision, are outlined with distinctness and seem like children's toys, frail to the touch. Around their bountiful fires some of the soldiers are cooking their bacon and coffee, others cleaning their guns and accoutrements, while other fires are surrounded by troops telling of the day's adventures or singing those songs which are common to the army, while around the whole march with stately tread the vigilant camp guard. Bands are heard discoursing cheering music before headquarter tents, while during the intervals the attention is called to the dulcet strains of the much abused long eared and astonishingly interesting quadruped, the 'Army Mule.' As evening draws to a close, a bugle is heard sounding retreat, and, following closely, the stirring notes of a fife and drum announce the time for retiring. When the fires burn low, the sleeping camp is left in darkness and silence. The only sign of life is the lonely sentry, steadily pacing his lonely beat."
—Theo. F. Brown, 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry
*
Lincoln wanted a liberal peace. "Let 'em up easy," he instructed Sherman and Grant in one of their final meetings. He had no interest in punishing those who had abandoned the Union or taken up arms against it. The president just wanted to see the country whole again. Those Confederate soldiers who turned in their arms and swore an oath not to take them up against the national government again could return to their farms and shops. Those Confederate leaders who swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States once again likewise would be pardoned—even Robert E. Lee; even Jefferson Davis. But Lincoln's plans for the nation after peace were shattered by his murder. Political leaders who lacked both Lincoln's stature and vision would abandon Reconstruction and the South to Segregation and Klan terrorism for a century.
Abraham Lincoln's body was loaded aboard a train which bore it west from Washington to his home in Springfield, Illinois. It passed through Euclid Township on the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula Railroad in the early morning hours of April 28, 1865, and paused for the day at Cleveland. Ninety thousand mourners passed by to pay their respects before the funeral coach departed that evening to continue the president's journey home.
*
Throughout the summer and fall of 1865 the surviving veterans of the 103rd, the 188th, the 177th, and the rest of the Euclid Township regiments returned to northern Ohio and their farms in Cuyahoga County, a place still overwhelmingly rural, filled with wheat fields and dairy cows, Euclid tied to the wider world by just the lake and the single small rail depot at Euclid Creek. Before the end of the year the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery became law.
"On the 12th of June," F. B. Sherburne of the 103rd OVI wrote, "we left the Southland for home, arriving in Cleveland at our old camp of three years before, and those left of us were here mustered out."
The divisive and violent debate of free versus slave that plagued and threatened the future of the United States since its founding was over. The Union was saved, and slavery at last destroyed.
That's what teenaged farm boys did, the Army of the Cumberland, William Tecumseh Sherman and George Thomas.
That's what Euclid Township did.
The information in Chapter Eighteen is drawn from the following sources:
Cary, Ferdinand Ellsworth. Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway System and Representative Employees, A History of the Development of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, from its Inception, Together with Introductory and Supplemental Chapters, Tracking the Progress of Steam Railroad Transportation. Biographical Publishing Company, 1900.
Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. American Heritage/Bonanza Books, 1982.
Euclid Township Trustee Minutes 1809-1877, Cabinet 54, Drawer 2, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Frohman, Charles E. Rebels on Lake Erie. Ohio Historical Society, 1965.
Gleason, William J. History of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors’ Monument. The Monument Commissioners, 1894.
Heidler, David S., and Heidler, Jeanne T., eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War. ABC-CLIO, 2000.
Johnson, Crisfield. History of Cuyahoga County Ohio. D.W. Ensign & Co., 1879.
National Geographic Society. Historical Atlas of the United States. National Geographic, 1988.
Personal Reminiscences and Experiences by Members of the One Hundred and Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Campaign Life in the Union Army from 1862 to 1865. Fred Weidner & Son, 1984.
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History website:
case.edu/ech
Ohio in the Civil War website:
Expert Consultation:
James McPherson, Princeton University, e-mail August 18, 2003.