Download A Civil War Private`s Odyssey through Battles, Illnesses, and Military

A Civil War Private’s Odyssey through Battles, Illnesses, and Military Justice
Walter G. Moss (with major research assistance from Roger H. Moss)[1]
Jeffrey A. Hill’s The 26th Ohio Veteran Volunteer Infantry: The Groundhog Regiment is an
excellent history of this Civil War regiment.[2] In it, citing two sources, he has the following
passage involving my great-grandfather: “‘Erastus Guy and Ben. Moss had a fight,’ over an
unidentified issue. Unfortunately for Private Benjamin Moss of Company G, Erastus Guy was a
1st Lieutenant, and thus a commissioned officer and his superior. Guy had Moss placed under
arrest, ‘and he was tied up to a tree for striking the lieutenant’. . . . When the march resumed,
Moss was tied to a wagon and under continuous guard” (Kindle Locations 21270-21274).
Thanks to Hill’s book, it is possible to trace Pvt Moss’s service from his enlistment (and then
reenlistment) until his unit was mustered out in Victoria, Texas in late October 1865. Most
striking about his service were his many battles with diseases and other illness. Diseases were an
important, but often overlooked, part of the Civil War saga because they killed or at least
temporarily removed from their units far more men than did battlefield deaths and wounds.
According to one source, in the Union Army, 1 of 13.5 died of disease, while only 1 out of about
65 men were killed in action, and 1 of 56 died from wounds.[3]
Two other facets of Pvt Moss’s service also stand out: first, the geographic range of it—from
Ohio, through western Virginia (later West Virginia), Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi,
Missouri, Georgia, and Alabama, and finally, by way of New Orleans, to Texas—and second, his
dealings with military justice.[4]
He was born in Birmingham, England, in September 1843, and came to the United States with
his family (mother, father, and three brothers) when he was four. He enlisted for a three-year
stint in the 26th Ohio Regiment beginning on 27 July 1861 at Camp Chase, on the outskirts of
Columbus, Ohio. Like many others in Co. G, he listed his residence as being Youngstown, Ohio,
and like most other veterans in the regiment he reenlisted in January 1864.
After his initial training, in November and December 1861 he joined others from the 26th Ohio
stationed in the area of Fayetteville, Virginia. This western portion of Virginia, today’s West
Virginia, was already in the process of splitting itself off to form a separate state, and Union
troops helped make this a reality. By the time he arrived in the area, most of the fighting between
Union and Confederate troops had ended, although some rebel guerrilla forces and many
Confederate sympathizers remained. Earlier that fall, hundreds of soldiers in the region on both
sides had been sent to hospitals as a result of diseases contracted in unsanitary camp conditions.
In October, all six soldiers of the 26th who died did so of disease.
In January and part of February 1862, Pvt Moss was hospitalized with malarial fever at the
Fayette County Hospital. Such fever was throughout the Civil War one of the two most common
diseases—the other was listed as “diarrhea and dysentery.”
After leaving the hospital in West Virginia, he rejoined his unit on 28 February. It was now at
Camp Robinson, KY, several miles north of Bowling Green—unlike neighboring Tennessee,
which joined the Confederacy, Kentucky never seceded. The 26th Ohio was by this time part of the
15th Brigade, 4th Division of the Army of the Ohio, and this brigade included troops from
Indiana, Michigan, and Kentucky, as well as from Ohio. By mid-March, the 26th Ohio had
marched to Nashville, occupied it, and then encamped about five miles beyond it. While in this
area, the men of Pvt Moss’s regiment were informed that their brigade had been transferred to
the 6th Division of the Army of the Ohio. On 29 March, the regiment began marching south
toward Corinth, Mississippi, which contained the junction of two important railways.
But before the 26th Ohio reached Corinth, they were diverted to an area in Tennessee just north
of Corinth. There the bloodiest clash yet of the Civil War occurred, the Battle of Shiloh (6-7
April), fought near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. Over 10,000 casualties on each
side was the result. But the 26th arrived only on the morning of 8 April, after the battle had
ended.
But Pvt Moss was soon too sick to fight anyway. For several days he was in critical condition,
suffering from diarrhea and fever. At the Tennessee River he was placed aboard the hospital ship
Imperial, one of several the Quartermaster Department sent to evacuate sick and wounded Union
troops.
By early May, however, he was well enough to participate as part of a large Union army group
advancing slowly toward Corinth, only some 22 miles away. There was little good water along
the way, and dysentery and typhoid were common. In mid-May, before Corinth was taken, he
was one of the men stricken with chronic dysentery and fever. He was sent to a hospital in
Hamburg, Tennessee only about five miles south of Shiloh. Many of the sick were cared for in
conical (Sibley) tents that could accommodate a dozen soldiers or more. According to another
soldier at the time, the “hospital” was vermin infested.
Pvt Moss remained in Hamburg until he was transported to Benton Barracks Hospital, which was
about five miles north of St. Louis. He apparently arrived there in late July after a three-day boat
trip. The hospital was part of a huge encampment that could accommodate as many as 30,000
soldiers and also contained training facilities, barracks, and more. He convalesced there for
several months and in July received extra pay for nursing duties. This was not unusual in the
early stages of the war because nursing as a profession was still in its infancy, and most nursing
duties were performed by convalescing soldiers healthy enough to help, and to a lesser extent by
women in religious orders. There was also volunteer help, like that of the poet Walt Whitman,
who served as a volunteer in Washington, D.C. hospitals and wrote about his observations with
great compassion and realism.[5]
In the months from May to September that Pvt Moss spent hospitalized, his regiment, along with
other units from the Army of the Ohio, marched through various parts of Mississippi, Alabama,
and especially Tennessee and Kentucky dealing with Confederate threats. On 8 October, six days
after he rejoined his unit, it was kept in reserve at the Battle of Perryville. But many others in the
Army of the Ohio were casualties in this largest Kentucky battle of the Civil War.
Following the clash, Confederate forces retreated southward with Union forces in pursuit, which
led to numerous skirmishes. The rest of October was spent marching through Kentucky toward
Nashville. In late October, Gen. William Rosecrans became head of the geographic area known
as the Department of the Cumberland and also of the area’s largest army, the Army of the Ohio,
which henceforth became known as the Army of the Cumberland.
On the last day of October, with his regiment camped near Glasgow (KY), about 35 miles east of
Bowling Green, Pvt Moss, sick with fever, was sent to a Cincinnati hospital. About this time, one
of the other soldiers in his regiment commented on the widespread sickness in the unit,
attributing it to too much exposure and long-hours of strenuous marching.
For the next four months Pvt Moss remained hospitalized in Cincinnati, then one of the ten
largest cities in the United States. The hospital where he was treated was then known as St.
John’s Hospital, and it was run by the Catholic Sisters of Charity. From 1855 to 1865, it treated
more than 6,000 patients, many of them soldiers brought up the Ohio River on boats from
Southern battlefields. At the end of the war, the hospital moved to a new building and renamed
itself Good Samaritan Hospital.
While Pvt Moss was hospitalized in Cincinnati, his regiment and the rest of the Army of the
Cumberland fought at Murfreesboro, Tennessee in the Battle of Stones River (31 Dec. 1862 to 2
Jan. 1863). The losses for each side were heavy. The battle ended with the retreat of Confederate
forces. The Army of the Cumberland then remained at Murfreesboro for the next six months,
reequipping, reorganizing, building a massive fortress (Fortress Rosecrans), drilling, and waiting
for better weather.
On March 7, 1863, when Pvt Moss returned to active duty, his regiment was thus still at
Murfreesboro. In the spring of 1863 the soldiers of the 26th Ohio received new pup tents, in
which a maximum of two soldiers could sleep. Using them instead of the larger Sibley tents may
have cut down upon the spread of communicable diseases.
In early May rumors and finally the bitter truth that General Robert E. Lee’s forces had defeated
Union troops at Chancellorsville circulated among the regiment. But later that month the soldiers
were encouraged by news of General Grant’s siege of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River,
hoping the city would soon fall to him (as it eventually did on 4 July). Meanwhile, Gen.
Rosecrans continued amassing whatever supplies he could for a summer campaign. Among his
shortages were men, many having been lost to battle, disease, and desertion. Some of the troops
expressed the hope that the conscription law passed by Congress in March would help replenish
their ranks. Others vented their contempt for northern Copperheads, who advocated an
immediate end to the war by arranging a peace settlement with the Confederacy.
On 2 June, by order of his brigade commander, Col. Edward P. Fyffe (who eight days later
relinquished command of the brigade due to ill health), Pvt Moss was transferred for several
months to his 1st Brigade headquarters to serve as a provost guard. Why Fyffe chose to send him
to serve in this military-police capacity is not clear, but such guards formed a security unit at the
headquarters of various levels, guarded prisoners, and attempted to prevent alcoholic violations,
plundering, and desertion. “None of these duties were pleasant.” But “as a rule, soldiers enjoyed
their tenure on the provost guard. . . . did not have to drill, enjoyed more comfortable lodgings
and better provisions.”[6]
On 23 June the 26th Ohio and the remainder of General Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland
finally began to move toward Chattanooga. Overcoming Confederate resistance along the way,
they occupied it in early September as the Confederate Army of Tennessee retreated rather than
fight against unfavorable odds. It was another important gain for Union forces, this time over a
Confederate army second in size only to that of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
But before the month was out, the Army of the Cumberland was threatened with disaster at the
Battle of Chickamauga (18-20 Sept.), by which time Pvt Moss had apparently returned to the
26th Ohio from his detail with his brigade’s provost guards. The battle was chaotic and bloody.
Regiments collapsed, provost guards stopped fleeing soldiers, and ad-hoc groups combined to
form new units. By late on the 20th, Union forces were disorderly retreating back to Chattanooga,
fortunate that the Confederate victory was not more devastating than it was.
Estimated combined casualties, including killed, wounded, captured, and missing, numbered
over 33,000, with the South’s portion being slightly more than the North’s. In the 26th Ohio
about fifty-six per cent of the men were casualties, including many men from the Youngstown
area who had served with Pvt Moss in Company G.
After the battle, however, General Ulysses S. Grant assumed command over western Union
forces. They were now bolstered by shifting troops to Chattanooga from the Army of the
Potomac and most of the Army of the Tennessee under General William Tecumseh Sherman.
Grant also replaced General Rosecrans as head of the Army of the Cumberland and put in his
place General George Thomas, who had distinguished himself at Chickamauga. The troops under
Thomas were also reorganized, and the 26th Ohio became part of the 2d Brigade, 2d Division of
the 4th Army Corps.
The decisive Battles for Chattanooga occurred on 23-25 November, especially on the 25th at
Missionary Ridge, located east of the city. And the 26th Ohio was at the center of it on an
advancing and long-extended line of the Army of the Cumberland. At the battle, Northern troops
outnumbered Southern ones by about a three to two margin. What was most striking about the
seizing of Missionary Ridge from Confederate forces that afternoon was that the officers and
men of the Army of the Cumberland exercised great initiative in advancing to the top of the steep
ridge across trenches and amidst heavy artillery and rifle fire from above.
Union casualties were much less than those at Chickamauga. The South had fewer killed or
wounded than did the North, but more captured or otherwise missing. The 26th Ohio
distinguished itself, but it lost only a few men to battlefield deaths and had another 30-40
wounded, a few of whom subsequently died of their wounds. In a post-war pension examination,
Pvt Moss reported that a scar on his temple was the result of a fall at the battle of Missionary
Ridge.
During February 1864, he and most of the men of the 26th Ohio were on furlough, which had
been an inducement for them to reenlist. In early March, they reported back to Camp Chase in
Columbus, where they had begun their first training almost three years earlier. From there they
took a train to Cincinnati. Along the way, according to one lieutenant, many of them were
drinking and fighting. From Cincinnati, they took a steamboat to Louisville, and from there
trains to Nashville and beyond to southern Tennessee.
By late March, the returning men were encamped on the south side of Charleston, TN, about 40
miles northeast of Chattanooga, and 89 new recruits had joined the regiment, bringing its total to
274 men. During that same month, General Grant took command of all the Union armies. Taking
his place as commander of Western armies was the Ohio-born General William Sherman, who
had led his Army of the Tennessee alongside the Army of the Cumberland at Missionary Ridge.
During April, Sherman prepared to move southward to capture Atlanta. In and around
Chattanooga he gathered supplies and a grand army, with the Army of the Cumberland at over
60,000 men the largest (62 percent of his entire force).
Within the 26th Ohio, four more soldiers died in April, each from diseases which included
pneumonia and chronic diarrhea. On 25 April, the 26th Ohio moved closer to Chattanooga, and
on 3 May, the regiment (by now up to 314 enlisted men), along with the rest of their division,
began their long march toward Atlanta. Pvt Moss, however was not with them. Along with other
sick soldiers he had been sent to Chattanooga. Due to mixed later reports from the Record and
Pension Office and the War Department Surgeon General's Office, it is unclear exactly when,
where, and why he remained hospitalized as long as he did. According to one government
document, the initial cause for his hospitalization was “arthritis,” which was a frequent diagnosis
during the Civil War and often resulted from earlier diseases such as dysentery.
A second government document indicates that he entered a Chattanooga hospital on 8 May with
a back sprain and was transferred on 17 June to General Hospital No. 2 in Chattanooga—where
he apparently remained for at least the rest of the month. This same document indicates that he
entered Cumberland Hospital in Nashville on 7 July with a gunshot wound to his left hand and
was returned to duty 26 July. How he received the gunshot, whether in battle or not, is not clear.
Meanwhile, his regiment continued marching south with the rest of General Sherman’s forces,
sometimes, such as at Kenesaw Mountain, facing stiff resistance. It is possible that Pvt Moss
rejoined his regiment somewhere near Marietta, GA, between Kenesaw and Atlanta, because his
regiment did suffer some casualties in that area on 4 July (specifically at Smyrna Station, a little
south of Marietta). If injured, he could have been transported back by train to Chattanooga and
then on to Nashville, but it is also possible that the gunshot wound happened somewhere off the
battlefield.
After he returned to active duty on 26 July and throughout August, his regiment and Confederate
forces maneuvered and fired upon each other from entrenched positions in and around Atlanta.
But Union troops gradually improved their position around the city, cutting off railway lines to
it. On 1 September the besieged Confederate forces withdrew from the city, and a portion of
Sherman’s grand army occupied it the next day. The four-month long campaign to take Atlanta
had cost the Army of the Cumberland almost 23,000 casualties, and the 26th Ohio had suffered
117 of them. But it was a great victory, reenergizing war-weary Northern resolve.
On 25 September, the 26th Ohio departed the devastated Atlanta area by train, as part of two
divisions which General Sherman sent northward to Chattanooga. During the next month the
regiment performed different tasks including guarding supply trains running from Bridgeport,
AL, through Chattanooga, to Dalton, GA. Sometimes they travelled on the trains and sometimes
marched one way or another to deal with Confederate threats along the route or in the three-state
vicinity.
On 28 October, the 26th Ohio was heading back north in Alabama toward Bridgeport and had to
climb the same mountain ridge for “the third time in six days. . . . The boys marched 12 miles
that day. Tempers must have been getting pretty frayed by now with all the long marches,
especially up and down precipitous terrain” (Hill, Kindle Location 21268-21270). At this point,
Pvt Moss (Co. G) got into the fight with 1st Lieutenant Erastus Guy (Co. B) that was mentioned
in this essay’s first paragraph. After being arrested for striking an officer, for the next several
months “Moss . . . remained under constant guard” (Hill, Kindle Location 21453).
In the three plus years that he had been in the army, this was the first clear-cut trouble that shows
up on his record. Earlier in mid-1863, when serving for a few months in the provost guards, he
had been on the enforcing side of military justice. Now, for the next few months, he was on the
receiving end.
On 18 January 1865, a general court-martial trial rendered its verdict: On Charge 1, disobedience
of orders, found guilty; on Charge 2, striking an officer, found not guilty. Exactly how the
military court arrived at these conclusions is unclear, but the punishment was not too severe—
forfeit of one month’s pay and ten-days fatigue duty under guard. Considering that he was
charged with violating Article 9 of the Articles of War—“Any officer or soldier who shall strike
his superior officer, or draw or lift up any weapon, or offer any violence against him, being in the
execution of his office, on any pretense whatsoever, or shall disobey any lawful command of his
superior officer, shall suffer death, or such other punishment as shall, according to the nature of
his offense, be inflicted upon him by the sentence of a court-martial”—he was probably greatly
relieved to be getting off so easily.[7]
Perhaps Lt. Guy’s not being in Company G, and thus not Benjamin’s direct superior officer,
helped lessen the sentence. Perhaps also the fact that Benjamin had so often been sick, but
always returned to duty encouraged leniency. In that winter of 1864-65, according to the later
testament of Captain Baldwin, his company commander, Pvt Moss was in poor physical
condition and would have received, if requested, a disability discharge.
The trial was held in Huntsville, Alabama, where the 26th Ohio was located at the time. After Pvt
Moss’s arrest in late October, his regiment had continued to move back and forth between
northern Alabama and Tennessee to meet threats from Confederate forces. In November and
December it fought against Confederate forces in Tennessee, including battles at Spring Hill and
Franklin (both south of Nashville) and, on 15-16 December at Nashville itself. At this last battle
the total casualties numbered almost seven thousand, with Confederate losses being more than
twice those of Federal forces.
On 28 December, near Lexington, AL, the 26th Ohio received news that General Sherman had
reached the Atlantic Ocean by capturing Savannah. On 30 December, the regiment and the
remainder of the 4th Corps received orders to encamp for the winter in the Huntsville area. On
14 February 1865, Pvt Moss returned to active duty. At the end of March into the first few days
of April, the 26th Ohio and the rest of the 4th Corps transferred by train to Knoxville and then
about 60 miles further northeast to Bull’s Gap. The reason General Grant ordered the corps
northeast in this fashion was to better position it to assist blocking any attempt by General Lee to
move west and reach Lynchburg should he be forced to evacuate two other Virginia towns,
Richmond (the Confederate capital) and Petersburg. And under attack by Union forces, Lee did
abandon these two cities on 2 April and headed toward Lynchburg. But he never reached it. On 9
April, at Appomattox, VA, almost surrounded by Grant’s forces, Lee surrendered his Army of
Northern Virginia to Grant. By this time, the 26th Ohio and part of the remaining 4th Corps were
at Greeneville, TN, still a few hundred miles from Appomattox.
Lee’s surrender did not end the Civil War. There were still a few other rebel armies to contend
with, but Lee’s capitulation was greatly celebrated, including by the men of the 26th Ohio. On 15
April, however, they received the crushing news that President Lincoln, whom they greatly
admired, had been shot the previous evening and died the following morning. One of the men in
the regiment wrote that “it was a pretty hard blow to our government when Lincoln was killed. I
tell you there is not any that dare speaks against him here in the Army. There was many a man
shot for saying he was glad Lincoln was killed” (Hill, Kindle Locations 25133-25135).
Apparently, such a reaction to the killing of their beloved president was common among Union
troops.[8]
A few days after the Lincoln assassination, the Southern army of General Johnston surrendered
to General Sherman in North Carolina, and the last significant eastern opposition ended. Even
before that, however, the 4th Corps had received orders to move west to Nashville, closer to
remaining opposition still existing further south in Alabama and Texas. As part of that corps, the
26th remained in the Nashville area from late April until mid-June. As spring was nearing its end,
many of the men of the 26th believed that the war was essentially over and they should get to go
home. But when the veterans had reenlisted in 1864 they had done so for three years or until the
government decided they could go home when no longer needed. Officially, the war was not yet
over—only in 1866, did President Andrew Johnson officially declare an end to it.
Thus, on 15 June, the 4th Corps left Nashville, eventually to end up in Texas. The 26th Ohio came
by rail to Johnsonville on the Tennessee River, and from there by steamboat to New Orleans.
Before reaching that colorful city, the steamboat stopped on 19 June at sundown at a small
island, where the men were allowed to disembark. The island was primarily inhabited by former
slaves living in a freedmen’s camp and contained a store which some men of the 26th Ohio and
another Ohio regiment (the 125th) proceeded to loot. When the lieutenant in charge of the island
protested to the commander of the 26th Ohio, the latter told him the men were angry because of
their new assignment and took no action to stop the looting.
After reaching New Orleans, the 26th Ohio and the rest of its corps encamped for the next
several weeks five miles below the city. One of the soldiers described the city as beautiful, with
plentiful markets, and with an appalling number of prostitutes.
On 18 July, the 2nd Division of the 4th Corps, to which the 26th Ohio now belonged, left New
Orleans by ship to traverse the Gulf of Mexico to Texas’s Matagorda Bay. Many of the men
suffered from seasickness along the way. After landing at Indianola, about half way between
Galveston and Corpus Christi, they hiked to Camp Irwin (aka, Camp Placedo), located about 15
miles southeast of the small town of Victoria.
Exactly why they were at Camp Irwin, a barren mosquito-infested place where many soldiers got
sick, many of the men of the 26th Ohio were not sure. Generals Grant and Sheridan, whom Grant
had placed in charge of western Louisiana and Texas, were attempting to decrease lawlessness
and scattered Confederate resistance. Moreover, they were concerned with neighboring Mexico,
where the French government and troops had installed the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as
emperor in 1864. Grant was convinced that Maximilian was assisting the Confederates and vice
versa and hoped that a U. S. show of force might weaken him and help restore (as it eventually
did) the man he considered Mexico’s legitimate ruler, Benito Juarez.
But, in general, there was little for the men of the 26th Ohio to do in Texas except bemoan the
fate that had brought them there. Among all the Union soldiers who arrived there in mid-1865
almost 500 died due to unsanitary camp conditions, lack of fresh water, excessive heat,
mosquito-transmitted yellow fever, and other causes.
Despite his previous bouts with disease, Pvt Moss seems to have survived Texas without any
further serious illness. In early October he served as a brigade teamster or wagoner, probably
delivering supplies. On 21 October, along with the rest of the 26th Ohio, he was mustered out of
his long service at Victoria, Texas. The men then made their way, via New Orleans, back to
Ohio’s Camp Chase, where in November they received their final pay, made their goodbyes and
headed home in time for Thanksgiving.
In many ways Pvt Moss was a typical Union soldier. He was young and, like most men in his
regiment, he went into service as a private and was mustered out as a private. In his four and a
half years of service, he experienced much. In a 1901 Pension Statement, his former company
commander, Capt. William Baldwin, testified, “Private Moss was an active and stalwart man
always ready for difficult and dangerous duty. He is one of the sort of men . . . [to whom] we
owe our final triumph.”9
His court martial and many illnesses were perhaps not so typical, but they were not all that
unusual either, as Ramold (on military justice) and other scholars (on diseases) have clearly
demonstrated. Regarding Pvt Moss’s sicknesses, he spent more than a year of his four and a half
years of duty in hospitals, but at least he survived his diseases. Many did not.
After the Disability Pension Act became law in 1890, he, like many other veterans, claimed
disabilities due to service. His list of Civil-War injuries for an 1891 Pension Medical exam
included an injury to his right testicle, fractured skull, rheumatism in body and limbs, malarial
poisoning, partial loss of eyesight, kidney disease, spinal disease, chronic diarrhea, and heart
disease. He died on 12 June, 1903 of chronic gastritis and cardiac paralysis. He was buried in the
Grand Old Republic Soldiers’ section of the Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington, KY, the city
across the Ohio River from Cincinnati where after the war he had married, worked, and fathered
many children.
Union soldiers like him helped make possible the abolition of slavery. And his regiment
sometimes encountered slaves and ex-slaves, including some of the 180,000 black soldiers who
eventually served in the Union army. But unfortunately we know nothing of his racial views.
A final note on slavery and the illnesses that plagued Pvt Moss and so many other soldiers during
the Civil War is this: “Without a proper place to live, adequate nutrition or access to basic
medical necessities, freed slaves became more vulnerable to illness than Union soldiers, and as a
result, hundreds of thousands of slaves became sick and died at the moment of freedom—a bitter
irony often ignored in favor of a more triumphant narrative about emancipation.”[10]
[1] My brother, Roger H. Moss, has collected Civil War and pension records of Benjamin Moss from the National
Archives and other sources and shared the most pertinent of them with me. He then read over this essay to insure all
materials pertaining to Benjamin coincided with all the records he had received.
[2] Kindle ed. (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2010).
[3] “Statistics on the Civil War and Medicine” <link> ; for a quick overview of some of the main reasons for the
high death rate, see <link>.
[4] I have dealt more extensively with the details of Pvt. Moss’s service on Jeffrey’s Hill’s website dealing with the
26th Ohio regiment <link>.
[5] See, e.g., Whitman’s “The Great Army of the Sick,” NY Times (26 Feb 1863) <link>.
[6] Steven J. Ramold, Baring the Iron Hand: Discipline in the Union Army (DeKalb: Northern Illinois U Pr, 2010)
306-07.
[7] “Articles of War” <link>; for more on courts-martial and punishments (including being tied to a tree as Pvt Moss
was after striking 1st Lt Guy), see Ramold, Chs. 8 and 9.
[8] See Steven J. Ramold, “‘We Should Have Killed Them All’: The Violent Reaction of Union Soldiers to the
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln,” Journal of Illinois History (Spring 2007) <link>.
[9] Statement by William Baldwin, dated 27 Dec 1901, in behalf of Benjamin Moss’s Pension Application,
Washington, D.C: The National Archives and Records Administration.
[10] Jim Downs, “Dying for Freedom,” NY Times (5 Jan 2013) <link>.