2nd Minnesota Battery of Light Artillery

1862 Unit History

(This article was written for the Minnesota History Magazine by Vickie Wendel and was published in December of 2004.)

Minnesota’s Second Battery of Light Artillery never made “big” history. Its men made no wild charges, nor were they among the first to reach the crest of a ridge. They were never in a position to hold back a tide of Confederates sweeping toward a shattered Union line. The Second Battery simply did what thousands of other military units did in the Civil War: its duty.

The Second Battery was made up of ordinary men who were proud of their unit. They served together in battle and triumphed over disease, homesickness, and Confederates. After doing their part to see the Union preserved, the men went home to live as ordinary citizens, just like thousands of others who had served but never made headlines.

It was not planned that way. The first man to be interested in raising a company of artillery from Minnesota seemed to have a desire for headlines. He was looking to raise the state’s first battery of artillery, but fate had more ordinary plans for him. William Augustus Hotchkiss, a Mexican War veteran farming near Monticello in Wright County when the Civil War began, later wrote:

In the summer of 1861, soon after President Lincoln called for 300,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, I went to St. Paul and, through Gov. Ramsey, telegraphed to the Secy of War a tender of a Bty of Light artillery from Minnesota. It was promptly accepted by telegraph and I commenced recruiting, mustering in as a private with my first detachment. After enlisting 47 men entitling me to a first lieutenants commission I allowed myself to be overreached and cheated of that battery.

Hotchkiss expected to be given command, but circumstances and politics prevented his success. This may stem from the fact that Hotchkiss enlisted as a private and began recruiting with the belief he would be commissioned an officer as soon as he had enough men. He was acting as a captain, but in true military rank was only a private. Hotchkiss left few details why he felt so cheated, but it was still a bitter pill many years after the war.¹ The First Battery was mustered into service on November 21, 1861, under the command of Emil Munch. The men Hotchkiss helped recruit were assigned to Munch’s Battery.²

Hotchkiss was not to be left behind, and he set about raising his second battery. Two men soon proved invaluable to him. Richard L. Dawley of Winona, a 35-year-old veteran of the Mexican War, was working in a mill when he decided to leave his wife and children to go to the aid of his nation. He returned to Winona several times to recruit where people knew him. His reputation as a veteran may have helped, as at least 57 men from Winona County enlisted.⁴ Albert Woodbury, a 26-year-old dealer in real estate,⁵ had no military experience, but he was educated, wealthy, and well known in the new community of Anoka. The Woodbury family had invested heavily in water power, flour and saw mills, and land in Anoka and St. Francis.⁶ Recruiting, probably among friends, acquaintances, and business associates, proved relatively easy. Woodbury worked both sides of the Mississippi River, drawing from communities in nearby Hennepin County as well as throughout Anoka, Sherburne, and Isanti counties. Some 74 men from these counties joined the battery.⁷

Hotchkiss continued recruiting as well, and, as he later wrote, “succeeded in getting recognized as the 2 Bty by the Secy of War and was commissioned Captain Jan’y 14, 1862.”³ By late February, a notice in the St. Paul Pioneer and Democrat stated that the “Second Battery of Light Artillery” was “Fully Organized.” Hotchkiss was listed as captain, and Woodbury and Dawley were lieutenants. The newspaper reported 125 enlistees and noted it as “full to the maximum.” Sometimes called field artillery, such a unit ideally mustered six guns of the same caliber.⁸ The men were training daily at Fort Snelling, and Hotchkiss, “opposed to burning any more powder without affecting something,” was “very anxious to get to the scene of the action.”⁹

The Second Battery was officially mustered into service on March 21, 1862.¹⁰ A month later, the men boarded riverboats¹¹ and started south. Pvt. George Murphie wrote his father about their trip: “We had as pleasant a passage down as could be expected with some 800 passengers. At all the towns on the river the people flocked to the banks as we passed, or stopped for a few minutes while our band struck up Hail Columbia, or Yankee Doodle, and cheer after cheer greeted us on landing and leaving.”¹² The battery landed at St. Louis on April 25 and moved into camp at Benton Barracks.¹³ There they would remain until fully outfitted and assigned to their division.

Hotchkiss was indeed anxious to get to the war. Official reports noted, “Through the energetic efforts of Captain Hotchkiss, the battery was supplied with horses, guns [cannon] and other necessary equipments by May 1st.” “Every available hour” was put to training until the battery received orders to move on May 21. Leaving St. Louis by riverboat, the Second Minnesota Battery disembarked at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, where the battle of Shiloh had been fought some six weeks earlier. After participating in the investment of Corinth, Mississippi, the battery continued to move with the Army of the Cumberland and marched 248 miles to Nashville, arriving September 8. They had only a short rest before setting out on another march of 259 miles that put them just outside of Louisville, Kentucky.¹⁴

Their baptism of fire came at Perryville, Kentucky, on October 8, 1862. The battery was then attached to the Army of the Ohio, serving in the Third Corps, First Division, Thirty-First Brigade under the command of Col. William P. Carlin. The brigade had arrived near Perryville on the previous afternoon and was posted on either side of the road some three-to-four miles from town. Orders to move came early the next morning. The Second Minnesota, equipped with four howitzers and two napoleons,¹⁵ would fight the battle as separate sections, with pairs of guns being sent to different parts of the field. Two guns under command of Capt. Hotchkiss were detailed to support McCook’s corps. Pvt. James Hunter described the action: “Howitzers Nos. 1 and 2 of our battery were ordered to the left of the line, about half a mile distant, to support General McCook, and became immediately engaged.” These two pieces fired at Confederates taking cover in an old barn. They continued firing until ordered to the left and rear of the original position, where they were instructed to wait until the enemy was close enough to use “grape and canister.” As the battle grew in intensity and the outnumbered Union forces began to be driven back, the Second’s guns were ordered across a lane to a position near a white house where they fired continuously for more than two hours with canister. There they held until ordered to retreat under heavy fire as the flanks caved in around them.¹⁶

The Second Battery pulled its guns off the field to a position of safety, but five men were seriously wounded, including Hunter. He was the only member of the Second left on the field, where he remained until the next day when Confederate soldiers took him to a house filled with 17 other Union wounded and left him. Two days later, they were still unattended. Only seven men were alive when Lt. Woodbury, who had returned to look for Hunter, found the house. Woodbury got help, and Hunter survived, although he was later discharged for disability caused by these wounds. Perryville was considered a Union victory.

 

The Army of the Ohio, including the Second Minnesota Battery, was not destined to stand still after this battle. Two days later, the men were at Lancaster, Kentucky. On October 22, they were near Lebanon and then moved toward Nashville. They marched 265 miles in October 1862,¹⁸ their movements reflecting those of Confederates under Gen. Braxton Bragg as he made good his escape from Kentucky.

November and December provided the battery with more marching. By December 26, they were at Knob Gap, Tennessee, where they ran into a “considerable force of rebels” and a “heavy skirmishing commenced.” The Confederates fielded eight pieces of artillery and “infantry and cavalry support,” but Capt. Hotchkiss reported that his battery participated “with good effect.” The Confederates retreated hastily, leaving one piece and five horses in possession of Carlin’s brigade, of which the Second Battery was still a part.¹⁹

That was only a prelude to the fighting the battery would see on the bank of Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The firing began on the afternoon of December 30 as the two armies met. Col. Carlin’s report described the actions of the Minnesotans at the outset: The Second Minnesota Battery “opened on the enemy with canister and spherical case, inflicting serious damage. . . . The batteries in our front were soon silenced, but another was then opened on my right flank, distant about five hundred yards, which completely enfiladed my lines and considerably injured us; but this, too, was driven out of sight by Captain Hotchkiss, after a vigorous and well directed fire.”²⁰

The battle at Murfreesboro (also called Stones River) continued throughout that day. Then there was a day of rest before fighting resumed. Pvt. Frank Lewis described what ensued for the Second Minnesota: “Our battery got cornered up in that fight. The Confederates got around us and we had to retreat. Hopkins [another private] was hit in he neck with a piece of shell and he died from that. John O’Brien and John Flynn were killed in action. John O’Brien was my bunk mate. He was a cannoneer on my gun. Flynn was a teamster on another section of my battery. A shell exploded and he was killed off his horse.” Five men were wounded, two killed, and two listed as missing immediately after the battle. Another man died of wounds later.²¹ In later years, at least six men [Edward Vaughn, Edward Pratt, Christopher Johnson, Jesse B. Smith, Henry St. Cyre and Tennes Hanson.] claimed a disability for deafness caused by the heavy cannonading at the Battle of Stones River.²³

The Second Battery stayed on the Murfreesboro battlefield until January 6 and then moved to camp some 8 miles south of town. The army shifted position in the next weeks and sent out scouting expeditions, but the battery marched less than 40 miles in the first two months of 1863.²⁴

The time spent near Murfreesboro was far from boring or safe, however. Six men went out scouting for “the solid soup detachment,” as 16-year-old Pvt. Francis Flint described it. While at a house, the party was discovered and captured by Confederate soldiers. Flint said that first he was relieved of “a number of chickens and a quantity of dried fruit.” He continued grumbling about the “fine black horse” the Confederates also took from him. The horse was usually ridden by Sgt. Goyne Hamilton, and Flint wondered if he would ever be forgiven for losing that animal.²⁵

The prisoners were taken to Columbia, South Carolina and confined. Pvt. Fordice Averill complained to a Confederate captain that a diary and photograph had been taken from him—items that would do no one else any good. The captain ordered a sergeant to see that the items were returned to the prisoner, and the order was made good.

A later conversation with their captors did not go as well for the Minnesotans. Cpl. Christian Denlinger served as their spokesman when a Confederate quartermaster wanted to “talk over the situation.” While the topic of the conversation is unknown, Flint knew the results. The quartermaster left angry and, from what the men could observe of the Confederates talking, gesturing, and looking at them, the captives knew the topic had shifted to “putting an end to our earthly existence then and there.” Things settled down, and the captain who had rescued Averill’s possessions warned the Union men to “be more careful hereafter in talking over the situation.”

The prisoners were then transferred to Tullahoma, Tennessee, and given an opportunity to enlist in the Confederate service. None of them took the offer. The next transfer was to Libby prison in Richmond, where they stayed until paroled. Flint had few good words about the month he spent in the hands of the Confederacy and said he would “be much obliged to them if they will take some one in my place next time.”²⁷

Only two of the six captives returned to the battery after their month-long stay in Confederate prisons. The men went to Annapolis in the prisoner exchange and two men were left in hospitals in there. Two more were, in Flint’s words, “used up” and were discharged for disability. Flint and Averill eventually rejoined the Second Minnesota Battery and served until the end of the war.²⁸

Taking part in the Tullahoma campaign through Tennessee in the early summer of 1863, the Second Minnesota found, as Capt. Hotchkiss reported, “The enemy resisted the advance stubbornly every day, and progress was slow. The Battery was frequently under fire.”²⁹ But the Union army steadily advanced, forcing the Confederates to retreat some 85 miles into northern Georgia.³⁰

The routine of fighting and marching did not change as the battery moved beyond Chattanooga and approached the banks of a stream called Chickamauga. The fighting there would cost the battery the only officer it lost during the war. Shortly after noon on September 19, 1863, the Second Minnesota was with the troops forming a defensive line at the right of the battlefield. Before firing a shot, it received orders to move because nearby dense woods would allow Confederates to approach without being seen. The battery reestablished itself farther to the right on the “first eligible ground that could be found” under a “brisk fire from the enemy’s skirmishers,” Hotchkiss reported.³¹

The Confederates made three attempts to turn the flank of the division, but fire from the Second Minnesota and other batteries halted their efforts. For nearly three hours the outnumbered Union division held back their attackers. Orders came to pull back slowly and in good order, but something went wrong. A section of an Indiana battery, which had been on the Minnesotans’ left, “became panic-stricken and stampeded with their caissons and gun limbers through the Second Minnesota Battery, endangering the safety of its guns, very nearly causing the loss of the left section.” Hotchkiss credited one of his lieutenants, Henry Harder, for his “courage and coolness” in saving the section.

Hotchkiss, acting as chief of artillery for the division, then ordered Lt. Woodbury to move the Second Minnesota to the right of the new line and to continue to engage the enemy. As soon as the new position was reached, Hotchkiss wrote, “a rebel sharpshooter sent a musket ball into Lieutenant Woodbury’s left arm, just above the elbow, and broke the bone. From this wound he died in a private hospital in Chattanooga, Oct. 29, 1863. Thus terminated the life of an accomplished young officer, much beloved by his commander and the men of the battery.”³³ Fixing shattered bones was beyond the ability of most surgeons of 1864, as were sterilization procedures. The most common treatment for a wound such as Woodbury’s was amputation. Woodbury probably died from infection, which killed many men suffering from what today would be nonfatal wounds.

On the second day of the fight, the Second Minnesota Battery, serving under Union Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, was ordered to occupy a position as a reserve along the road to Chattanooga. Hotchkiss reported that they “did not fire over half a dozen shots during the day.”³⁴ Pvt. Frank Lewis saw the situation in very plain terms: “There were too many batteries there and on Sunday our battery was stationed out of the way and we did not take part in the fight.”³⁵

Young Francis Flint wrote little to his neighbor and sweetheart Jennie Russell about Chickamauga: “I suppose you have heard all about the battle so I wont say much about it except that we was in it and came out pretty well. Lieut. Woodberry D.[died], one private wounded and one horse killed.” Flint was more concerned with the situation the battery now found itself in. With the rest of the Army of the Cumberland, they were stuck in Chattanooga, and the Confederates held the high ground. Flint’s letter continued:

But we have been in considerable danger since we came here. The Rebs have got several guns on the mountains that they like to bother us with. They have thrown shells all around and into the Battery, but all the damage done yet is the smashing of one wheel and one tent. . . . The Rebs are only about two miles from us. We can see their tents and camp fires but their batteries that they shell us with we can’t see.”³⁶

The Army of the Cumberland endured hard times while waiting in Chattanooga. The Confederates shelled their camps and restricted supply lines, causing shortages. Flint wrote home, wishing he could go to Sunday meeting with “some pretty girl” but admitting he would “like the supper that she’d get me when we got home from meeting better. You see we are short of rations down here just at the present.” Two months later Flint continued his grousing: “We have not fared very well since the army has been so largely reinforced. There is but one R.R. for us and it is not able to furnish us with edibles, say nothing of clothing. Until yesterday, I had but one shirt and that had no sleaves to it. When I wanted to wash it, I had to wait for it to dry before I had one to put on.” He wrote that one section of the battery had gone out toward Knoxville and had a “hard time of it [as] some of them were barefooted.”³⁸

Pvt. Lewis, one of the men sent to Knoxville, did not mention bare feet but explained why only one section went: “Our horses were not in condition to send more than two guns on that relief trip.” Men were not the only ones facing shortages in Chattanooga.³⁹ Flint admitted to stealing corn from the horses to parch or boil for food. ⁴⁰

Despite his complaining, Flint was happy. He wrote:

We have not had rations enough but most of us have managed to get what we wanted to eat. Take us all in all we are what you might call a fat, rugged and saucy set, but we are gay and happy still. Most of us are going to enlist in the Veterans Corps, get a furlough, go home to see our sweethearts . . . and then off to the war again. We can’t enlist in it until we have served two years which will be soon. . . . We aint sick of the war yet, with all its hardships. Our Country needs our help and she shall have it.”⁴¹

Relief for the Union forces in Chattanooga came in the form of armies serving under Gen. U. S. Grant and Gen. William T. Sherman. A “cracker line” was opened to bring in supplies; men and arms followed. Life in the Army of the Cumberland slowly began to improve. One battery lieutenant, Lyman Ayer, was soon able to tell his parents: “Our present camp is on a ridge so covered with gravel that the harder it rains the cleaner and nicer the camp is and the men are enabled to keep their feet dry.” He continued, “The men have . . . built themselves very comfortable log ‘shanties’ with fire places.”⁴²

By the third week of November, the stage was set for the Union to break out of Chattanooga. The Army of the Cumberland was to take the center position of the line with Sherman’s army to the north and Grant’s to the south in the coming assault on Missionary Ridge. The Second Battery was with the division sent to guard a pontoon bridge on the North Chickamauga Creek, preventing anyone—even civilians—from leaving or entering the city. While the battle of Missionary Ridge raged on the main stage, the Second Minnesota Battery fought with Confederate mounted pickets who were trying to protect supplies at Cowan’s Station on the Nashville-Chattanooga Railroad about six miles from the city. As Hotchkiss reported, “The Second Minnesota Battery drove the rebels from the work and dismounted a gun belonging to a rebel battery; meanwhile the division charged upon the station and captured it without loss.”⁴³

Missionary Ridge was a Union victory. The army had broken out of Chattanooga and would soon set its sights on the Confederate stronghold of Atlanta.

The next three months kept the Second Battery outside of Chattanooga and near their “comfortable” camps, though sections were involved in the actions just across the Georgia line at Tunnel Hill and Buzzard Roost on February 24 and 25. Hotchkiss, continuing to serve as chief of artillery for Davis’s Division, wrote, “At Tunnel Hill the Second Battery boys had a duel with a well-served rebel battery, and drove it from the field. The next morning the enemy was driven through Buzzard Roost, where the Second Battery elicited praise for its effective work.” The Confederate army fell back.

Battles with paperwork took over the battery in March 1864. Many of the men were eligible to reenlist—“veteranize”--and thus be granted a furlough in Minnesota. The 39 men who had not yet served two years or who chose not to reenlist were sent on detached duty to the Second Illinois Battery, along with the Second Minnesota’s guns and horses.⁴⁵ Forty-six of the Minnesota boys went home on furlough.⁴⁶

Those 39 men left behind saw some hard fighting in the campaign for Atlanta. Pvt. William Shaw testified to the action, recording in his diary that the horses had not been unharnessed for more than 40 hours because they were needed at the guns.⁴⁷ Ole Oleson, called Ole #1 to distinguish him from the other Ole Oleson in the battery, and Peter Streicher were both killed fighting near Atlanta in early August.⁴⁸ Horatio Joy, Henry Simonds, and Jesse Smith claimed a disability for hearing loss resulting from the heavy fighting.⁴⁹ Pvt. Adolph Appitz died in a field hospital of disease.⁵⁰ Indeed, disease claimed more than 224,000 lives in the Union army compared to slightly more than 110,000 who died from battle wounds.⁵¹

The 46 men who went home to Minnesota under the command of Capt. Hotchkiss first reported to Fort Snelling.⁵² Granted a 30-day furlough, they scattered, most returning to family and friends. At least one man—John Sisler—got married.⁵³

The reasons for reenlisting or not are unknown for most of the men, but Lt. Lyman Ayer, who did not re-up, wrote to his wife: “I would have been glad to have reenlisted had you and father not seemed so opposed to it. I think I would be good for three years more.”⁵⁴

In contrast, Lt. Richard Dawley, one of the original organizers of the battery, expressed no regrets about his decision. The same week that Ayer wrote home, Dawley resigned his commission: “I Have the Honor to tender my Resignation as 1st Lieut in the 2nd Battery Minn vols. on account of my inability to Cooperate with the Comdg officer of said Battery.”⁵⁵

Dawley was not the only member of the battery who had a disagreement with Capt. Hotchkiss. As Charles Earl, a second lieutenant, wrote: “A large number of the men in this battery wish to re-enlist as veteran volunteers--provided--a reorganization can be had by which the man of their choice shall be Captain.” He continued, “Lieut. R. L. Dawley—Comdg.—is the choice of the Co. for Captain. He is an old soldier—and a truer man never wore a uniform. The Co. will reenlist under him, but will not if Capt. Hotchkiss has anything to do with or in the battery.” But Hotchkiss retained command, and so Earl also submitted his resignation, citing “my inability to cooperate harmoniously with the commanding officer.”⁵⁶

The enlisted men, too, had conflicts with Hotchkiss. Flint mentioned him in several letters and once called him “the meanest old brute for a Capt. that ever was.”⁵⁸ Another time, the soldier wrote about Hotchkiss being gone: “I didnt see any one crying when he left.”⁵⁹

This animosity may have had some foundation. On December 2, 1862, a court-martial had been convened to try the captain under the charge of “returning false provision returns.” The proceedings listed a series of times when the number of men for whom provisions were drawn exceeded the number present in the battery. Hotchkiss was also accused of “appropriating to his own use the provisions belonging to the Enlisted Men of his Battery.” In all, 15 charges were listed. Although the court-martial found Hotchkiss not guilty on all counts, it certainly indicated dissatisfaction and suspicion. Furthermore, it may have tainted Hotchkiss’s reputation.⁶⁰

Whatever the conflict between Hotchkiss and his men, it must have been resolved by 1864 when nearly 50 of them reenlisted. After their furlough, the men returned south and received orders in Nashville to escort a herd of cattle destined for the army beyond Chattanooga. Francis Flint told the story: “We did draw muskets and started with them and carried them about four miles and the boys made such a fuss about it that we were marched back to Nashville and they gave us horses and Cavalry equipment so we got a ride after all. We was eleven days coming and guarded 400 head of beef cattle.”⁶²

Their cattle duties completed, the men went into their old camp near Chattanooga. They were not, however, re-equipped with the implements of artillery. Duty now included scouting missions and guard details.⁶³ That was fine with Pvt. Flint: “We are having pretty lively times here now,” he wrote in August 1864. “We are scouting most every day and more or less nights. We have picked up a lot of thieves and some bush-whackers. . . . I like this scouting first rate.”⁶⁴ By October, when 56 new recruits from Fort Snelling joined and the men serving with the Second Illinois returned, the battery was at some 160 soldiers, its greatest strength. As Pvt. Lewis remarked, “I guess at muster out we had more men than at enlistment in the first place.”⁶⁵

While the new recruits did not participate in any major battles, they did see scouting action and guard duty. They also were on hand for one of the less official incidents. Flint told the story:

Our boys had a great spree the other night and all got into the guard house. I was with them but made my escape. Now don’t think that I was tipsy, for I remembered my promise. . . . None of the boys were drunk but most of them felt funny, all they had was beer. We were all in the Sutler’s tent after taps, or half past eight, and that’s against orders you know and the Officer of the Day sent down four guards to arrest them. As the Sargt. came in, I was sitting against the side of the tent and I knew what was up as quick as I saw him and turned a sumersault backwards through the tent and made some long steps toward my tent. Was in bed and fast asleep in most no time. The next day all the rest were on extra duty. We have some fun once in a while but this time some of them didn’t like the way their fun turned out.

Flint concluded his letter home with the assurance that he had never been under arrest and he did not mean ever to be—especially if going backwards through a tent would save him!⁶⁶

Antics such as these were frequent occurrences as the men in camp tried to find ways to make the days pass just a little faster. After all, they were ordinary men placed in extraordinary times by the circumstances of war.

And when the war was over, the men went home. Hotchkiss, in his farewell address to the Second Battery, reminded the men of what they had done and would need to do:

“Soldiers! You are about to return to the peaceful pursuit as citizens in which capacity I believe you will prove to be as true men as you have been soldiers. In the future, remember what you did . . . perpetuating an individual record unsurpassed by the heroes of any age, and that, what you have done in arms for the defense of law and order and good government is hereafter to be done by example and through the ballot-box. . . . Cherish the memory of each other with a true soldier’s love. Embrace the memory of those of our companions who have fallen by casualties in battle and disease in your most sacred affections.”⁶⁷

The men of the Second Minnesota Battery of Light Artillery were mustered out of service on August 16, 1865. They collected the pay due them and went home with service records to be proud of but not to boast over. They did their duty well—as did some 24,000 men across Minnesota⁶⁸—fighting to bring the nation through the painful, bloody struggles of the Civil War. None of the men of the Second Battery went on to great fame or tremendous wealth; they went on unnoticed, just as most people do today. They were the everyday citizens who worked hard to build the future.