It was nearly the first of August before orders came to rejoin the army slowly fighting its way south to Atlanta.

“Camp 17^th O.V.I., near Atlanta, Aug. 14/64 – I am writing, lying flat on my stomach behind a heavy breastwork, 50 yards behind our regiment. It is safe from rifle fire and cannon, unless an artillery shell should burst directly overhead. Last Wednesday we occupied a very dangerous place where the 31^st Ohio had just lost 2 men. Our men and Rebs agreed not to shoot but the sharp shooters were on the lookout for officers. Toward dark, our adjutant stepped out and got a ball through his head. All is quiet now. Our boys and the Johnnies are as friendly as can be. We have been trading coffee for tobacco with them. But now their officers will not permit them to trade, as so many desert. When we shoot, we holler over and tell them to lie low, and when we are done, we holler, ‘The war is over. Bring on your tobacco, Johnnies.’”

With most of the South now in Union hands, there was a feeling of despair in Rebel ranks. This feeling was shared by some high officers, and the governor of Georgia, but President Davis still talked of victory.

“It is reported that a Reb brigade got permission to charge our works, but when they got most up they threw down their arms, and ran into our lines. Their battery opened up on them with grape and canister, killing and wounding many. Over 600 got in safely. We are so close together now, and since we have stopped shooting, we get a great many. The Johnnies would come down to a spring. Our boys would meet them there, give them some clothes, and they would come back with us. Now the Reb officers have ordered their men to shot if we start out. Got none today.”

“Aug. 28/64 – Two days ago, at 2 A.M., we started. Troops were moving all night. We are cut off from communication and bound for Dixie. The enemy falls back as we advance. I think we are on the eve of a big fight; it seems just like Chickamauga. When the army moved yesterday, I fell a little behind, to tend a sick man. I circled out through the fields to catch up to my place, and near a barn, seated on a pie of straw, sat Gens. Sherman and Thomas, eating their dinner. I saw they had hard tack. Sherman looked rather cross, but Papa Thomas was sedate and thoughtful as usual. He is a man who says little and that right to the point; but still if even a private goes to him about something he doesn’t understand and has a right to know, Tommy will explain to the minute detail. I hear that Sherman was not pleased because the Army of the Cumberland did not get into place sooner. He thinks there is none like the Army of the Tennessee. I think Thomas would stick up for the Cumberland, though I think they were very slow starting.”

NEXT WEEK: The Fall of Atlanta

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

In March of 1864, David had rejoined his regiment near Ringgold, Georgia, and the routine of the previous year began. He was to remain in this vicinity for many months, and it was here that he was known to the people as “The Little Doctor on the Black Horse.”

Smallpox had recently been added to the ever present dysentery and ague (similar to malaria). The soldier victims of smallpox were isolated away from the camps in “The Shanty” and David was assigned to care for them, going out each day from camp to care for them. He also, at the same time, continued his service to the local country folk, vaccinating all who asked for it.

“March 24/’64 – Ringgold, Ga., Dear Hattie, I am now detailed to the smallpox hospital. If not relieved, I shall be here a month or more. I wish you could send me some onion and radish seed. I mean to have a little garden out there. As soon as the roads are settled, I think there will be an advance, but am afraid I shall not be with it, as I shall be left with my patients. I suppose that will please you, but not me! My horse has gone lame for some unknown reason. I have promised to stay tonight with Mr. Brown, a prosperous farmer, whose daughter-in-law is expecting a baby right away. They want me to stay, and I shall, for it will be very handy while my horse is lame, saves a walk of 4 miles every day back to camp.”

May 8/64 – “My regiment has moved on and left me. I have now only 3 cases of smallpox in the “shanty.” The whole army is moving south, 500 wagons today, 1100 tomorrow. Even the woods are white with dust. It is said we have the biggest army ever seen in these parts, 100,000 men. I wish I were with them. I want to be in the front rank when we go into Atlanta.”

“May 29/64 – The army has got so far off now that we here don’t know what is going on. I feel ashamed to stay here with so few patients when I must be needed elsewhere. But orders are orders. I have many local patients around here, especially children. Dysentery is very bad. I am afraid Mr. Brown’s little grandson is going to die of it. Such a nice little boy. The flies are so bad.”

“June 2/64 – Day before yesterday, Mr. Brown’s little grandson died. I sat up with him all night before he died, giving his medicine. He would open his mouth for it just like little birds do when their mother feeds them. He was a year old. Yesterday, I went to the funeral about 5 miles, to a little place called Graysville. As I watched at his side that night, I thought of my own little ones at home and wondered if they were still alive and well. The graveyard was a desolate place out in the woods. Many of the graves were entirely obliterated. All the pens around the individual graves had been destroyed by fire. I thought of the lines, which you will remember, ‘it matters not. I’ve oft been told, where the body lies when the heart is cold.’ The flies fill my face and eyes so I can hardly see to write. My horse is entirely well now and I ride him around most of the time. Keep him on Mr. Brown’s clover.” (On several occasions, after he had gone on to the army, David writes of receiving letters from various of the Brown’s).”

GO TO NEXT POST – Battle for Atlanta -

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

David was very lucky to have been assigned to a “good prison” like Libby. Fred Wickham, one of my father’s three soldier brothers, suffered many months in the notorious Andersonville. [1] The stories he told of prison life were very different from David’s. The men slept on the floor, close packed for warmth. When they became cramped, someone would call out, “Everybody over!” and they would have to turn at once. They were often close to starvation. Some of the guards amused themselves by drawing a line inside the wall of the grounds, over which no prisoner must step. Then they would throw bits of food outside the line and when a starving prisoner reached for it, they would shoot him. When Fred was exchanged, his group met an equal number of Southerners at Philadelphia, possibly from Johnson’s Island in Sandusky Bay. These men were in good condition. When they saw the men from Andersonville, many of them burst into tears. When Fred arrived home, he was so gaunt and old-looking that his sister did not know him. He was about 20.

In November, David was exchanged and granted a long furlough, so that he was able to spend that Christmas with his family in Norwalk. What a precious interval that must have been, with his dear Hattie, and the four little girls, Mamie, Hattie, Aggie and baby Fanny, who was almost a year old. He remained in Norwalk until March. During David’s absence, Grant supported by Sherman and Thomas, & now in command of the armies in the Southeast, had won the battle of Lookout Mountain, relieving the pressure on Chattanooga. General Grant was then made Commander-in-Chief of the Union Forces, with General Sherman commanding the armies of the Southeast.

Footnote:

[1] There is some question that it may have been Salisbury.

GO TO NEXT POST: Return to the Army

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

Libby Prison, Richmond, Va., 10/29/63 – “Dear Hattie, Please send me a box of eatables: 5 lbs. Ground coffee, 1 of tea, 20 of brown sugar, 1 ham of dried beef, a small cheese, if you can find it, and as much butter as you’ve a mind to; put up in oyster cans. Also anything else suitable for prison life, some pickles. I shall want you to send me a box about every two weeks. Capt. Riggs got a box and all things came all right, even to the lining in the vest pocket. I’d like a shirt, but what I want most is something to eat and . . . I should like to see you very much. It is harder to be a prisoner than a soldier. Money is put in the commandant’s office and doled out of at $50 per month, hardly enough at the prices here.”

The prison furnished rations, but slim ones — two meals a day. Those with money could have guards buy for them in the markets. In the letter a faint trail of dots runs from the “and” up to and circles around “send me” and “money”, where in tiny dim letters are “hide” and “send”.

Hattie understood his secret message, which the censors apparently missed, for family tradition says she “colored” the butter with gold pieces. These got through safely, like the aforesaid “lining in the vest pocket”, for David’s next letter states: “I got the box all safe. The contents are being duly dissected.”

This letter also asks, amongst other things, for “1 three-cornered file, 1 small round file, and send some light reading.” the files at first puzzled me. Was he thinking of escape? Then I remembered the two bone napkin rings he carved in prison, one for Mamie and one for little Hattie. These were made from the bones of the beef issued as rations. He also did some wood carving.

“What rations the Confederates furnish are good, but the same every day. We boil the beef for soup for dinner, then the meat is chopped as hash for breakfast. We get but two meals a day. We can buy things from the city markets, but many of us have no money, and prices are very high. Money can be sent by mail, but it is taken out and put to our credit in the commissary, and handed out at only $50 a month, which will hardly keep one here.”

GO TO NEXT POST: Exchange and Return Home

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

In September 1863, Rosecrans’ (the soldiers called him “Old Rosie”) army was maneuvering here and there through northwest Georgia. Rumors were about that a big battle was impending. David prudently sent home the pistol his grandfather Platt B. had given him for “if a surgeon is captured with a gun, he is a combatant; if no gun, he can expect better treatment.”

On Sept, Rosecrans had taken Chattanooga and pursued Bragg’s army into north Georgia, where, on Sept. 19-20, at Chickamauga, he was defeated and forced back into Tennessee. And a Chickamauga David’s premonition proved true. Here is his next letter (an account of the battle given at end):

.

Chickamauga Valley, Ga., 9/28/63

“My dear wife, I am here held as a prisoner of war. I am well and so far have been treated as a gentleman. I have taken a parole to stay with our wounded, and when they have been disposed of, to report to Atlanta for imprisonment. This may be the last you will hear from me for some time, as we are to be held as prisoners of war until some Confederate surgeons are released; so say the Confederate officers. Take good care of the children and remember your absent though affectionate husband, D.D. Benedict.”

.

We can imagine poor Hattie’s dismay! It was almost a month until his next letter, and it could not have been a very comforting one

GO TO NEXT POST – Libby Prison

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

“In the mountains 9 miles from Lafayette, Georgia, 9/13/63

My Dear Hattie: We encamped 2 P.M. in a fine meadow near a nice stream at the foot of a mountain, having marched 13 miles this day. I took the privilege of a fine wash. We were just nicely fixed for the night, when the bugle sounded ‘fall in’. We were loaded up and off in less than ½ hour.

It was very dark and the roads blocked with teams. We left our ambulance and wagon and rode on ahead. Went up a very bad hill where one of our caissons had gone over a bank and hung up on a tree. After three miles, about 10 o’clock, we came to a cleared field full of troops, and halted for the night. I slept very well on my poncheau and a little shawl, with my oilcloth over me, first having built a rail pen to keep folk and horses from running over me. Woke about three quite chilly, so I set my pen afire and went back to sleep.”

9/14/63 – “We started up the hill about 7 A.M. and an awful hill it was. Near the top was a log cabin and in it a woman and four children in a starving condition. Her husband had been dead 2 years. It is said she prayed God she might never see the Yankees, but it would have done your heart good to see the dirty and rough, but noble hearted soldiers empty their haversacks of coffee, sugar, crackers; and she got about $40 in money. I think God answered her prayers by saving her life. I should like to know how she prays now. When we reached the top of the mountain, it was reported that a boy from our regiment took some of the crackers from that poor woman, and it raised a regular breeze. He was brought before the colonel, who said if he could prove it on him, he would hang him from the nearest tree. But the boy claims he took out 8 crackers, gave her some sugar and coffee and 5 of the crackers, and was putting the others back in his pocket, which they thought he had taken from her. He is still under arrest, but no one can be found who saw him take them.”

McLamours Cove, Ga., 9/16/63 – “About noon we halted near a house. I went to it and found 4 women and 6 children. Three of the women were married, and one was young and good looking. I played with the 2 babies and got a bowl of milk. Two of the women had a babe at the breast. Both their husbands are in the Rebel army. I pity one as she is very poor. Last Friday, when there was fighting, she left her house and came to this neighbor’s. About 4 P.M., I went back about ½ mile form camp to where our hospitals are established. It was near where this poor woman’s house is; she had just returned. The soldiers had broken it open and destroyed what little she had. It was hard to hear the little children cry. The oldest was about as old as our Mamie (6 years). I looked about amongst the hospitals and found some of her things which I immediately returned. We consoled her with all that we could . . . Fixed up our quarters; use a sort of tent, just a tarpaulin hung over a line or pole and pegged down on the sides and made a good bed by putting down some fence rails and piling on what Fowler (the other assistant surgeon) called a straw stack, the finest bed I’ve had.” (In more permanent camps they had real tents and cots. The officers and doctors had to furnish their own food, cooked by their orderly, who, at times was a local Negro they hired). “Today I passed a house where a very pretty girl was singing “The Union Forever.” Her father is in jail in Lafayette for being a Union man. I touched my ragged hat in respect and admiration. It has been a brave thing to be a Union man or woman in this neighborhood.”

GO TO NEXT POST: Prisoner of War

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

For most of 1863 and 1864, the Army of the Cumberland drifted slowly back and forth, through Southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, and Northeast Alabama. One expects the letters of this desperate war to be filled with battles, but they are not. The sound of gunfire, the night marches up and down the mountainsides, and mud and monotony, the homesickness are all there, but on the whole they are cheerful letters, full of camp incidents, of comments on the news from home, and descriptions of the wildly beautiful scenery and of the rural Southerners, who fascinated this young Ohio doctor. Letters are usually a reflection of the writer’s personality, and in these it is easy to see the inquisitive, cheerful man who made friends with everyone he met.

The first letter, dated “Triune, Tenn., April 1, 1863” we find there was a little military action, only skirmishing. On his black horse, David explored the countryside in his spare time, visited the surgeons of near-by regiments, and followed the back roads and “hollers”, stopping at farmhouses and mountain cabins, treating typhoid, measles and accidents, delivering a baby now and then, and lecturing the backwoods folk on their unsanitary habits. Evidently the people responded, for we read, “vaccinated two children. Played with the babies and got a bowl of bread and milk in return.”

There seemed to be a surprising number of Union sympathizers in the Cumberland region. Many of the women were alone with their children, their husbands in one army or the other. Sometimes Union and Rebel women would be living in the same house. Nearly all were facing danger and privation, sometimes on the edge of starvation. Local people came into the camps with vegetables to trade for flour, coffee, etc. In the more level lands there was considerable food to be bought. The doctors furnished their own food.

“Today I rode around the country to see what I could buy. Got 10 chickens, 8 dozen eggs, and a big ham. You would have laughed to see me riding along with the chickens strapped to one side of my saddle, the ham to the other, and the pail of eggs in front. I have a pretty good horse, not afraid of the firing of a gun nor the squalling of chickens, and he can run pretty fast.

.

“Battle Creek, Tenn. 8/30/’63

Dear Hattie: Today we stopped at a very well-to-do looking farm house. The family consisted of an old man named Bible, his wife, who had just had a baby, and three grown daughters, one of them wife of a lieutenant in Stones Cavalry, which is scouting after Rebels, the Lieut. commanding them. They make their headquarters here. There was another young woman there, wife of a poor man enlisted in our army, his wife having no place to go but with these people. I should say she would be having a baby in a few days, so, having an eye to business, I gave them my address and told them to call on me if they needed my medical service. There are no doctors about here, most of them being Rebs who put out before we came. There is much sickness. I asked for some mush and milk, and they made us some, but when it came, it was buttermilk, which spoiled my fun.”

GO TO NEXT POST: With the Army of the Cumberland II

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

War is often pictured as a vast pageant, with the roar of cannon and bombs, with flying flags and bemedaled heroes, glorious victories and tragic defeats. But War is also a million personal stories, of quite ordinary men and women, caught up by forces beyond their control. For them, War is a strange new way of life. This is the story of one of these.

David Benedict was born in Norwalk, Ohio in 1833. He lost his mother at an early age, and when his father also died in 1851, David used part of his inheritance to go to college at Kenyon (where his dearest friend was Fred Tennard of Louisiana, a boy with strong southern views). After graduation, David married Hattie Deaver of New Haven and enrolled in Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland, from which he graduated in 1861. At any other time, life would have been quite uncomplicated for David. He had only to take the state exams and then open an office in his home town, where he already owned his late father’s home, and begin raising his fast-appearing family (he had three little girls by that time). But this was the spring the nation was shaken by the firing on Fort Sumter, and Lincoln was calling for volunteers.

David established his wife and babies in the house where he had been born, and enlisted as a “contract surgeon” in the Union army. He was named director of the military hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, [1] to which casualties were brought from the Western Campaigns” of Tennessee. He had left home Jan. 3^rd, 1862. A year later he was commissioned as Assistant Surgeon in the 17^th Volunteer Infantry.

New Orleans had fallen to the Union, the battles of Forts Henry and Donnellson, of Pittsburgh Landing and Shiloh were over. The battle line was across the south edge of Tennessee, centered around Murfreesboro, and it was here that David joined his regiment and began the series of 58 letters to his wife which form the basis for this memoir (there are some letters missing).

Footnote:

[1] This is from the Firelands Pioneer, an article by Caleb Gallup (a cousin) in 1901. However, it may have been in Cincinnati, as Eleanor is sure that at one time he and his family were in Cincy, while he was with a hospital there, but perhaps that was after the war.

NEXT WEEK – With the Army of the Cumberland – Part I

© 1961 by Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton. All rights reserved.

“Sufferers’ Land.”
The “Firelands.”

These evocative and descriptive phrases refer to a region in Northern Ohio set aside by the state of Connecticut for “Sufferers” who were burned out of their homes by the British in the Revolution. Part of the Western Reserve, it covers present-day Huron and Erie counties.

After the War of 1812, a flood of emigration erupted out of crowded New England, the result of a pent up desire for new land that had been held in check by the threat of Native Americans defending their homes and the spur of economic hardship engendered by the catastrophic “Year without Summer” of 1816. Most of these pioneers were bound for the Firelands.

Thus began one of the great migrations of American history; a flood of humanity that poured out of New England and settled lands stretching along the southern shores of the Great Lakes from upstate New York to Illinois and across the Mississippi River into Iowa.

These settlers greatly impacted the history of the United States. In the 1850’s, some of them entered Kansas and clashed with the leading edge of another great migration that had settled the South — a tragic foreshadowing of the Civil War. The grandchildren of the settlers of the Old Northwest formed the backbone of the Union Army of the West during that war and made possible the Republican majority that ruled the nation the remainder of the century.

This website presents histories of the Firelands and genealogies of families that settled there.

1. The Sufferers’ Land is a history of the settlement of the Firelands from the founding of the town of Norwalk in 1817 by Platt Benedict to the final Pioneers Reunion and founding of The Firelands Historical Society in 1857. This story may be read from the beginning starting at the Prologue, or by selecting any of the 53 episodes in the Index of Posts.

2. A genealogy of families who settled in the Firelands is also included on this website. These include the Benedict, Wickham, Preston, Taylor, Buckingham, Christian, DeForest, Deaver, Walker, Shaon, Smith, Bradford, Talcott, Farrar, French, Lovewell, Hassell, Converse, Blanchard, Wanton, Winthrop, Dudley, and Sutton families.

3. Little Doctor on the Black Horse is a memoir of Doctor David DeForest Benedict of Norwalk, Ohio, a Union Surgeon during the Civil War. It was written by his granddaughter Harriott Benedict Wickham, who included in the story excerpts of letters he wrote to his wife from the field and from Libby Prison, where he was a prisoner of war. An episode of the story is posted every Monday, with the most recent installment immediately below this post. See the Index of Posts to read the entire memoir.

I would appreciate any comment you may have about this post. Please click on the comments button below, or contact me by email at dawbarton@aol.com. Thank you.

© 2009 by David W. Barton. All rights reserved

Little Doctor on the Black Horse is a story written by my grandmother, Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton about the experiences of her grandfather, David DeForest Benedict, a Union surgeon in the Civil War. David wrote many letters to his wife during that conflict and over 60 survive today. My grandmother used these letters as the basis for her story and includes many extracts.

In this story, we catch a glimpse of David Benedict as a human being. He was a cheerful man on the greatest adventure of his life. In spite of the hardships he endured, his letters have a sense of fun about them. In a letter to Harriott, he described how he built a fence of split logs around where he was sleeping so he would not be trampled by horses, and then set it afire when it became so cold he couldn’t sleep.

He also had an eye for the ladies. Often in his letters, he mentioned seeing pretty young women on the streets. Displaying his sense of humor in one of these letters, he told his wife that the dirty underclothes of an otherwise elegant young lady ‘spoiled the charm some’. He was affectionate. His love for his wife and young daughters shines through in his letters. He missed them terribly and was disappointed when Harriott’s letters did not arrive.

His courage is also evident, not only in his letters, but in the description of him by Solon Hyde, an enlisted Hospitalman in the 17^th OVI. When a rebel brigade attacked their hospital during the Battle of Chickamauga, all the other medical personnel ran. Only Solon and Doctor Benedict stayed behind with the wounded. He was courageous not only in the face of the enemy, but also when he saw injustice in his own ranks. When the army was encamped outside of Savannah, a soldier was bound and gagged with a bayonet as punishment for being drunk. David had the man released, in spite of the opposition of the officer who had administered the punishment.

Through all the accounts, we see a compassionate man. When Confederate guards took Solon Hyde’s blanket, David Benedict shared his with him. Wherever he was, the young doctor spent his free time caring for the civilian population, both Union and Confederate. It was while doing this that he became known as ‘the little doctor on the black horse’.

In his travels around the countryside, David befriended many people, including a farmer named Brown in Tennessee, who repaid his kindness with food and fodder for his horse. When Farmer Brown’s grandson took ill, Doctor Benedict sat with the boy through the night. In spite of his efforts, the boy died. In a letter home, he told his wife of his sadness, and of his concern for the safety of his own children. Ironically, he would one day experience a loss as heartrending himself.

I will post a weekly episode of Little Doctor on the Black Horse for the next few months. Please visit often and enjoy the story.

Dave Barton
Littleton, Colorado

GO TO NEXT POST: Doctor David DeForest Benedict Joins the Union Army

© 2009 by David W. Barton. All rights reserved