Foreword: The family can only count one Civil War soldier among direct ancestors. He is Eugene Boyer, a shoemaker by trade, who lived from 1842 to 1892. He saw considerable combat, was wounded once and hospitalized but returned to duty and served out the war. The records of Eugene's service and of the movements and battles of the Wisconsin 20th infantry make possible a reasonably detailed account of his Civil War experience.
Eugene Boyer was approximately 17 years old when the Civil War broke out. He joined the fight two years later when he was 19 by enlisting as a private in Company K of the 20th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. At the time, he was newly married. We have Eugene’s original enlistment papers which fail to record his age but note that he joined on August 13, 1862, for a period of three years or the end of the war, whichever came first. He joined at Madison, the Wisconsin state capital. For so doing he immediately received a $215 bonus and one month’s advance pay, amount unspecified. Eugene was part of a new unit organized as part of a levy of some 18,000 men Wisconsin was to supply to the war effort by order of President Lincoln. The new regiment was officially mustered 10 days later on August 23 with a formal communication from Wisconsin Governor Salomon to Secretary of War Stanton.
The Battle of Prairie Grove
Private Eugene Boyer’s regiment was mobilized in quick order. Detailed records of its movements show the Wisconsin 20th leaving the state on August 30 for St. Louis, Mo., presumably by train. They moved to Benton Barracks two days later, where the raw troops were given some rudimentary training, and thence to Rolla, Missouri. In September the regiment marched to Springfield and from there to Cassville, Missouri, then over the Boston Mountains to Cross Hollows. The 20th saw its first combat in December 1862 at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
This battle was part of a campaign by both sides to control the land west of the Mississippi River. It took place at a crossroads in northwestern Arkansas not far from present day Fayetteville. Confederate forces had sought to destroy two divisions of the Union Army of the Frontier before they could link up and join forces. The rebels attacked between the two divisions and achieved initial gains. They then established their line of battle on a wooded high ridge. Two Union assaults in which the Wisconsin 20th participated were repulsed. At nightfall neither side had won but the Confederates retreated during the dark giving the Union forces a strategic victory and helping establishing Union control of Arkansas.
The 20th Wisconsin had acquitted itself well. Following a forced march over the mountains to come to the aid of beleaguered Union troops, the regiment had been in the forefront of the assault on enemy lines and captured one Confederate battery before a counterattack forced it back down the hill. Its color bearer was killed but others carried the banner to safety. In his report to headquarters, Gen. Francis Herron, the division commander, said: “I ordered the infantry to charge the enemy’s batteries. The Nineteenth Iowa and the Twentieth Wisconsin did it gallantly.” A subsequent communique noted, however, that the 20th Wisconsin had “suffered severely.” It sustained the highest casualty counts among the regiments. Total casualties in the battle were about even between the contending forces, with the Union reporting 1,251 killed or wounded.
Vicksburg and Yazoo City
From his Union Army pay records, it appears that after the Prairie Grove battle and by early 1863 Eugene was out of action and in the hospital suffering from what later was recorded as measles and mumps leading to chronic diarrhea. He is listed as residing in a hospital in Springfield, Mo., in January and February, in Fayetteville, Ark., in March, and back in Springfield in April. By May 1863, however, Eugene had returned to Company K just in time to take part in one of the pivotal battles of the war -- the siege of Vicksburg. In his book The Final Fortress: the Campaign for Vicksburg, 1862-1863, historian Samuel Carter III says: “Of all military operations of the Civil War, none was more important than the campaign for the Mississippi Valley which culminated in the siege of Vicksburg in the spring and summer of 1863.
At this point the 20th Wisconsin was attached to General Herron’s Division, 13th Army Corps, of the Union Army of the Tennessee. Its senior commander was Ulysses S. Grant, a distant cousin of Eugene. The 13th Corps arrived below Vicksburg on June 13, as the Union siege was entering its final phase. The regiment, Eugene among them, took up positions at the extreme left of the line. The men were spread over three miles and in a version of trench warfare gradually edged forward until by June 25 they were only 600 feet from Confederate fortifications. When the Confederate surrender came on July 4, the 20th Wisconsin was among the Union force deployed to occupy the city and its defenses.
Within a matter of days Eugene and the 20th Wisconsin were on the move again. This time Grant ordered General Herron and his 13th Corps to take Yazoo City, Miss., about 50 miles up the Yazoo River from Vickburg. Using riverboats and accompanied by the Union Navy with an ironclad called the DeKalb, Herron’s troops attacked the strategically placed town and its defenses. The 20th Wisconsin once more distinguished itself in battle. As the Confederate defenders retreated from the town, the regiment followed them for ten miles, capturing a number of prisoners and forcing the Confederate troops to abandon wagons and a gun carriage. Union forces suffered no casualties during this brief engagement but the DeKalb was sunk by a floating mine.
Eugene Joins the Pioneer Corps
After the fall of Yazoo City, Gen. Herron’s troops were engaged in a number of forays against Confederate strongholds in Mississippi and Louisiana. On September 5, by order of the general, Eugene Boyer was separated from Company K of the 20th Wisconsin and chosen to be part of the Division Pioneer Corps, equivalent to today’s combat engineers. These units were organized by choosing about 20 men from each regiment. Among their duties were cutting trees, making roads for the army, laying down bridges, repairing railroads and constructing artillery batteries. Those serving in the Corps wore a special emblem of two crossed axes on their uniforms. The involvement of a division commander in the selection process suggests that being picked for service in the Pioneer Corps was something of an honor. As a result, however, we cannot be sure of Eugene’s whereabouts from September 1863 until he officially rejoined his unit some 10 months later.
During most of that time the 20th Wisconsin was in the vicinity of Brownsville, Texas, part of the Union force garrisoning the area. It made at least one foray from that base when, in January 1864, it joined an expeditionary force that crossed the Rio Grande to Matamoras, Mexico, to protect the United States Consul there and assist in the removal of property belonging to American citizens. In February Gen. Herron was reporting to Union headquarters that the 20th Wisconsin has been depleted by death, wounds and disease to just 253 “effective” men.
Battle of Mobile Bay
Still the Wisconsin troops found no rest, nor presumably did Eugene Boyer. Still a private, Eugene is recorded in pay records as having returned to Company K of the 20th Wisconsin in July 1864, probably at Brownsville. In early August the regiment was on the move again, this time to Carrollton, Ala., a small town near Tuscaloosa, and from there to the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama. By August 9 it was engaged in the Battle of Mobile Bay. This operation combined Union naval and army forces in a concerted effort to close the bay to Confederate ships involved in running the Union blockade of Gulf Coast ports.
The action began on August 3 when Union forces landed on Dauphin Island and laid siege to Fort Gaines, shown above. Two days later the famous Union Admiral David Farragut with a fleet of 14 wooden ships and 4 ironclads entered Mobile Harbor. Enduring withering fire from Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan, Farragut’s forces nonetheless gained access to the inner harbor and forced the surrender of a small Confederate fleet. Because the 2Oth Wisconsin was sent to the scene after the battle began, it can be surmised that Confederate resistance was stronger than anticipated. The regiment was deployed to the peninsula that forms the lower mouth of Mobile Bay, where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. Fort Morgan lies at the end of the peninsula. Despite the Union siege, the fort was not taken until August 23. Its fall effectively closed Mobile Bay to Confederate ships. The City of Mobile, however, remained in rebel hands. Union casualties were estimated at some 320 men killed.
In and Out of Navy Cove
After the battle, the 20th Wisconsin retired eastward to a coastal location called Navy Cove, near present-day Gulf Shores, Ala. They garrisoned the area for almost four months, perhaps to prevent the port from being reopened. From time to time the regiment was employed for pacifying expeditions to nearby towns. In December 1864 its troops were moved, probably by ship, to nearby Pascagoula, Mississippi, and from there marched up country to Franklin Creek. A skirmish with Confederate troops is recorded there on December 21. In this engagement the 20th Wisconsin is recorded as having captured 8 million feet of lumber, subsequently rafting it through enemy-held country to the town of Griffin’s Mills, Miss., where they captured another 7 million feet of lumber. Turning their wooden booty over to Union quartermasters, the 20th Wisconsin then was transported, presumably by ship or barge, back to Navy Cove, Miss. The regiment stood duty there until March 1965 at which point it was ordered to the final campaign against Mobile and its defenses.
At this point the 20th Wisconsin had been reassigned to the new 13th Army Corps commanded by Maj. Gen. E.R.S. Canby. In mid-March 1865 Canby moved his forces along the eastern shore of Mobile Bay forcing the Confederates back into their defenses. Union troops then concentrated on Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely that guarded the approaches to the city. Spanish Fort was under siege by April 1 and fell on April 7. Fort Blakely, where the 20th Wisconsin was engaged, fell a day later. For the next month regimental elements were at both forts, collecting stores, ammunition and artillery pieces. Finally, Mobile itself surrendered and the 20th helped garrison the city until late June 1865.
Eugene Goes Home
As hostilities were winding down, the 20th Wisconsin moved to Galveston, Tex., on the Gulf Coast. Then Lee surrendered. and the Civil War was over. In Galveston, on July 14, 1865, the regiment was demobilized and its soldiers sent home. During its almost three years in service, the 20th lost five officers and 100 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded. Dead through disease were one officer and 145 enlisted, an ironic but not uncommon Civil War statistic. Unnumbered others had been seriously wounded and bore the scars to their graves. Illnesses first contracted in the service also would continue to plague many.
For his service to the Union Eugene Boyer, still a private, was paid an amount due on his clothing account of $18.28, $6.00 for turning in his weapon, and $25 as a mustering-out bonus ($75 more was promised) -- a cash total of $49.28. With that money in his pocket, he likely was packed on a troop train in Galveston and with his comrades in arms sent home to his wife. He was 21 years old. According to later testimony by a friend he had suffered a “slight flesh wound in his leg” during the war. More serious was the chronic diarrhea that would plague him for the rest of his life.
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