We Were the Ninth

Constantin Grebner

Description

We Were The Ninth is a translation, carefully edited and thoroughly annotated, of an important Civil War regiment. The Ninth Ohio-composed of Ohio Germans mostly from Cincinnati-saw action at Rich Mountain and Carnifex Ferry in West Virginia, Shiloh, Corinth, Perryville, Hoover's Gap, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Chickamauga.The Ninth began the War amid misgivings (Would a German-speaking regiment in the Union Army cause chaos?) and ended its active service among the honored units. It continued as an active German-speaking veterans' organization. Constantin Grebner published this significant history, in German, in 1897 and noted that it "is intended as neither a history of the war nor a definitive account of battles. Rather, it is restricted to a straightforward, veracious report of what happened to The Ninth, and to recounting as accurately as possible The Ninth's experiences as a wartime regiment." Frederic Trautmann's English translation is faithful to Grebner's original text, preserving its integrity while maintaining its energy, precision, and grace.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• Military history
• Regiment
• History of the Americas
• American Civil War
• États-Unis
• Ohio
• Guerre de Sécession

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 12 juin 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612779522
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

“WE WERE THE NINTH”
General W. S. Rosecrans (upper left), Colonel Gustav Kämmerling (upper right), Colonel Robert L. McCook (center), General August Willich (lower left), General George H. Thomas (lower right)
“We Were The Ninth”
A History of the Ninth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry April 17, 1861, to June 7, 1864
by Constantin Grebner
translated and edited by Frederic Trautmann
The Kent State University Press Kent, Ohio, and London, England
© 1987, 2009 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-3884
ISBN 978-1-60635-029-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
First paper printing 2009
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grebner, Constantin, d. 1907.
“We were the Ninth”.
Translation of: “Die Neuner.”
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. United States. Army. Ohio Infantry Regiment, 9th (1861-1864)— History. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Regimental histories. 3. Ohio—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Regimental histories. 4. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—German Americans. 5. Ohio—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—German Americans. 6. German Americans—Ohio—History—19th century. I. Trautmann, Frederic. II. United States. Army. Ohio Infantry Regiment, 9th (1861-1864) III. Title.
E525.5 9th.G7413  1987          973.7′471                            87-3884
ISBN 0-87338-337-0 (alk. paper) ∞
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
To
David M. Neigher
(F. T.)
First published as “ Die Neuner”: Eine Scbilderung der Kriegsjabre des 9ten Regiments Ohio Vol. Infanterie, vom 17. April 1861 bis 7. Juni 1864 (Cincinnati: S. Rosenthal & Co., 1897).
Now, as in the war, let our motto be:
Forward—March!
—Constitution of the Associated Veterans, Ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 4.
“We would be happy if they who follow us and read our book—our children and our children’s children—were infused by the same spirit and filled with the same conviction.”—infra, 33.
No more they hear the roll of drums,
No more the call to battle comes.
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    
Their work is done; [they rest] beneath the sod
Where lilies lean and roses nod.
—W.J. Lampton, quoted by Jacob Smith, Camps and Campaigns of the 107th Ohio , 238.
Contents
Illustrations
Introduction by Frederic Trautmann
Chronology
Preface by the Editorial Committee
Foreword by Gustav Tafel
I. The Men and the Struggle
1. Our Leaders and Comrades-in-Arms
2. North against South 32
II. The Ninth at War
3. April 17 to June 16, 1861: Ohio and West Virginia
4. June 16 to November 26, 1861: West Virginia
5. November 28, 1861, to March 4, 1862: Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee
6. Life under Arms in Europe and Here in America
7. March 25 to November 3, 1862: Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky
8. November 4, 1862, to July 25, 1863: Tennessee
9. Passing the Time in the Field, and Other Topics Gleaned in Reflection
10. August 16 to September 22, 1863: Tennessee and Georgia
11. September 23, 1863, to February 22, 1864: Tennessee and Georgia
12. February 22 to June 7, 1864: Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio
III. To Honor the Past
13. The German Soldier in America
14. The Associated Veterans of The Ninth Regiment
15. For the Record: Statistical Data and Muster Roll
Poems
Word List
Notes
Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index
Illustrations
Important men in this book
“The Fighting McCooks”
Colonel Robert L. McCook’s mother
Camp Harrison
Graves of men who fell at Mill Springs
Sergeant-Major Raimund Herrmann
Dr. Beatty’s house, where Colonel McCook died
Corporal Louis Weghorst’s grave
Monument to The Ninth Ohio at Chickamauga
Monument to the Burnham Battery at Chickamauga
Monument to Colonel McCook
Introduction              by Frederic Trautmann

A Regiment.—Its Veterans’ Association.—The Regiment’s Historian.—His Book.—This Translated Edition of It.—Books Useful to Reading and Understanding It.—The Editor-Translator’s Acknowledgments.—The Book’s Purposes: May They Be Achieved!
1
On Friday, April 12, 1861 , in Columbus, the Ohio senate conducted business—but not as usual. Anxiety and strain filled the chamber. News from the South had worsened as more states passed “ordinances of secession.” Worse, a Southern army, with artillery, had gathered opposite Fort Sumter. Guns were trained on the Federal arsenal; a shot could bring war. The senators worked, but their hearts were not in legislative humdrum. Fear of war and dread for a nation’s breaking up preoccupied the senators. What of the Union? What of Ohio, which touched Kentucky and Virginia, both likely to secede? Indeed, a spike of Virginia pointed like a dagger stabbing between Ohio and Pennsylvania, as if to slice the North in half. Would geography and history drive the national epicenter west, beyond the Alleghenies? Would Ohio become “the keystone of the Union,” the shield against invasion, or the victim of a Rebel offensive?
On the floor, Jacob Cox, of Trumbull County, shared his colleagues’ foreboding. In the gallery, Abby Kelly Foster, the abolitionist, may have rejoiced alone at the dark rush of events. She believed in a solution by the sword: through blood would the slave be freed.
A senator entered from the lobby, excited. Catching the presiding officer’s eye, he said: “Mr. President, the telegraph announces that the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter!” A solemn, painful hush—broken by Foster: “Glory to God!” Blood would be spilled. The sword, terrible and swift, would strike. The scourge of war would follow. Gloom settled in the senate.
Outside, not senatorial dejection but Foster’s fervor prevailed. Ohioans and other Northerners, largely regardless of party, approved Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers. More than 75,000 wanted to enlist. “At the first shot from Beauregard’s guns in Charleston harbor,” Cox observed, “these men crowded to the recruiting stations to enlist for the defense of the national flag and the national union.”
The popular enthusiasm, Cox said, “swept politicians off their feet.” Judge Thomas Key of Cincinnati, chairman of the senate’s judiciary committee, took Cox by the arm, paced the floor outside the railing, and declared: “Mr. Cox, the people have gone stark mad!” 1
In Judge Key’s Cincinnati, Lincoln’s call had been heeded. People, if not mad, were up in arms. Troops mobilized and, as elsewhere, often into ethnic units. Indeed, from New Mexico to New England, Irish, French, Scandinavians, Swiss, Welsh, Dutch, Poles, and even Mexicans assembled for the Union. 2 Most notable were the Germans. The willingness to fight, of this, the biggest ethnic group, erupted in Cincinnati, where beer and Germans had long flavored a populace 30 percent German in 1860. There, in the German quarter known as Over the Rhine, a German regiment appeared, the first of its kind in the nation, the one that would take martial honors with the bayonet. The regiment needed one thousand men; two thousand applied, and “1,000 pairs of eyes” wept “because they were not permitted to go.” 3 Four days after Lincoln’s call, the Ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry—German by ethnic origin and mostly foreign-born, German-speaking, organized along German lines, and run in the German manner—reported for duty, eager for action. Ohio must be defended, the Union preserved, and freedom extended to all . This the Germans believed. So the Germans of Cincinnati answered the call of their President.
In June of 1861 “the well-trained Ninth” went to West Virginia to begin “a long and brilliant career in the field” and become “the staunch and trusty old Ninth Ohio.” 4 “Dutch devils” Southerners called them, those “bloody Dutch” noted for success with the bayonet. 5 Their steel routed Confederates at Mill Springs, Kentucky, in the first bayonet charge of the war. At Chickamauga, in “a famous charge,” one of its “several telling charges” there, The Ninth blunted and bent a Confederate assault. 6 Their battle-cry, a Teutonic hurrah — cohesive, inspiring, evocative, savage—raised Union hackles and struck fear into Confederate hearts. Shouting hurrah , wielding bayonets, repulsing other attacks at Chickamauga, and “scattering the enemy like chaff,” The Ninth became “the pivot point on which our [Union] right swung back toward Chattanooga”; and Chattanooga was held. 7 The Ninth’s recapture of Burnham’s Battery won an inscription on the monument raised to the battery at Chickamauga after the war. The Ninth was second in the line of attack at Missionary Ridge. 8 When The Ninth left Georgia to muster out in 1864, it had done “excellent service,” it “could be depended on in any emergency,” and “the division lost one of its best regiments.” 9
For most of its enlistment The Ninth served and fought at points of geographic and strategic significance.

• At Rich Mountain and Carnifex Ferry in West Virginia to protect Ohio in 1861.
• At Shiloh, Tullahoma, and Corinth in 1862.
• To secure Nashville, Louisville, and Cincinnati itself against Braxton Bragg’s mobile and dynamic designs and John Morgan’s predations, in 1862 and 1863.
• In bloodier battles in 1863 and 1864, as the army of the Cumberland maneuvered for position in what would become Sherman’s march to the sea.
• In carnage at Chickamauga, through hunger in Chattanooga, and therefore, in 1863 at Missionary Ridge, mounting but half its numbers and losing half of them .
In a word the history of the Armies of the Ohio and the Cumberland is the history of the Ninth Ohio from 1861 to 1864, in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.
Despite hardship and danger, The Ninth never wavered or shirked but did its duty to the end. Though counting their remaining days and calculating the hours before they could leave the war, they set out to engage the enemy at the Etowah River in May of 1864. General Thomas, the co