Rain. Impassable Roads. Endless Mud. Victory. 

    Private William F. Stegamiller of Co. C wrote the following letter to the editors of the Aurora Journal in July 1863 giving a fine account of the Tullahoma campaign. Like most regiments in the Army of the Cumberland, the 37th Indiana’s part was larg...

After a long winter of relative inactivity, the war in the Kanawha Valley of western Virginia opened with a bang in May 1862 with a series of engagements at Giles Courthouse, Princeton, Charleston, and Lewisburg. Sergeant Major Phocian Way of the 11th Ohio missed all of the action, tasked with guarding stores at Raleigh. But the stern realities of war rolled into town on the ...

Charging the Confederate works at Fort Donelson on the afternoon of February 15, 1862, Andrew Nichols of the 2nd Iowa recalled the intensely personal nature of combat.

"The enemy did not fire a shot until we got within about 50 yards," he wrote. "As for me, I held my head as low as possible and ran my best for they were shooting high u...

A setting sun silhouetted the charging Confederates as they broke the first line of Federals at Pleasant Hill on the evening of April 9, 1864. Chaplain Francis Evans of the 35th Iowa observed their approach from the second line and marveled at the response of his fellow Iowans.

    "While the Rebels were charging up the field and the troops in our secon...

Watching the sun set after the first day of Shiloh, Sergeant Harold White of the 11th Iowa “commenced musing over the affairs of the day and you may well suppose my musings were not of a very agreeable character. The prospect was most decidedly blue- not the bright cerulean tings of the summer sky, but a dark, despairing, deplorable blue.”

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