Delilah's Men

Delilah's Men,

Delilah Mills' Husband and Brothers in the Civil War

Pea Ridge and Perryville, Keys to the Western Borders.

Missouri had come into the Union as a slave state but like its Border slave holding sisters, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, its people were divided between remaining in the Union and joining the fledgling Confederacy. Claiborne Fox Jackson, Missouri's Governor was a pro-slavery firebrand. He had personally led pro-slavery invaders to fight in Bloody Kansas. He used a razor thin majority in the Missouri Legislature to call a State Convention to consider an Ordinance of Secession. When the Convention met at the Jefferson City Capitol the vote was pro-Union. Thwarted in his effort to lead the state out of the Union the Governor appealed to the new government in Montgomery for assistance and called his Missouri State Guard to assemble at "Camp Jackson" on St. Louis outskirts. In response to Jackson's appeal Jefferson Davis sent four cannons in crates labeled "marble". Jackson's plan was to assemble his force, train and arm it and then march on the Federal Arsenal in St. Louis and seize the military stores stockpiled there.

The Federal Arsenal was commanded by Captain Nathaniel Lyon, a Connecticut native, a superb soldier and leader and an ardent abolitionist. One of Lincoln's first acts was to promote the Captain to Brigadier General. St. Louis was an old city by the time of the Civil War. It had thrived as a river port for two centuries under both French and Spanish flags. It had come to the United States as a slaveholding market center with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In the almost half-century since it had changed its character. It had become the gateway to the west, a mercantile center that had attracted merchants and artisans from Central Europe where slavery was neither permitted nor understood. In large part the immigrants had been Germans and they and their children were fiercely pro-Union. Faced with Jackson's militia preparing for rebellion on his doorstep Lyon did not ask or wait for orders from Washington.

He mobilized the city's German-American Union Club and with the regulars of his garrison at the core, Lyon marched on Camp Jackson on March 10, 1861. No shots were fired and the 700 strong militia quickly surrendered. As the prisoners were marched through St. Louis to the Arsenal rioting broke out. Shots were fired and at the end of the day 28 rioters had been killed or wounded. Two days later Jackson named former Governor Sterling Price as commander on the newly organized Missouri State Guard with the rank of Major General. Democrat Price was pro-secession and had commanded a Brigade of Missouri troops in the Mexican War. Just three weeks after the Confederacy had fired the first shots at Fort Sumter the battle lines were being drawn in Missouri.

In the election of 1860 St. Louis had sent Lincoln's friend, Francis P. Blair, Jr. to Congress. The politician wanted to save his city from the ravages of the coming conflict and called for a meeting between the factions. On June 11 Jackson and Price sat across a table from Lyon and Blair in a suite of the Planter's House hotel. Blair was willing to settle for Missouri declaring neutrality while remaining in the Union. Jackson and Price were only interested in negotiating terms for Lyons surrender of the Federal Arsenal. Lyon ended the meeting by standing and declaring the obvious. "This means war!", he said.

The echoes of Ft. Sumter's cannonades had barely faded when the administration adopted the policy of the caution when it came to the slaveholding states that had not yet left the Union. It was administration policy to avoid provoking anti-union sentiment by deploying federal troops or reinforcing garrisons. The policy Lincoln had followed in Charleston Harbor had not prevented Beauregard from striking, yet the administration still harbored the illusion that it could avoid full blown Civil War. Lyon wasted no time waiting for orders from an administration that was feeling its way. He marched on Jefferson City to nip the rebellion in its Missouri bud before Jackson could fully assemble his Missouri State Guard. Lyons columns occupied the Capitol on June 15th and Jackson fled westward with his government to Boonsville on the Missouri River.

At Jefferson City Lyon loaded a reinforced brigade on riverboats and steamed to Boonsville. They were met by a smaller force of the ill-armed and barely trained Missouri State Guard commanded by John S. Marmaduke. They put up but light resistance and then evacuated the city. Jackson and Price retreated to the Southwestern corner of the state where the Confederate Army was just across the Arkansas border. Lyon followed on heir heels while he sent Franz Sigel with a column of 1,100 from St. Louis to rendezvous with him at Springfield. Sigel reached the hills outside of Carthage on July 5th and ran into Jackson with 4 times that number arrayed in line of battle. In the running fight that followed Sigel was driven slowly back through Carthage and broke off the engagement to rendezvous with Lyon's column in Springfield.

By mid July the Unionist elements of the State Convention re-convened in the Capitol and declared Jackson and his legislature to have forfeited their offices by reason of treason. They took control of the State's institutions and declared themselves the provisional government of the State of Missouri filling the offices they had just declared vacant. Historians would later debate whether then impetuous Lyon had saved Missouri for the Union, but to the administration he was a loose cannon. Lincoln had an alternative ready and anxious for service, his predecessor as the Republican nominee for the presidency in 1856, John C. Fremont. He promoted Fremont to the rank of Major-General and put him in charge of the Department of the West. The Pathfinder of the West took his post in St. Louis in July.

Closer to Washington the opening rounds of the war were not going well for the Union. Optimists had believed that the rebellion would be swiftly put down. Lincoln was among them. His first call for troops had been for volunteers to serve for 90 days. In July the enlistment of the first round of volunteers was drawing to a close. The defeat at Bull Run opened the administrations' eyes to the long war that awaited them. Lincoln called on the States for 300,000 volunteers to serve 3 years or until the rebellion was put down, which ever was the shorter.

Deliliah Mills brother, William Mills, was the first of the family to don the Union blue. When the recruiters for Company D of the 25th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry beat the drum at the Dallas Post Office in late July 1861 he signed up for three years service. The 25th was organized at Urbana under the command of Col. William Coler and boarded the cars of the Great Western Railway for the ride to Alton. Taking the steamers south to St. Louis the regiment rendezvoused at the U.S. Arsenal on August 2, drew its uniforms and equipment and was mustered into Federal service on August 4th and commenced the process of becoming soldiers - drills and discipline.

Displaced now as ranking officer in the Department of the West, isolated by distance at Springfield and with his three month men's enlistments ready to expire Lyon had 5,400 under his command. Brigadier General Ben McCulloch had brought his 12,000 man Army north of the border to support Jackson and Price and their 7,000 Missouri State Guard. Lyon sent to Fremont for re-enforcements. The Pathfinder of the West was assembling what he hoped was an irresistible force with which he intended to clear the west of th infection of rebellion. There was room for only one hero in Fremonts vision and that left Lyon out. There would be no re-enforcement and Lyon should stay where he was.

Lyon was desperate and time was running out. McCulloch's Arkansas Army was in camp at Wilson's Creek, just 12 miles south of Springfield. Lyon's men were running out of food. Leaving a detachment to guard the city he marched out in two columns during the night of August 9th to surprise the Confederates at dawn. He sent 1200 with Franz Sigel to circle around to the heights on the Confederate right flank. He led the main body of his attacking force to smash the Rebel left and flatten the Arkansas regiments like a blacksmith's hammer against Sigel's anvil. The plan worked well and the surprise was flawless as the Union cannon opened up with the sun. But time and superior numbers were on the side of the Confederates. Three counter-attacks broke on the Union line. During the first Lyon was slightly wounded by an enemy shell. After the second he was rallying his men to meet the third line that was sure to come. A rebel sharpshooter's musket ball made him the first Federal general to die in the Civil War. The Union line held the third time and the rebels fell back to regroup. The Union forces, their bold leader fallen, retreated to Springfield and then retired to the railhead at Rolla.

Fremont took his growing force to Jefferson City. The 25th marched to its new post and arrived on August 23. Now ensconced in the State Capitol Freemont declared Missouri subject to martial law, announced the immediate execution of guerillas found behind Union lines and declared the slaves of rebels to be free men. He also announced his plan to carry the war to Arkansas and the Indian Territory of Oklahoma with a force of 58,000. If Lyon had been a military loose cannon, Fremont was a whole rolling battery. Lincoln was still trying to treat the border states tenderly. Kentucky and Maryland were especially sensitive cases. Fremont's emancipation proclamation struck at the policy of defending the Union with out attacking slavery. Lincoln publicly disavowed his commander in the West and Fremont's days were numbered.

The 25th Illinois were part of the 58,000 that Fremont led out of Jefferson City to campaign in the Southwestern corner of the state. The regiment left Jefferson City on September 25th and reached Springfield on October 27th. Fremont was in no hurry to drive the enemy from Missouri's soil, as he had bragged in September. By November 2 Lincoln was fed up. Fremont lost his command and his chance for political glory. David Hunter took his place and withdrew his force to winter quarters in Rolla until the following February when he moved south from Springfield to confront the Confederates in the first real battle since Wilson's Creek.

The 25th's introduction to the reality of war came in March 1862 with the sharp battle at Pea Ridge, Arkansas that effectively ended the Confederate threat to Missouri. Well trained and battle tested the 25th was marched to Cape Girardeau where it boarded the transport, Henry Clay bound for Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee on the Tennessee River. The regiment was part of the force shadowing the movements of Braxton Bragg, one of the South's more effective generals in the west. After a summer of marching across west Tennessee and Kentucky it reached Louisville in August 1862 to be sent to General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio assembling in camp at Louisville, Kentucky to defend the vital border state.

In the late summer of 1862 Union Recruiters were canvassing in South Western Vermilion and South Eastern Champaign Counties organizing the 125th Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Company K of the new unit was made up of men enrolled in Dallas and Sidell in Vermilion and Homer and Sidney west of the County line. The recruiters' drum sounded at the post office in Dallas on August 13th. John Ritter and his brothers-in-law, Adam and Richard Mills all enrolled, collected their bounty and composed their affairs to report to be mustered into Federal service at Danville on September 3.

In camp at Danville they drew their equipment, the Regiment was organized and the dull routine of camp life began with drills and exercises to turn the Illinois farm boys into soldiers. After two weeks of meager training the regiment was loaded on the cars and sent by rail to join the 11th division of the Army of the Ohio at Covington, Kentucky. They arrived September 25th and were attached to the 36th Brigade. Braxton Bragg was leading a thrust into Northern Kentucky threatening Cincinnati and the fresh raw troops fresh from Illinois were rushed through more drill and sent to the front to see their first action.

John Ritter did not go with them. Many more men died in camp than fell to enemy fire. Sickness was the major enemy of soldiers of both sides in the Civil War. An epidemic broke out. John fell ill in camp at Covington and when the Regiment moved out to help drive Bragg back to Tennessee Ritter stayed behind, to ill to march, too ill to fight. He had what we would call the flu today. That combination of respiratory and intestinal afflictions that answer well to time and modern medicine but threatened life in the middle of the 19th century. A high fever that made the joints ache, a hacking cough and gasping breathe and endless diarrhea marked the end of John Ritter's service. He lay in the camp hospital until October 23, 1862 when the Army recognized that the likelihood of his recovery was remote. Major W. H. Spencer of the 3rd Kentucky Infantry signed his discharge and John was sent home to die. He lingered through the winter, fading with the season. John would not see the spring. On March 20, 1863, the last day of winter, John Ritter gave up the fight. He was the family's first casualty of the Civil War.

John's illness and discharge left Adam, Richard and William Henry for Delilah to worry about. Company K and the 125th went off to war as Buell moved to repulse the invasion and keep Kentucky in the Union. Brad had concentrated his forces at Bardstown and Frankfort where he was installing a provisional Confederate government for the State. Buell sent two divisions toward Frankfort disguise his intentions and sent the rest of his army toward Bardstown. Bragg fell for the feint and kept fully half of his army to defend Frankfort and the provisional government leaving just 16,000 men at Bardstown to face the 22,000 that Buell was sending against them.

October 1862 was hot and it hadn't rained in two months. The creeks were mostly dry and the troops of both sides were thirsty. The 125th was raw and barely trained. The columns Buell sent against Bardstown were approaching Perryville on October 7 when the Union advance was held up by Confederate Cavalry commanded by Col. Joe Wheeler. The 125th was part of Col. Daniel McCook's brigade of Phil Sheridan's division of moving up the Springfield Pike. The column halted for the night just west of Perryville. Early in the morning, before sun up skirmishers were ordered out to fetch water for breakfast coffee. They found fire instead of water on the slopes leading down to the creek. Sheridan deployed on the Union right flank moved his division up and pushed the Confederates back to the east side of Doctor's Creek and was beginning to consolidate his advance when he received overly cautious ordered from III Corps headquartered to withdraw and establish a defensive line on Peter's Hill.

The 125th was stationed in support of a battery on the crest near Sheridan's headquarters at Turpin house. Firing slackened about 9:30 in the morning as the battle shifted to the Union left flank. Faulty information told Bragg the left was lightly held. He sent Leonidias Polk with two divisions to roll up the Union right. Instead he ran into General McCook's Corps. McCook gave ground slowly and traded inches for time as he brought his strength up. Positioning them on the heights he stood his ground as the Confederates battered themselves against a wall of steel and lead.

When Polk's attack failed, the focus shifted to Sheridan's division posted on Peters Hill. Linton's division came up the slope and smashed into the Union position, breaching the Union first line and working into the batteries, came up against Daniel McCook's 36th Brigade and the 125th. The Illinois farm boys stood like veterans and the Confederate attack first wavered then broke. Sheridan, always more comfortable on the offensive, sent his boys down the hill, nipping at the rebel heels as they fled into the streets of Perryville. Gilbert had held the 32nd Brigade, including the 25th Illinois, in reserve. The veterans did not get into the fight and the raw recruits of the 125th became veterans.

Bragg left 5.500 of his 16,000 men on the field as he retreated to join Kirby Smith in the East Tennessee mountains around Knoxville. Buell lost 4000 of the 22,000 he had sent against the rebels. Just as Pea Ridge had kept Missouri in the Union, Perryville ended the illusion that Kentucky would join the Confederacy. Buell did not follow up the strategic advantage won at Perryville by hot pursuit of the retreating rebels. Instead he moved cautiously to Nashville where he established a base for later offensive operations. Exasperated at the delay, Lincoln relieved Buell and put William S. Rosencans in charge and renamed the force as the Army of the Cumberland.

©Keith Hays, Champaign, Illinois