William Rosecrans

September 1st, the unit was given guns and horses, which were six cast iron rodman rifles initially, which Lilly then divided the battery into three sections, each with two rodmans and eight horses per limber.

Now, the 18th Indiana was only given three days to train with their new equipment before they were sent out of Indiana to join the new Army of the Cumberland, Under William Rosecrans in October of 1862.

And again, the reason we talked about this previously, but the reason why for the urgency was the artillery was needed in Louisville in Cincinnati to protect the cities from Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who was in the midst of his Kentucky campaign.

And so every able-bodied unit was sent there to protect the cities from Braxton Bragg.

And I think it's because of the horses.

So it's interesting looking back on the history of this.

When Wilder approached Rosecrans with this request to mount his men on horses...

Rosecrans basically said, yeah, sure thing.

We're going to start with the Union Army.

It is led by William Rosecrans, who graduated from West Point in 1842.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Rosecrans did not see action in the Mexican-American War.

Now, this is a big point because Mexican-American War is kind of where you made your spurs.

Of course, James Longstreet has won great fame in the East as Robert E. Lee's right-hand man.

And he's bringing that reputation with him as he comes west.

Longstreet graduated from West Point in 1842 and had actually been roommates with William Rosecrans while he was there at West Point.

He's also a very good friend of Ulysses S.

He therefore ignored Halleck's elaborate plan and set about repairing the railway to Nashville and moving his troops in that direction.

His previous slowness and indecision had brought him greatly into disfavor, and on the 30th of October he was relieved by Major General William S. Rosecrans.

The district was called thereafter the Department of the Cumberland, and the army in the field was designated as the 14th Army Corps.

Halleck's plans were urged upon Rosecrans, but he was of the same opinion as Buell, and it had by that time become plain that Bragg was doing just what Buell thought he would do.

Rosecrans concluded to go on in the same direction as had Buell, and the events showed clearly that Halleck's bureau made plans, based upon theory alone, and without an intimate knowledge of the real conditions, were the veriest nonsense, and that Buell and Rosecrans were quite right in ignoring them.

rosecrans organized the army into right wing center and left wing the right wing under mccook consisted of johnson's davis's and sheridan's divisions Thompson commanded the center, which consisted of five divisions under Rousseau, Negley, Fry, Mitchell, and Reynolds.

The left wing was commanded by Crittenden, and comprised Wood's, Palmer's, and Van Cleve's divisions.

The army was very deficient in cavalry, and a large portion of its meager force was very poorly armed.

In the summer of 1863, Confederate General Braxton Bragg controlled Chattanooga.

Union General William Rosecrans was sitting across the Tennessee River and threatening the rear of the Confederates.

Bragg had been outmaneuvered by September, and so the Confederate Army had no choice but to abandon the city and its remaining residents.

Rosecrans pursued, but found that Bragg had gotten reinforced.

Mm-hmm.

It happened on 18 to 20 September 1863 in the North Georgia woods, and this was a, uh, battle between, uh, General William Rosecrans commanding the Army of the Cumberland against General Braxton Bragg commanding the Army of the Tennessee.

Now, it all happened near Chattanooga, Tennessee, so you can visualize on the map in your mind.

This is the northwest corner of Georgia where it touches Tennessee.

Okay, so let me set the stage here.

So 1862, really, the Confederates have the momentum across the entire East, Central, and, and West.

So Rosecrans is stationed in, um, Tennessee, but he's reacting to Bragg.

Now, 1863 turns around and Rosecrans decides to go on the offense with a lot of pressure from Abraham Lincoln, of course.

They complied.

Wolfe also wrote a letter to the commander of Union forces in Missouri, Major General William S. Rosecrans, pleading for his life and promising that his own General Price would undoubtedly send Tim Reeves to rightfully die in his place if Union authorities would but inform him of Wolfe's predicament.

But the condemned man received no reply.

On the evening of Thursday, November 10th, less than 24 hours before Major Wolfe's terrible appointment with the firing squad, the president himself, old Abe Lincoln, sent a telegram to Union headquarters in St. Louis.

Years later, an elderly Enoch Wolfe claimed it was his membership in the Masonic Lodge that spared his life, that both the jailer and the preacher who baptized Wolfe were brothers in the venerable fraternal organization, and that they marshaled the local masons to lobby the president on behalf of the doomed Confederate major.

If that happened, it will forever remain a secret, of course.

What we know for sure, though, is that there were other non-Masons fighting to save the major, including two society ladies who went door to door getting the signatures of prominent Union men on a petition asking General Rosecrans for mercy.

Many influential St. Louisans signed it in part due to their shame and embarrassment over the public execution of the Confederate enlisted men on October 29th It was a harsh display that most folks in St. Louis, regardless of their allegiance, disapproved of.