On the Road to Atlanta – On the firing line

On June 16th, near Gilgal Church, David Stanley aggressively pushed forward his First Division skirmishers, seizing elevated ground 400 yards in front of his line. Two regiments from Brig. Gen. Charles Cruft’s First Brigade, the 31st Indiana and 90th Ohio; and two regiments from Col. William Grose’s Third Brigade, the 30th Indiana and 59th Illinois, spearheaded this advance “under severe fire.” There, “not over 80 yards from the Rebel skirmish pits,” details from each regiment went to work. Colonel John T. Smith of the 31st Indiana later described how the advance was accomplished. His men cut down “a large log . . . some sixteen feet in length, which we rolled up the hill.” Next “a line of men was formed, lying down,” who passed brush up to “throw over the log. Then the shovels were kept busy. . . . This operation was repeated until the entire log had been rolled up the hill.” Sometime that morning General Hooker rode by and, dubious, ordered Smith and his fellow Hoosiers to “quit our foolishness.” When Smith informed Hooker that “he was not in command of these troops”—the 31st was in the IV Corps, not the XX—the general rode off. Later Hooker returned and, now impressed with the Hoosiers’ ingenuity, told Smith that “the rebels will either have to put you out of this or else they will have to get away.”[1]

Accompanying them was Capt. Peter Simonson, along to supervise the construction of these artillery embrasures. To maintain contact with the 5th Indiana Battery and direct its fire, Simonson formed a “human telegraph line” using volunteers from the battery, stationed at “intervals of about 35 yards.” Not long after he went forward, however, a Confederate “sharpshooter” shot him in the forehead, killing him instantly. He was widely mourned. Major General Stanley deemed his demise “an irreparable loss to the division.” Lieutenant Chesley Mosman of the 59th Illinois, whose pioneer detachment was helping to build these new works, thought that “it was too bad. He was a splendid officer.” Later, Stanley wrote that “he was my favorite artillery officer.”[2]

[1]OR 38, pt. 1, 232, 280; John Thomas Smith, A History of the Thirty-First Regiment of Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion (Cincinnati, OH: 1900), 103.

[2]OR 38, pt. 1, 232, 280; D. D. Holm, History of the Fifth Indiana Battery, Compiled and Written from the “Field Diary” of Lieutenant Daniel H. Chandler, and from Official Reports of Officers of the Army of the Cumberland. (n.p.: 1900), 47; Gates, The Rough Side of War, 217; David S. Stanley, Personal Memoirs of Major-General D. S. Stanley, U.S.A. (Cambridge, MA: 1917), 172.