THE SURRENDER OF THE THIRD REGIMENT

MINNESOTA VOLUNTEER INFANTRY.*

BY BRIGADIER-GENERAL C. C. ANDREWS,

BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL U. S. VOLUNTEERS.

THE several papers which it has been my fortune to hear read before this society have not only been uncommonly graphic and interesting, but they have delineated scenes in great campaigns. In contrast with them. it is with real diffidence that I now ask attention to the story of a single regiment, the Third Minnesota. What gives general interest to this regiment is the influence which its unfortunate surrender had in an important chapter of the war, the failure of General Buell to make the campaign into East Tennessee.

Like all of our Minnesota regiments, the Third was recruited from all portions of the State. I was residing

* Among the Companions present at the reading of this paper were General and ex-Governor H. H. Sibley; General and exGovernor W. R. Marshall, formerly colonel of Seventh Minnesota; General and ex-Governor L. F. Hubbard, formerly colonel Fifth Minnesota; Chief-Justice James Gilfillan, formerly colonel Eleventh Minnesota; General J. B. Sanborn, formerly colonel Fourth Minnesota; Colonel H. Mattson, Third Minnesota; General J. T. Averill, formerly colonel Sixth Minnesota; General J. H. Baker, formerly colonel Tenth Minnesota; Rev. Dr. E. D. Neill, ex-chaplain First Minnesota, etc., etc.

before the war at St. Cloud, in a then sparsely-settled region, and the recruiting for the little nucleus of my company involved travel by carriage over territory about a hundred miles in extent. In the early autumn of 1861, generally accompanied by some one, I canvassed for recruits a good part of the upper country, and especially Sauk Valley, a lovely region of undulating prairie, wood, and stream, forming a natural park sixty miles in length. I went as far northwest as the shores of Lake Osakis. At that time the earlier frost had thrown a scarlet tinge over the thickets of maple and poplar, and on the scattered farms the threshingmachine and autumn plough were already in motion.

Among each nationality of the settlers we found a few young men who were eager to go to the war, but it was often too great a pang for their parents to give their consent. I distinctly recall instances where after a full talk and consideration of the matter a husband agreed to enlist; but the wife, on hearing the decision, burst into tears, and seemed unable to consent to spare him. In every such case, of course, the man was promptly released from his promise. I remember two such cases where husbands subsequently went in other regiments and returned after the war safely to their families. If one had dreamed that in course of a year that peaceful frontier would have been swept by Indian war, our success in recruiting would probably have been much less than it was.

Although without military experience before the war, I had, however, some years previously, as a civilian, spent six months at a large military post, where by frequently seeing drills and occasionally an inspection

in each arm of the regular army service I acquired some idea of military discipline. Also, after inscribing my name as a volunteer under the first call for troops, I spent a week at Fort Ripley, drilling in the manual of arms and observing that model officer, Captain Nelson H. Davis (afterwards inspector-general United States Army), handle his infantry company.

The thinness of our population and distance from Fort Snelling caused my company to be the last but one organized. The men with me came from St. Cloud to St. Paul by stage; we lodged at the old Winslow House near Seven Corners, and the next day went to Fort Snelling. But we were not enough for a company organization. The first night at Fort Snelling I retired feeling about the bluest I ever did in my life, for I was contemplating what sort of an enlisted man I would make. I knew I was going to the war even if I had to serve through it as an enlisted man. The next day the skies brightened. Our men of the upper country united with about an equal number from the Minnesota Valley, with Mr. J. H. Swan, and Company I was formed, the writer being elected captain. We were sworn into the service October 11, but it was not till about the 1st of November that the company was filled.

On a bright Indian-summer day, November, 1861, the Third Regiment, eight hundred or more strong, embarked at Fort Snelling for the South. What greetings and benedictions from the awakened people saluted it on its progress to Louisville! What a bountiful repast the Wisconsin ladies spread before us at Portage! What throngs of old and young gathered around us at La Fayette, Indiana! I will not say that patriotic

emotion took away our appetites, but it stirred our feelings on reaching the soil of Kentucky to be treated as the regiment was to a bountiful collation served in person by some of Louisville's sturdy Unionists and most prominent citizens. Nor was it a compliment paid only to the Third Minnesota. All volunteers as they arrived were treated in the same hospitable manner. It was just there that Prentiss, the Demosthenes of the Union cause in the Southwest, had thundered against secession.

What was the training of the Third Regiment up to the hour of Murfreesboro'? Assigned to the brigade of General Mitchell, the regiment, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel B. F. Smith, remained a short time in camp a few miles out from Louisville, where it procured teams and Belgian muskets, also exercised in battalion drill; then marched to Shepherdsville, Kentucky, and entered upon the duty of guarding an extensive stretch of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, being brigaded with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Kentucky and Ninth Michigan Regiments as the Sixteenth Brigade of the Army of the Ohio. At this time General Buell had just relieved General Sherman of the command of the Department of the Ohio, headquarters at Louisville. General George H. Thomas with a small force was at Peach Orchard, Lincoln County, eighty miles southeast of Shepherdsville; while the principal Union force was on Nolin Creek (near Abraham Lincoln's native spot), sixty miles south of Shepherdsville, under General McCook. In his front at Bowling Green was General Albert Sidney Johnston with nineteen thousand Confederates. The Con

federates also held Columbus, Kentucky. The armies in the field on both sides were constantly being reinforced, and a battle seemed impending.

At Shepherdsville our Colonel Henry C. Lester, who had been a captain in the First Minnesota, arrived from the Army of the Potomac and took command of the regiment. He proved to be an intelligent, modest, and hospitable gentleman. He at once started an evening school of tactics and the manual of arms for the commissioned officers, and organized that instruction and drill which, rigidly adhered to for many months, gradually brought the regiment to an unusually high degree of discipline and efficiency. This, with his uniformly just and dignified conduct, won for him the admiration of officers and enlisted men alike, so that probably the very misfortune of the 13th of July following was partly owing to such an extreme confidence of some of the company commanders in him as to deprive them of independent judgment in that crisis. Headquarters were shortly moved to Belmont, a deserted iron-producing village, whose abundant buildings afforded ample shelter. It was a hilly, brush-wooded, and lean region; but it had this charm: it afforded enough level ground for knapsack battalion drill. Four companies were detached a week at a time guarding railroad bridges at Elizabethtown, Colesburg, Lebanon Junction, and Shepherdsville. There were thus always six companies at the main camp being habitually exercised two hours every afternoon in battalion drill. Each company likewise, wherever stationed, spent two hours every forenoon in squad and company drill. In very wet weather the manual of arms and marking