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Forging a New South
forging a new south
The Life of General John T. Wilder
Maury Nicely
the university of tennessee press

Knoxville
Copyright © 2023 by The University of Tennessee Press / Knoxville.
All Rights Reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America.
First Edition.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nicely, Maury, author.
Title: Forging a new South : the life of General John T. Wilder / Maury Nicely.
Other titles: Life of General John T. Wilder
Description: First edition. | Knoxville : The University of Tennessee Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Summary: “John T. Wilder was an entrepreneur, Civil War general, and business leader
who would become influential in the development of post-Civil War Chattanooga.
A northern transplant who made his early fortune in the iron industry, Wilder would
gain notoriety in the Western Theater through his victories at the battles of Chattanooga,
Chickamauga, and throughout the Tullahoma and Atlanta Campaigns while leading
the famous ‘Lightning Brigade.’ After the Civil War, he relocated to Chattanooga and
began the Roane Iron Company and fostered ironworks throughout the southeast.
He was elected mayor of Chattanooga but would fail to be elected to Congress as its
representative. Finally, he was instrumental in the establishment of national military
parks in Chattanooga and Chickamauga. Nicely’s biography captures the life of a man
important to the development of Chattanooga and East Tennessee and argues that Wilder
was influential in bringing both northern and immigrant populations to the area.”
—Provided by publisher
Identifiers: LCCN 2022056859 (print) | LCCN 2022056860 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781621908005 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781621908012 (adobe pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Wilder, John Thomas, 1830–1917. | Generals—United States—
Biography. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Biography. | United States.
Army. Wilder’s Brigade. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—
Regimental histories. | United States. Army—Biography. | Businessmen—Tennessee—
Chattanooga—Biography. | Tennessee—Economic conditions—19th century. |
Chattanooga (Tenn.)—Biography. | Greensburg (Ind.)—Biography.
Classification: LCC E467.1.W69 N54 2023 (print) | LCC E467.1.W69 (ebook)
| DDC 355.0092 [B]—dc23/eng/20230111
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056859
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056860
Contents
Acknowledgments
xi
Prologue
1
part 1
Old Northwest to Old South
5
part 2
Old South to New South
235
Notes
415
Bibliography
491
Index
517
Illustrations
photographs
Following page 185
John Thomas Wilder and Martha Stewart, 1858
Ridgway Foundry, Columbus, Ohio
Wilder’s Patented “Improved Horizontal Water-Wheel”
John T. Wilder Residence, Greensburg, Indiana
Lt. Col. John T. Wilder, 1861
Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton
Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner (CSA)
Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans (US)
“Wilder’s Mounted Infantry Passing the Blockhouse
of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad”
Spencer Repeating Rifle
Hoover’s Gap Battlefield
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Capt. Eli Lilly (US)
First Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Friar’s Island, Tennessee River
The “Ditch of Death,” West Viniard Field, Chickamauga
Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana (US)
Maj. Gen. Thomas Crittenden (US)
Roane Iron Company Furnace, Rockwood, Tennessee
Hiram S. Chamberlain
Superintendent’s House, Rockwood, Tennessee
Company Store, Rockwood, Tennessee
Roane Rolling Mill, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Stanton House, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Opera House Foundations, Chattanooga, Tennessee
John T. Wilder Residence, East Terrace, Chattanooga, Tennessee
H. Clay Evans
David M. Key
Tomlinson Fort
Confederate Monument, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Group of Chattanooga’s “Distinguished Citizens,” 1881
Frank Stratton
John T. Wilder’s “Rustic Boarding House,” Roan Mountain
Roan Mountain Inn, Roan Mountain Station, Tennessee
John T. Wilder Residence, Roan Mountain Station, Tennessee
Wilder Family at Roan Mountain Station, 1886
Northern Methodist Church, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga (U.S. Grant) University, Chattanooga, Tennessee
John T. Wilder, early 1880s
John T. Wilder Congressional Campaign Ribbon, 1886
John Randolph Neal
Cloudland Hotel, Roan Mountain
John T. Wilder at Roan Mountain, 1886
Lightning Brigade Officers atop Lookout Mountain, 1880
John T. Wilder, 1887
Joseph Wheeler
Carnegie Hotel, Johnson City, Tennessee
John T. Wilder Residence, Johnson City, Tennessee
President Benjamin Harrison Visit to Johnson City, 1891
Crawfish Springs, Chickamauga, Georgia, 1898
Henry Van Ness Boynton
Commissioners, Chickamauga and Chattanooga
National Military Park, 1892
Wilder Brigade Monument, Chickamauga Battlefield
U.S. Custom House, Knoxville, Tennessee
John T. Wilder
Dr. Dora Lee Wilder
John T. Wilder Residence, Knoxville, Tennessee
G.A.R. Monument, Knoxville, Tennessee
Imperial Hotel, Monterey, Tennessee
John T. Wilder Residence, Monterey, Tennessee
John T. Wilder in Monterey, Tennessee, 1913
Lightning Brigade Reunion, Chickamauga, 1903
Wilder Point, Signal Mountain, Tennessee
G.A.R. Encampment, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1913
John T. Wilder Grave, Forrest Hills Cemetery, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Wilder’s Children at His Funeral, 1917
John T. Wilder, c. 1900
maps
Map 1. Battle of Munfordville 36
Map 2. Battle of Hoover’s Gap 86
Map 3. Crossing the Chickamauga 126
Map 4. John T. Wilder’s East Tennessee 236
Acknowledgments
John T. Wilder was dedicated to the idea of collaboration.

In that spirit, my heartfelt thanks go out to the individuals and entities
who gave their time, expertise, and opinions to help shape this biogra-
phy of General John T. Wilder: Dr. Anthony Hodges; Patrice Glass; Jeanie
Watts at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection in Knoxville; the
staff of the Chattanooga Public Library; Ron Westphal, Curator of Science
and Technology at the Tennessee State Museum; Russell Wilhoit and Lynn
Saler, Decatur County Historical Society; Traci Cromwell, Indiana State
Museum; Brittany Kropf and the staff of the Indiana State Library Rare
Books and Manuscripts Collection; W. Calvin Dickinson, professor emeritus
of history at Tennessee Technological University; Julie Bohannon and Dale
Welch, Monterey Depot Museum; Glenn Jones, Putnam County Archives;
Ruth Ann Woodbright; Michael A. Gibson, professor of geology at the
University of Tennessee at Martin; Carolyn Runyon and the staff of the
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections; Kyle Hovious,
University of Tennessee Special Collections; Kate Scott, Indiana Historical
Society; Ethan Wright, Indiana War Memorials; Sharon Brackett, Register of
Deeds of Roane County; Denise Zeigler, Decatur County Deputy Recorder;
Jarrod Ellis, Carter County Register of Deeds; Teresa Bowman, Washington
County Register of Deeds; Lindsay Hager and the staff of the Tennessee
State Library and Archives; Alan Boehm, special collections, Walker Library,
Middle Tennessee State University; Michelle Jarrell, historian/archivist, Eli
Lilly and Company; Maxwell Zupke, UCLA Library Special Collections;
Jennifer Dewar, Tennessee Tech University Archives and Special Collections;
and Thomas Wells, Jonathan Boggs, Linsey Perry, and the staff of the Uni-
versity of Tennessee Press. To the extent that I have inadvertently omitted
anyone, I apologize and will get you back the next time around.
xii ack now l edgm e n ts
Special thanks to Tom Maher, the great-grandson of John T. Wilder, who

desired and labored to see a comprehensive biography published. Thank you
for your enthusiasm and willingness to share your research and family stories.
I hope you are pleased with (and occasionally infuriated by) the results.
And special thanks to Michael “Birdie” Birdwell, professor of history at
Tennessee Technological University. A discussion of Tennessee history with
you always became a fireworks of connections and ideas for how to take a
project to the next level. Thank you for leading a day-long expedition to find
the remains of the Wilder mining town in the Upper Cumberland; it was a
day I will not soon forget. Your enthusiasm and friendship will be missed.
This book is dedicated to Jenny, Charles, and William.
Forging a New South
Prologue
Mid-summer in the woods of northwest Georgia. Suppertime yet the air is

hot and thick. Humidity drips from the trees surrounding the field; those
waiting can feel the dampness at their collars.
At the far side of the meadow, a murmur rises. The first few emerge from
the thickets, weighed down by the trappings flung over their shoulders. They
do not pause at the tree line but step out into the open. Irregular drum bursts
and the braying of horns draw them across the field. Others fall in step be-
hind, freshly cut hay crunching beneath their feet as they enter the clearing.
They reach the middle of the field. Wordlessly they toss down their blan-
kets. Styrofoam coolers plunk to the ground with a squeak and the clinking
of bottles. Tee shirts are pulled from sticky torsos, toes let out to wiggle
in the crisp browned grass of early July. Quilts, their corners pinned down
with discarded sandals, scatter the ground like a patchwork.
At the crest of a small rise, a red, white, and blue flag hangs from a stone
tower, fluttering in the slightest of breezes. At the foot of the tower, musi-
cians tune their instruments, tightening pegs and wiping brows. Frisbees
and footballs arc overhead.
The laughter and chatter subside as a man with a baton steps from behind
the tower and raises his hands.
Silence and a thick heat hang over the field for a long second.
It begins with a crash of sound.
The Wilder Brigade Monument is an emblematic symbol of the Chicka-

mauga military park. From a roughly paved pull-off at Tour Stop 6, visi-
tors walk through an iron gate and climb a winding stone staircase to the
2 prologu e
highest point in the park, from which the battlefield spreads out into the
distance, undulating fields bisected by woods and creeks, the foothills of
the mountains at the horizon. Shadowing the iron tablets, green-weathered
cannon, and sculptures littering the spot where widow Eliza Glenn’s cabin
once stood, the tower overlooks the field like a massive chess piece, a general
surveying the terrain with upthrust chin, squinting through battlesmoke
toward the enemy.
Celebrating the United States Bicentennial, on July 4, 1976, the Chat-
tanooga Symphony played a “Pops in the Park” concert at the foot of the
historic tower. It soon became an annual event, drawing thousands to listen
to the patriotic music of Copland, Tchaikovsky, and Sousa. Most of those in
attendance, however, were little aware of the tactical movements that took
place on the ground where they sat, the story of the iconic stone tower, or
the achievements of its namesake.
John Thomas Wilder enlisted in the 17th Indiana Infantry (17 IN) regiment
in a patriotic fit in April 1861; he rose to command the regiment, then its
brigade. In the aftermath of Chickamauga, where Wilder’s Brigade delayed
the Confederate advance and helped to save the Union Army, he was bre-
veted a brigadier-general. “Many believe General Wilder to be the greatest
military genius and soldier developed during the war,” a 1905 biographical
article gushed. Plagued by a nagging illness, however, he retired from the
war in October 1864, his military career spanning roughly three years and
six months.1
Perhaps rightfully so, biographies of the notable, colorful, and notorious
figures of the American Civil War tend to focus almost exclusively upon
the four-year period between 1861 and 1865—their postbellum careers are
often a footnote to their wartime exploits. Wars, of course, make for excit-
ing reading—more so than business partnerships and financial investments.
As such, biographers focus upon the thrilling wartime adventures of their
subjects, in comparison to which their civilian lives often pale.
Many Civil War icons, moreover, had less-than-prosperous peacetime
careers. The war was the highlight of their public lives, inspiring otherwise
average men to heroic (or notorious) deeds. Many reentered civilian life only
to settle into dull mediocrity or failure—the qualities that had served them
in the heat of battle ill-suited to the humdrum of daily existence. For many
war heroes, there was not much beyond the war worth telling.
Such was not the case with Wilder. “It would take a book of space and
great time to enumerate the successful undertakings of this one man,” pro-
prologu e 3
posed an 1891 newspaper article. “A volume would hardly suffice to tell

the story of his life,” echoed a turn-of-the-century profile. He was a fasci-
nating, if relatively minor, Civil War officer. He was bold and innovative,
his ingenuity and incapacity for boredom spurring him to take advantage
of technological advances spurred by the war and pioneer tactical innova-
tions of his own devising. His “Lightning Brigade,” which modernized the
nineteenth-century art of war, was “known from Maine to Mexico, without
whom no history of the Civil War can be written.”2
War, though, occupied but four years in the eighty-seven-year life of
John T. Wilder. Even before the rebellion, he was a successful Indiana busi-
nessman. In the wake of the conflict, recognizing the business opportunities
in the southern mountains where he had recently fought, he relocated to
East Tennessee. He would spend the remainder of his life there, charging
into the industrial arena as he had done on the battlefield. Congenitally
frustrated by idleness, always on the prowl for new opportunities, he was
a New South visionary who created dozens of businesses, factories, mines,
hotels, and towns in his adopted home. “His name was a household word
in the South,” one writer praised. “Industry after industry here and in upper
East Tennessee were inaugurated by Gen. Wilder or through his influence.”3
He ventured South into a region under the yoke of Reconstruction, where
the term “carpetbagger” was a pejorative for the Northerners flowing in to
capitalize on the federal occupation of the South. In sharply divided East
Tennessee, ugly guerilla violence would linger for years. A Union veteran
seeking to set up shop in the former Confederacy doubtlessly did so at con-
siderable personal risk. Wilder came, however, not as a conquering warrior
claiming the spoils of war, but as a champion of sectional reconciliation and
the development of a new South.
Throughout his career, he exhibited a deep commitment to binding the
wounds created by the war; at every possible turn, he sought to affiliate
with former Confederates as well as Union veterans in his business efforts,
and he was well-respected despite his former status as a “Yankee invader.”
Of Wilder, one former rebel officer offered that “no man did more . . . in
bringing order out of the chaos” of the war. His goal was not to simply wring
wealth from the region; he cast his lot with the defeated South, optimistic
that together they would create a new economy and society. His mindset was
encapsulated upon his death by an associate who remarked, “Gen. Wilder
told me thirty-five years ago that doing well was mighty hard to beat.”4
The story of John T. Wilder is more than a Civil War biography. This
is the story of a man—a soldier and industrialist—who not only made his
mark in the crucible of war, but also led the effort to forge a new South in
the wake of conflict.
Part One
old northwest to old south
One
O
n April 20, 2001, onlookers gathered for the unveiling of a historic
marker at the corner of Main and Lathrop Streets in the small
town of Greensburg, Indiana. A handful of mustachioed Civil War
reenactors, resplendent in blue-trimmed infantry coats and high-crowned
Model 1858 “Jeff Davis” dress hats, milled around among the crowd. They
were armed with reproduction muzzle-loading muskets—not the Spencer
repeating rifles that were the hallmark of the “Lightning Brigade,” the other-
wise-eponymous unit whose commander the crowd was gathered to honor.
Dedicated to “Civil War General John T. Wilder,” the iron marker stands
on a quiet residential street in front of the home built by Wilder and his
wife, Martha, during the closing years of the war. Although his sojourn in
Greensburg was fairly brief, Wilder is memorialized by of one of only three
historic markers in and around Greensburg. To that end, at the unveiling
of the marker, it was noted that it “commemorates the life of a man who,
although he spent only eleven of his eighty-seven years in Greensburg,
non-the-less was, and continues to be recognized as one of the community’s
finest citizens.”1
Throughout his long life, one enduring character trait of John Thomas
Wilder was a certain restlessness, an “itchy heel” that kept him surveying
the horizon for new opportunities, leaping from one to the next. He was
always lured more by the prospect of a new challenge than by the daily
drudgery of maintaining his affairs. “I am essentially a pioneer by disposi-
tion,” he advised a newspaper reporter in 1887. “Whenever an enterprise
gets to running along smoothly in a rut, I get out of it.” This opinion was
consistent with American attitudes of the time. “The American has always
something better in his eye, further west,” one visitor to the young country
wrote in 1823, “he therefore lives and dies on hope, a mere gypsy in this
8 pa rt 1
particular.” This restiveness, coupled with a bold confidence that at times

bordered on recklessness, led Wilder to embark headlong upon new ideas
and projects from the time he was a young man to the end of his days.2
Wilder’s temperament is not at all surprising when set against the many
migrations of his ancestors, who came quite early from England to the Amer-
ican colonies. Around 1584, his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather,
Thomas Wilder, was born at Shiplake-on-Thames, a rural community on
the west bank of the River Thames in Berkshire, one of the oldest counties
in England. The family have been labeled “Puritans,” and upon Thomas’
death on October 23, 1634, his widow, Martha, possibly motivated by the
persecution of Protestants under King Charles I, emigrated to America. In
May 1638, she sailed from Southampton on the Confidence, bound for Mas-
sachusetts Bay; while the evidence is inconclusive, she may have sent some
of her children ahead on the perilous journey while settling her affairs in
England. She died in April 1652 in Massachusetts, where the family would
remain for a handful of generations.
Born in 1623, Edward Wilder received a ten-acre land grant in Hingham
(Suffolk County), a town on Boston Harbor that was settled in 1635 and
purchased three decades later from the native Wampanoag tribe. In 1651,
he married another English colonist, Elizabeth Eames (or Ames), with whom
he had eleven children. He was made a freeman in 1644, which provided
him with the rights to own land and become a member of the church; this
advancement suggests that he had served a term as an indentured servant,
possibly in exchange for his passage to America. His rise within the com-
munity was complete when, in 1667, he became a selectman, a member of
the local assembly that administered the town of Hingham. In 1675 (age
52), he was impressed into military service during King Philip’s War, the first
native war in America, after the Wampanoag tribe attacked colonial towns
throughout New England; in that way, the Wilder family came quite early to
military service in America. Edward Wilder died in 1690, Elizabeth in 1692.
Few facts have survived with respect to the next two generations of
Wilders. John Wilder (1653–1724) married Rebecca Doggett (1655–1728) in
1675. His son, Ephraim (1696–1770), a blacksmith by trade, married Mary
Lane (d. 1770) in Hingham. He is the first Wilder documented as working
with iron, a trade upon which subsequent generations would build. At some
point, he relocated to Abington (Plymouth County), Massachusetts, midway
between Boston and Plymouth, where he died in 1770.
The eighth of nine children, Seth Wilder (c. 1738–1814) married Mariam
Beal in 1761 and moved west to the fairly new town of Cummington, Mas-
sachusetts, around 1773, possibly after a chimney fire destroyed their home
old nort h w est to old sou t h 9
in Hingham. Like his father, he was a blacksmith. It has been claimed that
he was involved in the Boston Tea Party uprising, but the sole source, a
newspaper claim made by a descendant in 1858, cannot be validated.
John T. Wilder’s grandfather, Seth Wilder, Jr. (1764–1813), married
Tabitha (or Dorcas) Briggs (1766–1825) around 1788. He died at age forty-
nine in 1813 and is buried in Cummington.
Reuben Wilder (1797–1880) was John T. Wilder’s father. Like many New
Englanders in the decades following the Revolution, he sought his fortune in
the green lands of the advancing frontier, venturing west to Hunter Village
(Greene County), New York, a small town in the Catskill Mountains. It was
a pristine region. Designated as Lot 25 of the two million-acre Hardenbergh
Patent granted by Queen Anne in 1708, the land was purchased by John
Hunter in the 1790s and christened “Greenland” because of the rich forest
lands surrounding the village. After Col. William Edwards established a
tannery to exploit the vast hemlock forests whose bark was used for tan-
ning hides, it was renamed “Edwardsville,” but after the tannery failed the
chagrinned townspeople substituted Hunter’s name in 1814. The villagers
continued to make use of the forests, establishing lumber mills and furniture
factories that supported the town until a bristling tourist trade developed
in the mid-nineteenth century.
In 1825, Reuben Wilder married Mary Merritt, born in 1793 in Hunter
Village. He was a farmer and millwright, described as a “mill contractor
and prosperous” and praised as “a man of sturdy self-reliance; a strong
man who never used his strength; without ambition beyond living well and
educating his children; [and] noted for his broad, practical good sense.”
Politically, he was a Whig, although he became a Republican after the col-
lapse of the Whig party.3
John Thomas Wilder was born on January 31, 1830, in Hunter Village. The
details of his early life are sparse and have been oft-repeated in biographies
over the years. He was the third of five children, following sisters Elizabeth
(1826) and Clarissa (1828), and preceding Mary Ann (1832) and Horace
(1834). He is said to have attended the local common (public) schools, where
accounts uniformly report that he obtained “a fairly adequate education
for that day.” Even as a youngster, he was clear-eyed and ambitious. An
alert and inquisitive young man, he was interested in natural curiosities,
collecting a cabinet full of stones and minerals that he studied throughout
his childhood. “Though essentially a business man,” it was later remarked,
10 pa rt 1
“he has scholarly attainments, especially in geology, mining and engineer-

ing, which he took up and mastered without a teacher, and on which his
advice is constantly sought.” A relative described the youthful Wilder as “a
handsome young man, of fine physique, mentally alert, fond of research
[and possessed of a] genial and hospitable nature.” He grew to be six feet,
two inches tall and of solid build, or as one biographer pronounced, “well
proportioned.”4
Wilder’s family background and interest in the study of minerals naturally
drew him toward the manufacture of iron. Although an 1886 campaign
biography employed the stock claim for political aspirants that Wilder
“started in life a poor boy and has risen to be a prominent man,” his father
was a successful master millwright who established mills throughout the
frontier. Wilder almost certainly completed a period of apprenticeship under
his father, learning the various aspects of the millwright trade, as did his
brother Horace.5
“I was born on the Hudson and went west in ’44,” Wilder declared in
later years. “From the age of fourteen to twenty-one,” one account echoed,
“he served an apprenticeship of seven years as a founder, machinist, mill
wright and pattern-maker.” In reality, he did not leave home quite so early;
the 1850 census lists him as a millwright living with his parents in the town
of Olive (Ulster County), New York, immediately south of Hunter Village.
It was around that time that the twenty-year-old Wilder, having completed
his schooling (and reportedly against the wishes of his family), determined
to head west, where new lands and opportunities beckoned. “Though his
father was a man of means,” one profile recounted, “he was too proud to
ask him for anything, and left home when a boy, and has made his way by
industry and push and vim and snap ever since.”6
His initial destination was Columbus, Ohio. “As a boy,” offered an em-
bellished newspaper account, he “had run away from the school at which
his father’s care had placed him, and had supported himself by serving an
apprenticeship to a master machinist in Ohio.” During the early years of
the republic, the Appalachian Mountains stood as a formidable barrier to
western expansion. Then, in 1825, the 363-mile Erie Canal was completed,
connecting the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River (and New York City) to
the Great Lakes at Buffalo, New York. It was an engineering marvel. The suc-
cess of the canal enabled New York to commercially eclipse other Northern
cities, and the Northwest frontier, with newfound access to eastern markets,
was inundated with settlers pouring into the region by way of the canal.
From Buffalo, travelers continued by boat along the southern edge of
Lake Erie to Cleveland. From that point, the Ohio & Erie Canal pierced
the interior of the state. An eleven-mile feeder channel branched off from
the canal toward Columbus, which was laid out as the capital of Ohio in
1812 due to its central location. Until the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincin-
nati Railroad reached the city around 1851, the canal remained the primary
means of reaching the capital.
For a time, Wilder was unable to find work in Columbus. “Too poor to
enjoy the society of people of the station in life which his father’s family
occupied, and too proud to associate with those of pecuniary circumstances
like his own,” it was noted, “he took up the study of mineralogy and geology
in order to have some occupation for his leisure moments. Of keen powers
of observation and marked quickness of the true inwardness of whatever he
read, the young man succeeded in thoroughly mastering the sciences which
he pursued.” Though this account ignored the fact that the young man had
studied mineralogy since boyhood, it did confirm that his scientific interests
were not simply a passing childhood fascination.
Gilded Age newspapers often printed colorful but apocryphal morality
stories about the childhoods of public figures; Wilder was no exception.
“Practically penniless,” the young apprentice was said to have at one point
found a coin on the street and, famished, raced to High Street (the main
north-south thoroughfare in Columbus) to buy a bun. Once there, however,
he determined that he could wait until he was even more starved before
parting with the coin. His persistence and frugality were highlighted by the
claim that “he kept that coin in his pocket through all of his eventful days.”
No evidence exists of Wilder sharing this anecdote himself.
He eventually secured an apprenticeship at the Ridgway Foundry (Co-
lumbus Foundry) at the corner of Broad and Water Streets on the west
bank of the Scioto River. The foundry was built in 1822 by New York na-
tive Joseph Ridgway, who advertised in the Columbus Gazette that he was
“preparing a large plough for the special use of breaking up new prairies
and barrens.” Operated initially by horse (as opposed to steam) power, the
foundry produced the cast-iron “Wood’s Plow,” touted as especially durable
for use in the tough fields of the Midwest. “When I came here in 1826,”
a competitor recalled, “Ridgway’s foundry was the only manufacturing
establishment in the place. For several years all the pig metal was hauled
from Granville furnace in a two-horse wagon, which made three trips a
week, aggregating about five tons in that time. This was principally used in
the manufacture of plows.”
In 1830, the firm converted to steam power, which enabled production of
a wide variety of products, including steam engines, stoves, firedogs (which
held logs in a fireplace), and gudgeons (flat, circular bearings). It was at the
12 pa rt 1
Ridgway Foundry that the young Wilder “learned the iron business from ore
beds to steel ingots.” He was taught the various phases of the trade, includ-
ing drafting (drawing images of a metal item to be manufactured), pattern
making (transforming the drawing into a mold, into which molten iron was
poured to create the item), and mill-wrighting (building mill machinery that
was correctly aligned so as to operate properly). Wilder later asserted that he
“served seven years apprenticeship at the trade of a millwright,” after which
he “acted as foreman of a machine shop for one year,” an apprenticeship
that would provide him with the skills and knowledge he would employ
throughout his business career.
Impressed with the young man’s skill and work ethic, Ridgway eventu-
ally offered Wilder a one-half share in the foundry (the other half offered to
Ridgway’s son). Though he was surely appreciative of the mark of respect
conveyed by the proposal, Wilder rejected the offer; he had set his sights
higher than managing another man’s business. His ambition would lead him
farther westward, where he would strike out on his own.7
From Ohio, Wilder’s travels carried him to the neighboring state of Indi-
ana. By 1850, railroads linked Columbus to Cincinnati; it was a small leap
across the state line to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on the Ohio River downriver
from Cincinnati. Settling there in 1857, he was involved in several business
enterprises, including a contracting partnership with William Probasco, a
New Jersey native millwright who had come west a decade earlier. The busi-
ness fell apart due to a difference in moral principles. Although he was by
no means prudish, Wilder “never drank, never gambled, [and] never used
tobacco or dissipated in any way.” Probasco did not share those attitudes,
and when the business obtained a contract to build a large distillery in
Petersburg, Kentucky, Wilder ended the partnership.8
After a brief spell in Lawrenceburg, Wilder in 1857 pulled up stakes
and moved to Greensburg, a small town midway between Cincinnati and
Indianapolis. After the Delaware Indians ceded the surrounding land to the
United States in the 1819 Treaty of St. Mary’s, Col. Thomas Hendricks, a
Pennsylvania veteran of the War of 1812 and early Indiana legislator, was
one of two men selected to survey the area—a plum job he likely obtained
because his brother, William, was the governor of the state at the time.
Hendricks donated one hundred acres on which to locate the town, with
the hope it would be selected as the seat of Decatur County. The name
“Greensburg” was selected by his wife, Elizabeth, in honor of her Pennsyl-
vania hometown.
By 1857, Greensburg was home to twenty-five hundred residents, two
steam flouring mills, ten dry goods stores, twelve groceries, two carriage
and wagon shops, two drug stores, four hotels, and four churches. It also
boasted one of the finest courthouses in the state, a $100,000 Italianate
structure that had replaced the original courthouse, Hendricks’ log cabin.9
The advance of the western frontier was fostered by technological innova-
tion, particularly the spread of rail lines. Most Indianans initially clung to
the southern fringe of the state along the Ohio River, “the only important
navigable river flowing to the west in eastern North America,” which led
to important markets, primarily New Orleans. New infrastructure opened
the interior of the state (as when a road connecting the Ohio to Lake
Michigan was lain through Greensburg), and as railroads replaced rivers,
canals, and rudimentary roads, the population boomed. During the 1850s,
railroad mileage within Indiana increased from 212 to 2,163 miles; as a
result, the population swelled from 988,416 to 1,350,428, making it the
sixth most populous state in the nation. This growth benefited Greensburg
directly when the Lawrenceburg & Indianapolis Railroad reached the town
in 1853; the following year, the L&I was completed to Indianapolis, forg-
ing a vital link between the Indiana capital and Cincinnati (reached from
Lawrenceburg via the steamer Forrest Queen).10
With the L&I providing efficient, reliable access to commercial markets
within the state (and to the Ohio River, connecting the Old Northwest to
the South), Greensburg was a fitting choice for Wilder to focus his busi-
ness interests on. During the antebellum period, Indiana, with abundant
limestone deposits, ready access to extensive coal beds, and fields of timber
to be converted to charcoal (key ingredients for the manufacture of iron),
was a prime site for the construction of blast furnaces. A combination of
natural resources, transportation to markets, and available land provided
Wilder with a good chance for success in Greensburg.11
Wilder exhibited no caution or doubt as he laid down stakes in his new
hometown. As he would do time and again, he leaped immediately into the
Greensburg business community, prompting a later assessment that “perhaps
no one from that era left a more lasting legacy from his time in Decatur
County than John Wilder.” His most significant business involvement was
an iron foundry and machine works begun “on a modest scale” across the
tracks from the L&I depot, at the corner of Montfort Street and Railroad
Avenue. The business quickly boomed, employing nearly one hundred em-
ployees by 1861, such that “at the breaking out of the war [Wilder] was at
the head of and half owner of the largest establishment of its kind west of
the Ohio.”12 Wilder’s Machine Works sold equipment and erected mills in
six states, including Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Virginia, and
Kentucky, leading to plaudits that Wilder “built more mills than any man
14 pa rt 1
west of the Allegheny mountains.” The business made him a wealthy man.
In the census of July 1860, Wilder, a “30 year old Mill-wright from New
York,” was said to possess $6,900 in real estate and $25,600 in personal
estate—a substantial sum at the time, particularly for a young man.
Part of his success may be traced to innovations Wilder developed while
in Greensburg, chief among them the low head water turbine, which he
would patent three times over the years. The novel device was first patented
on October 18, 1859, as the “Improved Horizontal Water-Wheel” (Patent
No. 25,859). The design proved far more efficient than the typical over-
shot waterwheel, which was powered by water pouring down from above.
Wilder’s turbine was set on its side; water was introduced from the side,
funneling through the entire encased wheel, maximizing the water pressure
powering the mill. As a result of this and other innovations, he became a
nationally recognized hydraulics expert, such that “he was called to serve as
a witness or umpire in [disputes occurring in] distant parts of the country.”
Tireless and enthusiastic, Wilder leaped into various other enterprises
in Greensburg. He contributed funds to erect the three-story brick Wilder
Building on the courthouse square, at the corner of Washington and Franklin
Streets. It is said that the International Order of Odd Fellows contributed
funds for the top floor, while Wilder funded the first two. He maintained
an interest in the building well into the 1870s, long after he had left the
town. The Greensburg Woolen Mills, situated on land that he owned at the
corner of Main and Lincoln Streets, was built after he agreed to relocate the
channel of a creek on the property so that the lot would be large enough to
accommodate the mill. He also developed a residential area labeled “Wilder’s
Addition,” where he would erect his own substantial home.13
Through the success of his business endeavors, or simple good fortune,
within a year of his arrival in Greensburg, on May 18, 1858, Wilder married
twenty-year-old Martha Stewart, “a lady of great charm” whose father, Silas
Stewart, was “a prominent citizen and one of the founders of the town.”
The Stewart family was “banished from Scotland, in 1752, for following the
fortunes of Charles in the last Scottish rebellion,” before coming to Indiana.
In a photograph of the newly wedded couple, he holds her left hand, which
rests lightly upon his knee. The image, the earliest portrait of Wilder to
survive (and possibly the first taken), depicts him with the short chin-beard,
without sideburns or mustache, which he “sported since early manhood”
and which would serve as a distinguishing facial feature throughout his life.
By all accounts, the marriage was a first-rate match. “His genial and
hospitable nature was equaled by that of his remarkable wife,” a relative
recalled decades later. While Wilder seems to have left no personal diary
reflecting his inner thoughts, his correspondence with Martha, whom he

(and other family members) called “Pet,” reveals a caring couple dedicated
to one another. Described as “a plain, straight forward, sensible, unassuming,
charitable Christian mother and wife, and utterly without vanity,” Martha
was said to have “possessed many fine qualities of heart and mind, and was
most devoted to the welfare of her husband and children.”
Nine months to the day after the wedding, on February 18, 1859, Martha
gave birth to the couple’s first child, Mary. The young family is believed to
have lived at 515 East Washington in the first house built on that street. In
addition to Wilder, Martha (listed in the 1860 census as a “housewife from
Indiana”) and little Mary, a nineteen-year-old domestic servant named Kate
Snell lived in the household.14
In a short time, Wilder had become a respected member of the Greens-
burg community. His businesses flourished. He was said to have an “easy
kind-hearted temper” and was considered an “honest and trustworthy”
businessman. His business endeavors occupied much of his energy and at-
tention, and letters sent to Wilder during his time in Greensburg frequently
complain of a lack of response, indicating that he may not have been an
avid correspondent.
Despite running off to the Old Northwest, Wilder maintained a close,
caring relationship with his parents and siblings in New York. As secession
and the possibility of war wafted in the breeze in early 1861, he was asked
to travel to Cleveland, Ohio, to escort his parents, who wanted to visit but
were wary of the arduous trip, to Greensburg. “Ma is so anxious to see little
Mary,” sister Mary Ann Elmendorf wrote, encouraging the busy new father
to make the trip. It is unclear whether the visit took place, but it would not
be long before the clouds of war would intervene and carry Wilder in a
different direction, far from family, business ventures, and Indiana.15
Two
A
t 2:30 p.m. on April 13, 1861, the thirty-six-hour bombardment of
Fort Sumter at the mouth of Charleston harbor in South Carolina
ended with the surrender of US Maj. Robert Anderson and his small
garrison. The American Civil War had begun.
Before Sumter, most in the State of Indiana had taken a temperate posi-
tion on the secession question. Among the states of the Old Northwest,
Indiana had the largest population of native Southerners—in 1860, sixty-five
thousand Kentucky natives lived in Indiana. There existed a natural affin-
ity toward the South in the Hoosier state, “the most southern of northern
states.” With its southern border on the Ohio River, Indiana was tied to
and reliant upon Southern markets, including New Orleans. Indianans were
therefore wary of a self-destructive war with the South.
Attitudes shifted immediately when news of Sumter reached Indianapolis.
War fever engulfed the state. Geography played a role, as Indiana, poised
north of the wavering border state of Kentucky, was thought to be particu-
larly vulnerable to Confederate invasion. “In every quarter, and especially in
the counties bordering on the Ohio River,” Indiana Adjutant Gen. W. H. H.
Terrell recounted, “the most serious fears were entertained that the State
would be invaded by rebel bands, known to be organizing in Kentucky,
the towns on the border plundered, and the country devastated.” This ap-
prehension, coupled with patriotic fervor, sparked a rush of enlistments.
On April 15, Abraham Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand
three-month volunteers. Though the Indiana contribution was fixed by the
Secretary of War at six regiments of infantry (4,683 men), in less than a week
twelve thousand were tendered by the state. When the US adjutant general
visited Indianapolis in October, he commented that the state had raised
and equipped a greater number of troops per capita than any other state.
There was little question that the purpose of the war in the minds of
most Indianans was preservation of the Union—not subjugating the South
or emancipating Southern slaves. Although the 1850s had observed the rise
of the Republican Party throughout Indiana (the towns along the Ohio River
remaining the only solidly Democratic portion of the state), that affiliation
did not equate with an anti-slavery mindset. Racist sentiment was prevalent
in Indiana, and many residents, particularly those along the state’s southern
border, feared an influx of newly freed blacks competing for jobs, land, and
other benefits of citizenship (in violation of Article XIII of the 1851 state
constitution, which provided that “No negro or mulatto shall come into or
settle in the State”). As war loomed, a special session of the legislature in
early 1861 stressed that Indiana soldiers and taxes would not be used “in
any aggression upon the institution of slavery or any other Constitutional
right belonging to any of the states.” The Indianapolis Sentinel summed up
local sentiment when it declared that “the Union must and will be preserved
. . . [but] it can never be preserved by an anti-slavery policy. Secession and
abolition must go down together.”1
The citizens of Decatur County rallied to the flag following the fall of
Sumter. The county contributed twenty-five hundred soldiers to the war
effort, including six future Medal of Honor recipients, ten colonels, fifteen
regimental officers, and six brevetted brigadier generals—including John T.
Wilder.2
Successive generations of Wilders had distinguished themselves through
wartime service. Henry VIII reportedly gifted Nicholas Wilder the “beauti-
ful estate” of Parley Hall on the Thames in Berkshire as well as a crest with
the motto Courage conquers walls for “his manly conduct in attacking
and carrying the castle in which Richard III had taken refuge during the
[1485] battle of Bosworth.” Wilder’s great-grandfather Capt. Seth Wilder
commanded a company of minutemen in the American Revolution before
losing a leg at Bunker Hill; his sixteen-year-old son, Seth Wilder Jr., took his
place, serving as a mechanic in the militia through the battles of Saratoga,
Monmouth, and Stony Point, where he suffered a bayonet wound. In the
same conflict, Wilder’s maternal grandfather, Samuel Merritt, enlisted at age
sixteen to serve under a pre-treasonous Benedict Arnold. During the War of
1812, Wilder’s father raised a company of New York light horse, fighting
at Plattsburg and Sackett’s Harbor. Without question, Wilder came from
“revolutionary stock.”3
Anticipating the outbreak of hostilities, Wilder, who ventured far and
wide in association with his foundry business, recruited volunteers from
among those customers whom he thought might make good army officers.
18 pa rt 1
“Why not organize a company and get a commission,” he reportedly urged

one acquaintance, “instead of waiting to be drafted?” Within a week after
receiving the news of Sumter, he volunteered his services to help put down
the rebellion. Such bold, decisive action was entirely within his character;
nevertheless, the impulsive nature of his enlistment raised concerns among
his family and associates—after all, he was responsible for the livelihood
of nearly one hundred employees and was expecting a second child (Annie,
born on May 6, 1861, only weeks after his enlistment). While he may have
been swept up in post-Sumter fervor and may have felt that honor demanded
that he volunteer, some felt that he had acted rashly. David E. Rees, one of
Wilder’s closest business associates, remained displeased by the decision
months later. “I still have fears for the result some day of your rashness &
impudence,” the forty-four-year-old Rees cautioned. “No one doubts your
courage—many do your discretion.”4
Spurning pleas for caution, Wilder cast two six-pound wrought-iron
cannon at a cost of $3,200 at his Greensburg foundry, which he then closed
after producing bullets from the remaining metal on hand. On April 21, he
volunteered as a private in the First Independent Battery of Artillery, the
first three-year regiment in the state, for which he recruited a company of
volunteers. On his second day of service, he was elected captain. Artillery
was not a priority, however, as the state needed to fill its infantry ranks; the
company was not accepted into service, and Wilder and his recruits were
reassigned to the infantry.5
As Indiana infantry in the Mexican War had been assigned regiment
numbers one to five, new regiments would pick up with the number six.
Regiments six to eleven were organized into the First Brigade of Indiana
Volunteers. Camps were established on May 6 for additional regiments;
after regiments twelve through sixteen were filled, any surplus men would
be placed in the Seventeenth Indiana (17 IN), which would eventually tally
984 enlisted men, forty-nine commissioned officers, and thirty noncommis-
sioned officers and musicians. Mostly sixteen to twenty years of age, they
came from every county in Indiana, twenty other states, and almost every
country in Europe. Wilder’s rejected artillery unit would become Company A
of the 17 IN. The fair grounds of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture were
repurposed as a mustering ground, with horse pens converted into barracks;
at that hastily erected facility, designated “Camp Morton” in honor of the
governor, Wilder and his company were mustered into service on June 12.
Identifying qualified military leadership was a challenge in Indiana. There
had been no regular militia in the state for fifteen years, and only a handful
of West Point graduates could be found. There were a few veterans of the
Mexican War, and some volunteers were awarded commissions in return for
their recruiting efforts throughout the state. Republican governor Oliver P.
Morton appointed both Republicans and Democrats to military posts,
regardless of political affiliation (although some complained that he was
simply surrounding himself with lackeys devoted to him); for example, the
brigadier-general commanding Indiana’s new regiments was Col. Joseph J.
Reynolds, a Lafayette grocer who had not been a Morton supporter but
who had served in the army after graduating from West Point.
Wilder, a prewar Democrat, was commissioned a lieutenant-colonel by
Morton on June 4, bypassing the rank of major. His recruiting efforts may
have played a role in his speedy rise through the ranks—in fact, he was of-
fered the opportunity to leap forward to the rank of colonel but declined, as
he “did not think himself fit for such a high position with so little experience
in, or knowledge of, military affairs.” Goshen lawyer and railroad promoter
(and West Point graduate) Milo S. Hascall was instead commissioned colonel
of the 17 IN; George Gorman, a printer from Owensville who had served
in the Mexican War, assumed the post of major. When the Secretary of War
called for four regiments to increase their commitment from a single year to
three years or the duration of the war to enable more ambitious campaigns
by Union commanders, the 17 IN readily volunteered.6
Though nominally part of the rebel state of Virginia (the state of West Vir-
ginia would not be carved out until June 1863), the Unionist counties of
western Virginia held fierce antisecession sentiments. In the early months
of the rebellion, Union forces were dispatched to the region to assuage the
fears of local Unionists and protect the adjacent states of Ohio and Penn-
sylvania from a Southern invasion. Key objectives included the Staunton-
Parkersburg Pike (linking the rich Shenandoah Valley to Parkersburg on
the Ohio River) and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which connected the
western and eastern theaters of the war. Union control of western Virginia
would also open the way to the Great Valley of Virginia and East Tennessee.
On July 1, 1861, the 17 IN and its sister regiments boarded trains in
Indianapolis destined for Parkersburg. Before departing Camp Morton,
Wilder joined a group of 17 IN officers to contribute funds to purchase a
memorial sword and sash for Adj. Gen. Lazarus Noble, a former business
partner of Governor Morton who served as the principal military advisor
20 pa rt 1
to the State of Indiana at the start of the war. The politically savvy Wilder,
who appears to have drafted the pact and may have conceived the plan,
donated five dollars himself.7
Passing through the counties of southeast Indiana, the green troops were
treated to “one continued ovation” by cheering crowds expecting a swift,
decisive end to the Southern revolt. After a three-day layover in Cincinnati,
on July 5 they detrained at Parkersburg and set off on a twenty-three-mile
march through a steady rain to the town of Elizabeth, Virginia. Along the
way, it was reported to readers back in Indiana that Wilder and Hascall
“are quite energetic and do all they can for the welfare, safety and comfort
of the men under their charge.”
After a two-day respite, Wilder was instructed to take 380 men twenty-
six miles south to Spencer to determine whether rebels held the town and,
if so, drive them out. The assignment was a minor piece of a broad Union
effort to secure two key mountain passes deemed by Confederates to be
“the gates to the northwestern country.” “See to it that your men commit no
depredations upon the persons or property of . . . citizens,” Hascall counseled
his eager subordinate; it was critical in the early stages of the conflict that
nothing be done to risk alienating the local population and causing them
to shift their allegiances to the Confederacy.
Nearing Spencer, Wilder split his force, taking 160 men on a laborious
march over the mountains to entrap the several hundred rebel troops sus-
pected to be in the town. After sporadic clashes over nine miles of broken
terrain, they burst into Spencer to find that the Confederates had fled. “The
villains did not dare to fight us fairly, but kept in the brush and on the hills,”
a scuffle-flushed Wilder wrote to Martha. “The route was very difficult, as
the road wound through ravines and over mountains and around points
where they would lay in wait for us, but we kept flanking parties out ahead
that came in behind them when they would run to some other point.” They
did kill one rebel, wounding another and capturing five prisoners and three
horses, suffering a single casualty shot through the thigh. Though it was a
largely bloodless skirmish, Wilder was exhilarated; as his men set up camp
on the courthouse lawn, he claimed a “first rate Quarters” in a lawyer’s
office in the courthouse.8
Hascall dispatched troops, arms, and supplies to bolster Wilder, who was
expecting a counterattack. “We are farther out in their country than any
other party and if they make any stand at all, we will probably have a fight
soon,” the brash lieutenant-colonel informed his wife. “They have at least
three times our number within 18 miles of us, but if they attack us I think we
can whip them.” No attack developed. Dislodged from their entrenchments
at Rich Mountain, the Confederates pulled back to secondary defensive lodg-

ments in the mountain passes. While George B. McClellan’s self-promoting
boast that “secession is killed in this country” was premature, the clash at
Rich Mountain did loosen Confederate control of the region and embolden
loyal Unionists to push for separation from Virginia.9
The engagement at Spencer was a minor sideshow to the Rich Mountain
victory, but Hascall proclaimed it a “glorious” triumph. Tales of the “battle”
were swirling about, he wrote Wilder, “such as that you had to fight your
way from Elizabeth to Spencer killing 8 or 10 of the enemy . . . and that
there was a force of 1500 or 2000 of the enemy at Arnoldsville and that
you was surrounded in all directions.” Rumors trickled back to the home
front, and a July 22 letter published in Indiana newspapers crowed that four
companies of the 17 IN (along with the 22 OH) had snared sixty rebels in
western Virginia. “I am much pleased at the spirit and determination your
command has manifested,” Hascall praised. He did remind Wilder to remain
vigilant as to the pilfering of civilian property: “I have drummed two men
out of the service since you left for similar offenses.” Looting would become
more commonplace as the war progressed; Wilder’s men would not be above
committing indiscriminate thievery from time to time.
Though relieved that her husband had survived his first engagement,
Martha Wilder was concerned for his safety. “I do hope your life may be
spared,” she wrote in late July. Perhaps alluding to the sobering losses on
July 21 at Manassas, the first real battle of the war, she prayed that he would
not be sent to eastern Virginia, and she counseled him to caution. “Don’t
be too rash,” she pleaded. “Consider well before you take any step[,] you
know you are very hasty.”10
On July 22, McClellan, fresh from the success at Rich Mountain, was called
east to command the Army of the Potomac, leaving Brig. Gen. William S.
Rosecrans (Ohio) in command in western Virginia. The following day, the
17 IN traveled by rail to Oakland, Maryland, and marched sixteen miles
to the northern branch of the Potomac River to assist in the construction
of a blockhouse that would become Fort Pendleton.11
Wilder used the lull following Rich Mountain to correspond with his
business partners, who sought advice on financial matters, lawsuits, and the
payment of amounts owed in his absence. His decision to enlist still rankled
some of his associates. “I feel that you have treated me badly in going off and
leaving things so unsettled,” David E. Rees castigated from Lawrenceburg on
August 18, “and neglecting—apparently purposefully—to inform me on the
many points of which you know me to be ignorant, and which of course you
know to be important that I should know something.” Wilder’s colleagues
22 pa rt 1
would have to be content with an occasional letter to assist in divining his

plans and instructions as the otherwise-occupied lieutenant-colonel tramped
along with his regiment on the far side of the Appalachians.12
Buoyed by success, federal forces in West Virginia pushed south to oc-
cupy Cheat Mountain Pass, settling into strong fortified positions while
the Confederacy mulled plans to retake western Virginia. Joseph Reynolds
established three federal fortifications in the “Cheat Mountain District”: the
Elkwater camp sat astride the Huttonsville-Huntersville Turnpike, which led
south to the Virginia Central Railroad (and Richmond); Cheat Summit Fort,
four thousand feet above sea level, commanded the Staunton-Parkersburg
Pike; and reinforcements and supplies were concentrated at Cheat Mountain
Pass for deployment to either spot as needed.
In late July, Robert E. Lee, yet to take troops into battle, arrived in
western Virginia with orders to push back the federal forces. The ensuing
Cheat Mountain campaign, however, was muddled, in part because Lee did
not supplant a resentful Brig. Gen. William W. Loring, on the basis that the
older man was a Seminole and Mexican War veteran who had outranked
him in the old army; instead, Lee issued his orders through Loring, which
diluted the clarity of his plans.
“We are ready for a fight most any time,” reported Second Lieut. Isaiah B.
McDonald (Co. D) to Wilder on July 31 from “Head Quarters, Army of
Occupation, W. Va.” at Cheat Mountain Pass, where a portion of the 17 IN
was entrenched, waiting. Of the “Fleet Footed Virginians” who had run in
the face of the advancing federals at Spencer, he scorned, “they don’t like the
Hoosier boys very well.” By mid-August, the entire 17 IN was concentrated
at the Elkwater camp.
Avoiding the strong defenses at the pass, Lee devised a plan for a two-
pronged assault upon Elkwater and Cheat Mountain on September 12. The
attack, however, was plagued by a lack of coordination, misinformation
provided by captured Union soldiers, fog, rain, and the rugged terrain.
Approaching Cheat Summit, Col. Albert Rust (3 AR), whose charge was
to provide the signal for the attack to begin in the valley below, became
convinced that the federal defenses were impenetrable and withdrew, even
though he vastly outnumbered the enemy; as a result, the plan for a co-
ordinated assault fizzled. Confederate losses were likely embellished by
Reynolds, who claimed one hundred killed and twenty prisoners captured;
he tallied federal losses much lower, at ten killed, fourteen wounded, and
about sixty captured.
Reynolds’ report briefly mentioned the 17 IN, two companies of which
had checked the rebel advance at Elkwater before falling back. An elated
Wilder wrote home on September 26, proclaiming the recent events “such
a busy exciting time” and explaining that, despite “desperate odds” pitting
six thousand federal troops against twenty-six rebel regiments, “we whipped
them with about 600 men thrown out as Skirmishers . . . who fought like
tigers.” He was unimpressed by the “cowardise” [sic] of the rebels, who
had stalled and fallen back in the face of a smaller Union force. “They had
brought 80 empty wagons with them to haul away our stores,” he wrote.
“They [instead] used them to haul off their wounded.”13
A notable episode occurred on September 13 when Lee sent out a small
party to reconnoiter the Union right at Elkwater, probing for any weakness
that might be exploited by a renewed attack. The detail included his son,
Maj. W. H. F. (Rooney) Lee, and Col. John Augustine Washington, a nephew
and topographical engineer who served as Lee’s chief of staff.14
Sgt. J. J. Weiler (17 IN) and ten men were meanwhile scouting the flank
of the mountain in response to reports that rebel troops had been spotted in
the area. Halfway up a foggy ridge, they encountered three men on horse-
back “evidently scouting around to see what could be seen.” As the rebels
wheeled to escape, Weiler shouted to his men, “who were good shots,” to
“take the middle one.” Struck three times in the back, Washington fell from
his horse. Rooney Lee, his horse shot, scrambled onto Washington’s and fled.
Mortally wounded, Washington asked the clustering bluecoats for water,
but by the time a cupful was retrieved from a nearby stream he was dead.
His personal items were claimed as souvenirs, including his sword, two
revolvers, a field glass, one hundred-fifty dollars, and “a remarkable accurate
map of the federal camp.” At the site of the ambush, a bitter inscription
was carved: “Under this tree, on the 13th of Sept, 1861 fell Col. John A.
Washington, the degenerate descendent of the Father of his Country.”
Lee soon learned of the confrontation, but not the result. “His
[Washington’s] zeal for the cause to which he had devoted himself carried
him, I fear, too far,” he worried in a note to the governor of Virginia. If
Washington had been killed, Lee wrote in a message sent across the lines
on September 14, “I request that you shall deliver to me his dead body.”
The flag of truce carrying this inquiry was met by an ambulance bearing
Washington’s body to the rebel camp. A subsequent account described
Wilder with a detail of soldiers delivering the body to the Confederate
general. “Gen. Lee’s kindly eyes filled with tears of gratitude, mingled with
those of grief,” it was said, “for he was most grateful for the courtesy ex-
tended by the enemy.” Weiler, however, did not mention Wilder in his own
reminiscence, stating that he drove the ambulance while Hascall and Adj.
Edward Kerstetter rode ahead with a flag of truce.
24 pa rt 1
Disheartened by the failure of the Confederate attack and the loss of

his nephew, Lee drew his forces back into their camps, downplaying the
abortive expedition as a “forced reconnaissance.” Lee “felt the death of his
relative very keenly,” Confederate chaplain C. T. Quintard observed. His
own emotions aside, however, Lee comforted the widowed Washington’s
seven children with an air of obligatory stoicism: “He is now happy in
Heaven. I trust with her [his deceased wife] he so loved on earth. We ought
not to wish him back.”15
After the disappointment at Cheat Mountain, Confederate forces retired
twelve miles to Camp Bartow, where the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike
crossed the Greenbrier River. Flush with success and directed to “worry
and harass” the rebels out of western Virginia, Reynolds planned his own
“armed reconnaissance” of the entrenched Confederates. A preliminary
excursion on September 26, however, was countermanded after only half a
mile due to foul weather. “We were very much disappointed,” Wilder wrote
to Martha. He was itching for a fight and hinted that “there will be stirring
times here within a few days.” He added that he had slept in a tent only
two nights over the prior two weeks, having sheltered four nights under a
cannon.16
At midnight on October 2, five thousand federal troops and six pieces of
artillery set out on the twelve-mile march from Cheat Mountain to Green-
brier. The 17 IN, like other units, had been “reduced by continuous hard
service and sickness to about half regiments.” “I had been out sick for nearly
two weeks and did not know whether I could ride a horse or not,” Wilder
informed Martha on October 5, but he was determined not to miss out on
the action: “I was bound to be in the fight if I had to be carried.” By eight
o’clock on the morning of October 3, the illness-depleted force approached
the fortified rebel camp, driving in the rebel pickets. Wilder was fortified
by the promise of action, writing afterward that “the nearer we came to
the enemy the stronger I got.” Inside the works waited eighteen hundred
Virginia, Georgia, and Arkansas Confederates commanded by Brig. Gen.
Henry R. Jackson.
A lively artillery duel ensued, during which the 17 IN protected the right
flank of six Parrott guns manned by the 1 MI light artillery. The firing,
though “almost incessant,” was largely bloodless. “The first gun fired by the
enemy threw a twenty pound ball directly over my head, the wind it made
took my cap off, but I caught it,” wrote Wilder. “The ball struck the earth
within ten feet of General Reynolds, who was in the rear.” A six-pound shell
“stuck in the ground under Lt. [Greenbury] Shields[’] feet,” knocking him
down, “but did not hurt him in the least,” while another “sailed between
me and another officer as we were talking, and stuck in the hillside behind
us.” Newspapers described soldiers knocked from their feet as shells struck
the hillside, “fortunately without injury, save a few scratches,” and a four-
pound ball passing within a few inches of George Gorman, “causing his
horse to crouch nearly to the earth” as the shell skimmed across Gorman’s
back. More men would have been injured, Wilder estimated, but for the
rebels “forgetting to cut the fuses” on their shells, preventing them from
exploding in the federal ranks.
A lull followed the artillery barrage, after which Reynolds ordered his
forces forward to test the rebel defenses. Crossing the Greenbrier, the 17
IN would assist the attempt to turn the rebel left. “I formed the regiment
and told them that any man who was not willing to storm the enemy’s bat-
teries with me, and follow wherever I led the way, could fall out of ranks,”
Wilder recounted. “Not a man stirred or spoke. I could see them clutch their
muskets tighter and straighten a little taller, and when I gave the order to
advance double-quick, every man started off with a promptness and will
that convinced me they would follow me to Mobile if I led the way.”
Moving forward “under a perfect rain of canister, shot and shell,” the 17
IN came upon a hesitant, halted 25 OH infantry. In his battle report, Lieut.
Col. William P. Richardson (25 OH) wrote that an animated Wilder “asked
me why I did not move forward.” Responding that he was “waiting for the
commencement of the charge,” Richardson was told that “I was mistaken;
that your [Reynolds’] order was that I should proceed to the enemy’s right;
and that if I did not immediately proceed he would occupy my place.”
Either inspired or intimidated by Wilder’s bold directive, Richardson “at
once complied with the demand” and compelled his men to press forward
toward the rebel earthworks. For his part, Wilder wrote of the encounter
only that “we passed the Ohio Regiments who were halting and wavering.”
Wilder shifted to the left to steady the 7 IN, “whose men had scattered
through the woods, recoiling from the iron hail.” After a half hour standing
“steady as mile-posts” while waiting for orders, they were drawn back. The
attack failed to carry the rebel works. “We distinctly saw heavy reinforce-
ments of infantry and artillery arrive while we were in front of the works,”
Reynolds explained; after almost five hours of faltering action, he called off
the attack. “You are the only regiment in order,” he advised Wilder. “Can
you cover those batteries and bring them off the field?” The 17 IN covered
the withdrawal of the federal guns and “brought them safely into camp.”
“Rapidly and in disorder they returned into the turnpike,” Jackson
gloated, “and soon thereafter the entire force of the enemy—artillery, in-
fantry, and cavalry—retreated in confusion along the road and adjacent
26 pa rt 1
fields.” Reynolds, on the other hand, claimed that he had met his objective,
reporting that “after having fully and successfully accomplished the object of
the expedition [we] retired leisurely and in good order to Cheat Mountain.”
The battle at Greenbrier River was indecisive. The official Union tally was
eight killed and thirty-five wounded; the Confederates suffered six killed,
thirty-three wounded, and thirteen missing. Wilder claimed that his regiment
alone killed thirty-eight Confederates. The 17 IN suffered three wounded
and one killed—Pvt. E. T. Dukes, who was “cut in two by a cannon ball.”
The federal dead were buried at Cheat Mountain Summit.17
The thrill of battle was soon replaced by the dullness of camp life. In
October, Co. A of the 17 IN was peeled off and reassigned to the artillery
service (26 IN). Wilder, however, would stay with regiment in western Vir-
ginia. Although his health was “getting first rate again,” he was unenthused
by the prospect of wintering in the mountains. “I liked this country as well
as any, but to lay here all winter is rather a dreary prospect,” he grumbled
in a letter home on October 25.18
With winter looming, rebel troops were drawn off to be deployed at
other needed points, and the focus of the war effort shifted from western
Virginia to the Potomac in the eastern theater and Tennessee and Kentucky
in the west. “We have been partially promised a campaign in Ky. this winter,”
Wilder informed Martha, “and earnestly hope we will be ordered there.”
On November 9, the Department of the Ohio was reorganized to include
the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, and Kentucky (east of
the Cumberland River). Assigned to command was Brig. Gen. Don Carlos
Buell, a forty-three-year-old career army officer who had spent part of his
childhood in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and had been commissioned to West
Point from that state. Ten days later, before western Virginia could be hit
by harsh winter weather, the 17 IN was directed to report to Louisville; the
regiment would remain in the western theater for the remainder of the war.19
Three
D
uring the war, Indiana troops fought in 308 engagements in seven-
teen states, the great majority in the western theater. In the winter
of 1861–1862, federal manpower in the west was concentrated in
Kentucky, “an area about which there was particular concern because of its
proximity [to Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois].” Reassigned to the Bluegrass State,
on November 30 the 17 IN joined the Fifteenth Brigade (under Col. Milo S.
Hascall) of the Fourth Division (led by a six-foot two-inch, three-hundred-
pound naval veteran, the profane and quarrelsome Maj. Gen. William “Bull”
Nelson) of Buell’s Army of the Ohio. The regiment camped briefly at the old
Oakland Race Course before moving into winter quarters near Hodgenville,
where it would remain for two months. On New Year’s Day 1862, Wilder,
who denigrated Camp Wyckliffe as “the unhealthiest camp I have ever seen,”
contracted pneumonia; he was ill for several weeks, as were others in the
regiment, which was “about half fit for duty.”1
In February, the brigade was reassigned to the Sixth Division of the Army
of the Ohio, “raw troops” commanded by Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood, a
thirty-nine-year-old Kentuckian and career soldier. “All like the change, very
much,” Wilder informed “Pet.”
When Buell assumed command, the Confederate line extended across
southern Kentucky, from the Mississippi to the Cumberland Gap. Side-
stepping the formidable rebel defenses at Columbus, Kentucky, the Union
high command determined to plunge south along the Tennessee and Cum-
berland Rivers to the Mississippi River Valley. The capture of Forts Henry
and Donelson in February 1862 opened the door to the rebel-held capital
of Tennessee. “If you can occupy Nashville,” McClellan urged Buell from
Washington, “it will end the war in Tennessee.”
28 pa rt 1
Two days after the fall of Fort Donelson (February 18), therefore,
Hascall’s brigade was ordered to march on Nashville. Issued seven days’ ra-
tions and one hundred rounds of ammunition, they slogged ten miles through
what Wilder called “one of the worst storms you ever saw” to Munfordville,
a key river crossing along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. “You may
expect to hear a good account of the 17th if the rebels dont run as usual, or
surrender without much of a fight,” Wilder wrote to Martha on February 23.
Although he struggled under the lingering effects of his recent illness, the
prospect of battle had fortified him somewhat. “Hope we will get through in
time to plant the Old flag on the dome of the Capitol of Tennesee [sic],” he
reflected. “Think I would be willing to lose an arm for the privilege of doing
it myself.” He was confident that the end of the war was in sight. “Think the
rebellion is about played out,” he predicted, “and we will get home with the
proud conciousness of having been among the first to volunteer in defence
of our country, and of having been successful in its defence.”2
Wilder’s medical issues—possibly a recurrence of his Virginia ailment—
persisted, as noted on March 26 by Samuel E. Munford, surgeon for the
17 IN, who recommended that the patient “remain quiet for some time”
due to dysentery and hemorrhaging of the bowels, which had reappeared
with “renewed severity.” This notion was set aside when Wilder, described
by the Evansville Journal as “a worthy and efficient officer,” was promoted
to colonel on March 29. His Model 1850 foot officer’s sword, upon which
had been scrolled “Capt. Of Wilder’s Battery April, 1861,” was sent home
for “Col. 17th Ind. Vols. 1862” to be added to the scabbard.3
By March, Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee had driven south to
take possession of Pittsburgh Landing along the Tennessee River, twenty-
two miles north of the strategic rail crossroads of Corinth, Mississippi.
Albert Sidney Johnston (CSA) sought to take advantage of Grant’s isolated
position by attacking from Corinth. Sensing the danger, Henry Halleck, in
overall command of the western theater, ordered Buell to press his Army of
the Ohio to Pittsburgh Landing to support Grant. On March 29, the 17 IN
raced south from Nashville, anxious not to miss the fight. Along the ten-day
journey, though, the regiment was diverted to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee,
“to disperse a gang of rebels,” wounding two “secesh Cavalry” and seizing
large stores of bacon and other supplies.
On the morning of April 6, Johnston surprised Grant, driving the shocked
bluecoats to the Tennessee River; the following day, bolstered by Buell’s
reinforcements, Grant turned the tide, forcing the rebels to fall back in
confusion. The battle of Shiloh was a revelation—the bloodiest day in U.S.
history, with 13,047 federal and 10,699 rebel casualties. The 17 IN, how-
ever, was not among the fourteen Indiana regiments that saw action on the
bloody field—the exhausted Hoosiers arrived the day after the battle had
ended. “I telegraphed you immediately after the great battle to let you know
there was nothing the matter with us,” a slightly disappointed Wilder wrote
home on April 16. “The rebels are very much demoralized,” he concluded.
“I think their cause is nearly used up, at least their army is.”4
In Virginia, Milo S. Hascall had urged Wilder to restrain his men from
plundering the countryside. Whether by 1862 soldiers had become more
hard-boiled or the admonition fell flat when the property belonged to reb-
els, by the spring of 1862 Wilder himself was shipping home souvenirs of
the war, a few of which became subjects of no small intrigue. An April 3
letter from brother-in-law Daniel Stewart pleaded that “special U.S. Detec-
tives are here, seizing all property that now belongs or has belonged to the
Government . . . They have accurate descriptions of every horse that has
come into this county, whether taken in Western Virginia or Missouri.”
George Anderson, an associate to whom Wilder had presented a gray stal-
lion, asked him to explain in writing “all you know about the Horse, how
he was procured and how you got possession of him.” Wilder’s father-in-
law, moreover, was said to feel “a little uneasy in reference to a certain little
grey colt in his possession[,] as the detectives are on the scent of it.” No
further correspondence discusses the fate of the suspect horseflesh shipped
home by Wilder, but it is evident that the wartime chaos provided him the
opportunity to make personal gifts of government property.5
After the setback at Shiloh, the Confederates fell back to Corinth, “the
great rallying point in the central South.” The Tishomingo County town sat
at the intersection of two critical railroads: the Memphis & Charleston, the
key east-west corridor of the Confederacy, connecting the Mississippi to
the East Coast; and the Baltimore & Ohio, striking north from the Gulf of
Mexico to Columbus, Kentucky. Corinth was a key strategic objective. As
Halleck wrote to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton on May 25, “Rich-
mond and Corinth are now the great strategical points of war, and our
success at these points should be insured at all hazards.”
Rising to command after the death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh,
P. G. T. Beauregard sought to render Corinth unassailable. A seven-mile line
of fortifications, the “Beauregard Line,” was strung along the ridgelines north
and east of the town; beyond lay marshy ground that would complicate
a federal offensive. Five crescent-shaped works manned with siege guns
covered the roads leading to the town. Reinforcements poured in from the
south and west, and by the end of April seventy-thousand Confederates
were stationed in and around Corinth.
30 pa rt 1
At Pittsburgh Landing, the victorious but exhausted Union armies recu-

perated. For two weeks, the Army of the Ohio camped on the battleground.
In their haste to join the battle, the 17 IN had left their trains and baggage
at nearby Savannah, Tennessee; as a result, Wilder grumbled, “we lay in
the woods without tents, and have to carry our provisions 5 miles on our
backs.” Of Shiloh, he described “hundreds of trees shivered to splinters,
gun carriages torn to bits, dead horses by the drove, heads, arms, legs and
mangled bodies strewn around, all combined to make a picture of horrors
that it would be well for our infernal political leaders to look on.” Even so,
he professed a renewed sense of vitality and looked forward to the next
stage of the offensive.
Halleck amassed a staggering one hundred thousand troops for the ad-
vance upon Corinth. Buell’s Army of the Ohio, poised upon the bluffs
overlooking Lick Creek, would occupy the center of the federal line. “They
have fallen back to Corinth and are busily intrenching,” Wilder wrote of
the rebels, “but they cannot stand our determined attack, which will be
made within a short time.” He was confident that victory was imminent. “A
great many deserters come into our lines,” he advised Martha on April 28,
“all [saying] that their army is very much demoralized . . . I think I shall
not soldier longer than through the spring campaign.”
On April 29, the order came to advance. Plagued by thick heat and bad
water, the Army of the Ohio trudged three and one-half miles toward Lick
Creek, building corduroy roads over the twisting creek beds and marshlands.
With the other federal columns bogged down in the difficult terrain, John
Pope’s Army of the Mississippi became isolated at the front of the advance.
Beauregard sensed an opportunity, and although his May 9 attack failed
to eliminate Pope, it alarmed Halleck, who became nervous and wary that
the Confederates might repeat the strategy and destroy the Union forces
piecemeal. The result was an excess of caution. Frustrated federal troops, en-
trenching continually as they inched forward through the muck, bequeathed
their commander the nickname “Grandmother Halleck.”6
As the jittery federal columns crept toward Corinth amid constant skir-
mishing, the bold war governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, visited the
lines to check in on his citizen soldiers. Shells crashing about, an officer
cautioned Morton: “too much danger for a governor here.” “No more for
me than for you,” the governor countered, although he was soon convinced
to move to the rear for his own safety.
After a painstaking month, a concentrated push brought Halleck to the
outskirts of Corinth. Opting against a costly frontal attack, he determined
to besiege the town. Beauregard, aware that he could not wait for Halleck to
Another random document with
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behind, a horse was dragging, with a long rope, a small, deeply
laden canal-boat, not pretty like this one, which went swiftly and
merrily along by steam. But at last it came to a stand, in front of two
huge wooden gates which shut the canal in, and through every
crevice of which the pent-in water kept spouting in tiny cataracts.
“That’s the first of the locks,” said papa, who had seen it all before,
and took his little girl to the end of the boat to show her the wonderful
sight.
She was not old enough to have it explained, or to understand what
a fine piece of engineering work this canal is. It cuts across country
from sea to sea, and the land not being level, but rising higher in the
middle, and as you know water will not run up a hillside and down
again, these locks had to be made. They are, so to speak, boxes of
water with double gates at either end. The boat is let into them, and
shut in; then the water upon which it floats is gradually raised or
lowered according as may be necessary, until it reaches the level of
the canal beyond the second gate, which is opened and the boat
goes in. There are eight or nine of these locks within a single mile,—
a very long mile, which occupies fully an hour. So the captain told his
passengers they might get out and walk, which many of them did.
But Sunshine, her papa and mamma, were much more amused in
watching the great gates opening and shutting, and the boat rising or
falling through the deep sides of the locks. Besides, the little girl
called it “a bath,” and expressed a strong desire to jump in and
“swim like a fish,” with mamma swimming after her! So mamma
thought it as well to hold her fast by her clothes the whole time.
Especially when another interest came,—three or four little Highland
girls running alongside, jabbering gayly, and holding out glasses of
milk. Her own bottle being nearly drained, Sunny begged for some;
and the extraordinary difficulty papa had in stretching over to get the
milk without spilling it, and return the empty glass without breaking it,
was a piece of fun more delightful than even the refreshing draught.
“Again!” she said, and wanted the performance all repeated for her
private amusement.
She had now resumed her old tyranny over her papa, whom she
pursued everywhere. He could not find a single corner of the boat in
which to hide and read his newspaper quietly, without hearing the
cry, “Where’s my papa? Sunny must go after papa,” and there was
the little figure clutching at his legs. “Take her up in your arms! up in
your own arms!” To which the victim, not unwillingly, consented, and
carried her everywhere.
Little Sunshine’s next great diversion was dinner. It did not happen
till late in the afternoon, when she had gone through, cheerfully as
ever, another change of boat, and was steaming away through the
open sea, which, however, was fortunately calm as a duck-pond, or
what would have become of this little person?
Papa questioned very much whether she was not far too little a
person to dine at the cabin-table with all the other grown-up
passengers, but mamma answered for her that she would behave
properly,—she always did whenever she promised. For Sunny has
the strongest sense of keeping a promise. Her one argument when
wanting a thing, an argument she knows never denied, is, “Mamma,
you promised.” And her shoemaker, who once neglected to send
home her boots, has been immortalised in her memory as “Mr.
James So-and-so, who broke his promise.”
So, having promised to be good, she gravely took her papa’s hand
and walked with him down the long cabin to her place at the table.
There she sat, quite quiet, and very proud of her position. She ate
little, being too deeply occupied in observing everything around her.
And she talked still less, only whispering mysteriously to her mamma
once or twice.
“Sunny would like a potato, with butter on it.” “Might Sunny have one
little biscuit—just one?”
But she troubled nobody, spilt nothing, not even her glass of water,
though it was so big that with both her fat hands she could scarcely
hold it; and said “Thank you” politely to a gentleman who handed her
a piece of bread. In short, she did keep her promise, conducting
herself throughout the meal with perfect decorum. But when it was
over, I think she was rather glad.
“Sunny may get down now?” she whispered; adding, “Sunny was
quite good, she was.” For the little woman always likes to have her
virtues acknowledged.
And in remounting the companion-ladder, rather a trial for her small
legs, she looked at the steward, who was taking his money, and
observed to him, in a confidential tone, “Sunny has had a good
dinner; Sunny liked it,”—at which the young man couldn’t help
laughing.
But everybody laughs at Sunny, or with her,—she has such an
endless fund of enjoyment in everything. The world to her is one
perpetual kaleidoscope of ever changing delights.
Immediately after dinner she had a pleasure quite new. Playing
about the deck, she suddenly stopped and listened.
“Mamma, hark! there’s music. May Sunny go after the music?” And
her little feet began to dance rather than walk, as, pulling her
mamma by the hand, she “went after” a German band that was
playing at the other end of the vessel.
Little Sunshine had never before heard a band, and this was of wind
instruments, played very well, as most German musicians can play.
The music seemed to quiver all through her, down to her very toes.
And when the dance-tune stopped, and her dancing feet likewise,
and the band struck up the beautiful “Wacht am Rhein,”—the “Watch
on the Rhine,”—(oh! if its singers had only stopped there, defending
their fatherland, and not invaded the lands of other people!), this little
girl, who knew nothing about French and Prussians, stood absorbed
in solemn delight. Her hands were folded together (a trick she has),
her face grew grave, and a soul far deeper than three years old
looked out of her intent eyes. For when Sunny is earnest, she is very
earnest; and when she turns furious, half a dozen tragedies seem
written in her firm-set mouth, knitted brow, and flashing eyes.
She was disposed to be furious for a minute, when her Lizzie tried to
get her away from the music. But her mamma let her stay, so she did
stay close to the musicians, until the playing was all done.
It was growing late in the afternoon, near her usual bedtime, but no
going to bed was possible. The steamboat kept ploughing on
through lonely seas, dotted with many islands, larger or smaller, with
high mountains on every side, some of them sloping down almost to
the water’s edge. Here and there was a solitary cottage or
farmhouse, but nothing like a town or village. The steamboat
seemed to have the whole world to itself,—sea, sky, mountains,—a
magnificent range of mountains! behind which the sun set in such
splendour that papa and mamma, watching it together, quite forgot
for the time being the little person who was not old enough to care
for sunsets.
When they looked up, catching the sound of her laughter, there she
was, in a state of the highest enjoyment, having made friends, all of
her own accord, with two gentlemen on board, who played with her
and petted her extremely. One of them had just taken out of his
pocket a wonderful bird, which jumped out of a box, shook itself,
warbled a most beautiful tune, and then popped down in the box
again; not exactly a toy for a child, as only about half a dozen have
ever been made, and they generally cost about a hundred guineas
apiece.
Of course Sunny was delighted. She listened intently to the warble,
and whenever the bird popped down and hid itself again, she gave a
scream of ecstasy. But she cannot enjoy things alone.
“May mamma come and see it? Mamma would like to see it, she
would!” And, running back, Sunny drew her mamma, with all her little
might, over to where the gentlemen were sitting.
They were very polite to the unknown lady, and went over the
performance once again for her benefit. And they were exceedingly
kind to her little girl, showing a patience quite wonderful, unless,
indeed, they had little girls of their own. They tried pertinaciously to
find out Sunny’s name, but she as persistently refused to disclose it,
—that is, anything more than her Christian name, which is rather a
peculiar one, and which she always gives with great dignity and
accuracy, at full length. (Which, should they really have little girls of
their own, and should they buy this book for them and read it, those
two gentlemen will probably remember; nor think the worse of
themselves that their kindness helped to while away what might
otherwise have been rather dreary, the last hour of the voyage,—a
very long voyage for such a small traveller.)
It was ended at last. The appointed pier, a solitary place where only
one other passenger was landed, stood out distinct in the last rays of
sunset. Once again the child was carried across one of those shaky
gangways,—neither frightened nor cross and quite cheerful and wide
awake still. Nay, she even stopped at the pier-head, her attention
caught by some creatures more weary than herself.
Half a dozen forlorn sheep, their legs tied together, and their heads
rolling about, with the most piteous expression in their open eyes, lay
together, waiting to be put on board. The child went up to them and
stroked their faces.
“Poor little baa-lambs, don’t be so frightened; you won’t be
frightened, now Sunny has patted you,” said she, in her tenderest
voice. And then, after having walked a few yards:
“Sunny must go back. Please, mamma, may Sunny go back to say
good-bye to those poor little baa-lambs?”
But the baa-lambs had already been tossed on board, and the
steamer was away with them into the dark.
Into the dark poor little Sunny had also to go; a drive of nine miles
across country, through dusky glens, and coming out by loch sides,
and under the shadow of great mountains, above whose tops the
stars were shining. Only the stars, for there was no moon, and no
lamps to the carriage; and the driver, when spoken to, explained—in
slow Highland English, and in a mournful manner, evidently not
understanding the half of what was said to him—that there were
several miles farther to go, and several hills to climb yet; and that the
horse was lame, and the road not as safe as it might be. A prospect
which made the elders of the party not perfectly happy, as may well
be imagined.
But the child was as merry as possible, though it was long past her
tea-time and she had had no tea, and past bedtime, yet there was no
bed to go to; she kept on chattering till it was quite dark, and then
cuddled down, making “a baby” of her mamma’s hand,—a favourite
amusement. And so she lay, the picture of peace, until the carriage
stopped at the welcome door, and there stood a friendly group with
two little boys in front of it. After eleven hours of travelling, Little
Sunshine had reached a shelter at last!
CHAPTER VI.
Sunrise among the mountains. Who that has ever seen it can forget
it? Sunny’s mamma never could.
Arriving here after dark, she knew no more of the place than the
child did. But the first thing she did on waking next morning was to
creep past the sofa where Sunny lay,—oh, so fast asleep! having
had a good scream overnight, as was natural after all her fatigues,—
steal cautiously to the window, and look out.
Such a sight! At the foot of a green slope, or sort of rough lawn, lay
the little loch so often spoken of, upon which Sunny was to go a-
fishing and catch big salmon with Maurice’s papa. Round it was a
ring of mountains, so high that they seemed to shut out half the sky.
These were reflected in the water, so solidly and with such a sharp,
clear outline, that one could hardly believe it was only a reflection.
Above their summit was one mass of deep rose-colour, and this also
was repeated in the loch, so that you could not tell which was
reddest, the water or the sky. Everything was perfectly still; not a
ripple moved, not a leaf stirred, not a bird was awake. An altogether
new and magic world.
Sunny was too much of a baby yet to care for sunrise, or, indeed, for
anything just now, except a good long sleep, so her mamma let her
sleep her fill; and when she woke at last she was as bright as a bird.
Long before she was dressed, she heard down-stairs the voices of
the five little boys who were to be her companions. Their papa and
mamma having no objection to their names being told, I give them,
for they were five very pretty names: Maurice, Phil, Eddie, Franky,
and Austin Thomas. The latter being the youngest, though by no
means the smallest or thinnest, generally had his name in full, with
variations, such as Austin Tummas, or Austin Tummacks. Maurice,
too, was occasionally called Maurie,—but not often, being the eldest,
you see.
He was seven, very small for his age, but with a face almost angelic
in its delicate beauty. The first time Sunny saw him, a few months
before, she had seemed quite fascinated by it, put her two hands on
his shoulders, and finally held up her mouth to kiss him,—which she
seldom does to any children, rather preferring “grown-ups,” as she
calls them, for playfellows. She had talked ever since of Maurice,
Maurice’s papa, Maurice’s boat, and especially of Maurice’s “little
baby,” the only sister of the five boys. Yet when he came to greet her
this morning, she was quite shy, and would not play with him or
Eddie, or even Franky, who was nearer her own age; and when her
mamma lifted up Austin Thomas, younger than herself but much
bigger in every way, and petted him a little, this poor little woman fell
into great despair.
“Don’t kiss him. I don’t want you to kiss Austin Thomas!” she cried,
and the passion which can rise at times in her merry blue eyes rose
now. She clung to her mamma, almost sobbing.
Of course this was not right, and, as I said before, the little girl is not
a perfect little girl. She is naughty at times, like all of us. Still,
mamma was rather sorry for her. It was difficult for an only child,
accustomed to have her mamma all to herself, to tumble suddenly
into such a crowd of boys, and see that mamma could be kind to and
fond of other children besides her own, as all mothers ought to be,
without taking away one atom from the special mother’s love, which
no little people need be jealous over. Sunny bore the trial pretty well,
on the whole. She did not actually cry,—but she kept fast hold of her
mamma’s gown, and watched her with anxious eyes whenever she
spoke to any other child, and especially to Austin Thomas.
The boys were very kind to her. Maurice went and took hold of her
hand, trying to talk to her in his gentle way; his manners were as
sweet as his face. Eddie, who was stronger and rougher, and more
boyish, wanted her to go down with him to the pier,—a small erection
of stones at the shallow edge of the loch, where two or three boats
always lay moored. Consequently the boys kept tumbling in and out
of them,—and in and out of the water, too, very often,—all day long.
But the worst they ever could get was a good wetting,—except
Austin Thomas, who one day toddled in and slipped down, and,
being very fat, could not pull himself up again; so that, shallow as the
water was, he was very near being drowned. But Maurice and Eddie
were almost “water babies,”—so thoroughly at home in the loch,—
and Eddie, though under six years old, could already handle an oar.
“I can low” (row,—he could not speak plain yet). “I once lowed
grandpapa all across the loch. Shall I low you and the little girl?”
But mamma rather hesitated at accepting the kind offer, and
compromised the matter by going down to the pier with Sunny in her
arms, to watch Eddie “low,”—about three yards out and back again,
—in a carefully moored boat. Sunny immediately wanted to go too,
and mamma promised her she should, after breakfast, when papa
was there to take care of her.
So the little party went back to the raised terrace in front of the
house, where the sun was shining so bright, and where Phil, who
was in delicate health, stood looking on with his pale, quiet face,—
sadly quiet and grave for such a child,—and Franky, who was
reserved and shy, stopped a moment in his solitary playing to notice
the newcomer, but did not offer to go near her. Austin Thomas,
however, kept pulling at her with his stout, chubby arms, but whether
he meant caressing or punching it was difficult to say. Sunny
opposed a dignified resistance, and would not look at Austin Thomas
at all.
“Mamma, I want to stop with you. May Sunny stop with you?”
implored she. “You said Sunny should go in the boat with you.”
Mamma always does what she says, if she possibly can, and,
besides, she felt a sympathy for her lonely child, who had not been
much used to play with other children. So she kept Sunny beside her
till they went down together—papa too—for their first row on the
loch.
Such a splendid day! Warm but fresh—how could it help being fresh
in that pure mountain air, which turned Sunny’s cheeks the colour of
opening rosebuds, and made even papa and mamma feel almost as
young as she? Big people like holidays as well as little people, and it
was long since they had had a holiday. This was the very perfection
of one, when everybody did exactly as they liked; which consisted
chiefly in doing nothing from morning till night.
Sunny was the only person who objected to idleness. She must
always be doing something.
“I want to catch fishes,” said she, after having sat quiet by mamma’s
side in the stern of the boat for about three minutes and a half:
certainly not longer, though it was the first time she had ever been in
a boat in all her life, and the novelty of her position sufficed to sober
her for just that length of time. “I want to catch big salmon all by my
own self.”
A fishing-rod had, just as a matter of ceremony, been put into the
boat; but as papa held the two oars, and mamma the child, it was
handed over to Lizzie, who sat in the bow. However, not a single
trout offering to bite, it was laid aside, and papa’s walking-stick used
instead. This was shorter, more convenient, and had a beautiful
hooked handle, which could catch floating leaves. Leaves were
much more easily caught than fishes, and did quite as well.
Little Sunshine goes fishing.
The little girl had now her heart’s desire. She was in a boat fishing.
“Sunny has caught a fish! Such a big fish!” cried she, in her shrillest
treble of delight, every time that event happened. And it happened
so often that the bench was soon quite “soppy” with wet leaves.
Then she gave up the rod, and fished with her hands, mamma
holding her as tight as possible, lest she should overbalance, and be
turned into a fish herself. But water will wet; and mamma could not
save her from getting her poor little hands all blue and cold, and her
sleeves soaked through. She did not like this; but what will not we
endure, even at two and three-quarters old, in pursuit of some great
ambition? It was not till her hands were numbed, and her pinafore
dripping, that Sunny desisted from her fishing, and then only
because her attention was caught by something else even more
attractive.
“What’s that, mamma? What’s that?”
“Water-lilies.”
Papa, busily engaged in watching his little girl, had let the boat drift
upon a shoal of them, which covered one part of the loch like a
floating island. They were so beautiful, with their leaves lying like
green plates flat on the surface of the water, and their white flowers
rising up here and there like ornamental cups. No wonder the child
was delighted.
“Sunny wants a water-lily,” said she, catching the word, though she
had never heard it before. “May Sunny have one, two water-lilies?
Two water-lilies! Please, mamma?”
This was more easily promised than performed, for, in spite of papa’s
skill, the boat always managed to glide either too far off, or too close
to, or right on the top of the prettiest flowers; and when snatched at,
they always would dive down under water, causing the boat to lurch
after them in a way particularly unpleasant. At last, out of about a
dozen unsuccessful attempts, papa captured two expanded flowers,
and one bud, all with long stalks. They were laid along the seat of
the boat, which had not capsized, nor had anybody tumbled out of it,
—a thing that mamma considered rather lucky, upon the whole, and
insisted on rowing away out of the region of water-lilies.
“Let us go up the canal, then,” said papa, whom his host had already
taken there, to show him a very curious feature of the loch.
Leading out of one end of it, and communicating between it and a
stream that fed it from the neighbouring glen, was a channel, called
“the canal.” Unlike most Highland streams, it was as still as a canal;
only it was natural, not artificial. Its depth was so great, that a stick
fifteen feet long failed to find the bottom, which, nevertheless, from
the exceeding clearness of the water, could be seen quite plain, with
the fishes swimming about, and the pebbles, stones, or roots of trees
too heavy to float, lying as they had lain, undisturbed, year after year.
The banks, instead of shallowing off, went sheer down, as deep as in
the middle, so that you could paddle close under the trees that
fringed them,—gnarled old oaks, queerly twisted rowans or beeches,
and nut-trees with trunks so thick and branches so wide-spreading,
that the great-great-grandfathers of the glen must have gone nutting
there generations back.
Yet this year they were as full as ever of nuts, the gathering of which
frightened mamma nearly as much as the water-lilies. For papa,
growing quite excited, would stand up in the boat and pluck at the
branches, and would not see that nutting on dry land, and nutting in
a boat over fifteen or twenty feet of water, were two very different
things. Even the little girl, imitating her elders, made wild snatches at
the branches, and it was the greatest relief to mamma’s mind when
Sunny turned her attention to cracking her nuts, which her sharp little
teeth did to perfection.
“Shall I give you one, mamma? Papa, too?” And she administered
them by turns out of her mouth, which, if not the politest, was the
most convenient way. At last she began singing a song to herself,
“Three little nuts all together! three little nuts all together!” Looking
into the little girl’s shut hands, mamma found—what she in all her
long life had never found but once before, and that was many, many
years ago—a triple nut,—a “lucky” nut; as great a rarity as a four-
leaved shamrock.
“Oh, what a prize! will Sunny give it to mamma?” (which she did
immediately). “And mamma will put it carefully by, and keep it for
Sunny till she is grown a big girl.”
“Sunny is a big girl now; Sunny cracks nuts for papa and mamma.”
Nevertheless, mamma kept the triple nut, as she remembered her
own mamma keeping the former one, when she herself was a little
girl. When Sunny grows a woman, she will find both.
Besides nuts, there were here and there along the canal-side long
trailing brambles, with such huge blackberries on them,—
blackberries that seem to take a malicious pleasure in growing
where nobody can get at them. Nobody could gather them except
out of a boat, and then with difficulty. The best of them had, after all,
to be left to the birds.
Oh, what a place this canal must have been for birds in spring! What
safe nests might be built in these overhanging trees! what ceaseless
songs sung there from morning till night! Now, being September,
there were almost none. Dead silence brooded over the sunshiny
crags and the motionless loch. When, far up among the hills, there
was heard the crack of a gun,—Maurice’s papa’s gun, for it could of
course be no other,—the sound, echoed several times over, was
quite startling. What had been shot,—a grouse, a snipe, a wild duck?
Perhaps it was a roe-deer? Papa was all curiosity; but mamma, who
dislikes shooting altogether, either of animals or men, and cannot
endure the sight of a gun, even unloaded, was satisfied with hearing
it at a distance, and counting its harmless echoes from mountain to
mountain.
What mountains they were!—standing in a circle, gray, bare, silent,
with their peaks far up into the sky. Some had been climbed by the
gentlemen in this shooting-lodge or by Donald, the keeper, but it was
hard work, and some had never been climbed at all. The clouds and
mists floated over them, and sometimes, perhaps, a stray grouse, or
capercailzie, or ptarmigan, paid them a visit, but that was all. They
were too steep and bare even for the roe-deer. Yet, oh! how grand
they looked, grand and calm, like great giants, whom nothing small
and earthly could affect at all.
The mountains were too big, as yet, for Little Sunshine. Her baby
eyes did not take them in. She saw them, of course, but she was
evidently much more interested in the nuts overhead, and the fishes
under water. And when the boat reached “The Bower,” she thought it
more amusing still.
“The Bower,” so called, was a curious place, where the canal grew
so narrow, and the trees so big, that the overarching boughs met in
the middle, forming a natural arbour,—only of water, not land,—
under which the boat swept for a good many yards. You had to stoop
your head to avoid being caught by the branches, and the ferns and
moss on either bank grew so close to your hand, that you could
snatch at them as you swept by, which Little Sunshine thought the
greatest fun in the world.
“Mamma, let me do it. Please, let Sunny do it her own self.”
To do a thing “all my own self” is always a great attraction to this
independent little person, and her mamma allows it whenever
possible. Still there are some things which mamma may do, and little
people may not, and this was one of them. It was obliged to be
forbidden as dangerous, and Little Sunshine clouded over almost to
tears. But she never worries her mamma for things, well aware that
“No,” means no, and “Yes,” yes; and that neither are subject to
alteration. And the boat being speedily rowed out of temptation’s way
into the open loch again, she soon found another amusement.
On the loch, besides water-fowl, such as wild ducks, teal, and the
like, lived a colony of geese. They had once been tame geese
belonging to the farm, but they had emigrated, and turned into wild
geese, making their nests wherever they liked, and bringing up their
families in freedom and seclusion. As to catching them like ordinary
geese, it was hopeless; whenever wanted for the table they had to
be shot like game. This catastrophe had not happened lately, and
they swam merrily about,—a flock of nine large, white, lively,
independent birds, which could be seen far off, sailing about like a
fleet of ships on the quiet waters of the loch. They would allow you to
row within a reasonable distance of them, just so close and no
closer, then off they flew in a body, with a great screeching and
flapping of wings,—geese, even wild geese, being rather unwieldy
birds.
Their chief haunt was a tiny island just at the mouth of the canal, and
there papa rowed, just to have a look at them, for one was to be shot
for the Michaelmas dinner. (It never was, by the by, and, for all I
know, still sails cheerfully upon its native loch.)
“Oh, the ducks—the ducks!” (Sunny calls all water-birds ducks.) She
clapped her hands, and away they flew, right over her head, at once
frightening and delighting her; then watched them longingly until they
dropped down again, and settled in the farthest corner of the loch.
“Might Sunny go after them? Might Sunny have a dear little duck to
play with?”
The hopelessness of which desire might have made her turn
melancholy again, only just then appeared, rowing with great energy,
bristling with fishing-rods, and crowded with little people as well as
“grown-ups,” the big boat. It was so busy that it hardly condescended
to notice the little pleasure-boat, with only idle people, sailing about
in the sunshine, and doing nothing more useful than catching water-
lilies and frightening geese.
Still the little boat greeted the large one with an impertinent hail of
“Ship ahoy! what ship’s that?” and took in a cargo of small boys,
who, as it was past one o’clock, were wanted home to the nursery
dinner. And papa rowed the whole lot of them back to the pier, where
everybody was safely landed. Nobody tumbled in, and nobody was
drowned,—which mamma thought, on the whole, was a great deal to
be thankful for.
CHAPTER VII.
Life at the glen went on every day alike, in the simplest, happiest
fashion, a sort of paradise of children, as in truth it was. Even the
elders lived like children; and big people and little people were
together, more or less, all day long. A thing not at all objectionable
when the children are good children, as these were.
The boys were noisy, of course, and, after the first hour of the
morning, clean faces, hands, and clothes became a difficulty quite
insurmountable, in which their mother had to resign herself to fate;
as the mamma of five boys, running about wild in the Highlands,
necessarily must. But these were good, obedient, gentlemanly little
fellows, and, had it been possible to keep them clean and whole,
which it wasn’t, very pretty little fellows, too.
Of course they had a few boyish propensities, which increased the
difficulty. Maurice, for instance, had an extraordinary love for all
creeping things, and especially worms. On the slightest pretence of
getting bait to fish with, he would go digging for them, and stuff them
into his pockets, whence, if you met him, you were as likely as not to
see one or two crawling out. If you remonstrated, he looked
unhappy, for Maurice really loved his worms. He cherished them
carefully, and did not in the least mind their crawling over his hands,
his dress, or his plate. Only, unfortunately, other people did. When
scolded, he put his pets meekly aside, but always returned to them
with the same love as ever. Perhaps Maurice may turn out a great
naturalist some day.
The one idea of Eddie’s life was boats. He was for ever at the little
pier waiting a chance of a row, and always wanting to “low”
somebody, especially with “two oars,” which he handled
uncommonly well for so small a child. Fortunately for him, though not
for his papa and the salmon-fishers, the weather was dead calm, so
that it was like paddling on a duck-pond; and the loch being shallow
just at the pier, except a few good wettings, which he seemed to
mind as little as if he were a frog, bright, brave, adventurous Eddie
came to no harm.
Nor Franky, who imitated him admiringly whenever he could. But
Franky, who was rather a reserved little man, and given to playing
alone, had, besides the pier, another favourite play-place, a hollow
cut out in the rock to receive the burn which leaped down from the
hillside just behind the house. Being close to the kitchen door, it was
put to all sorts of domestic uses, being generally full of pots and
pans, saucepans and kettles,—not the most advisable playthings,
but Franky found them charming. He also unluckily found out
something else,—that the hollow basin had an outlet, through which
any substance, sent swimming down the swift stream, swam away
beautifully for several yards, and then disappeared underground.
And the other end of this subterraneous channel being in the loch, of
course it disappeared for ever. In this way there vanished
mysteriously all sorts of things,—cups and saucers, toys, pinafores,
hats; which last Franky was discovered in the act of making away
with, watching them floating off with extreme delight. It was no moral
crime, and hardly punishable, but highly inconvenient. Sunny’s
beloved luggie, which had been carried about with her for weeks,
was believed to have disappeared in this way, and, as it could not
sink, is probably now drifting somewhere about on the loch, to the
great perplexity of the fishes.
Little Phil, alas! was too delicate to be mischievous. He crept about
in the sunshine, not playing with anybody, but just looking on at the
rest, with his pale, sweet, pensive face. He was very patient and
good, and he suffered very much. One day, hearing his uncle at
family prayers pray that God would make him better, he said, sadly,
“If He does, I wish He would make haste about it.” Which was the
only complaint gentle, pathetic little Phil was ever heard to utter.
Sunny regarded him with some awe, as “the poor little boy who was
so ill.” For herself, she has never yet known what illness is; but she
is very sympathetic over it in others. Anybody’s being “not well” will
at once make her tender and gentle; as she always was to Phil. He
in his turn was very kind to her, lending her his “music,” which was
the greatest favour he could bestow or she receive.
This “music” was a box of infantile instruments, one for each boy,—
trumpet, drum, fife, etc., making a complete band, which a rash-
minded but affectionate aunt had sent them, and with which they
marched about all day long, to their own great delight and the
corresponding despair of their elders. Phil, who had an ear, would go
away quietly with his “music,”—a trumpet, I think it was,—and play it
all by himself. But the others simply marched about in procession,
each making the biggest noise he could, and watched by Sunny with
admiration and envy. Now and then, out of great benevolence, one
of the boys would lend her his instrument, and nobody did this so
often as Phil, though of them all he liked playing his music the best.
The picture of him sitting on the door-step, with his pale fingers
wandering over his instrument, and his sickly face looking almost
contented as he listened to the sound, will long remain in
everybody’s mind. Sunny never objected to her mamma’s carrying
him, as he often had to be carried; though he was fully six years old.
He was scarcely heavier than the little girl herself. Austin Thomas
would have made two of him.
Austin’s chief peculiarity was this amiable fatness. He tumbled about
like a roly-poly pudding, amusing everybody, and offending no one
but Little Sunshine. But his persistent pursuit of her mamma, whom
he insisted on calling “Danmamma” (grandmamma), and following
whenever he saw her, was more than the little girl could bear, and
she used to knit her brows and look displeased. However, mamma
never took any notice, knowing what a misery to itself and all about it
is a jealous child.
Amidst these various amusements passed the day. It began at 8 a.
m., when Sunshine and her mamma usually appeared on the terrace
in front of the house. They two were “early birds,” and so they got
“the worm,”—that is, a charming preliminary breakfast of milk, bread
and butter, and an egg, which they usually ate on the door-step.
Sometimes the rest, who had had their porridge, the usual breakfast
of Scotch children,—and very nice it is, too,—gathered around for a
share; which it was pleasant to give them, for they waited so quietly,
and were never rough or rude.
Nevertheless, sometimes difficulties arose. The tray being placed on
the gravel, Maurice often sat beside it, and his worms would crawl
out of his pocket and on to the bread and butter. Then Eddie now
and then spilt the milk, and Austin Thomas would fill the salt-cellar
with sand out of the gravel walk, and stir it all up together with the
egg-spoon; a piece of untidiness which Little Sunshine resented
extremely.
She had never grown reconciled to Austin Thomas. In spite of his
burly good-nature, and his broad beaming countenance (which
earned him the nickname of “Cheshire,” from his supposed likeness
to the Cheshire Cat in “Alice’s Adventures”), she refused to play with
him; whenever he appeared, her eye followed him with distrust and
suspicion, and when he said “Danmamma,” she would contradict him
indignantly.
“It isn’t grandmamma, it’s my mamma, my own mamma. Go away,
naughty boy!” If he presumed to touch the said mamma, it was
always, “Take me up in your arms, in your own arms,”—so as to
prevent all possibility of Austin Thomas’s getting there.

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Forging a New South: The Life of

General John T. Wilder 1st Edition

the university of tennessee press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

John T. Wilder was dedicated to the idea of collaboration.

Special thanks to Tom Maher, the great-grandson of John T. Wilder, who

Mid-summer in the woods of northwest Georgia. Suppertime yet the air is

The Wilder Brigade Monument is an emblematic symbol of the Chicka-

posed an 1891 newspaper article. “A volume would hardly suffice to tell

particular.” This restiveness, coupled with a bold confidence that at times

“he has scholarly attainments, especially in geology, mining and engineer-

reflecting his inner thoughts, his correspondence with Martha, whom he

“Why not organize a company and get a commission,” he reportedly urged

at Rich Mountain, the Confederates pulled back to secondary defensive lodg-

would have to be content with an occasional letter to assist in divining his

Disheartened by the failure of the Confederate attack and the loss of

At Pittsburgh Landing, the victorious but exhausted Union armies recu-

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