Clear The Track
A History of the Eighty-ninth Illinois Volunteer Infantry,The Railroad Regiment
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Also staying behind in Chicago to tie up any remaining loose ends was John M. Farquhar, now the regiment’s sergeant major. One of his duties was to round up those men who were either on one last fling or having second thoughts about military service. On Tuesday, September 9, the Evening Journal printed the following: “THE RAILROAD REGIMENT. ---It is ordered by Colonel Christopher that all absentees from the 89 Illinois Regiment report for duty immediately or they will be published and treated as deserters. Stragglers in the city will report to me at the Warren House, Randolph [S]treet. This is the last call.” On a positive note the sergeant major offered to receive and deliver any “letters and parcels for the Regiment, if left at the Michigan Southern Railroad office, 56 Clark [S]treet, previous to Wednesday noon. . . .”17 Once in the field the men soon found Lieutenant-Colonel Hotchkiss was just as determined to turn the Eighty-ninth into a trained and functional regiment, as he was in his days with 11 Illinois. The business of regimental drill began immediately. On Monday, September 8, Private Fred Goddard wrote that “we drill eight hours a day. It is quite warm and drill is hard.” The thirty-one-year-old Joseph Buckley held a more realistic view of the current situation. He explained to his wife, Mary that “we are commencing to drill this morning in good earnest. We will have to drill from 8 to 10 hours a day. We do not know how soon we may be called on to fight. I don’t care how much they drill us for the more we practice, the better it be for us.” Born in Lancashire, England, Joseph Buckley immigrated to the United State in 1849. When his father died in 1851, he returned to England to settle the estate, and was gone for four months. When he returned to Illinois, he took up farming in Kendall County. In August 1862, even though he was married with two children and not “a full-fledged citizen,” Buckley answered Lincoln’s call for more men.18 The Eighty-ninth was barely settled into their encampment when they received marching orders. Federal regiments were needed to defend the Queen City of the Ohio since Kirby Smith’s rebels were reported “only seven miles from Cincinnati, threatening the invasion of Ohio and Indiana.” It was near sundown on Wednesday, September 7, and the Railroaders had finished with battalion drill and dress parade when an order came to get knapsacks packed and haversacks filled. The men were given 30 minutes to be squared away and ready to march. With each man carrying four days of rations and 50 rounds of cartridges, the regiment fell in and set off for the Ohio River to board a transport to Cincinnati. “After trudging three or four hours, with a knapsack on my back,” George Sinclair wrote, “we laid down on the river bank for the night with the starry heavens for a canopy and a lot of broken bricks for a bed. They were those soft red brick or we should have fared hard.” He continued: “Well the transport that was to take us did not come during the night, so we crossed [on] the ferry to Jeffersonville to take the cars for Cincinnati. But we had as good luck as on the Kentucky side for we were packed onto open flat cars and old stinking cattle cars. . . .” After creaking along for about 15 miles, the train slowed to a halt as track was out ahead. “We staid in the open cars most of the day,” Joe Buckley added, “and while we sat there, we had one of the heaviest rains I ever saw. We got one good soaking, and finally we received orders to move back and finally we moved back to Camp Holt that night and slept on the ground in a field of stubble, about as rough ground as I ever saw.” During the night another storm brought heavy rain which wrapped in there blankets the men endured. Nothing took place the next day, “till three oclock and then had marching orders to go back to ower ould camping ground,” George Berry wrote. And afterward, he concluded: “It all did not amount to nothing.”19 After completing its first “hurry up and wait” operation, the Eighty-ninth was right back where it started, about a mile outside of Louisville. Sunday, September 14, Goddard noted: “We are back at our old camp (Camp Manchester) and have got our tents all pitched and are writing letters. We expect to leave again tomorrow.” Uncertainty and confusion is the enlisted soldier’s lot as George Sinclair revealed to his wife. “We are going to move tomorrow morning for where I can’t tell as we are not let into the secrets of their movements. . . . Well, thank the Lord [that] I have not much curiosity on that score. Only I want them to end this war as soon as possible so as I can get Home.” With that out of the way, Sinclair was proud to speak of his recent promotion. “By the way I got the second sergeant both by the captain’s appointment and the approval of the men. I am proud of it for it is certainly great an honor to hold such in this regiment as a lieutenancy would be in some regiments. . . .”20
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With the air filled with the missiles of death, the bluecoats sought the shelter of mother earth and lay flat hugging the wet ground. The men were caught in an exposed position, and here occurred an incident, that would haunt William R. Hartpence of the Fifty-first Indiana as long as he lived. He observed First Lieutenant Peter G. Tait of the Eighty-ninth Illinois “standing a little in advance of his regiment,” which had intermingled with the Fifty-first during the assault. With his eyes fixed on the young officer, Hartpence watched as Tait “was stuck by a cannon ball near the center of his body, tearing a great hole in the left side. As he fell, he threw his right arm around to his side, when his heart and left lung dropped out into it. The heart continued to throb for twenty minutes, its pulsations being distinctly seen by his agonized comrades, who stood there and saw the noble life fade out in heroic self-sacrifice.” Battle of Nashville, December 16, 1864. In answer to Lincoln’s call for more men to put down the rebellion, the several trunk railroads centered in Chicago oversaw the organization of a regiment composed principally of railroad employees. Numbered the Eighty-ninth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, it was better known by the sobriquet, the “Railroad Regiment.” Considered one of the 300 hundred fighting regiments of the Union army, the “Railroaders” had 133 men killed in action or later died from wounds. Another 66 succumbed in rebel prisons. At the final muster, Colonel Charles T. Hotchkiss said it best: “Our history is written on the head-boards of rudely-made graves. . . . Such a record we feel proud of.” And indeed, it was. PHILIP J. REYBURN is a retired field representative for the Social Security Administration. With Terry L. Wilson, he edited “Jottings from Dixie:” The Civil War Dispatches of Sergeant Major Stephen F. Fleharty, U.S.A.
About the Author
PHILIP J. REYBURN is a retired field representative for the Social Security Administration. With Terry L. Wilson, he edited “Jottings from Dixie:” The Civil War Dispatches of Sergeant Major Stephen F. Fleharty, U.S.A.