Lorenzo J. Miner
1st Lieutenant Co. B, 61st Illinois Infantry.
Died December 19, 1864, of a wound received in a fight on the railroad,
near Murfreesboro, Tenn., December 15, 1864.
In concluding my account of this affair it will be stated that the most of our boys who were captured in the fight, and (I think) all the line officers who had the same bad luck, made their escape, singly, or in little parties, not long thereafter. Their Confederate captors, on or about the day after our encounter, had hurriedly joined the army of Gen. Hood, taking their prisoners with them. In their retreat from Tennessee on this occasion, the Confederates had a hard and perilous time. The guards of the captured Yankees were probably well-nigh worn out, and it is likely that, on account of their crushing defeat at Nashville, they had also become discouraged and careless. Anyhow, the most of our fellows got away while Hood was yet on the north side of the Tennessee river. He crossed that stream with the wreck of his army on the 26th and 27th of December, and fell back into Mississippi.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MURFREESBORO. WINTER OF 1864-1865. FRANKLIN. SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1865.
After the retreat of Hood from Nashville, matters became very quiet and uneventful with us at Murfreesboro. The regiment shifted its camp from the inside of Fortress Rosecrans out into open ground on the outskirts of the town, and proceeded to build winter quarters. These consisted of log cabins, like those we built at Little Rock the previous winter, only now the logs were cedar instead of pine. There were extensive cedar forests in the immediate vicinity of Murfreesboro, and we had no difficulty whatever in getting the material. And we had plenty of nice, fragrant cedar wood to burn in our fire-places, which was much better than soggy Arkansas pine. And I remember with pleasure a matter connected with the rations we had in the fore part of the winter. For some reason or other the supply of hardtack became practically exhausted, and we had but little in the line of flour bread, even for some weeks after Hood retreated from Nashville. But in the country north of Murfreesboro was an abundance of corn, and there were plenty of water-mills, so Gen. Rousseau sent out foraging parties in that region and appropriated the corn, and set the mills to grinding it, and oh, what fine cornbread we had! We used to make "ash-cakes," and they were splendid. The method of making and cooking an ash-cake was to mix a quantity of meal with proper proportions of water, grease, and salt, wrap the meal dough in some dampened paper, or a clean, wet cloth, then put it in the fire and cover it with hot ashes and coals. By testing with a sharp stick we could tell when the cake was done, then we would yank it from the fire, scrape off the fragments of the covering and the adhering ashes,—and then, with bacon broiled on the cedar coals, and plenty of good strong coffee, we would have a dinner better than any (from my standpoint) that Delmonico's ever served up in its palmiest days.
On February 4th, 1865, the non-veterans and recruits of the regiment came to us from Arkansas, and so we were once more all together, except a few that were in the Confederate prisons down South. We were all glad to see each other once more, and had many tales to "swap," about our respective experiences during our separation.
On February 10th, Lieutenant Wallace resigned, and returned to his home in Illinois. The chief reason for his resignation was on account of some private matter at home, which was giving him much anxiety and trouble. Further, the war in the region where we were was practically over, and there was nothing doing, with no prospect, so far as we knew, of any military activity for the regiment in the future. Wallace's resignation left Co. D without a second lieutenant, as we then did not have enough enlisted men in the company to entitle us to a full complement of commissioned officers, and the place remained vacant for some months.
On March 21st, we left Murfreesboro by rail and went to Nashville, and thence to Franklin, about twenty miles south of Nashville, and on what was then called the Nashville and Decatur railroad. A desperate and bloody battle occurred here between our forces under the command of Gen. Schofield and the Confederates under Gen. Hood, on November 30th, only two days after our arrival at Murfreesboro. I have often wondered why it was that Gen. Thomas, our department commander, did not send our regiment, on our arrival at Nashville, to reinforce Schofield, instead of to Murfreesboro, for Gen. Schofield certainly needed all the help he could get. But it is probable that Gen. Thomas had some good reason for his action.
When we arrived at Franklin we relieved the regiment that was on duty there as a garrison, and it went somewhere else. It was the 75th Pennsylvania, and the officers and men composing it, so far as I saw, were all Germans. And they were fine, soldierly looking fellows, too. From this time until we left Franklin in the following September, our regiment comprised all the Union force that was stationed at the town. Maj. Nulton was in command of the post, and, subject only to higher authorities at a distance, we were "monarchs of all we surveyed." When we came to Franklin the signs of the battle of November 30th were yet fresh and plentiful. As soon as time and opportunity afforded, I walked over the whole field, (in fact, several times,) looking with deep interest at all the evidences of the battle. I remember especially the appearance of a scattered grove of young locust trees which stood at a point opposite the right center of the Union line. For some hours the grove was right between the fire of both the Union and the Confederate lines, and the manner in which the trees had been riddled with musket balls was truly remarkable. It looked as if a snowbird could not have lived in that grove while the firing was in progress.