Chapter VII.

MILITARY HISTORY
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THE MILITIA MUSTER.

     VARIOUS laws have been passed in Ohio for the purpose of organizing and drilling the militia, and all of them have proved ineffective.  The first law proclaimed in the territory northwest of the Ohio was "An act for regulating and establishing the militia."  Up to the year 1833, twenty-two acts for this purpose had been enacted by the Territorial and State Legislatures, and all of them repealed, amended or superseded.  These laws provided for dividing the State into military districts, for officering the militia, and that all persons subject to military duty should furnish themselves with arms and accouterments, and meet at specified times to be drilled in the art of war.  There were to be company musters, regimental, musters, battalion musters and brigade musters.  Failure to attend the muster or to be properly armed subjected the offender to a fine.  An old document in possession of the writer gives the proceedings of  “A Regimental Court of Inquiry of the First Regiment, Second Brigade, First Division of the Ohio Militia, held on Monday, the 20th day of September, 1819, at the house of Gen. David Sutton, in Deerfield, for the assessment of fines in said regiment.”  Lieut. Col. William McLean was President, and thirteen Captains were members of the court. Over three hundred members of the regiment were fined in sums varying from 50 cents to $2.50.
     The whole system of militia training soon fell into general contempt.  The general muster brought out a vast concourse of people; the day was a holiday for the lower classes, and the occasion of much intoxication and many brutal fights.  For the purposes of a military drill it was worse than useless, and in 1844, the Legislature wisely abandoned the attempt of enforcing the performance of military duty in time of peace.  Nothing was left of the old muster but along list of high-sounding military titles - Generals, Colonels, Majors and Captains.
     Volunteer and independent military companies have been organized at various times, but they have generally been of short life.  They often started out with an energy and spirit which carried their members for a time through the whole routine of drilling but a few months produced a loss of interest and laxity of discipline.  The independent volunteer militia companies have been of considerable expense to the State and municipal governments, but their history in the past shows that no reliance can be placed upon them as permanent organizations of the militia.
     The ridiculous features of the old general muster were described in the famous speech of Thomas Corwin, in reply to Gen. Crary, of Michigan, delivered in the House of Representatives of Congress in 1840.  The materials for this description were derived from what Corwin had seen at home, and there is a tradition that the orator, before the delivery of this speech in Congress, which gave him a national reputation as a wit, had employed the same weapons of satire, had used the same images and given the same description, in the court of a Justice of the Peace at his own home, while ridiculing a prosecuting witness who happened to be a pompous militia officer.
     Gen. Crary had undertaken to criticise the military record of Gen. Harrison.  His own military title was obtained in the militia service.  After ridicul-

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ing, in his inimitable manner, the military knowledge of Gen. Crary, derived from his law books, Corwin turned to examine his knowledge drives from military duty in the field:
     We all in fancy now see the gentleman from Michigan in that most dangerous and glorious event in the life of a Militia General on the peace establishment - a parade day.  The day for which all the other days of his life seem to have been made.  We can see the troops in motion, umbrellas, hoe and ax handles and another like deadly implements of war, when lo!  the leader of the host approaches.

"Far off his coming shines;"

his plume, white, after the fashion of the great Bourbon, is of ample length, and reads its doleful history in the bereaved necks and bosoms of forty neighboring hen-roosts.  Like the great Suwaroff, he seems somewhat careless in the forms and points of dress; hence his epaulets may be on his shoulders, back or side, but still gleaming, gloriously gleaming, in the sun.  Mounted he is, too, let it not be forgotten.  Need I describe to the Colonels and Generals of this honorable house the steed which heroes bestride on such an occasion?  No; I See the memory of other days is with you.  You see before you the gentleman from Michigan, mounted on his crop-cared, bushy-tailed mare, the singular obliquities of whose hinder limbs is described by that most expressive phrase, “Sickle-hams" - her height gust fourteen hands, all told.  Yes, sir; there you see his steed, that laughs at “the shaking of the spear;”  that is his "war-horse, whose neck is clothed with thunder.”
     Mr. Speaker:  We have glowing descriptions in history of Alexander the Great and his war-horse, Bucephalus, at the head of the invincible Macedonian phalanx; but, sir, such are the improvements of modern times that every one must see that our Militia General, with his crop-eared mare, with bushy tail and sickle-ham, would literally frighten off a battle-field a hundred Alexanders.  But, sir, to the history of the people day.  The General, thus mounted and equipped, is in the field and ready for action.  On the eve of some desperate enterprise, such as giving an order to shoulder arms, it may be there occurs a crisis, one of the accidents of war.
     A cloud rises and passes over the sun!  Here an occasion occurs for the display of that greatest of all traits in the character of a commander; that tact which enables him to seize and turn to good account events unlooked for as the arise.
     Now for the caution wherewith the Roman Fabius foiled the skill and courage of Hannibal.  A retreat is ordered, and troops and General in a twinkling are found safely
bivouacked in a neighboring grocery.
     But even here the General still has room for the exhibition of heroic deeds.  Hot from the field, and chafed with the untoward events of the day, your General unsheathes his trenchant blade, eighteen inches in length, as you will well remember, and with an energy and remorseless fury he slices the watermelons that lie in heaps around him, and shares them with his surviving friends!
     Others of the sinews of war are not wanting here.  Whisky, Mr. Speaker, that great leveler of modern times is here also, and the shells of watermelons are filled to the brim.
     Here, again, Mr. Speaker, is shown how the extremes of barbarism and civilization meet.  As the Scandinavian heroes of old, after the fatigues of war, drank wine from the skulls of their slaughtered enemies in Odin's Halls, so now our Militia General and his forces, from the skulls of melons thus vanquished, in copious draughts of whisky, assuage the heroic fire of their souls after the bloody scenes of a parade day.  But, alas, for this short-lived race of ours, all things will have an end, and so even is it with the glorious achievements of our General.  Time is on the wing, and will not stay his flight; the sun, as if frightened at the mighty events of the day, rides down the sky, and at the close of the day, when "the hamlet is still," the curtain of night drops upon the scene;

"And glory, like the phoenix in its fires,
Exhales its odors, blazes, and expires."

THE WAR OF 1812.

     Before the declaration of war against England, in June, 1812, the people of Southwestern Ohio were frequently alarmed with reports of Indian incursions.  Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, had been laboring for years to bring about the union of the Indian tribes in a war against the whites.  The battle of Tippecanoe was fought Nov. 7, 1811.  The Indians were defeated, but, until the commencement of the war with England, the Government was constantly engaged in negotiations with them to prevent more formidable hostilities.  Not content with negotiations, the Government, in April, before the declaration of war, organized a military force at Dayton, consisting of three regiments of infantry, in addition to one regiment of regulars.  This force was placed under the command of Gen. Hull, and was afterward surrendered to the

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British in August, 1812.  The news of Gen. Hull’s surrender spread gloom and alarm among the people from Cincinnati to the frontier.  The whole region of the Miamis was left exposed to Indian depredations.  Soon after came the rumor that the British and Indians under Tecumseh were approaching by the Maumee River, and that Fort Wayne was besieged.
     During the year 1812, many councils were held at Piqua by representatives of the Government with Indian chiefs for the purpose of securing friendly relations with them. While one of these was in progress, Gov. Meigs, Jeremiah Morrow and Thomas Worthington being the United States Commissioners, a rumor was spread throughout the southern part of Warren County that the Indians had proved treacherous, had massacred the representatives of the Government, and were marching southward.  Men left their plows in the furrow, seized their rifles and rushed to the defense of their homes.
     Although their situation was such as to give rise to feelings of uneasiness as to the safety of their own homes, the great majority of the people of Warren County were in favor of the war with England.  On the reception of the news of the formal declaration of war, the people held meetings, passed resolutions of approval, and took steps to respond to the call for troops.
     Lebanon was the rendezvous of the troops raised in 1812 from the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont.  In August, 1812, four companies of riflemen, commanded respectively by Capt. Joel Collins, Capt. Means, Capt. Leonard and Capt. Hinkle; a company of artillery commanded by Capt. Joseph Jenkinson; and a company of light infantry commanded by Capt. Matthias Corwin, assembled in Lebanon, where the commissioned officers met and elected Joseph Jenkinson, Major.  They took up their line of march for Urbana by way of Dayton, making, according to James McBride, quite a formidable appearance.  Before reaching Dayton, they received the news that Gen. Hull and his army were prisoners of the enemy, and that the British and their Indian allies were marching to meet them.  At Urbana, they were united with a battalion under the command of Maj. Galloway, of Xenia.  The commissioned officers of the two battalions met and elected Capt. David Sutton, of Deerfield, Warren County, Colonel of the regiment.  “Col. Sutton,” says McBride, in his biography of Joel Collins, “ had raised a company and gone out with the first army as a Captain.  He had been sent into the interior, by the order of Gen. Hull, for the purpose of transacting some business connected with the army, and consequently was not present at the time of their capitulation.  He was with Jenkinson’s battalion, on his return, when they received intelligence of Hull’s surrender.  Any person alive now who was living at that time must remember the consternation that this news produced throughout the whole community.  So strong a feeling of patriotism pervaded the country at that time that it appeared as if every able-bodied man who could possibly raise a horse and a gun was on the move for the frontier.  In a few days, a large, promiscuous multitude were assembled in and about Urbana, but they were without leaders, and knew not what to do.”  William Henry Harrison, however, soon took the command, and applied his energies to the proper organization of the army on the Northwestern frontier.
     The first Kentucky troops that arrived in Ohio after Hull’s surrender were a brigade of militia under the command of Brig. Gen. John Payne. They arrived at Piqua Sept. 3, 1812, and Gen. Harrison determined to send for ward a detachment for the relief of Fort Wayne.  Maj. Jenkinson, in whose battalion were riflemen from Warren and neighboring counties, was ordered to send one of his companies to act as road-cutters and open a wagon-way along Wayne’s old trace from Fort Loramie to St. Mary’s; another company to escort a train of wagons on their way to Fort Wayne; another to relieve a company of

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John Drake

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militia from Ohio, stationed at Loramie’s; and the remainder of the battalion to remain at Piqua.  Maj. Jenkinson permitted the Captains to decide the matter by lot as to the company which should be assigned to each particular duty.  Tickets were prepared and drawn from a hat.  It fell to the lot of Capt. Matthias Corwin’s company of volunteers from Warren County to escort twenty wagon-loads of supplies, and to Capt. Joel Collins’ company of Butler County volunteers to open the road.  In 1840, Gen. Charles Anthony thus addressed a political meeting in Columbus, Ohio:

     “When the brave Harrison and his gallant army were exposed to the dangers and hardships of the Northwestern frontier - separated from the interior, on which they depended for their supplies, by the brush-wood and swamps of the St. Mary‘s country, through which there was no road - where each wagoner had to make his way wherever he could find a passable place, leaving traces and routes which are still visible for a space of several days’ journey in length there was one team which was managed by a little, dark-complexioned, hardy looking lad, apparently about fifteen or sixteen years old, who was familiarly called Tom Corwin.”

     From what has already been said, it is evident that there were stirring times in Warren County during the opening scenes of the war.  Fears of the Indians, news of Hull’s surrender, calls for volunteers and upon farmers for wagon-loads of provisions; the encampment of troops at the little village of Lebanon produced an intense excitement, and animated the whole population with a determination to avert the desolation that threatened the frontiers, and to wipe out the disgrace with which American arms had been stained by the opening movement of the war.  Enlistments in the county must have been rapid, but no record of their numbers, or even the names of the commanders of companies, can now be found.  The files of the Western Star, the only paper then printed in the county, for that period, are lost, but in a single paper still in existence, dated Aug. 27, 1812, the announcement of Hull’s surrender is made under the head of  “To Arms! To Arms! ” and from the same paper it appears that a light infantry company from Lebanon and volunteers from other parts of the county left Lebanon for Piqua on the 25th of August, and on the afternoon of the same day, Thomas Ross induced twenty men to volunteer in Lebanon, after which they marched through the town, endeavoring to induce others to join them.  From other newspaper accounts, it appears that on Sunday, Aug. 23, 1812, Capt. Caldwell, with a troop of horse from Warren County, rode through Dayton to Piqua, and Capt. Johnson, with a rifle company from the same county, reported at Camp Meigs, on Mad River, near Dayton.  The following notice was published in the Lebanon Star in August, 1812:
To all those brave and patriotic young men who wish to enlist in defense of the honor and independence of their country, a bounty of $16 will be paid, and 160 acres of land and three months’ extra pay at the expiration of five years' service.
                                               DANIEL CUSHING,, Capt. of Artillery, U. S. Army

     Drafts were resorted to in order to fill the quota of Ohio, and a number of citizens of Warren County were drafted.  The troubles of the Shakers of Union Village on account of their refusal to perform military service began in September, 1813, an account of which we obtain from their own journals:

     June 1, 1812.  Richard McNemar and Samuel Rollins go to Dayton to see the Governor respecting military matters that concern believers.
     September, 1813.  About the 7th and 8th, we have military troubles.  Seven of the brethren are drafted to join the Northwestern army, and were required to go to Lebanon and join the detachment of Maj. Fay.
     September 11.  Brethren furloughed until called upon to march.
     September 16.  They are called to Lebanon to march.
     September 18.  They are marched under guard to Dayton.
     September 22.  Brethren return home from Dayton; arrive after night; much joy among the people.

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     October 1.  Our drafted brethren are taken again to Lebanon under pretense of being deserters.
     October 3.  They are marched off from thence to Xenia, thence to Franklinton, thence to Sandusky, etc., etc.  It is supposed they will be kept in the army six months.
     November 24.  Our brethren arrive home from the military department, viz.: Samuel Rollins, David Spinning, Robert Baxter, William Davis, Jr., Rufus E. Davis, Adam Gallaher and Samuel McClelland, the two latter Buseron Brethren.  [Buseron was a Shaker community on the Wabash, commenced about 1808.]

     It is impossible to learn, at this day, the number of men from Warren County who served their country in the last war with England.  A list even of the commissioned officers from the county cannot be obtained.  There are on file in the Adjutant General’s office at Columbus only nine of the muster rolls of the war of 1812.  As the terms of service for which the men were called out were generally short, not exceeding six months, the number of persons who served at some time during the war was quite large, and the names of the commissioned officers would form an extended list.  The military system under which the war was carried on would by no means have answered the purposes of the Government in the great war of the rebellion.  In many cases, the raw militiamen had scarcely learned to drill as soldiers when their terms of service expired, and they were succeeded by fresh, untrained recruits.  But in every vicissitude of the conflict, the conduct of the people of the county was patriotic and honorable.  They volunteered with alacrity, and endured the hardships of the campaigns in the Northwest with patience and cheerfulness.

THE MEXICAN WAR.

     The war with Mexico aroused but little of the martial spirit of the people of Warren County.  There was a prevalent sentiment among the people that the war was unnecessary; many believed that their Government was in the wrong.  The county was strongly Whig in politics, and the majority were not enthusiastic in their support of the war measures of a Democratic administration.  Thee were but few men from the county in the war.
     No event during the progress of the war arounsed more interest among the people of every class in the county than the memorable speech of their fellow citizen, Thomas Corwin, against the further prosecution of the war, delivered in the Senate of the United States Feb. 11, 1847, just before Gen. Scott began the last campaign, which completely broke the military power of Mexico, and after Taylor had won his most brilliant victories.  Perhaps no speech ever delivered in Congress was so much talked about.  On one side, its sentiments were approved; on the other, they were denounced as treasonable.  The orator himself, in after years, with some rhetorical exaggeration, said the speech had caused him to be burned in effigy in every town and hamlet from Maine to Texas that had sent a soldier to fight against Mexico.  The famous expression of “Welcome you with bloody hands” caused the Senator in his own county to be represented on banners carried in the processions of his political opponents with his hands and arms to the elbows painted blood red, and underneath the picture, the word “Traitor.”  Considering the unpopularity of the sentiments uttered, the mere politician regarded the orator as unwise.  Looking at the strength and boldness of his language, some of his friends reproached him for imprudence, and his opponents denounced him as a traitor.  But time has already marked it as the greatest and best speech of the eminent orator.  Portions of it have become familiar to school-boys, and have taken their place among the most eloquent passages in the English language.  The memorable expressions, “bloody hands” and “hospitable graves” occur in a passage which is frequently incorrectly quoted.  The exact language of Senator Corwin will be found below:

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     What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico?  It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle with his old Castilian master.  His Bunker Hills and Saratogas and Yorktowns are there.  The Mexican say, There I bled for liberty, and shall I surrender that consecrated home of my affections to the Anglo-Saxon invaders?
     Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, had England's lion ever showed himself there, is a there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet him - is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood - is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battle-fields of liberty should have been wrested from us?
     If I were a Mexican, I would tell you, "Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead men?  If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable graves."

THE CIVIL WAR

     The record of Warren County in the rebellion is one which will ever be contemplated with pride by her people.  No State in the Union was more prompt and thorough in her response to the call to arms than Ohio and no county in Ohio exhibited more alacrity and patriotism in bearing her share of the burdens of the momentous struggle than Warren.
     Until fire opened upon Fort Sumter, the mass of the people did not apprehend civil war.  Even after the inauguration of President Lincoln, with Jefferson Davis ruling at Montgomery - two Presidents with their cabinets, two Governments standing face to face - the people still seemed incredulous as to the imminence of a clash of arms.  While a minority of the people of the county were willing to see a civil strife begun as a means for the destruction of slavery, the great majority hoped for a happy and peaceful issue from the national complications Probably a majority were even disposed to favor such measures of conciliation as the repeal of the personal liberty bills in the Northern States which interfered with the enforcement of the fugitive slave law, and to give assurance that slavery should never be interfered with in any of the States where it then existed.
     Thomas Corwin then represented the county in Congress.  On the 14th of January, 1861, as Chairman of a Grand Select Committee of the House of Representatives, consisting of one from each State, Mr. Corwin made a report which perhaps met the approval of a majority of the people of the county.  The report favored concession by recognizing the constitutional rights of the Slave States, and declaring that “all attempts on the part of the Legislatures of any of the States to obstruct or hinder the recovery and surrender of fugitives from labor are in derogation of the Constitution of the United States, inconsistent with the comity and good neighborhood which should prevail among the several States, and dangerous to the peace of the Union.”  The report passed the House by a decided majority.  There were throughout the county, however, not a few who regarded even a declaration of a purpose to respect the rights of the Slave States under the constitution as an effort, to use the language of Horace Greeley, “to disarm the sternly purposed rebellion by yielding without bloodshed a substantial triumph to the rebels.”
     President Lincoln’s first call for 75,000 militia to suppress unlawful combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed was read in the daily news papers Monday, Apr. 15, 1801.  On the evening of the next day, the first public war meeting in Lebanon was held.  It was held in Washington Hall, and was attended by citizens of Lebanon and vicinity and other portions of the county.  The meeting was marked by a general and enthusiastic approval of the President’s proclamation.  Whatever spirit of conciliation and concession had before existed, there was now no more talk of coaxing or pleading with traitors who had dared to aim their cannon at the flag of the Union.  A. H. Dunlevy presided.  A committee on resolutions was appointed, consisting of

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George R. Sage Durbin Ward, James M. Smith, J. D. Wallace, William Crosson, Simon Suydam and John C. Dunlevy.  Earnest and forcible addresses were made by the President, Judge Belamy Storer, Durbin Ward and J. D. Wallace.
Resolutions were adopted as follows:

     Resolved, That we, the citizens of Warren County, most cordially indorse the action of the Government in its energetic measures to execute the laws, and to preserve the institutions of our country.
     Resolved, That we will stand by and support the Administration in the most vigorous efforts to put down rebellion and punish treason at whatever expense of men or money.
     Resolved, That we recognize no party in the present crisis but the party of the Union.

     The band played "Hail Columbia," "The Star Spangled Banner" and "Yankee Doodle."  Before the meeting adjourned, it authorized a dispatch to be sent to Gov. Dennison, pledging the county to raise promptly the quota of men required under the call of the President.
     The war spirit was soon aroused throughout the county.  The national flag was run up on the court house, and was seen floating from stores, workshops and residences.  The whole country was filled with the noise and excitement of military preparation.  Three companies from the county were soon raised, commanded respectively by Capt. Rigdon Williams, of Lebanon; Capt. John Kell, of Franklin; and Capt. J. D. Wallace, of Morrow.  The sight of real soldiers was new to most of the people, and the marching to camp of a company for the three-months’ service made more ado than afterward the departure of a regiment who left their homes for three years or during the war.  Capt. Williams" company, on Tuesday, April 23, marched from Lebanon to the railroad, intending to take their departure for Camp Jackson at Columbus Stores and shops were closed, and the people turned out to bid the soldiers adieu.  The procession of soldiers and citizens on the road from Lebanon to Deerfield was nearly a mile in length.  At the railroad station, the Captain received a dispatch that Camp Jackson was full, and the company returned to Lebanon and encamped at the fair-grounds.  The company was mustered into the service of the United States for three months, at Columbus, on May 5:, was reorganized and mustered into service for three years at Camp Dennison on the 19th of June, as Company F, Twelfth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  Jabez Turner, of Harveysburg, a member of this company, killed at Scarey Creek, W. Va, July 17, 1861, was the first man from Warren County who lost his life in the war of the rebellion.
     Capt. John Kell’s company, which, before the war, had been organized as a militia company, called the “ Franklin Grays,” was the first company to leave the county for service under the telegraphic call for troops. 
     Durbin Ward was the first man in the county to sign an enrollment paper for troops in the civil war.  When the President’s proclamation reached Lebanon, he was trying a case at the court house.  He hastily drew up a paper containing something like the following: “We, the undersigned, hereby tender our services to the President of the United States to protect our national flag.”  He signed it, and proceeded with his case.  It was soon signed by Milton B. Graham.  Only one or two other names were obtained until after the war meeting at Washington Hall, on the evening of April 16.  Gen. Ward went into the army as a private, declining a captaincy.  He came out a Brigadier General.  He was a Democrat, and a decided opponent of the election of Lincoln, yet, when the national flag was fired upon, he at once offered his services to support an adminstration whose elevaton to power he had opposed.  His example and influence did much to unite all parties in the support of armed
measures for the suppression of the rebellion.
     The volunteers from Warren County belonged to no one party.  Republicans and Democrats and Bell-Everett men, Conservatives and Radical Aboli-

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tionists, who had been almost willing “to let the Union slide," all forgot their past differences and gave their services to support the Constitution and the Union.
     The women of the county were earnest in their ministrations to the soldiers.  From the beginning until the close of the war, they were constant in their efforts to supply those comforts and delicacies needed in the field, and still more in the hospital, and which no government does or can supply.
     On May 3, the President issued his first call for men to serve three years or during the war.  Then began the serious work of enlistment.  Early in the war, there was appointed in each county of the State a standing military committee, which had the charge and direction of the military matters of the county.  The raising of funds for bounties, enlisting recruits and looking after the families of those who were absent in the army, and many other duties, devolved upon the committee.  The Governor consulted with this committee before commissioning military officers.  The war called for so large a proportion of, the entire male population that the quota of the county was not in all cases filled without difficulty.  Drafts and the offer of large bounties to volunteers were found necessary.  Liberal provisions were made for the support of the families of soldiers and marines in active service.  Of the men who filled the quota of Warren County, all, except an inconsiderable fraction, were volunteers.  With in eighteen months after the first call for three-years’ men, the county, with a total militia enrollment of 5,352, sent into the service 2,140 men, of whom only 52 were drafted.
     Most of the recruits, on being mustered into the service, received a considerable bounty.  Under the last calls of the President, the local bounties were unusually large, amounting to upward of $500, while still larger sums were paid to acceptable substitutes In this way an enormous sum was expended.  The money for this purpose was raised in part by taxation, under the authority of law, but more largely by the voluntary contributions of the stay-at-home citizens.  The large bounties were a great incentive to desertion, and it was estimated that of the recruits enlisted to fill the quota of Ohio under the call of July, 1864, more than ten thousand deserted.  The deserters would present themselves at a new recruiting station, or, with a change of name, to the same station, be again mustered in, receive a second large bounty, and again desert.  To put a stop to this “bounty-jumping,” the plan was adopted of withholding  the bounty until the recruit had reached his regiment.
     The soldiers from Warren County were scattered through so large a portion of the United States Army, and in so many regiments and branches of the service, that the record of the county can only be given in the record of Ohio in the rebellion.  Such a record, to be complete, should exhibit the military history of every soldier and officer - name, age, rank; when, where and by whom enrolled; when, where and by whom mustered into service; the nature and date of every promotion; date of death, discharge, muster out, transfer or desertion - in short, everything pertaining to the soldier’s military career.  The importance of such a record for the whole State is evident from the numerous applications made at the Adjutant General’s office by soldiers or their relatives, heirs or attorneys, and the departments of the United States Government requesting
certificates of service.  There are on record at the court house in Lebanon only a few hundred soldiers’ discharges.  The military records of the Adjutant General’s office at Columbus, though incomplete, supply most of the information necessary for the full war record of every soldier in an Ohio regiment during the rebellion.
     Warren County claims its full share of the glory in the record of Ohio in the rebellion.  Whitelaw Reid, in his “Ohio in the War,” says:

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“Ohio soldiers fought on well-nigh every battle-field of the war.  Within forty-eight hours after the telegraphic call, two Ohio regiments were on their way to the rescue of the imperiled capital in the spring of 1861.  An Ohio brigade, in good order, covered the retreat from the first Bull Run.  Ohio troops formed the bulk of the army that saved West Virginia; the bulk of the army that saved Kentucky; a large share of the army that took Fort Donelson; a part of the army' at Island No. 10; a great part of the army that, from Stone River, and Chickamauga, and Mission Ridge, and Kenesaw, and Atlanta, swept down to the sea, and back through the Carolinas to the Old Dominion.  They fought at Pea Ridge. They charged at Wagner.  They campaigned against the Indians at the base of the Rocky Mountains.  They helped to redeem North Carolina.  They were in the siege of Vicksburg, the siege of Charleston, the siege of Richmond, the siege of Mobile.  At Pittsburg Landing, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, at Corinth, in the Wilderness, before Nashville, at Five Forks, at Appomattox Court House - their bones reposing on the fields they won, are a perpetually binding pledge that no flag shall ever wave over these graves of our soldiers but the flag they fought to maintain.”

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