Trumbull County Boys with (Chris Mowery)

Trumbull County Boys with (Chris Mowery)

In this episode of the American Civil War & UK History Podcast, host Daz is joined by Chris Mowery of Vlogging Through History to discuss his new book, Trumbull County Boys: Company H, 20th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.

In 1861, the “Trumbull County Boys” of Company H, 20th Ohio Infantry—friends and family from northeast Ohio—answered Lincoln’s call and fought across the Western Theater, from Shiloh to Atlanta and the March to the Sea.

Based on letters and diaries, this is a story of brotherhood, courage, and lives forever changed by war.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

To keep up to date with everything in American Civil War and UK history, head over to our website ACW and UK History.com. And remember, this podcast has a PowerPoint presentation that goes along with the show. So if you would like to see the PowerPoint presentation, then head over to our YouTube channel at American Civil War and UK History. Cheers. Hello everyone, I'm Daz and welcome to American Civil War and UK History Podcast. This presentation is available as a video on our YouTube channel or as a podcast from wherever you get your podcast from. And if you're watching on YouTube, remember to hit that subscribe button and give us a big thumbs up. And check out our website at www.acwandukhistory.com where you'll find podcasts, blog posts, and links to all of our social media pages. The link is also available in the podcast description. And joining me today is Chris Maori. Welcome, Chris. Hello, how's it going? In today's discussion, we are going to be discussing Chris's new book, The History Behind It. And of course, the title is The Trumbull County Boys Company H, 20th Ohio Volunteers Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. But firstly, Chris, because it is your first time on uh American Civil War and UK history, I always ask my guests, how did you for first become interested in history?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

So for me, um, I'll be showing my age a little bit here. In 1985, I was eight years old and they found the Titanic. And uh it was all over the news when they found the Titanic, and I immediately went down to my local library a few miles away from us back when we didn't have the internet and uh got every book I could find on the Titanic and just started reading it. And I just became obsessed, and I realized very quickly that history was something I was interested in, but also something that I would obsess over. And a couple years later, this documentary by Ken Burns came out about the American Civil War, and from the time I watched that, it became the thing that I was most interested in. And for the last 30 plus years, uh I've been a student of the Civil War.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Excellent. Thanks for that great answer. Okay, yeah. So we're gonna be discussing obviously uh uh the book and uh the history behind it. So uh let's start off with what inspired you to focus on Company H and uh of course the experiences of the common soldier, please, if you wouldn't mind.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

So there's a couple things. Um, like a lot of people, um one of my favorite things that I have had the experience of uh enjoying in history has been the uh HBO series Band of Brothers. And um I think what connected people to Band of Brothers was that it wasn't the story of the entire war from the top down, looking at the generals like we typically get. Uh, it was the story of one company of soldiers from the time that they showed up at training camp through the end of the war and then even hearing their stories afterwards. And we we had time to learn their stories and get connected to them. And when something happened to one of them, we felt it. Uh you know, it was one of thousands of companies of soldiers across all the nations that fought, but we got connected to that. And I wanted that for the American Civil War. I wanted the experience of intimately getting to know a single company uh from the time they joined up through the end of the war. And I chose Company H of the 20th Ohio uh for two reasons. Number one, because uh one of my ancestors was in the unit. In fact, he was the oldest enlisted man in the company. He was 52 when he signed up. Uh, too old. He had to lie about his age. He said he was 44. And uh he signed up because his 15-year-old son was the drummer in the company, and I think he just wanted to go along and kind of keep his eye on him. Um, but also because the company was local. It was raised about three miles from the town I grew up in. Um and so I knew that I would know their story. I would know their story because I know the villages that they came from, I know the streets they lived on, uh, I know the the homes they came back to because it's where I've lived all my life. And uh so I thought those two things combined, um, following one single company, which I don't think has really been done too much uh in Civil War uh history writing. Uh we've got a lot of regimental histories, but not a single company. Um, so that that's really what motivated me.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Excellent. Well, and that's just fantastic that you've got that personal connection, so that makes it even more you're gonna, you know, it's gonna make it even more um satisfying for you to see this come to uh come to fruition, isn't it? You know, so that's fantastic. Okay, so how did uh Private Samuel Hughes' personal story shape the narrative of the regiment, if you wouldn't mind?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So so as I started out my research for the book, uh the thing I did first was um I I've been a professional genealogist for like 25 years, and so I I I leaned on that. I uh first of all put together a roster. Uh ended up there were 133 officers and men who at some point uh over the course of the American Civil War served in the company. Um and so I started doing research on every single one of them. I started digging into census records, I started looking at uh obituaries and visiting their graves and you know, just trying to understand who these men were. And as I got into Sam Hughes's story, because it was the one I knew the best, uh I leaned very heavily on the fact that he was not only a um he was an edge tool grinder. So he, you know, he had a uh kind of a very difficult work that he did, but he was also uh a preacher in a local church. And so that helped me to see uh the war through the eyes of someone that I can relate to because I'm also a preacher in a local church. And uh so I could I could understand him, not only because of our blood ties, but because of our occupational ties. And so I put myself in his shoes. He's four years older than I am now at the time he joins up. He's keeping an eye on his teenage son, which I have teenage sons, uh, and he's probably spending a lot of time just praying and kind of watching out for the morale of the men and encouraging them. And so I leaned very heavily on that in telling the story, just kind of as I looked at how he would have fit into this company that had guys that were you know young enough to be his kids.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Excellent. Thank you, mate. And again, so which which uh guy are you actually personally connected to? Sorry?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, so Sam Hughes. Uh Sam Hughes was a corporal in Company H. He was uh he was 52 when he enlisted, 55 when he went home uh from the war. Um, and then uh so then his son, the drummer of Company H, uh William Hughes, would have been my great-great-great uncle. Wow, what a connection. Um so when did you first discover this yourself?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

So I I've known about Sam and his uh military history for probably a good 20 years. Um, but I didn't really know a ton of the story of the 20th Ohio until I started really digging into it maybe 10 years ago. Um and realized that uh this guy was not only in you know a company that was involved in a lot of battles, he was involved in a company that did a ton of marching. I mean, they literally marched thousands of miles during the war. And he was never sick, he was never absent, he was on every single muster roll during the uh three years that he was in the unit, and uh it just kind of blew me away thinking that I don't think I could have done that, uh, let alone being in my 50s and doing it.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

I I don't think any of us could do it, to be honest, mate. Not in this time, uh, you know, just wouldn't be able to 100%. But also what I love the fact is uh of the book as well is that you've managed to compile um quite a few photographs, you know, of these guys. And yeah, some of them are when they're a little bit older, but you know, that's not an easy thing to do, is it, at that company level?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

No, you know what? Honestly, I've been incredibly lucky. Um, when I first started thinking about this project three years ago, my original goal was actually to write a book on the entire regiment, the 20th Ohio. But as I dug into it, I realized there was so much information available that I was gonna have no trouble writing on a single company. I mean, there were um two guys in the company who kept diaries throughout the war. There were six or seven of them that wrote regular letters home to the local newspaper. There are countless others whose letters survive uh that didn't go to the local newspapers. Um, we've got uh their colonel of the regiment uh kept uh all of his papers. A lot of those photos that you're seeing on the website there of men in Company H came from Manning Force, their uh colonel's uh collection, which is now at Harvard University. And uh and then there was one guy uh who was a scout and actually served as a spy, and he plays a big part in the book, who the year the war ended wrote a book about his experience. Uh him and the company commander together wrote a book. So I've got a book about the company through one guy's eyes that already exists that was written at the time. So, you know, that all of those photos that are available. I wish there were more photos available of the enlisted men. Uh, most of the photos that we have are from the officers. Uh, but they spent like a month and a half, two months in Memphis at the beginning of 1863. And the majority of the pictures that we have of men from the company were taken in Memphis around that time. So I think a lot of them had photos, and we just haven't tracked them all down yet.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, fantastic. Okay, so tell us a little bit about Trumbull County and uh, you know, is it a rural area?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

What tell us about the Yeah, so Trumbull County's fascinating. Um you'll hear the term here a lot, um Western Reserve. Uh, we live in a in a part of Ohio that's called the Western Reserve. So you can see it there on the map, Trumbull County. Uh most of the guys in Trumbull County, uh the Trumbull County boys are from southern Trumbull County, right there on the border with Mahonan County, which is where I live now. Um, and and so um that's where I grew up as well. But um so the entire northeast part of the state, which includes Cleveland and Akron and Trumbull County, was originally part of Connecticut, which doesn't make a lot of sense if you look at a map because Connecticut's way over to the east. But if you drew a line across the top border of Connecticut and the bottom, uh the southern border of Connecticut and drew them straight west, you would find that it takes up this northeast part of Ohio. Uh, and so Connecticut laid claim, they had this reserve of land in Northeast Ohio that eventually was given up to form Ohio. But so a lot of the men who, men and families who settled Northeast Ohio came from Connecticut. They came from what we call New England, and uh they came with a very particular culture. Uh, a lot of our towns in Northeast Ohio look like New England with the churches, with the big steeples. They're laid out in perfect square townships with a church and a school right in the center. Uh schools were kind of a mandatory thing that was set up in each township. Uh, and so this area is very unique compared to the rest of Ohio in its culture, but also in its politics. And so at the time of the Civil War, uh, Northeast Ohio, what was called the Western Reserve, is the most abolitionist place in the entire United States. Uh, I mean, the the movement of ending slavery in the United States was really strongest here. John Brown, who many people are familiar with, who you know led the raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, who was a strong abolitionist. He grew up in Northeast Ohio, uh, in uh right around the Akron area, not too far from here. Uh, this is where you have Oberlin College, which is the first uh college in the United States that uh allows uh women and allows uh African Americans to attend. And uh, so it's very much a very literate part of the country. It's a very abolitionist part of the country, and it's a very fervently pro-union part of the country. Uh, and that is the whole first chapter is really kind of introducing that to understand who these men were. These were men who were passionately pro-union, passionately pro-slavery, very educated, very informed, uh, and wanted to do their part.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Excellent, thank you. Okay, what's going to motivate these men again? Like you said, I obviously said they're quite uh, you know, uh into the abolition side of things. Um, and of course, they're gonna answer that call, aren't they, that Lincoln puts out in 1861 after the fire upon Fort Sumter for 75,000 volunteers. So tell us about how that how that goes down.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

And also uh Lincoln initially, after Fort Sumter is fired on, uh, does the maximum that he's allowed to do legally under uh the U.S. law at the time, which was raise 75,000 volunteers for three months. That's the most he can do. Uh, but very quickly, you know, folks realize that's not going to be enough, especially after the Battle of Bull Run. Um and so those three-month volunteers, their service is pretty much up uh by the summer. Uh in the 20th Ohio did have an earlier version, which was a three-month unit. Uh, but that the the men who served in the three-month unit for the most part don't really overlap too much with this one. And my book is about the men who served who signed up in the fall for three years. Uh so when the country realizes it's not going to be a three-month war, uh, the U.S. Congress authorizes Lincoln to raise a half a million men for three years. And it was under that that the 20th Ohio is uh authorized by the governor of Ohio. Um almost the entire regiment is from central and kind of southwest Ohio, like Knox County, uh, Shelby County, Delaware County, uh, very, very different part of the state. This these are farms, uh, this is flat land. Uh, it's completely different politically, completely different geographically than Northeast Ohio. But one company is authorized for the 20th Ohio from Trumbull County. Uh and the guy that they um tap to uh recruit this uh company is the man who was the first sheriff of Mahonan County, which is the county directly to the south of us. The company's raised in Lordstown, which is about two miles from the county line. So it's uh, you know, it's not too far from the border there. And so you had some men from Mahonan County as well. Uh this guy named James Powers. And so he uh kind of sets up in the town square, they're giving these speeches. Uh, there are these rallies happening in every village and every town uh in Trumbull County, uh, all with the uh idea of raising this company that's gonna go in uh as a uniquely Trumbull County unit. And and uh the men are kind of a mix. You've got a lot of farmers. Uh farmers uh dominate the regiment, but you've got um a lot of blacksmiths, you've got at least four school teachers in the uh company, you've got uh carpenters, you've got men who work in mills. Uh where we live uh is later going to be called the Steel Valley because it's uh one of the primary uh steel producing uh areas of the United States, at least it was until uh about 50 years ago. Now they call us the Rust Belt for the same reason we have all these old steel factories that aren't being used anymore. And so a lot of these guys are are um craftsmen. They're uh again very educated, uh, so there's a mix, but they know each other and you know they understand each other.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Excellent, thanks. And uh okay, so um how how did uh family and uh community ties influence the formation of Company H in particular?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Oh, it's huge. I mean, uh much like what happens uh in the UK with the PALs battalions, you know, in the First World War, where you have these entire um you know communities signing up en masse to form a battalion, uh, you have the same thing happening here, and so you'll have you know brothers and cousins and people who were roommates together. There are 13 sets of brothers in uh Company H uh throughout the war. There's one set of three brothers plus their brother-in-law who all enlist at the same time. You've got a father and son, you've got an uncle and nephew who were both sergeants in the company. Um, yeah, so these are people, and I and I lean heavily on that in my story of the recruitment, uh, about how these guys, when they're sitting around the campfires, they didn't have to explain to each other where they were from because they were all from the same place. They were neighbors. They, when you talked about that crazy old lady on Third Street, everybody knew who you were talking about because everybody came from that town. Uh, you know, so the bonds, not only the familial bonds, but the uh community bonds were there before they ever even put on the uniform, and that uh plays strongly into their unit cohesion throughout the war.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, I mean, I was gonna ask that because again, a lot of the northern regiments, like say, for instance, from the big cities like New York and Philadelphia, there's a sort of chuck together, aren't they? And they're not really gonna know each other. So this is gonna make a huge difference. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Okay, so let's talk about life in camp when they finally get to go and train and uh you know become soldiers, as you were. Um, but um, what is the biggest challenges for the recruits during the training at the camp uh Camp Chase and of course Camp King?

SPEAKER_00 17:31

So yeah, they start out, they they're organized at Camp Chase, which is in Columbus, um, but they're only really there to form up the regiment. And the regiment's really only at about 600 men when they leave Camp Chase, so they're still recruiting uh at the time. But they uh at this point, Company uh H uh in October of 61 has about 65, 70 men. So they're still waiting on about another 20 to 30 guys, uh, and they're giving orders to Camp King. So Camp King is right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. Uh it's right in northern Kentucky. Um and Cincinnati at the time is the fifth largest city in the Union. And uh, so it's important to defend it, especially because it's right across the river from uh, you know, from a border state, from a slave state. And so they go into Camp King where they're building these fortresses, a string of fortifications uh that ring uh the areas south of uh Cincinnati. The colonel of the 20th Ohio, a guy named Charles Whittlesey, is also the chief engineer of the Department of the Ohio. And so in addition to commanding the regiment, he's also the guy who's responsible for building these fortifications. Uh so that's why they send the 20th there. So the early uh months are just them learning how to be soldiers. They're they're given these really antiquated weapons because uh Ohio uh per capita uh sends more men to the Union cause than any other state in the Union. And uh so they more than meet their quota. Uh each state had a quota of how many men within that half million they were supposed to raise. Uh, and so they don't have enough weapons for them all. And so they take these 1816 Flintlock Harper's Ferry muskets, uh, and they modify them for Civil War service. And so they rifle the barrels and they take off the flint lock and replace it with a percussion cap system. Uh, but they're old. These are 50-year-old guns, and that's what they're armed with. And so they're learning to use these weapons that they hated, but it was all they had. And they're going on uh fortification duty, and so uh they would do rotations at any given time. 30 guys would be marching out two or three miles to guard one of these fortifications. And this is where you start to get the story of how these men become, you know, for lack of a better term, a band of brothers. There's stories that we have from the newspapers. Uh, one example is uh a squad of about 30 guys are marching out to one of the forts that's about three miles from camp. And this uh Southern lady rides by in her carriage and leans out the window and says, hurried for Jeff Davis. And so here you are, these men are defending this woman's land uh in northern Kentucky, and she's cheering for the enemy president. And so that night, uh a squad of soldiers decide they're gonna go pay a visit to her house. And they show up uh and at bayonet point they steal about 30 of her chickens, they take a bunch of other food, and they take it back to camp. Well, the next morning, this woman shows up at the camp complaining to the lieutenant colonel, Manning Force, uh, about these men from this company stealing her chickens. And so he immediately goes down to the camp of the uh of Company H and starts searching tents, starts looking around, can't find any evidence whatsoever that any of this has happened. And so they pull a lineup, they bring out all the guys from Company H. The woman walks down the lineup and picks out one of the guys she thinks was part of it, and it turns out he was several miles away at another camp, and so they get off scot-free. But the implication from the soldier who's writing this story is that yeah, they did it, but they were just really good at hiding the evidence. Uh, and and this was one of those stories that um indicates how these men are starting to become a cohesive unit because uh none of them cracks, none of them kind of rats out any of the other guys, they stand firm uh and it drives them closer. And for years afterwards, men would write about what they called the chicken scrape. Uh, these little stories like that define their early service. And then, of course, they very quickly learn uh that the main killer of soldiers in the Civil War is not going to be Confederate bullets, it's going to be disease. Uh, and in December of 61, they've only been in the field for about six weeks at that point. Uh, the first one of their men is gonna die. Uh, a guy named Solomon Fulk dies of pneumonia in camp. And he was One of those guys who enlisted. Two of his brothers also served in the company throughout the war. And throughout the war, the 20th Ohio is going to lose 290 men dead to disease. But Company H loses fewer men to disease than any other company in the entire regiment. And that's kind of it's a weird statistical anomaly that they lose percentage-wise about half as many as any other company in the regiment to disease.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Wow. Fantastic. And great story as well. Yeah, fantastic for finding that. Brilliant. Can I just ask, obviously, you know, so they're sending uh these guys, these guys get sent to the Western Theatre. Um, but how was it determined what Ohio regiments got sent east or west? Do you know that?

SPEAKER_00 22:51

I I think for the most part it was determined. So initially in the Civil War, um you didn't really necessarily just have armies in the field, you had departments. Uh, and the Department of the Ohio was primarily focused on operations in Kentucky and Tennessee early in the war. And so the vast majority of regiments from Ohio and further west, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, places like that, tended to serve in the Western theater. You had some units uh from uh Ohio that ended up in, say, the Army of the Potomac, but very few. Uh Army of the Potomac's heavily going to be, you know, Pennsylvania and New York, guys like that. So uh Ohio at the time, even though if you look at a map today, obviously we're in the northeast part of the country, at the time it was considered part of the western United States uh culturally, but also geographically. And so uh it just made sense that most of these units ended up that way.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I didn't think about it like that. Yeah, I suppose the uh the border was a lot closer uh that way, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Um okay, so um okay, let's um talk about the 20th Ohio and how they're gonna handle it uh their first time in combat. And uh is that I believe at Fort Donaldson, is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 24:06

That's correct. Um so February 9th, uh 1862, they get orders that they're going into action. Um Ulysses S. Grant, who a guy who's a guy they'd probably never heard of at that point, um, or barely heard of, has just taken Fort Henry and now he's moving on Fort Donaldson and he needs all the men in the field he can get. And so they're ordered to board steamboats. Uh so they go down to Cincinnati, they board steamboats, and they're gonna take steamboats down the Ohio River and then go up uh upriver to the site of Fort Donelson. And on the very day that they are ordered into the field, their company commander resigns his commission. Uh back in December, uh, he had taken a bad fall, slipped on some ice while inspecting one of the camps, and broken some ribs, and just never had fully healed from that, and realized that at 52 years old, he just wasn't cut out for field command. And so he uh he resigns the day that they they leave for combat. And uh a commander uh a lieutenant from Company A is temporarily assigned to command Company H. Uh, they board these steamers and they arrive at Fort Donaldson uh during the battle. And so there's this incredible drawing. Henry Dwight, who is one of the lieutenants in Company H for a good bit of the war, um, would do these sketches, and he did a sketch of when they came around the corner on the river and they see the gunboats on the river shelling the fort, and they could hear, you know, hear the sound of the war before they ever saw it. Uh, and just that jarring um sensory overload of riding into war on a boat. They they get off the boats, it's cold, there's sleet falling, uh, it's uh late at night, it's dark, and they do this 10-mile march off the boat, continually hearing uh the firing the whole time. Around midnight, they're marching around the Union lines to move into a reserve position behind one of the um regiments who's already been in the field for a few days. And the very next morning, after they sleep outside in the sleet with their guns, the very next morning the Confederates try to break out from the fort. And the breakout attempt happens right where the 20th Ohio has just moved into position. Uh, but they're in reserve, and so they they hear the firing, they see wounded men streaming back, uh, there are descriptions in their letters and in their diaries of uh just the unnerving sensation of standing there and being under fire, but they're in the woods and they can't see the enemy. All they see is shells exploding overhead, wounded men streaming back, these guys are streaming back yelling uh that their regiment has been completely destroyed, and you know, everybody's running, and there's all this panic. And this is Company H's introduction to the Civil War, uh, is this situation. Well, they never actually see the enemy. And the only casualty that they take that first day is one guy who's been with the company for about a month, who shoots off two of his own fingers while he's fiddling with his gun. And uh, so that was the only casualty for them. And uh they never do see the enemy that day. The um attack is thrown back, and the very next morning they're preparing to launch an assault on the fort when they hear the news that Fort Donaldson has surrendered. Uh so that's their introduction to combat, and then immediately they get a new mission. Uh 12,000 prisoners have surrendered at Fort Donaldson, and uh General Grant picks the 20th Ohio as the unit that is going to escort all the prisoners north to prison camps. And so they're divided up by company, and Company H is assigned to a thousand men that they're gonna escort to Camp Douglas, which is a prison camp in Chicago. So no sooner have they arrived at the front than now they're escorting prisoners back north on uh steamships into Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Wow, what an interesting story. Fascinating. Really is uh again. Uh hearing that before you actually see it, it must have been terrifying. And the the the similar similarities uh to um envisioning you know the guys coming back from the front and running past uh to uh Banda Brothers and the uh the bit where they're going into the into uh Bastone, you know, there's that similarity there.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, not only that, but I and that's one of the things, you know, I I was modeling this idea after Band of Brothers, but the number of uh similarities that I I found between Company H and the easy company guys in World War II is striking. I mean, right on the eve of combat, the guys in Band of Brothers get a new company commander. Uh, it's not the guy that trained them in the field, you know, same thing happened in both stories, and there are a number of other things that I'm sure we'll talk about as we get through the story that are just incredible parallels.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, fantastic. Okay, let's talk about uh uh an individual, um, this individual. So um hopefully I'll get his name right. Is that Lorraine Bunker Ruggles? Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yes, that's him. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yes. So um he plays a uh as a scout and a spy, and how does did that impact the regiment?

SPEAKER_00 29:18

So he he is the guy who actually uh the the story I told earlier, the chicken scrape, uh that story comes from his book. He's the guy that writes the book after the war. So Ruggles isn't a Trumbull County guy. Um while they're at Camp King, uh Lieutenant Downs, who is the second in command of the company, who is from Trumbull County, it takes a squad of about 10 men back home to Trumbull County to recruit. They still need about 10 more guys for the company. So they're they're on their way home to recruit, and they're in Columbus, Ohio, at a train station, and they run into this guy, Lorraine Ruggles, who has uh spent the last several years working in the South, uh a bunch of different jobs. He's kind of this adventurer, uh, so he knows the Southern culture. He has a Southern accent, but he's from Northeast Ohio. And he's looking for a unit of soldiers to uh sign up with. And he sees Lieutenant Downs and these uh Company H guys, and he likes the look of them. So he walks up to him and says, I'll sign up, I'll join your company. If you can promise to get me an Enfield rifle, one of these British-made rifles. And Downs says, Well, I'll do the best I can. Uh, and so he enlists. And he uh immediately kind of shows up into camp as this larger-than-life figure that's got all these incredible stories about his time in the South. He's telling jokes all the time. He's, you know, if you're familiar with Bander Brothers, he's kind of the George Ludz figure for Company H. He's the guy who always is breaking the tension with a joke, will you know, never takes leadership very serious, uh, is always kind of getting himself into a little bit of trouble, but he has a unique knowledge of the South and of their culture. Uh, he's got the same last name as a Confederate general, Daniel Ruggles, and he actually claims that Dan Ruggles is his brother. He's not. Um, and so very early on, uh it's right after um uh one of the battles in 1862 that uh General Grant uh sends down uh a request to company commanders to recommend anybody they think would make a good scout for the Army. And Lieutenant Downs immediately says, Well, Ruggles is your guy. And by the end of the war, Ruggles is going to be the primary scout for the Army of the Tennessee. Uh, he repeatedly uh will take a couple of Company H guys, dress up in Confederate uniforms, go behind the lines, actually embed themselves with Confederate cavalry at different times. There's one story where he's out with a handful of guys from Company H. They're dressed in Confederate uniform, they're with uh some Confederate cavalry who are about to uh launch an attack on some Union foragers when Ruggles realized that the foragers they're about to attack are actually guys from Company H. And he's holding on to his pistol thinking, okay, if this goes down, I'm gonna turn and shoot all these Confederate soldiers that I've been riding with for the last couple of days. Well, they decide not to attack. Uh, and so by the end of the war, he's got uh letters from General McPherson, General Sherman, General Leggett, General Grant all endorsing him as the guy to go to if you need a tough job behind enemy lines. Uh so much of the story of Company H is going to be seen through his eyes because he wrote a book after the war uh with uh Captain Downs, who is uh company commander later. So a lot of what we know about the company comes from him.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

And again, so that must have been invaluable for you to be able to delve into his book.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Absolutely. Uh you know, stories that of everyday life in camp that would not have otherwise been known if it hadn't been for his book.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the regiment are gonna obviously, as you said, they're in the Western Theatre, and as we know, the Western Theatre is literally non-stop through '62, all the way through '63. And so we're talking about Vicksburg campaigns, we're talking about places like Raymond, Champion Hill. Um, you know, eventually they're going to be going down uh to Atlanta as well, but that's further along the line. But so what kind of effect is this grueling war going to have on the company?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

So a couple of things that are really tough for them. One is obviously the uh the climate. These are northeast Ohio guys. We get a lot of snow. It's cold. You know, it's cold right now here. Uh we don't have a lot of sunshine. They're down in you know, Tennessee and Mississippi where the humidity is awful. They're wearing these wool uniforms. And so uh heat stroke, disease, things like uh obviously dysentery, malaria, even smallpox at one point. Uh so they're dealing with a lot of this stuff. And a lot of their existence is what I call the grind of Tennessee. They're they're doing a lot of uh after the Battle of Shiloh, which they're involved in the second day of the Battle of Shiloh in the counterattack. Um, after that, they're doing a lot of these forced marches uh and facing down a lot of Confederate guerrillas and cavalry raids on supply lines and things like that. And there are a lot of these places that most people have never heard of, but to men in Company H are the things they remember the most. So there's this town called Bolivar, which is west of the Shiloh battlefield. And for a couple of months they're in Bolivar. And at one point, there is uh a Confederate cavalry raid on Bolivar. And so the 20th is sent out to go and confront what they think are a couple of hundred uh Confederate cavalrymen that are trying to hit their supply lines. And what they end up finding out is that this unit of about a thousand men, you know, it's the 20th Ohio, uh, the 78th Ohio, and a couple of companies of Illinois cavalry are actually facing off against 6,000 Confederate cavalry. They're outnumbered about six to one. And so uh the guys from the 20th are going to spread out in skirmish formation. So this is a unique kind of trying time for them because you're not standing shoulder to shoulder. They're in these cornfields where they can't even see one another. And they're using this to their advantage. They're picking off guys from behind trees, and you know, they're just kind of using their own kind of guerrilla tactics, and they're able to hold off in about seven hours this 6,000-man cavalry unit with less than a thousand men. And by this point, they've also got better weapons uh because at the Battle of Shiloh, uh, there are so uh several Confederate regiments at Shiloh had been equipped with these English enfield rifles, this big shipment of rifles that came from England. Uh and so there are thousands of them lying on the battlefield at Shiloh. And so the 20th Ohio get rid of all of their 50-year-old antiquated uh modified flint locks, and they all take these 1853 enfields, and they're gonna use those uh until 1864. Uh and so these are much, much better weapons, and so they're they're able to pick these guys off. And so a lot of their existence is these little run-ins with small units of Confederates until they're called to be a part of the Vicksburg campaign. But while all that is happening, one of the other things that we focus very heavily on in the book is the war that's going on back home. There's this congressman who's actually from here. He's from Lisbon, which is about 20 miles south of us. Uh, his name's Clement Velandingham. And Clement Velandingham is the leader of uh the Copperheads. These are the peace democrats. These are uh northerners who want the war to end, who want the Confederates to be able to go and have their own country, who don't want to fight over slavery. Uh and word is getting back to men in Company H that back home, people are starting to go along with these copperheads. And so the men in Company H are just indignant. They, you know, these are fiery abolitionist pro-union guys, and they see men like Velandam as traitors, uh, traitors to the cause, and they see them as every bit as bad as the guys they're fighting in the field. And so they actually sit down and the company drafts a series of resolutions basically stating their political views, which are we view this war as a war for our for the Union, and now by this point you have the Emancipation Proclamation, and we fully support that as well. We fully support uh you know abolition of slavery, and we see anybody back home who is speaking uh in favor of peace without victory as traitors, and we won't stand for it. And every single man in the company signs it except for one. Uh this guy's name is Hezekiah Christ, and he refuses to sign. And within about three weeks of him refusing to sign the petition, he has been transferred to guard duty at another place and then eventually completely transferred out of the regiment. So you see how quickly these guys would not tolerate even a single person who dissented in their ranks. Um, you know, these guys were very, very politically motivated uh in this war. And so even as they're in the middle of the Vicksburg campaign, even as they're at the front facing the enemy, they took the time to tell the people back home and have this published in a newspaper that you need to get behind us because if you don't, you're a traitor.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Oh wow, yeah, fantastic. Okay, so um unfortunately some of the guys are gonna end up, aren't they, at the infamous Andersonville prisoners. Yes. So tell us about their experience there. And I mean, you know, for people that know Andersonville, uh will know it was not a nice place for anybody.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

No, so um the the worst day of the war for the 20th Ohio is July 22nd, 1864. Uh it's the Battle of Atlanta. Uh it's not, you know, for those who aren't real familiar with it, the Battle of Atlanta takes place, what about six weeks before the capture of Atlanta? So this is right before they're kind of laying siege to the city. And by this point, the 20th Ohio, they're called veteran volunteers because most of the regiment has re-enlisted for another three years, if necessary. And so they are placed at this place called Bald Hill, which is known today as Leggett's Hill. It's about four miles east of the center of Atlanta at the time. Uh, and they build these fortifications. And where they are on the Union line is that they're at the high point of the Union line, and they're right at the apex, the very center of where two divisions come together. And the Confederates uh get a new Army commander, John Bell Hood, and he sends uh one of his corps on this long all-night flanking move around the rear of the Union lines. And as the men of Company H are settled in behind their fortifications on July 22nd, they hear the sound of firing, but it's not coming from in front of them, it's coming from behind them. And pretty soon the rear is overrun, they're being attacked from the rear, and so they have to jump over the fortifications to the opposite side to defend against this attack from the rear. Well, no sooner had they done that than attack comes from the front. And so now they're being attacked from the front and the rear at the same time. Uh, and by the time the battle is over, uh they lose 150 men. They've lost about 50 killed, about 50 wounded, and something like 40 that are captured. And those 40 all end up going to Andersonville, including three guys from Company H. Uh, one of those guys will end up dying at uh Andersonville. And one of the men who ends up in Company H is actually uh the company first sergeant, who has been one of the leaders of the men from the beginning of the war. His older brother was actually their company commander for a good bit of the war. His name was William Downs. Uh, and so these three guys end up at Andersonville. So I do a whole chapter dedicated to what their experience would have been like at Andersonville. I've been to the site, it's a powerful place to visit. Um, Joseph Fusselman is the name of the soldier from the company who dies there. Uh thankfully he is one of the men who has a known grave at the Andersonville prison. But it's a prison that's built to hold 8,000 men. And at the time that the Company H guys show up there, it's at its peak with over 30,000 prisoners. Uh just was not designed to hold anywhere near that. And disease is awful. There's no shelter uh from the sun, there's no clean water, uh, there's not enough food. It's just about as miserable an existence as you could possibly imagine.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

Yeah, absolutely horrendous. Um now I haven't been to Andersonville, but I have been to Point Lookout, um, which was a Confederate prison camp, and yeah, that had a similar sort of feeling to it. It was just horrible. But the worst thing about that is they had a wall with the pictures of all the people that had stayed there, and that really brought it home to me as a visitor, you know. So yeah, horrible. Um, okay, so let's talk about the lasting impacts of the war on the company. And so, as you said, throughout the war there was 113 within the company.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

I think you said around about 133, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

33, sorry. So, um how many actually come home and how many go, you know, back to normal life?

SPEAKER_00 42:29

So uh near as I can tell, and you know, believe it or not, some of the figures are kind of hard to come by because there's at least two guys who are officially listed as deserters who just kind of disappear uh after they're sent to the hospital. Uh, and there's some suspicion that a couple that those guys may have actually died. So we're not a hundred percent clear on exactly how many men from Company H actually died during the war, but it's roughly around 27. About half of them from battle wounds and about half from disease, which, like I said earlier, sets them apart in a regiment uh where there were 360 deaths throughout the war, uh, but three-quarters of them were from disease. And so Company H ends up making up about 15% of the battle deaths for the uh regiment, but only about 5% of the disease deaths. So um of the number that return home, the roughly 100 or so that that survive and go home, uh quite a few of them go home with diseases that will eventually kill them, even if it's years later. Uh some of these guys come home with rheumatism, they come home with um digestive systems that are never the same. Um one guy talked about uh his name was Nelson Strock, and he talked about bad water that he drank at Fort Donaldson, and for the rest of his life his digestive system was screwed up. Um, some of these guys come home with severe what we would know today as post traumatic stress. One of the sergeants. His name's James Quackenbush, and I talk a lot about his post-war life in the last chapter. He went off to war as a father with multiple children, dedicated family man, comes home and within a couple of years he's divorced and uh described by his neighbors as a hermit that lives in this little hut and has to have his neighbors bring his food to him. He was just wrecked by his experiences in the war. His nephew, or his uncle, sorry. His uncle was killed at the Battle of Atlanta. They were both sergeants. And he was never the same. Hezekiah Christ, the guy that I mentioned earlier, who refused to sign the petition and ends up being transferred out of the regiment, eventually takes his own life after the war. They didn't adjust back to home life. I mean, how could you after the things that they had seen? But some of these guys did. Some of these guys go on to be incredibly successful. You have guys who become mayors and leaders in their communities. Three of them, including their company commander, end up going into the ministry after being involved in war. They don't want anything else. They want to be involved in peace and helping people. And so they'll go west as ministers and spend the rest of their life doing that. One guy, uh Henry Dwight, who you can uh on the website there, you can see his picture in the second row, kind of in the middle, real young-looking guy. Um, Henry Dwight was 18 when he enlisted, and he was 19 when he became uh an officer in Company H. He was born in Turkey, in uh what was then known as Constantinople. His parents were missionaries. And after the war, he goes back to Turkey as a missionary, spends the rest of his life doing that and writing books. And um, you know, so for some of these guys, they were never the same. For a lot of them, they came back changed, but they went back to their lives the best they could. A lot of them get involved in the Grand Army of the Republic, which is uh this post-war fraternal organization in uh the United States today. Yeah, there's a GAR post. Nine guys from Company H are in that picture. And uh the uh the men got together regularly. They had these reunions. Uh, and the 20th Ohio as a whole had reunions that were usually in one of the towns in central Ohio where the majority of the regiment came from. Uh, but the guys went to those, but then they also had their own Company H reunions here in uh the Western Reserve. Uh, but they got together regularly for the rest of their lives, and they they would talk often about how you know what, there's just some things that our families will never understand. Uh, nobody else can relate to except the guys that went through it with us. And so they would get together to talk about it, to remember, to celebrate the men who didn't come home from the war. Um, and honestly, to me, that story is as compelling as the war itself, is just understanding who these guys were after the war and what they did with their lives.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Yeah. And I think, um, do you think maybe obviously being such a tight uh knit community that would help them even more because obviously they've got each other in a closer proximity to compare to someone going back to a big city or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 47:15

Yeah, and I one of the cool things I found is a lot of these guys marrying into one another's families after the war, a lot of them got married like within months of coming home from the war. Uh, and a bunch of them married sisters of guys they had served with. Uh, so you can see just those growing connections that happened, and obviously they must have stayed connected after the war. You know, some of the towns, like the town where the company was raised, Lordstown, was a town of 800 people. And something like 50 guys uh from Lordstown enlisted in this company. So you're dealing with like six or seven percent of the entire town's population was in Company H. Uh, so I mean, it defined who they were after the war.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Wow, fantastic. Well, Chris, thank you for telling us about this fascinating story. But of course, people will want to know where they can get the books from and read about this fascinating story itself. So, Chris, tell us where they can get a book from, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Yeah, so right now it's available uh at uh trumblecountyboys.com. Uh and right now we're we're doing a pre-sale. Uh the release date is April 6th, which coincides with with the first day of the Battle of Shiloh, which is kind of the first big battle they were a part of. Um, and at that point it'll be available on Amazon. Uh, and we'll have other like we'll have the uh paperback version available right now. We have the autographed um hardcover available. And uh at the moment, uh as of recording this, it's only available in the U.S. But um probably within the next few days we're gonna have it available for people in Europe and Canada and other places. Uh, but certainly starting April 6th, you'll be able to get it on Amazon uh and and order it that way as well. But for now, trumblecountyboys.com, you can read a sample chapter of the book. You can look at the images of these guys, you can read uh kind of the contents and learn more about their story there.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yeah, well, I will link obviously that website to the uh description, guys. So please go and check that out and definitely worth going and getting this book for your Civil War collection. Um, but um we're gonna talk a little bit, a tiny little bit about vlogging through history now, Crystal. You know, we have to, you know, because it's something amazing. It's something, you know. Did you ever envision um, you know, being at this point where it's grown to this extent? And how did it all start and what started it for you?

SPEAKER_00 49:41

Yeah, so uh I uh I originally, when I first kind of got into the world of YouTube, I started as a gaming creator. Um, I would play strategy games and I would talk about the history. So the champ, my original channel was called The History Guy. And uh so if I was playing a game about the Battle of Gettysburg, I would talk about the real history of the Battle of Gettysburg while I played. And eventually that morphed into wanting to start a channel uh directly for history. And I called it vlogging through history because originally the intent was I would travel around to historic sites and make vlogs, video you know, blogs from these sites talking about what happened there. Right about the time I started the channel was when the COVID pandemic started and nobody was traveling. And we were all kind of locked in and stuck at home. And I had somebody on the gaming channel say, Well, why don't you do reaction videos where you watch a video about a historic topic and then just do what you do with your gaming videos, which is give commentary and talk more about it, go in more in depth about it. And I said, Well, that's yeah, that's a stupid idea. I hate reaction videos, but I did it. And holy cow! Uh, you know, within three months of doing of starting that, I had 100,000 subscribers and I was doing it full time, uh, you know, within three months of starting the channel. And uh now we're over half a million subscribers. It's morphed into you know some side channels. I've got stories of the Civil War and Stories of the Great War, which are channels where I do these vlogs from battlefields and also you know podcasts that go with them. Um but then also now I'm doing these battlefield tours. Next week I'm leading a tour of the battlefield at Shiloh. Uh, and yes, we will be heavily talking about the 20th Ohio on the second day of the tour. And uh, you know, I just got back from Jordan a few weeks ago, thankfully, just before everything happened there, leading a group tour there. Uh yeah, there you go. Uh Egypt in December. Uh it's been amazing, and the community has been incredible. And it's how I get connected to people like you, Darren. Uh, you know, people I never would have met who have become friends, who have become uh colleagues uh in this space of history. Uh, and it's become my life, and it's incredible, it's amazing, and I never five years ago would have imagined that I'd be sitting here uh talking to a guy from the UK about a book I was writing about a reg uh a company of soldiers in the civil war, and it's all because of the channel.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

Yeah, absolutely fantastic, yeah. And uh like a lot of us, uh COVID has a lot to answer for, but you know, we're quite thankful for it, really, aren't we? Because none of us will be doing any of this, really. Right, I don't think. Yeah, me included. Um, but um, Chris, um, it's been absolutely fantastic. Thank you for giving up your time to come and uh chat to me about um uh Trumbull uh County Boys, and uh guys, please go and check out Vlogging Through History. The link is also available in the podcast description. And uh at this point, Chris, there's only one thing left to say, my friend, and that is cheers. Cheers.