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Boundary Between the Union and the Confederacy

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48th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry

Overview:

Organized March 11, 1864, from 10th Louisiana Infantry (African Descent). Attached to 1st Colored Brigade, District of Vicksburg, Miss., to April, 1864. 1st Brigade, 1st Division, United States Colored Troops, District of Vicksburg, Miss., to February, 1865. 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, United States Colored Troops, Military Division West Mississippi, to May, 1865. 1st Brigade, 1st Division, United States Colored Troops, District of West Florida, to June, 1865. Dept. of the Gulf to January, 1866.

Service:

Garrison duty at Vicksburg, Miss., till February, 1865. Expedition from Vicksburg to Rodney and Fayette September 29-October 3, 1864. Ordered to Algiers, La., February 26, 1865; thence to Barrancas, Fla. March from Pensacola, Fla., to Blakely, Ala., March 20-April 1. Siege of Fort Blakely April 1-9. Assault and capture of Fort Blakely April 9. Occupation of Mobile April 12. March to Montgomery April 13-25. Duty there and at Mobile till June. Moved to New Orleans, La., thence to Texas. Duty at various points on the Rio Grande till January, 1866. Mustered out January 4, 1866.

Regiment lost during service 3 Officers and 59 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 1 Officer and 464 Enlisted men by disease. Total 527.

Predecessor unit:

LOUISIANA VOLUNTEERS.
10th REGIMENT INFANTRY (AFRICAN DESCENT).
Organized at Lake Providence and Goodrich Landing, La., May 6 to August 8, 1863. Attached to Post of Goodrich Landing, La., District Northeast Louisiana, to January, 1864. 1st Brigade, U. S. Colored Troops, District of Vicksburg, Miss., to March, 1864.

Service:

Duty at Lake Providence and Goodrich Landing, La., till January, 1864. Tensas Bayou May 9 and August 10, 1863. Duty at Vicksburg, Miss., till March, 1864. Designation of Regiment changed to 48th U. S. Colored Troops March 11, 1864, which see.

Soldiers:

View Battle Unit's Soldiers "

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Battle Unit Details - The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)

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Overview: Organized March 11, 1864, from 10th Louisiana Infantry (African Descent). Attached to 1st Colored Brigade, District of Vicksburg, Miss., to April, 1864. 1st Brigade, 1st Division, United States Colored Troops, District of Vicksburg, Miss., to February, 1865. 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, United States Colored Troops, Military Division West Mississippi, to May, 1865.

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How Black Union Soldiers Went from Slavery to Forever Free

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Black Soldiers (United States Colored Troops): The Civil War in Four Minutes

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The 24th Ohio Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

The 24th Ohio Infantry Regiment was organized at Camp Jackson and Camp Chase near Columbus, Ohio and mustered in for three years service on June 17, 1861, under the command of Colonel Jacob Ammen.

The regiment was attached to Cheat Mountain Brigade, West Virginia, to November 1861. 10th Brigade, Army of the Ohio, to December 1861. 10th Brigade, 4th Division, Army of the Ohio, to September 1862. 10th Brigade, 4th Division, II Corps, Army of the Ohio, to November 1862. 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division, Left Wing, XIV Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to January 1863. 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division, XXI Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to October 1863. 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, IV Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to April 1864. 1st Separate Brigade, Post of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Department of the Cumberland, to June 1864.

The 24th Ohio Infantry mustered out of service at Columbus, Ohio, beginning on June 17, 1864, and ending June 24, 1864.

Left Ohio for western Virginia July 26, reaching Cheat Mountain Summit August 14. Operations on Cheat Mountain, Va., September 11-17, 1861. Action at Cheat Mountain September 12. Greenbrier River October 3-4 and October 31. Moved to Louisville, Ky., November 18, thence to Camp Wickliffe and duty there until February 1862. Advance on Nashville, Tenn., February 14-25. Occupation of Nashville February 25-March 18. March to Savannah, Tenn., March 18-April 6. Battle of Shiloh, Tenn., April 6-7. Advance on and siege of Corinth, Miss., April 29-May 30. Occupation of Corinth May 30. Pursuit to Booneville May 30-June 12. Buell's Campaign in northern Alabama and middle Tennessee June to August. At Athens, Ala., until July 17. At Murfreesboro and McMinnville, Tenn., until August 17. March to Louisville, Ky., in pursuit of Bragg August 17-September 26. Pursuit of Bragg to London, Ky., October 1-22. Battle of Perryville, Ky., October 8. Nelson's Cross Roads October 18. March to Nashville, Tenn., October 22-November 7, and duty there until December 26. Advance on Murfreesboro December 26-30. Battle of Stones River December 30-31, 1862 and January 1-3, 1863. Action at Woodbury January 24, 1863. Duty at Readyville until June. Tullahoma Campaign June 23-July 7. At Manchester until August 16. Passage of Cumberland Mountains and Tennessee River and Chickamauga Campaign August 16-September 7. Battle of Chickamauga September 19-20. Siege of Chattanooga, Tenn., September 24-November 23. Reopening Tennessee River October 26-29. Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign November 23-27. Battles of Lookout Mountain November 23-24. Missionary Ridge November 25. Ringgold Gap, Taylor's Ridge, November 27. Duty at Shellmound until February 1864. Demonstration on Dalton, Ga., February 22-27, 1864. Near Dalton February 23. Buzzard's Roost Gap and Rocky Faced Ridge February 23-25. Garrison duty at Chattanooga, Tenn., until June.

The regiment lost a total of 176 men during service; 6 officers and 62 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, 2 officers and 106 enlisted men died of disease.

Colonel Jacob Ammen

Colonel Frederick C. Jones - commanded at the battle of Perryville as lieutenant colonel; killed at the battle of Stones River

Colonel David J. Higgins - commanded at the battle of Chickamauga

Major Henry Terry - commanded at the battle of Stones River after Col. Jones' death

Captain Enoch Weller - commanded at the battle of Stones River

Captain A. T. M. Cockerill - commanded at the battle of Stones River

Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (Des Moines, IA: Dyer Pub. Co.), 1908.

Ohio Roster Commission. Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War on the Rebellion, 1861-1865, Compiled Under the Direction of the Roster Commission (Akron, OH: Werner Co.), 1886-1895.

Osburn, Richard B. 24th and 175th Regiments of Volunteer Infantry from Ohio, 1861-1865 (Brunswick, GA: R. B. Osburn), 2005.

Reid, Whitelaw. Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Her Generals, and Soldiers (Cincinnati, OH: Moore, Wilstach, & Baldwin), 1868. ISBN 9781154801965

Attribution

This article contains text from a text now in the public domain: Dyer, Frederick H. (1908). A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines, IA: Dyer Publishing Co.

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The 24th Ohio Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The 24th Ohio Infantry Regiment was organized at Camp Jackson and Camp Chase near Columbus, Ohio and mustered in for three years service on June 17, 1861, under the command of Colonel Jacob Ammen.

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Sheldon R. Curtiss was born April 22, 1839 in Ohio. He enlisted in the 6th Michigan Cavalry on October 11, 1862 and served in Virginia before his capture by Confederates in 1864. He mustered out October 10, 1865 at Fort Leavenworth, KS.

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The Civil War witnessed a technological revolution in weaponry. This was highlighted by a changeover in shoulder-fired weapons from smoothbore firearms that had to be loaded through the muzzle each time a shot was fired to rifled-barrel firearms, some of which loaded at the breech. Most of these new rifle-muskets still had to be loaded between each shot, but repeating weapons such as 7-shot Spencer and 16-shot Henry rifles and carbines were developed as well. Unfortunately for the common soldier, tactics did not advance as quickly as technology. Napoleonic linear tactics from earlier in the century now combined with more accurate, faster-firing weapons to result in catastrophic casualty figures throughout the War.

The Confederacy, whose industrial base was far weaker than the Union's when the war began, accomplished a great feat by establishing a viable arms-manufacturing capability in short order. The North's industrial machine also swung into high gear to produce huge quantities of weapons and ammunition. Agents from both the Union and the Confederacy scoured the shelves of European arms-dealers to ensure that their armies had an adequate supply of weapons. Most Confederate infantrymen favored the English-manufactured Enfield.

Cavalry

Although they most often fought on foot-particularly as the War progressed-cavalry units typically looked for firearms that would be easy to reload from the back of a galloping horse. Cavalry in both the Union and the Confederate Armies employed a variety of breech-loading, single-shot, rifle-barreled weapons known as carbines. The carbines, because their barrels were several inches shorter than the rifle-muskets the infantry carried, also had a shorter range. In addition, the cavalry weapons had a brutal recoil when fired, and-despite their advantages in loading-most still required the cavalry soldier to manipulate a tiny cap in order to fire. Confederate cavalry often brought sawed-off shotguns and cut-down hunting rifles from home. Others used the standard infantry rifle-muskets, though the longer barrels were awkward and muzzle-loading was difficult on horseback.

The storm of battle [at Chickamauga] was sweeping over the ground I had just left. Hastily...returning, I found the 39th Indiana regiment coming from a cross-road,--a full, fresh regiment, armed with Spencer's repeating-rifles, the only mounted force in our army corps...Colonel T.J. Harrison, its commander...dismounting his men, dashed at the enemy in a most effective charge. [Colonel John T.] Wilder, coming up on our right, also attacked. Wilder had two regiments armed with the same repeating-rifles. They did splendid work. [Confederate General James] Longstreet told Wilder after the war that the steady and continued racket of these guns led him to think an army corps had attacked his left flank."
- Union officer Gates P. Thruston. (From Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. III, published by Castle.)

In addition to the carbines, cavalrymen also frequently were issued percussion revolvers. These handguns used rotating cylinders, bored through with five or six chambers, to allow multiple shots without reloading. The soldier had to pour a powder charge into the chamber, ram a round or conical ball on top, seal the front of the cylinder with grease to prevent one chamber from igniting the adjacent ones, and then place a cap on the rear of each chamber before the guns were ready to be fired. Once this time-consuming process was complete, the soldier could rely on five or six shots in succession. However, the sights on the handguns were crude; a soldier could not expect to hit any target much beyond 50 paces-less from horseback.

One massive Confederate revolver, the LeMat, clustered nine pistol chambers around a central shotgun barrel. Smith & Wesson perfected self-contained metallic cartridge revolvers in .22 and .32 caliber. Earlier cartridges had been made of stiff paper or animal skin wrapped around the charge, primer, and projectile of the gun. While more convenient to load and carry, these smaller guns lacked the power of their .36 and .44 caliber percussion competition. One French revolver, the Lefauchaux, used a small firing pin integral to the cartridge to ignite the charge. Federal forces used several thousand of the Lefauchaux revolvers, and Confederate Generals J.E.B. Stuart and Pierre Beauregard also carried this model. The preferred weapon of Nathan Bedford Forrest's Confederate horse soldiers was a pair of the .36 caliber Navy revolvers manufactured by Colt which Forrest believed was far superior to the Yankee infantry's bayonet.

Infantry

Most Civil War infantrymen, both Federal and Confederate, carried .58 or .577 caliber rifle-muskets. The rifle-musket was first manufactured in the United States in 1855 and quickly replaced earlier smoothbore guns. The rifling-spiral grooves etched inside the gun's barrel-greatly increased the accuracy of the weapons by spinning and stabilizing the bullet as it sped towards the target. A trained marksman could hit targets as far as 800 yards away, and even an average shot could expect to strike the mark at 250 yards. Smoothbore muskets, some of which were still used during the Civil War, were generally unreliable at any range more than 75 yards.

These rifle-muskets were chiefly percussion weapons; pulling the trigger of a rifle-musket caused the weapon's hammer to strike a small metal cap. A charge of fulminate of mercury inside the cap would explode to ignite the gunpowder charge in the barrel. The force of the gunpowder explosion drove the bullet, either a round ball or minie ball, down the barrel. The metal cap was tiny, about the size of a pencil-eraser, and had to be set into place by hand each time the musket was fired. Soldiers had to follow nine careful steps to load and fire a single bullet from a muzzle-loading gun, and five to fire a breech-loading weapon. Rifle-muskets weighed between six and ten pounds and many were designed to fit a bayonet on the end of the barrel.

After we had abandoned the line, and on coming to a little stream of water, I undressed for the purpose of bathing, and after undressing found my arm all battered and bruised and bloodshot from my wrist to my shoulder, and as sore as a blister. I had shot one hundred and twenty times that day. My gun became so hot that frequently the powder would flash before I could ram home the ball, and I had frequently to exchange my gun for that of a dead comrade.
- Confederate Private Sam R. Watkins, 1st Tennessee Regiment. (From "Co. Aytch" by Sam R. Watkins, published by Collier Books.)

One of the most highly rated of the rifle-muskets was manufactured at the United States Arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts (or at other armories under license). Other prominent U.S. gun makers included Colt and Remington. In addition, rifle-muskets could be imported from Europe. During the early campaigns, Confederate soldiers often armed themselves with captured Federal Springfields. Both the Federal and Confederate armies also carried large numbers of English Enfield rifle-muskets as well as Austrian, Prussian, French, and Belgian guns. The quality of imported guns ranged from the first-rate Enfield (equal or superior to the Springfield) to barely functional.

On the 13th, marched 10 miles, to camp Stanton, on big prairie in Missouri. Target shooting was practiced here by companies for the first time, and the muskets, owing to their large calibre and forcible shooting, were dubbed by the Col. "light artillery," causing much amusement."
- From the newspaper of the 11th Kansas Volunteers, Buck & Ball, December 6, 1862.

The Confederacy captured the gun-making equipment at the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1861. The Southerners used the Harpers Ferry machinery to establish factories in Richmond, Virginia and at the Fayetteville, North Carolina arsenal that manufactured guns very similar to the standard Federal rifle-musket. Other Southern arsenals turned out small quantities of Enfield-style weapons and copies of Colt & Whitney revolvers as well as a few designs of their own.

In addition to standard muzzle-loading rifle-muskets, a few Civil War infantrymen carried breech-loading guns (like the Sharps) or repeaters (like the Spencer and Henry). Breech-loading weapons were easier and faster to reload than muzzle-loaders--even from a position flat on the ground. Repeaters offered an additional advantage since they could be fired--in the case of the Henry--up to twenty times without reloading. Although the breech-loaders and the repeaters were only a small percentage of the total number of guns used by Civil War infantrymen, units that carried these weapons gained a distinct edge over even much larger enemy forces.

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The Civil War witnessed a technological revolution in weaponry. This was highlighted by a changeover in shoulder-fired weapons from smoothbore firearms that had to be loaded through the muzzle each time a shot was fired to rifled-barrel firearms, some of which loaded at the breech.

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The French army officer Claude-Etienne Minié invented the bullet that would bear his name in 1849. The Minié bullet, a cylindrical bullet with a hollow base that expanded when fired, proved lethally accurate over relatively long distances, and was soon used to devastating effect by the British army against Russian forces during the Crimean War. After the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, both Union and Confederate soldiers used the "minnie" bullet (as they called it) in their muzzle-loading rifles.

A New Bullet

Before the development of the Minié ball, muzzle-loading rifles were not used in combat situations because of how difficult they were to load. Because the ammunition used had to engage the spiral grooves, or rifling, inside the rifle barrel, it had to be equal in diameter to the barrel, and shooters would have to jam the bullet into the rifle by force. In addition, the rifle tended to become even more difficult to load as gunpowder residue collected inside the barrel. The French army officer Claude-Etienne Minié was not the first to come up with the design of a bullet that expanded when fired, but he simplified and improved on earlier designs-including those developed by Britain's Captain John Norton (1818) and William Greener (1836)-to create his namesake bullet in 1849. Cylindrical in shape, with a conical point and a hollow base containing an iron plug, the Minié bullet was smaller than the diameter of a rifle barrel, and could be easily loaded, even when the rifle became dirty.

Did you know? One persistent urban legend claims that a girl standing near a Virginia battlefield in 1863 was impregnated by a stray Minié bullet that passed through the scrotum of a Union soldier before lodging in her abdomen. The origin of the (false) story was a gag article published in The American Medical Weekly in 1874.

How it Worked

When a rifle containing a Minié bullet was fired, the bullet was rammed back on the charge, which exploded and sent the bullet hurtling down the barrel. On its way, the iron bullet expanded, gripping the spiral rifling and spinning so tightly along its course that its range and accuracy were greatly increased, with fewer misfires. The effective range of a Minié bullet was from 200 to 250 yards, a huge improvement on earlier ammunition.

The French army never adopted the Minié bullet, but the British did, paying Minié for his patent to use the ammunition in 1851. During the Crimean War of 1853-56, which pitted Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire against Russia, the bullet so improved the effectiveness of infantry troops that 150 soldiers using the minié could equal the firing power of more than 500 with a traditional musket and ammunition.

The Minié Ball & the American Civil War

In the early 1850s, James Burton of the U.S. Armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, improved further on the Minié bullet by eliminating the need for the iron plug and making it easier and cheaper to mass-produce. It was adapted for use by the U.S. military in 1855.

During the Civil War (1861-65), the basic firearm carried by both Union and Confederate troops was the rifle-musket and the Minié ball. The federal armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, produced a particularly effective rifle-musket that had a range of around 250 yards; some 2 million Springfield rifles were produced during the war.

The long-range accuracy of the Minié ball meant that the traditional model of warfare, when infantry and cavalry assaults could be successful, was over. Soldiers armed with a minié-loaded rifle could hide behind trees or blockades and take down approaching forces before they could get close enough to cause any damage. Weapons of an earlier age, such as the bayonet, became almost obsolete in this new kind of warfare, and the role of cavalry and field artillery was greatly reduced. Casualty figures for the American Civil War reached staggering proportions, with more than 200,000 soldiers killed and more than 400,000 wounded. The rifle-musket and the Minié bullet are thought to account for around 90 percent of these casualties.

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The French army officer Claude-Etienne Minié invented the bullet that would bear his name in 1849. The Minié bullet, a cylindrical bullet with a hollow base that expanded when fired, proved lethally accurate over relatively long distances, and was soon used to devastating effect by the British army against Russian forces during the Crimean War.