Leaderboard

Seemingly a study on any unit being reported as having cowardly conduct could be an interesting topic. The 71st Ohio's story of flight has been fairly well proven to be an exaggeration, and seemingly there is some evidence that the 13th Ohio Battery suffered from an unfair account from Hurlbut as other reports I mention in the two blog posts allude to. I do not know enough of Hurlbut to surmise if he warrants a pass or fail grade.

I'm sorry. I've been away from the group for a while and just now saw your question. If you look at this map on my ShilohDiary website (https://shilohdiary.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/easternrockhillmap.pdf), the cave would have been directly behind (north of) the location noted as "The Duncans' House." I have not explored the location thoroughly enough to determine if the cave still exists, but C.D. Rickman told me that he remembered seeing it while playing on that property as a child in the 1950s. It was C.D.'s childhood memories of the hill, cave and creek that led us to look at this property and ultimately to confirm it to our satisfaction as the most likely location for the Duncans' house in 1862. Sadly, C.D. passed away a couple of years ago, or he could give you a lot more information about the area.

Once you wrote the Yates part about Prentiss, it all came back to me. He played a pretty important role in 1861 in Illinois, so it is understandable he was annoyed about having Grant over him. For McClellan, the Blair family is likely the best overall answer. I almost put Lincoln for McClernand. It is true, but with two cavaets. First they were not friends and came from opposing parties. McClernand campaigned against Lincoln in 1860 and 1864. They even faced off in court a few times. But they had a decent working relationship, and did work a court case together. It is notable that after Vicksburg Lincoln abandoned McClernand. Lincoln was his patron, but not in an unreserved way such as you see with Davis' support for Johnston.

Here it is, SJ. At the end of this post, you'll find a ink to a PDF document that includes about half of the diary. It's the half you need, though. It starts with some family ancestry background information and continues until the war is almost over. It's about 18,000 words total. First, let me add a few notes: This diary is a transcription of an old handwritten document. It contains a lot of transcription errors. I was able to fix most of them, but there are some names that I'm not sure how to fix, so I left them unchanged. For example, the full name of the person identified at "Middie" is Milberry Harriet Duncan Blevins. I have assumed that Elsie wrote "Millie" instead of "Middie," but I have seen no evidence that Milberry Harriet Duncan Blevins was ever called either "Middie" or "Millie," so I left it as "Middie." When Elsie mentions "the Pleasant Land," she is talking about the property we now call "Duncan Field." Contrary to most people's assumptions, Elsie says the Duncan family lived west of the current national park, not on Duncan field itself. However, she says Middie lived in the Duncan Field house. That's one of the most interesting stories in the diary. The person referred to as "Jim" is James K. Polk Duncan. He was about six weeks past his 15th birthday when he enlisted in the Confederate army. This may be important to your story because Jim and at least one of his brothers enlisted in a Kentucky regiment without ever leaving Hardin County, Tennessee.Here's the link: https://shilohdiary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/elsie-diary-text-part-1.pdf John