By JOHN W. FOSTER WASHINGTON, D.C. 1918 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION The Riverside Press Cambridge...

As they were growing up, I was frequently importuned by my grandchildren to tell them of my experiences in the Civil War for the Union; and now as the great-grandchildren are coming on, their parents are asking that these experiences be put in some permanent form, as their children may never have the opportunity to hear the narrative from me. I naturally shrink from giving general publicity to my personal experiences, especially as the field has been already so fully covered by comrades in arms;

After the inauguration of President Lincoln, March 4, 1861, much discussion followed in Washington and in the North, and plans were proposed respecting peaceable adjustment of the troubles occasioned by the secession of the Southern States from the Union. But the first hostile gun fired at Fort Sumter and the National flag, on April 12, put an end to all peace proposals, and solidified the North in favor of restoring and preserving the Union by force of arms. As one of our statesmen of that day

The organization at Evansville became the Twenty-fifth Indiana Infantry Regiment of Volunteers. On August 22, thirteen days after its official staff was appointed, the regiment was ordered to St. Louis, Missouri. It was a notable farewell the citizens of Evansville and the surrounding country gave the regiment on its departure. The deportment of my wife I refer to in one of my first letters to her from St. Louis. I copy it at some length because it reflects the sentiments of hundreds of thousand

Greatly to our relief the Twenty-fifth Indiana was surely out of Missouri, with the prospect of active campaigning in Kentucky or Tennessee. Although we had orders to take a steamer for Cairo on January 30, we did not get away from St. Louis till February 2. On the steamer I wrote my wife in a tone which indicated that I was taking a more serious view of our future than I had in Missouri:— "It may be that when we get to Cairo we shall find orders sending us up to Smithland, but wherever we go yo

We were much pleased to turn our backs upon Fort Donelson, as the movement gave promise of an advance still farther into the South. In my letter dated Fort Henry, March 7, I write:— "We left Donelson on the 5th. The roads were terribly muddy, and it took us two days to get here, about twelve miles. Besides, the weather was quite cold and snowing, being one of the most blustery days of March, making the march a most uncomfortable one. But we arrived here in pretty good season yesterday evening, a

Evidently General Halleck's efforts to reorganize the army after the battle of Shiloh were having a salutary effect in the camp, as indicated in my letter of the 21st of April:— "We are having greater confidence in the army now. We think Halleck will manage affairs with much system and skill, and will not cause such needless slaughter of brave soldiers as we had on the 6th. I am glad to see the public journals exposing the wretched generalship which permitted a complete surprise of a large army,

When I arrived at Evansville in July, 1863, on furlough, I found the border country on both sides of the Ohio River in Indiana and Kentucky in a state of feverish excitement. The counties of western Kentucky were overrun with Confederate soldiers, who had secretly and singly passed through the military lines, and were engaged actively in the work of securing recruits for the rebel army, and, after mounting them on horses taken from loyal citizens, sent them back through the lines to the South. G

No portion of the people of our country had shown more devotion to the Union or suffered greater hardships on account of their loyalty during the Civil War than the citizens of East Tennessee. Almost the entire population of military age had fled over the mountains into Kentucky and enlisted in the Federal army. And those who remained—the old men, the women and the children—endured many privations and much persecution. It had long been the desire of the Federal Government to occupy East Tennesse

About three months elapsed after my return home from the East Tennessee campaign when a new appeal was made to me to reënter the military service. General Sherman was assembling at and near Chattanooga an army to make his great drive on Atlanta and into the very heart of the rebellion. To succeed in his decisive movement he had to draw his supplies from north of the Ohio River over a single long line of railroad communication, reaching from Louisville through the States of Kentucky and Tennessee

Some years after the close of the Civil War the Legislature of Indiana determined to erect a monument at Indianapolis, "designed to glorify the heroic epoch of the Republic and to commemorate the valor and fortitude of Indiana's Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Rebellion and other wars." The corner-stone of this monument was laid in 1887 with appropriate services, including an oration by President Benjamin Harrison. It was completed and dedicated in 1902. It stands upon a terrace 110 feet