Knox County can proudly boast of two Medal
of Honor Recipients. Galesburg’s Philip
Sydney Post is fairly well known. He
achieved a Brevet Brigadier General’s rank and after the war was elected to
serve in Congress. The other served as a
private during the war. Interested Civil
War buffs can locate his place of eternal rest in the Yates City Cemetery.
Robert Allison Lower was an 18 year old
farmer from Elmwood, Illinois when he signed up for a three year term of
enlistment on October 22nd, 1861.
From there he traveled to Camp Douglas in Chicago for his mustering in
ceremony on October 31st. He
was the eldest son of Mary and Jacob Lower who were married in March of
1843. Robert was born on the 11th
of April, 1844 in Mattoon, IL. At the
time of his mustering in, he was listed as being 5’9” tall, with brown hair,
blue eyes, and a florid complexion. He
was assigned to Company K of the 55th Illinois Infantry. The 55th would become known as the
“Canton Rifles.”
Robert Lower was still a Private in May of
1863; still with the 55th, which by this time was part of General
Ulysses S. Grant’s army that had laid siege to Vicksburg. On May 19th Grant’s subordinate,
General William Tecumseh Sherman had launched an assault upon the northern end
of the Confederate line with his XV Corps.
The rebels had had ample time to dig in, and had prepared some daunting
defenses. They included a series of
earthen forts protected by ditches and rifle pits and engineered to enable a
terrific field of fire against any Union assault. Ditches were dug in front of the forts, and
trees were felled as well to further impede the progress of any attack. Sherman’s assault had been stymied by the obstacles
and the ditches that impeded the attacker’s progress, and the men were driven
back with heavy losses.
On the afternoon of the 21st,
Grant decided to make another attempt to break the rebel defenses. Recognizing that the ditches in front of the
fort were the obstacles that doomed the first assault to failure, he explained
his new plan to the commander of the Second Division of the XVth Corps, the
division that he had designated to launch the next assault.
That afternoon the commander of the
division explained the planned attack to his men and called for a hundred and
fifty brave volunteers. These hundred
fifty men were to precede the main assault:
their mission would be to build crude bridges to place across the ditch,
then place ladders up against the walls of the earthen fort to facilitate the
attackers that would follow them, and to clear away the obstacles that were
placed to impede the attackers progress.
This kind of attack is called a “forlorn hope,” because the men who
would take part in it would draw the full brunt of the defender’s fire, and had
little likelihood living through it.
Like pawns in chess they would be willingly sacrificed to breach the
enemy’s defenses and enable the rest of the gambit to be played, a gambit that
if played through to a successful conclusion had the potential to checkmate the
rebel defenses.
Each regiment was to supply its quota of
men. Since the likelihood of survival
was so slim, orders were issued insisting that none but unmarried men were to
be accepted to take part in this endeavor.
Still, the men responded heroically to the call, with twice as many
volunteers stepping forth than were required, so preference was given to the
men who had offered the earliest to participate in this doomed endeavor. Robert Lower was one of the 150 brave men who
had stepped forward early.
On the morning of May 22nd the
men of the “forlorn hope” made their way quietly through a ravine to a road
that crossed the enemy line at a right angle.
Stashed in the ravine, unbeknownst to the rebels were a pile of lumber,
a stack of logs and some scaling ladders.
The men at the lead of this dangerous endeavor were assigned to carry
logs; two men to each one, which gives an idea of how heavy they were. These men were to hurl the logs across the
ditch. They would be immediately
followed up by men with lumber to lay down the planking for the bridge. The third group of men from this band of a
hundred and fifty heroes were to follow close behind with ladders which they
would run across the makeshift bridge with and raise against the walls of the
fort.
That’s the way the attack was drawn
up. The moment the “forlorn hope”
emerged from the ravine carrying their assigned loads they came under heavy
Confederate fire. The only silver lining
to the lethal bullets zipping past them is that smoke from the guns soon began
to obscure both vision for both sides.
Still, by the time the brave volunteers had traversed the 80 rods to the
fort, about half of them had been shot down.
So many of the logs had been
dropped along the way when then men who were carrying them went down, that it proved
impossible to make the bridge as they’d been ordered to. The rebels continued to rain a heavy fire
upon the remaining men, who soon discovered that the best way to seek shelter
from the enemy fire was to jump into the ditch.
The flag-bearer of the band of volunteers, Albert Trogden, planted the
flag of the storming party on the parapet of the fort, then slid down into the
ditch, where he and his comrades kept an intimidating fire upon any rebel brave
or foolhardy enough to attempt to reach for the flag and drag it into the fort.
The brigades that were ordered to follow
the “forlorn hope” with the main attack followed their orders, but the heavy
fire drove them back as well. Only about
thirty men from the 11th Missouri reached the ditch, where they took
shelter with the survivors of the “forlorn hope.” The fighting was turning even more
savage. The defenders were unable to
depress their artillery at enough of an angle to fire down into the ditch, so
they began to light the fuses of 12-pound shells and throw them over the
parapet into the ditch filled with Yankees.
Some of the fuses were cut too long, and the beleaguered men in the
ditch were able to pick them up and toss them back over the walls at the rebels. Otherwise, none of the men in the ditch could
have survived. As it was, the bottom of
the ditch was soon lined with the mangled bodies of those who hadn’t been able
to dodge or return the shells before they exploded.
One brigade, the 37th Ohio,
that had been advancing to help press forward the attack panicked under the
heavy fire and took shelter behind rocks or whatever cover they could
find. They refused to advance and feared
to retreat, so for hours they remained where they were. This created a bottleneck which forced other
regiments that were coming up behind them to circle around them and cross more
open ground while they moved their assault to the left of the Confederate
defenses. This exposed them even longer
to enemy fire, with the result that they were too weakened to launch an
effective attack. Having been beaten
back at every point, the Federal troops fell back to cover as well. From there they did their best to keep up a
heavy and sustained fire upon the Confederate works. They were aided in this endeavor by Admiral
Porter’s fleet, which was shelling the Confederates from the river as well.
Meanwhile, it was hell for the survivors
of the “forlorn hope.” who were still trapped in the ditch. The Confederates next brought up an artillery
piece loaded with grapeshot to an exposed position where it could pour an
enfilading fire into the ditch, but the men in it shot down the gunners before
a single devastating round could be fired.
Other brave rebels attempted to take their place, but when they too were
shot before they could prepare the gun to be fired, the gun was abandoned.
From midmorning until nightfall the men in
the ditch fought to stay alive. Under
the cover of night the few survivors managed to extricate themselves and make
their way back to the Union lines. It
was discovered that close to 120 of the 150 members of the stalwart band of
volunteers had been either killed or seriously wounded, and that few of the
survivors had escaped without a wound of some kind.
Although the Confederate defenders had
beaten back the Union assault, they were impressed with the bravery of the men
who had volunteered to be part of the “forlorn hope.” The rebels captured William Archinal in the
evening when he had made the decision that it was safe to leave the shelter of
the log that he’d found safety behind and return to his lines. He had been knocked unconscious briefly
during the assault, the man who was carrying the log with him had been killed,
and when he came to he had huddled close to the log using it to shelter him
from the fire coming from the Union lines.
Being close to the fort, his decision to escape did not go
unnoticed. Half a dozen rebel rifles now
were quickly trained on him and he was ordered to surrender. The following account is in his own words….
“When
I was taken into the fort, a rebel officer came up to me, slapped me on the
shoulder, and said “see here, young man.
Weren’t you fellows all drunk when you started out this morning?” I replied “No, Sir.” “Well, they gave you some whiskey before you
started, didn’t they?” he said, and I answered “No sir, that plan is not
practiced in our army.”
“Didn’t you know that it was certain
death?” he asked me again, and I replied, “Well, I don’t know, I am still
living.”
“Yes,” he said, “you are living, but I can assure you that very few of
your comrades are.”
Corporal Robert Cox, a Prairie City,
Illinois native, also a member of Robert Lower’s Company K, related an account
as well of his experiences in the ditch…..
“After
Trogden had planted his flag on the parapet, the Confederates tried to capture
it by hooking it with the shanks of their bayonets, but failed, owing to the
hot fire kept up by the sharpshooters.
Thereupon Trogden asked me for my gun to give the enemy a thrust. This was a very foolish request, for no
soldier ever gives up his gun, but I concluded to try it myself. I raised my head about as high as the safety
of the case would permit, and pushed my gun across the intervening space
between us and the enemy, gave their bayonets a swipe with mine, and dodged
down just in time to escape being riddled.
I did not want any more of that kind of amusement, so did not undertake
to enforce the acquaintance any further.
After we had been in this predicament about two hours, they sent over a
very pressing invitation to “Come on in you Yanks. Come in and take dinner with us.” We positively declined, however, unless they
would come out and give us a chance to see if the invitation was genuine. This they refused to do, but agreed to send a
messenger. By and by it arrived in the
shape of a shell, which went flying down the hill without, however, doing any
damage.”
Jacob
Sanford, a Fulton County resident at the time of his enlistment, was yet
another member of Robert Lower’s Company K, serving as Commissary-Sergeant.. Civil War enthusiasts can find both his and
Robert Cox’s Medal of Honor gravestones close to each other in the Prairie City
Cemetery. He boasted of his luck, saying
that while with the storming party, he came out with no injury more serious
than a sprained hip caused by grapeshot striking the plank that he’d been
carrying. He had been very near death
more than once, however, for he had two bullet holes through his hat, and nine
though his blouse. The bullets that
passed through his hat had come close enough where they had carried away locks
of hair with them during their course.
Every soldier who survived that hell in
the ditch had similar stories to tell, but if Robert Alison Lower related his, it was not transcribed to
written form, and thus is probably lost to history. His Medal of Honor citation is succinct, and
gives little indication of what he and other members of the “forlorn hope” had
to do to earn it. It reads simply… “For
gallantry in the charge of the volunteer storming party.”
Robert Lower chose to muster out when his
three year term of enlistment expired.
By then his 55th Illinois had seen the siege of Vicksburg
through to its successful conclusion, and had probably accompanied his regiment
and Company K to Chattanooga and then in the battles that led to the successful
siege of Atlanta. He’d done his share.
Robert Lower returned to farming after he
mustered out and eventually married Rachel A. Smith. They had five children.
Robert Alison Lower lived to see First
World War and the involvement of the U.S. in it. No doubt the tales of trench warfare brought
vivid memories of his time in the ditch back to him. He died on January 31st, 1918, and
despite his Civil War heroism and the Medal of Honor that it earned him, rests
almost forgotten in the Yates City Cemetery.
SOURCES
Medal of Honor Recipients, Volume
1 by George Lang, Ray Collins and Gerard White
Deeds of Valor, Volume 1 Beyer and Keydel 1903
Robert A. Lower Find a Grave website
The Forlorn Hope at Vicksburg andspeakingofwhich.blogspot.com
55th Illinois Volunteer
Infantry Regiment Wikipedia
Illinois Civil War Muster Rolls
Database
Ann Templer Page www.templerfamily.info
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