Grandfather and the Houghtons at Shiloh

[The following appeared, in slightly different form, in the Culver Citizen as one installment of my irregular column "It's Still the Lake Water." (That title reflects the fact that when I was a boy and first writing for the Citizen, it had a column written by Mr. Bob Kyle, a retired newspaperman--he had covered the Scopes monkey trial, among other things--called "It Must be the Lake Water.")]

The South Bend Tribune had an article one day this past summer about the Mishawaka Public Library and its new Civil War tribute, a painting of "Houghton's Charge" by Darren Smith (more here).

Darren Smith, "Houghton's Charge," collection of Peter Dekever on long term loan to the Mishawaka (Ind.) Public Library.

The hero depicted in the painting turns out to be no direct relation of mine, but reading about his career reminded me, in a roundabout sort of way, of one of my most interesting interviews from thirty years ago, a conversation with Mr. W. O. Osborn, Culver's legendary attorney and banker. I've repeated it so often that the Citizen's editor calls it "the story about the mule." 

The Mishawaka painting commemorates Captain James Houghton, of Mishawaka (and of the Massachusetts Houghtons), and his men of Company I of the 9th Indiana Volunteer Regiment; years ago, the Mishawaka Chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (the Civil War equivalent, for Union soldiers, of the American Legion) was also named for Captain Houghton. In April of 1862, the 9th Indiana was part of Colonel William Hazen's 19th Brigade, in Brigadier General William Nelson's 4th Division of the Army of the Ohio—50,000 men under the overall command of Major General Don Carlos Buell.

The 35,000-man Army of the Tennessee, under newly-reinstated Major General Ulysses S. Grant, had marched south along the Tennessee River, almost completely divided the state of Tennessee, and was on the brink of seizing a vital rail hub just across the border at Corinth, Mississippi. The Confederacy, realizing the danger, marshalled forces from as far away as New Orleans to stop Grant before he could get to Corinth; Buell, meanwhile, was marching southwest from Nashville to reinforce Grant. Grant decided the area on the west side of the Tennessee River between Pittsburgh Landing and Shiloh Church would be a good one in which to make camp and drill his largely inexperienced troops into shape. Twenty-some miles south, Confederate General A. S. Johnson had other ideas, and his Army of the Mississippi attacked Grant's almost completely unprepared forces on the morning of Sunday, April 6, 1862.

By late afternoon, the Union forces had been driven back, with great losses on both sides, including General Johnson and Union Major General W. H. L. Wallace (not be confused with Hoosier Major General Lew Wallace, future author of Ben Hur, who was also commanding a Union division in the battle). At about 5:30, Johnson's deputy, P. G. T. Beauregard, erroneously informed that Buell had turned aside, broke off the attack, thinking that Grant could be finished off on Monday. At almost the same moment, the first units of Buell's Army arrived at Pittsburgh Landing, ferried across the river by steamboat.

Monday morning saw the Union counterattack. General Nelson's division was on the left of the Union line, with the river on its own left and Confederate Maj. Gen. William Hardee's Third Corps in front of it. Hazen's 19th Brigade was on the right side of Nelson's division. About 10 am, they bore the brunt of a major Confederate attack and began to fall back; reinforced by the 22nd Brigade, they turned the tables, forcing back the Confederates. They overran a Confederate artillery battery, but came under friendly fire, and retreated. Confederates then advanced against the remaining Union brigade (Col. Ammen's, the 10th), and nearly captured the neighboring division's artillery. When the 6th Ohio drove the rebels away from the artillery position, Col. Hazen seized the moment and ordered a charge, led (I take it) by Captain Houghton, the only officer of the 9th to be killed in that day's battle.

I mentioned that there were two General Wallaces on the Union side. It turns out the Union had two Houghtons as well: in addition to Capt. James Houghton of Mishawaka, there was First Lieutenant James E. Houghton of Plymouth (29th Indiana, 5th Brigade, 2nd Division, my first cousin four times removed, and brother-in-law of Bayless Dixon, the first proprietor of Union Town, which eventually became Culver). Lt. Houghton's company commander, Capt. Daniel Casey, was shot in the hand as their unit moved into position on Monday morning, and Lt. Houghton assumed command of the unit for the duration of the war. He is buried next to his father in the southwest corner of Oak Hill Cemetery in Plymouth. 

Now, as to my morning with Mr. Osborn—I went to see the great man at his office in the State Exchange Bank. At 89, he was still sharp as a couple of tacks, and had a story for every occasion. For our conversation, he reminisced about one of his early cases as an attorney, defending the will of my great-great-grandfather, Thomas Houghton. Thomas had been married three successive times, and the children of his first marriage disagreed with the way he had distributed his property (mostly, originally, their mother's property, as they pointed out) amongst the various half-siblings. Their grounds for having the will overturned, Mr. Osborn said, were that Thomas had been mentally incompetent since the Civil War (a period of fifty some years, during which he had, among other things, served as Union Township Trustee). As evidence for this claim, they pointed out that Thomas had not served in the Civil War. He had been excused, they said, for medical reasons: specifically, he had been kicked in the head by a mule (or fallen off a horse, or something) and was mentally incompetent thereafter.

"Now Thomas," Mr. Osborn said, "kept meticulous records, and I knew if he had some sort of a medical excuse, he would have saved it all this time. So I searched that house high and low, and it turned out they were right. I found a medical deferment, and it actually was because he had been kicked in the head by a mule. But it wasn't because he was of unsound mind. That mule had kicked out his teeth. And with false teeth, he couldn't rip open a cartridge to load a muzzleloading rifle."