Yankee Warhorse: A Biography of Major General Peter J. Osterhaus

289 Pages·2010·3.647 MB·English

by  Mary Bobbitt Townsend

Yankee
Warhorse
�

Yankee
Warhorse
a B i o g r a p h Y o f
Major general peter osterhaus
Mary Bobbitt Townsend
�
university of missouri press
columbia and london
Copyright ©2010 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10
Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-8262-1875-9
This paper meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Design and composition: Kristie Lee
Printing and binding: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Typefaces: Adobe Garamond and Bernhard Modern
Frontispiece: Osterhaus monument on the Vicksburg
battlefield. (Author’s collection)
For my mother,
Elizabeth Osterhaus Bobbitt,
with love

Contents
Foreword by Earl J. Hess ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Before the War 7
Chapter 2 The Trans-Mississippi Campaigns of 1861 and 1862 30
Chapter 3 The Vicksburg Campaign 68
Chapter 4 The Chattanooga Campaign 120
Chapter 5 The Atlanta Campaign and the March to the Sea 145
Chapter 6 Mobile Bay and Reconstruction 179
Epilogue The Later Years 201
Notes 215
Bibliography 243
Index 261

foreword
p
eter J. Osterhaus has long deserved more attention from historians
and students of the Civil War than he has received. He was, in many ways,
the best example of disinterested ethnic patriotism in the conflict. An impor-
tant division commander in the Army of the Tennessee, especially during the
Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns, Osterhaus contributed greatly to many
Union operations from the start of the war in Missouri until the capture of Mo-
bile, Alabama, in April 1865. He held commands that ranged from the Twelfth
Missouri to the Fifteenth Corps and earned the respect of his superior officers
because of his dependability, energy, and resourcefulness as a campaigner. Sub-
ordinates enjoyed relating colorful stories of his unique German American mode
of expression, but when it was necessary to drive deep into enemy territory or
face the foe on the field of battle, they knew this gifted commander could be
relied on to help engineer success. Osterhaus based his war career on military
ability, not ethnic favoritism, and he won the respect of his associates and men
alike because of that stroke of integrity.
Any good biography of Osterhaus would be a breath of fresh air, but it is
particularly delightful that this one was written by a direct descendant of old
Peter Joe. Mary B. Townsend had already retired from a career as a hospital
nursing executive when she contacted me several years ago, based on a hand-
ful of articles about Osterhaus and the men he commanded that I had written
a long time before. She had an idea to write a full-fledged biography of her
great-great-grandfather. There are many amateur historians working in the Civil
War field, producing self-published books that probably should never have been
written, so I was initially hesitant to endorse Mary’s effort. But her enthusiasm
and drive carried her through the sometimes tedious job of researching and
writing a book, and led her to develop skills as a historian and writer. The end
result, I am proud to see, is a first-rate biography of a significant general in the
Union army.
There are many new views of Osterhaus in this volume, and Townsend very
ably summarizes them in the Introduction. He was not a Prussian but a West
ix