MIKE WEST, Managing Editor
Posted: Sunday, May 10, 2009 7:01 am

Gen. Milo S. Hascall

Remember the admonition against discussing politics and religion in public? Union Gen. Milo Smith Hascall ignored that sage bit of advice both during and after the Civil War.

Or perhaps, he just knew his new commander, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, too well

Hascall was a native New Yorker who moved to Indiana in 1846, clerked in a store and taught school until he was appointed to West Point in 1848. In 1852, he graduated a second lieutenant in the 2nd Artillery and was stationed in New England doing garrison duty in Newport Harbor, R.I., where he first became acquainted with Rosecrans. They served 10 months together.

A U.S. Military Academy graduate (class of 1842), Rosecrans was older and was a relatively new and enthusiastic convert to Catholicism, which was the chief thing Hascall remembered about him. The peacetime army wasn’t much of a place for promotion so both Hascall and Rosecrans resigned to find their fortunes in civilian life.

From the time of his resignation until the onset of the Civil War, Hascall was successful in Goshen and Elkhart County as a lawyer, railroad contractor, district attorney and clerk of the county courts. Rosecrans was a busy architect, engineer, inventor and coal company executive when the Civil War broke out.

Both Rosecrans and Hascall offered their services to the Union, and both were soon on the fast track. Rosecrans had the best connections. After doing planning and training duties for the state of Ohio, he was named commanding officer of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which among its members were future Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley.

Named a brigadier general in the regular U.S. Army, Rosecrans defeated Robert E. Lee at Rich Mountain, Va. Denied credit for his efforts, Rosecrans requested a transfer to the west where he was placed in charge of two divisions of U.S. Grant's Army of the Mississippi at the battles of Iuka and Corinth. His successes at Iuka and Corinth earned him a powerful enemy ... Grant.

Meanwhile, Hascall was serving with Don Carlos Buell’s Army of Ohio after a brief stint in Virginia. He was given charge of a brigade of Thomas J. Wood’s division of Buell’s army in December 1861. His troops arrived at Shiloh the day after fighting ended, but did take part in the siege of Corinth. He was promoted to brigadier general, U.S. Volunteers, April 25, 1862.

Buell had the difficult duty of protecting much of Tennessee and Kentucky and, despite a victory over the Confederates at Perryville, earned widespread criticism for his failure to pursue Rebel Gen. Braxton Bragg’s army. Buell was pulled from service and soon replaced by Rosecrans.

The opinionated Hascall, who was on a brief leave, sided with Buell, who was a career military man and not a political appointee. He blamed the problems at Perryville on Gen. Alexander McDowell McCook. Receiving the news, Hascall wasn’t pleased with Rosecrans selection, apparently on religious grounds.

“My recollections of him were not such as to inspire me with confidence in him as the proper person to be placed in command of an army,” Hascall wrote years later. “At that time he seemed to be a great enthusiast in regard to the Catholic Church; seemed to want to think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, and in fact do nothing else, except to proselyte for it and attend upon its ministrations,” he continued. “No night was ever so dark and tempestuous, that he would not brave the boisterous seas of Newport Harbor to attend mass, and no occasion, however inappropriate, was ever lost sight of to advocate its cause; in fact, he was what would nowadays be called most emphatically a crank on that subject.”

Hascall saw very little to improve his opinion concerning Rosecrans while the Union army regrouped at Nashville. “I was sorry, however, to be forced to the conclusion that my estimate of the man had been even more favorable than the facts would justify. His head seemed to have been completely turned by the greatness of his promotion,” Hascall wrote.

In addition to the usual staff members, Rosecrans surrounded himself with “with a numerous coterie of newspaper correspondents, and Catholic priests, who seemed in his estimation to be vastly more important than anyone else about him, and laid in a good supply of crucifixes, holy water, spiritus frumenti, Chinese gongs, flambeaux, jobbing presses, printers’ devils, javelins, white elephants, and other cabalistic emblems and evidences that a holy crusade was about to be entered upon, and having daily announced through his various newspaper correspondents, jobbing presses, and other means of reaching the public and the Confederate Army lying immediately in our front, exactly what was going on, one could but wonder at the sublime indifference of Bragg, and his Army remaining in the State of Tennessee, in the midst of preparations for their destruction such as these,” Hascall said.

Marching into Murfreesboro on Dec. 27, 1862, Hascall’s brigade captured the Stewart’s Creek bridge in a pitched skirmish. His unit was lined up on the Union left in Gen. Thomas J. Wood’s Division of the Union’s Left Wing, commanded by Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden. Rosecrans' “left” had been ordered to open attack at Stones River, but the Confederate Army of Tennessee struck first.

The Union left held, giving Rosecrans a victory. Once the battle was over, Hascall said Rosecrans had bungled the entire affair and quietly requested a transfer. Rosecrans instead reassigned him to Indianapolis to superintend the work of returning deserters from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

While there, Hascall was transferred at the request of Gen. Ambrose Burnside to the Army of Ohio and was placed in charge of the Military District of Indiana. While there, he enacted “Order No. 9,” which warned newspaper editors in Indiana not to write words that might be construed as giving aid to the enemy. Hascall took the order serious and began to chiefly crack down on Democratic newspapers.

“Editor of Columbia City News. Sir: A copy of your paper of May 5 has been handed me and my attention called to your comments on General Orders, No. 9, from these headquarters. You can now take your choice – publishing an article taking back your threats of resistance ... or you can discontinue the publication of your paper until further orders.... Milo S. Hascall Hascall’s orders, which included arrest of at least one editor, quickly became an embarrassment to the governor of Indiana and the Lincoln Administration.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered Burnside to relieve Hascall. Hascall was to remain a Union officer for another year, taking part in the defense of Knoxville and commanded the Second Division, XXIII Corps, in the Atlanta campaign. He was recommended for promotion by John M. Schofield on Sept. 12, 1864, but resigned Oct. 27, 1864, when no action on the promotion had been taken. Following the Civil War, Hascall was a banker in Goshen and Galena, Ind.

In 1890, he moved to Chicago and became involved in real estate. He died August 30, 1904, at his home in Oak Park, Ill.

You can read Hascall’s account of the Battle of Stones River online at murfreesboropost.com.