Erastus Winters

A Buckeye in the 50th Ohio Erastus Winters

191 pp. New paperback. Erastus Winters was born in Cincinnati in 1843. In 1862 he enlisted in Company K of the 50th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which was organized at Camp Dennison near Cincinnati, and mustered in for three years service under the command of Colonel J. R. Taylor. The regiment was attached to 34th Brigade, 10th Division, Army of the Ohio. In straightforward and measured prose, Winters describes his Civil War experiences, from camp life to pitched battles to prison. The 50th saw early action at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, and later joined General Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. In 1864, Winters was captured at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, and spent the remaining months of the war at the notorious Cahaba Prison in Alabama. Having survived the war, he nearly perished on his way back to Ohio, when the steamboat on which he and hundreds of other paroled prisoners were travelling, the Sultana, exploded and sank near Memphis. It was among the worst naval disasters in American history with over 1700 souls lost. Winters was not a remarkable soldier, neither gallant officer or daring hero, but he offers in his memoir the Civil War that an average infantry soldier experienced: fear, courage, death, humor, camaraderie, and ultimately a lifelong sense of pride. Until he died in 1925, Winters remained active in the Union veterans organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, and though decades removed, the Civil War was never far from him.