Civil War Antiques (Dave Taylor's) October 2013 Webcatalog #2

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Dave Taylor
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13-11-01 ... A WOUNDED HERO’S GOLD MEDAL. EXCEEDINGLY RARE GOLD & SILVER SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE MEDAL INSCRIBED AND OWNED BY MAJOR EPHRAIM C. DAWES, 53rd OHIO, WOUNDED IN ACTION AT DALLAS, GA. AND THE BROTHER OF RUFUS DAWES OF THE 6th WISCONSIN IRON BRIGADE:

“A MAN WHO COULD ENDURE WHAT MAJOR DAWES HAD THAT DAY WOULD BEAR BURNING AT THE STAKE”!

The Army of the Tennessee medal is one of the scarcest and most impressive of the Civil War army medals. Suspended from an upper bar, the “40 Rounds” cartridge-box corps badge of the 15th Army Corps is superimposed on the 16th Corps badge of a disk with four minie balls cut out of it, resembling a Maltese Cross, and is flanked by the number “13” for the 13th Army Corps. These insignia are all on the chest of an eagle which has a wreath above, with a suspension ring, and holds the arrow badge of the 17th Army Corps in its talons. The eagle and wreath are gold the corps devices are silver The Society of the Army of the Tennessee is a wartime organization and was formed by officers in the army before the fighting had ended. On April 14, 1865, during the Campaign of the Carolinas, after Sherman had occupied Raleigh, they met in the state senate chamber and organized the society, “To keep alive that kindly and cordial feeling which has been one of the characteristics of this army during its career in the service." Our medal is a beautiful example in gold and silver and a wonderful inscription for the gallant officer who wore it. . On the top suspension bar is engraved, “Dallas, Ga. May 28th 1864,” and on reverse of the suspension bar: “E.C.D. May 27, 1871.” These are the initials of Ephraim Cutler Dawes, the brother of the famous Rufus Dawes of the Iron Brigade, and the dates are the dates of the presentation of the badge in 1871 and the date of his wounding almost exactly seven years earlier. (It should be noted that CWData has a mistaken entry for the date of his wounding: they list it as May 17, but he is clear in his own letter, see below, that it was May 28.) On reverse of the eagle portion of the badge are Dawes’s personal battle honors: “Shiloh” and “Corinth” on the wings; on the body of the eagle, “Vicksburg/ Jackson/ Mission Ridge/ Resaca.”

Dawes was living in Cincinnati when he enlisted at age 21 as a 1st Lieutenant on 9/26/61 and was commissioned First Lieutenant and Adjutant the same day. He made Major 11/1/62, and served until wounded at Dallas, GA, 5/28/64. He was then sent to the officer’s hospital at Lookout Mountain and eventually to Grant Hospital in Cincinnati, from where he was discharged 10/25/64. He died in Cincinnati in 1895 and was buried in Constitution, OH, where he had been born in 1840. The 53rd Ohio organized in late 1861 and mustered into service in February, 1862. It was engaged at Shiloh in Sherman’s Division and then in the siege of Corinth. In mid-1863 it participated in the Vicksburg campaign, fighting at Black River. It saw action at Missionary Ridge later that year and in the Atlanta Campaign in 1864 fighting at Resaca, Dallas, Kennesaw Mountain, etc. At Dallas they were engaged with the enemy from May 26 to May 31. On May 28 they were the principal target of a charge by Finley’s Florida Brigade, which charged them in a column of regiments, but was beaten off with loss. It was in this fighting that Major Dawes was severely wounded. Here is Ephraim’s account of his wounding in a letter written shortly after: "I was shot at Dallas, Georgia, two weeks ago to-day. We were in rifle .pits. The rebels charged us. We gave them an awful licking. The bullet struck the left side of my lower jaw and, the surgeons say, 'carried away the body of the inferior maxilla to near the angle.’ It took off my lower lip, tore the chin so that it hangs down, took out all the lower teeth but two, and cut my tongue. It is a horrible looking wound and will disfigure me, but the doctors say they can fix up a face for me. It will be slow healing. A few minutes before I received this wound I was hit in the back of the head. It did not hurt much and is not at all serious, although it is not yet healed. Our regiment has done splendid fighting this campaign, and has made a reputation second to no regiment in the 15th army corps.

Rufus Dawes followed this up in 1864: “A wounded soldier's journey home. Written by my brother in 1864. ‘I was shot late in the afternoon of May twenty-eighth, and remained in the field hospitals, at and near Dallas, Georgia, until the night of May thirtieth. About ten o'clock at night of the thirtieth a wagon train was sent under strong escort to the railroad at Kingston, about thirty miles distant. All of the wounded who were able to travel in the wagons were permitted to go. The surgeons advised me to go in this train. They said that if I remained around the hospital the chances were that I would contract gangrene or erysipelas and die, and that I should get home as quickly as possible. My old friend Haydn K. Smith, correspondent of the Chicago Journal, volunteered to go to Nashville with me. I could hardly have got along without him. He had been with the army enough to know what to do and to whom to apply in an emergency. My colored servant, Wesley Benson, accompanied me. He was a faithful and competent young man but he could not read writing and I could not talk. The wagon train unwound itself at midnight. I got into one of the wagons and sat on a bag of corn. The different surgeons bid me good bye. I sat on that bag of corn all night. The road was very rough, much of the way through dark woods. My wound was much inflamed and my tongue so swollen that it was almost impossible to swallow. The misery of that night's ride was indescribable. Early next morning Major Patrick Flynn, of the ninetieth Illinois, who was commanding the train guard, saw me and brought up the only ambulance in the train. It was loaded with mail bags, but Major Flynn threw some of them in the wagon and put me in the ambulance and helped fix the mail bags so that I could rest on them. Mr. Smith got a canteen of cold water, I managed to swallow a little of it, but the effort was so painful that I almost concluded not to try again. The day was very hot and the road was very dusty. About noon we crossed the Etowah river on a bridge. Near the end of the bridge was a house where there were some Union soldiers and some women. One of the women brought out a great yellow bowl filled with buttermilk and handed it to me. I was weak with hunger, faint from loss of blood and burning with thirst. I crammed the bowl into my mouth with both hands, despite the awful pain, and drank nearly the whole of the buttermilk. It revived me at once. It satisfied both hunger and thirst, and settled the question of supplies. I could walk and I could eat, and felt that my worst troubles were over. The train reached Kingston between five and six o'clock in the evening. There seemed to be no adequate preparation for the wounded. But the agents of the Sanitary Commission were there. They took possession of a large house with a shaded yard and went to work to prepare food. Mrs. Bickerdyke and Mrs. Johnson were in charge. I camped in a corner of the porch, surrounding the house, where there was a projecting room. I could not lie down, for breathing was then impossible. I could not rest the back of my head against anything, for the "wound there was very painful, and I was obliged to sit up in some place where I could rest the side of my head. This corner filled every requirement. One of the women brought me a bowl of soup. I took off my bandage to drink it. She looked at me, burst into tears, and ran away. An old gray haired surgeon came in to dress the wound. At sight of it he turned very white and went away. Mr. Smith had gone to ascertain about the railroad trains, and Wesley was hunting a newspaper, so I went out myself to find a surgeon. Fortunately my good friend, Dr. Edwards of the fortieth Illinois, who had been attached to our regiment in the East Tennessee campaign and messed with me, met me in the yard. He spent an hour dressing my wound and gave Wesley full and careful instruction how to care for it ; that night I slept well. Next day, June ist, about noon, a train of empty freight cars backed down in front of the house. Mr. Smith came in with the news, that all the wounded who were able to walk, were to go to Chattanooga on that train. I got into a car with a large number of others ; so many that all had to sit up. Many of them were badly wounded, but all were in high spirits. At Resaca, as the train stopped, I was startled at the sight of Wm. D. Gaby, a soldier of company "K," of our regiment. At the battle, on May 13th, he was shot dead as we all supposed. The ball struck him in the forehead, but glanced and came out the top of his head. The train reached Dalton at dusk. I was very tired, and getting out of the car walked along the platform to a car where there was more room. It was occupied by a dying officer, with a surgeon and a detail of men sent to care for him, and endeavor to get him far enough North to meet his father and mother who were hurrying down in answer to a telegraphic summons. The officer was Lieutenant George B. Covington, Adjutant of the seventeenth Indiana regiment. He died before the train left Dalton. The surgeon seeing that I was badly wounded and very weak, gave me some stimulant and put me on Covington's cot, raising the head so I could rest. I went to sleep, but at Ringgold, woke with a start to find my bandages drenched with blood from some small arteries under the tongue, which had sloughed away. I stopped it by cramming a towel under my tongue. This weakened me very much and made me afraid to sleep again. About midnight the train reached Chattanooga. There was no one at the depot to tell us where to go. I saw the row of hospitals on the hill near by and started toward them. A guard cried : "Halt !" "Halt ! " but I did not care whether he shot me or not, and pushing past him, opened the door of the nearest building, which was the officers' ward. The nurse on duty was a wounded soldier. He knew exactly what to do, dressed my wound carefully, fixed a cot so that I could rest comfortably, and I slept until the surgeon came around in the morning. Mr. Smith after some trouble, secured a pass for me to Nashville. The nurse fixed up a large roll of bandages and a bottle of beef tea and gave them to Wesley for me. The train left at three P. M., June 2nd. It consisted of a number of empty freight cars with a single second class passenger car attached. The car was pretty well filled. I sat on the rear seat, (the seats were plain boards) with my back to the other passengers, as I was obliged to change my bandages frequently. The train went via Stevenson, Huntsville and Decatur, and did not reach Nashville until late in the afternoon of June 3rd. This railroad ride was the most trying experience of all. My wound was sloughing freely, my tongue was very much swollen and it was almost black. I suffered a great deal of pain, and to swallow was exquisite torture. At Nashville I was taken to the officers' hospital. Under the efficient care of Dr. J. H. Green, the surgeon in charge, I improved rapidly,' and having obtained a leave of absence, was able to leave for home June 6th." Ephraim Dawes, however, omitted some of the most trying details of his ordeal, and it was left to his brother to record them: “One more duty yet remained before I was done with my service in the war. It was to be with my brother while he passed through the ordeal of the surgical operation. This was performed in a building at Fairmount, near Cincinnati.Ohio, which was then used as an officers' hospital. Dr. George C. Blackman, one of the most skillful surgeons in the country at that time, performed the operation. My aunt, Miss Julia P. Cutler, wrote to our sister in Persia, giving my own contemporary description of the operation. Marietta, Ohio, September 24th, 1864. ‘My Dear Jane : — Just before bed time Rufus and Mary came in, he having come up from Cincinnati to-day. Dr. Blackman performed the operation at the officers' hospital. Rufus remained with him through the whole, and helped hold his hands while it was done. He was an hour and a half under the surgeon's knife and not under the influence of chloroform. During the four months which intervened since the wound was received, the jagged flesh had been put together and a sort of chin formed, so we hoped that the operation would not be an extensive one, but in this we were disappointed. The flesh was all cut loose, then a gash cut through the cheeks on both sides to the angle of the jaw; slits were then cut parallel with them, in the same direction, so as to get a loose strip of flesh an inch wide, which was only attached to the face at the angle of the jaw. These strips were pulled and stretched so as to meet over an artificial under jaw and teeth, to form an under lip. The tightening and stretching of these strips caused the upper lip to be pushed out of place and protrude, so a gore had to be cut out on each side and sewed up. Then the flesh which had been loosened from the chin was put back and trimmed so as to fit in with the new under lip. He lay upon the table unbound, Rufus holding his left hand. His self possession was remarkable, obeying every direction of the operator, turning his head as directed, until the agony and the loss of blood exhausted him, and only a shiver ran through his frame. After it was over and stimulants administered he rose and walked upstairs to his room. Dr. Blackman considers the operation a great success. He invited a number of physicians to be present. One of them told Rufus that a man who could endure what Major Dawes had that day would bear burning at the stake.’

It is a pathetic memory to me that when my brother had been told that the operation was over, Dr. Blackman, looking at his work, said : ‘Major, I must finish up with two more stitches.’ The Major, to whom there was left no voice, raised up one finger to plead for only one. I cried: ‘Dr. Blackman, don't touch him,’ and he then raised up both fingers and the two stitches were taken. During the operation he came near strangling with the blood in his mouth, and in a spasmodic effort to get his breath, threw out the false teeth and jaw, which were not replaced. It is perhaps well that they were not, but this made necessary a month later a second operation of comparatively limited extent. To the casual observer no trace appears under the full beard now worn by Colonel Dawes, but a glance will show the marks of the "gores" cut in his upper lip. Captain Wm. Wilson, now of Cleveland, Ohio, and Captain W. R. Thomas alternated with me in holding my brother's hand.”

This is a remarkable memento of the war and has everything going for it: the medal itself is a piece of art, the immeasurably brave officer who received it endured suffering beyond comprehension in the service of our country. The condition of the medal is extra fine. I don’t say this often, but it is an honor to handle this piece. I wonder why the family parted with it ever. ... $3,650.00 SOLD