Pvt. John S. Thomas © Neil Allen Bristow See biography and Neil Allen's site

John is listed in War Department documents as having served as a private in Company D of the 44th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, CSA. The only surviving records show John enlisting for three years on April 1, 1864 at Dalton, Georgia, which is twenty-five miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the Confederate forces under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had been regrouping in winter quarters after their defeat by Ulysses S. Grant the previous fall. Both the location of his enlistment and the tenor of the times strongly suggest that he had prior service, either in the 44th or in its predecessor, Blythe's Mississippi Regiment, which had three companies raised from De Soto county, where John had been living for several years. His commanding officer, Capt. T. W. Maxwell, who swore him in at Dalton, was later the Clerk of the De Soto County Court in Hernando. It does seem unlikely that a young, single man like John would have joined the war only three full years after it began. Even more unlikely is his traveling across two-and-a-half war-strained states to enlist.

Confirmation of his earlier service is found in the 1890 Census, when a special count was made of Civil War veterans to aid in projecting Federal pension costs. Although the enumeration was meant to be restricted to those who had served in the Union forces, not many former Yankee soldiers were to be found in Mississippi, so (luckily for us) Adolphus Johnson, who was taking the census in the Lauderdale district of De Soto County, also recorded information on Confederate veterans, including John Thomas, who said that he had served in Company D of the 44th Mississippi for three years, enlisting in 1862 and being discharged in 1865.

Tracing one private's whereabouts is impossible, given the incomplete, not to say fragmentary, records from the losing side. However, the regiment's history is recounted in Dunbar Rowland's Military History of Mississippi. If John's original enlistment was in 1862, he would have seen action in Bragg's Kentucky campaign (Sep-Oct), Stones River (Dec 31-Jan 1), and at Chickamauga (Sep 1863), and Missionary Ridge (Nov 1863). If he joined early enough, he might have been at Shiloh and Corinth in April, 1862.

We do know that on 30 April 1864, he was paid in Company D, and that a month later he was in the CSA Madison Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, where he received a clothing issue on 30 May. Why he was there is unknown. He may have contracted a fever or some other illness -- disease was endemic among the troops and killed far more soldiers than hostile action -- or suffered a non-combat injury. Or he may have been wounded in the opening phases of Sherman's advance to Atlanta, either at Rocky Face Ridge on May 8, or at Resaca, a week later, where the 5th Brigade, which included the 44th Mississippi, came under artillery fire, although not itself in the front line. We don't know whether he returned to his unit to take part in the defense of Atlanta in July, where the 44th suffered high casualties, but he was back by late fall of 1864, in time to take part in the disastrous Rebel response, an effort to recapture (or liberate) Tennessee and threaten, once again, Union communications in the West.

Although not as well known as Gettysburg, the battle of Franklin, Tennessee, 30 November 1864, was one of the bloodiest engagements of the Civil War, with over 6,000 casualties in four hours. It was also the turning point of John Bell Hood's ill-fated expedition which the Confederate strategists hoped would force Sherman to call off his March to the Sea.

Among the casualties was John Thomas. According to US Army records, John suffered a "gunshot fracture of right ankle" from a cannon ball. The round must have been pretty well spent -- you could break an ankle or smash a foot just from dropping a twelve-pound shot, which was about the lightest projectile used. (As a point of reference, the twelve-pound shot is used by American high school shot-putters.) In a way, he was very lucky in the nature of his wound, "merely" breaking an ankle, rather than losing a leg or being shot in the gut; the latter wound was almost always fatal, usually after a period of agony. He probably walked with a limp, especially in cold weather, and he may have used a cane, but family tradition is silent on any severe disability. In any case, he was hale enough to run a farm for almost thirty years.

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He was probably among the hundreds of wounded who were given shelter at the Carenton Plantation, which lies near the route of the regiment's advance, southeast of town. Or he may have been taken to one of the public buildings, churches, or private homes around Franklin, which were pressed into service as makeshift hospitals. He would not have accompanied the remnants of the 44th to Nashville. For a fast-moving force, such as Hood's, which lacked the North's extensive railroad network, providing transport for numbers of wounded was almost impossible. He was still at Franklin when, about two weeks after his encounter with the cannon ball, Private Thomas was captured by Federal troops on the 17th of December. Hood's Confederate forces had been thrown back from the Tennessee capital the day before and were retreating southward to Alabama. On Christmas day, he was admitted to the Union Army hospital at Nashville, where he spent two months. On March first, 1865, he was transferred via a POW camp at Louisville, Kentucky, to Camp Chase, Ohio, where he was released after signing an oath of allegiance to the United States on 11 June 1865.

While much rightly has been made of the horrors of Andersonville, the infamous Confederate POW camp in Georgia, little is now said about the sometimes brutal conditions at Northern POW facilities, such as Camp Chase. Tales of the survivors reveal an institution akin to a third-world jail.

By the time John was wounded at Franklin, his regiment was a small fragment of its original size, which may have numbered close to a thousand officers and men. Neither the Union or the Confederacy followed modern practice of restoring units to pre-campaign strength through replacements. Regiments and their constituent companies were typically raised by recruiting in a particular area, localities vying with one another for the largest number of recruits and the most inspiring names and colorful uniforms. In the early stages of the conflict, De Soto County furnished three companies: the Irrepressibles, the Home State Volunteers, and the De Soto Guards. Under the attrition of combat and disease, units shrank, and the ranks closed up to fill the vacant spots left by absent comrades. Regiments dwindled to the size of battalions, then to companies, then to platoons or squads. A initial roster of a couple of thousand men could be reduced to a couple of dozen. Before Hood's venture into Tennessee, Capt. Maxwell had assumed command of what was left of four companies. After the Confederates limped back to Alabama, what remained of the 44th was consolidated with the remnants of other regiments into a new 9th Mississippi, just in time to surrender in North Carolina.