DID YOU KNOW...
The Twenty-sixth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry mustered in at Camp Chase (Columbus, Ohio) from June 8-24,1861 to serve for three years. As such, the regiment was one of the first to answer President Abraham Lincoln's three-year call to duty to defend the Union. The regiment was one of the longest-serving ones as they were one of the final units to be mustered out. The 26th Ohio served in Texas for six months past the end of the War to confront the French puppet government of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico and to bring in line any renegade Confederate factions.
Throughout the War, nearly 1200 men were brothers in the 26th at one time or another; mostly as direct enlistment volunteers, but others as transfers from other regiments (most commonly the 97th OVI towards the end of the War), or due to conscription.
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During the War, 122 were killed or mortally wounded,13 died as Prisoners of War (most of them at Andersonville), 85 died from disease, 245 were disabled from combat injuries, 112 were discharged (probably due to serious illness or injury), 48 transferred out to other regiments, 441 were mustered out at the end of their term, at least one deserted, and records are incomplete for 149 soldiers. (Official Roster)
The regiment was among the units that suffered the greatest battle casualties. Of the 903 three-year regiments in the War, the 26th Ohio, with122 killed or mortally wounded in combat, ranked in the top 250 in number of killed in battle, or in the top 27% in terms of number of soldiers killed. (The average number of soldiers killed in battle per three- year regiment was 80.) (American Civil War Database). The regiment is also designated on historian William H Fox's revised list of: " Three Hundred Fighting Regiments". (Fox Revised Compendium)
The regiment fought in many major Western Theater campaigns including: Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, Kennesaw Mountain, Dallas, Peach Tree Creek, Atlanta, Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station, Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville. The regiment also fought in dozens of lesser known battles or skirmishes. The regiment also is noted for routing Confederate General Forrest's Cavalry at McMinnville, Tennessee.
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The regiment was among the first of the 4th Corps to be 'veteranized' as over 80 % of the soldiers, whose three-year enlistments were due to expire, chose to reenlist in January, 1864 while encamped in the wintry mountains at Blain's Crossroads, Tennessee. By so doing, from thence forth, the regiment was officially known as The 26th Ohio Veteran Volunteer Infantry.
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The 26th Ohio was a marching and traveling infantry. The veterans calculated that during the four and a half years of their service, they covered a total of 10,667 miles; nearly 3,000 miles (2,888 miles) on foot (a distance equivalent to a trip from Boston to Los Angeles). They also journeyed 3,922 miles by rail (usually in freight, hog, or cattle cars), nearly 2,800 miles by river transport, and over 1,000 miles by sea on the Gulf of Mexico.
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They journeyed from the mountains of what is today West Virginia to the coastal region of southeastern Texas. They crisscrossed the states of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and buried their dead in every one of them.
The bloodiest day for the regiment was September 19, 1863 at the Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia. The regiment lost 56% of its fighting force that late afternoon during the fierce hand-to-hand combat that occurred in the Viniard Fields located toward the southern end of the sprawling battlefield. A beautiful granite monument is erected at that site just east of Lafayette Road, Chickamauga Battlefield, Georgia.
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