By: Tony Patton (Blue and Gray Education Society)
Pvt. Arminius Bill of Sheffield, Illinois, was just 17 when he volunteered for service in Company C of the 14th Missouri Infantry, later designated the 66th Illinois Infantry. They were better known as the Western Sharpshooters—or, more colloquially, the Squirrel Tail Regiment.
On May 15, 1864, Private Bill was part of a detachment attempting to flank the Confederates from their entrenched position at Resaca, Georgia.
Located in Gordon County, just north of Calhoun, Resaca marked the first all-out battle between Union and Confederate forces during Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. The two-day affair resulted in more than 7,000 casualties.
On the 14th, as day one of the battle drew to a close, Sherman ordered Gen. Thomas W. Sweeny's division be detached from General McPherson's Army of the Tennessee. Their mission: to maneuver around the stubborn Confederate forces. The chosen location for the flanking movement was Lay's Ferry on the Oostanaula River. It was guarded by a detachment of Confederate cavalry from Gen. William T. Martin's division, along with a battery of artillery.
Upon arrival, the Federals were tasked with assembling a pontoon bridge to cross past the left—or western—flank of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate army. Private Bill wrote:
Gen. William T. Martin
LOC
"A Pontoon train comes up and by 5 p.m. their boats are ready to put down. Several companies of our regt. with their rifles are sent with the engineers to help lay the pontoons ... as the men with the pontoons approached the bank. ... the rebel force opposite opened a furious fire of artillery and musketry ... men got in and tried to cross: but the canvas sides were so quickly & completely perforated with bullets that the boats would fill and sink. One boat having 18 of the 81st Ohio men in it, had every man killed or wounded that the boat floated down stream and was caught by some bushes on our side, so that it could be hauled ashore, the men rescued."
Continuing, Private Bill wrote about his personal heroic action that day.
"I found that one of our batteries on a hill in the cotton fields cut its fuse so short that its shells burst in our regiment instead of going across the field & river to burst among the rebels. I got the range of the guns, and placed myself between the line
of fire—then ran back up the hill as rapidly as possible. Two shells passed me like shrieking demons—but I got up there, and stepped out of the smoke of the discharge yelling to the sergeant at the gun that he was killing our men. The Captain came forward and took my statement and started timing his shells longer thereafter. So I hope I did some good this day..."
The crossing was ultimately successful. After nightfall on the 15th, Johnston stealthily withdrew, leaving behind only a line of skirmishers in the fortifications around Resaca.
"The position at Resaca was, therefore, flanked, Johnston's communications threatened. The bloody Battle of Resaca was thus decided by a heavy skirmish several miles away," as noted on the Resaca Battlefield State Historic Site website.
"Battle of Resaca" by James Walker, from circa 1870s
Public Domain
