Information Sheet
R Leach, John Miller, 1830-1907.
1147 Diary, 1861-1863.
One folder, photocopies.
This is a typescript of a diary by John M. Leach, a
member of the Tenth Cavalry Regiment, Eighth Division, Missouri State Guard,
and the Sixth Missouri Infantry (CS).
The diary begins on 2 September 1861 and continues through 29 July
1863. It describes operations around Pea Ridge, Arkansas; Corinth, Mississippi; and
Vicksburg, Mississippi.
John M. Leach was a native of Ohio
County, Kentucky, and was a resident
of Cass County, Missouri, when the Civil War broke out. He became a member of Company F, Tenth Cavalry
Regiment, Eighth Division, Missouri State Guard. Leach and his company saw no action before
they joined the Missouri army at Springfield on 22 December
1861. On the first day of January 1862,
Leach left the state force and joined the Confederate service in what was known
as Adams’s or Fleming’s company.
Consolidated with John M. Weidemeyer’s company and assigned to Colonel
Thomas H. Rosser’s battalion of Colonel William Y. Slack’s brigade (2nd
Missouri Brigade) on 3 March 1862, Leach and the others participated in the
Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, after which they proceeded east of the Mississippi River with the rest of the Confederate
army. After joining in the defense of Corinth, Mississippi,
in May 1862, Leach’s battalion was organized as part of Colonel Eugene Erwin’s
Sixth Missouri Infantry (CS). Leach and
several others transferred to Captain Francis M. McKinney’s Company F in July
1862.
The Sixth Missouri Infantry suffered severe casualties
in the Battle of Corinth, Mississippi on 3 October 1862. Captain McKinney was among those killed;
Leach suffered a wound to his right arm, was captured, and hospitalized at
Iuka. He was exchanged at Jackson, Mississippi, on
13 November 1862, and rejoined his regiment at Grenada,
Mississippi. The regiment was engaged in fighting at Grand Gulf,
Port Gibson, Edwards Station, Baker’s Creek, and Big
Black River Bridge as
operations around Vicksburg
developed in the spring of 1863. The
regiment entered the fortifications of Vicksburg
on 17 May 1863. Leach and his comrades
were closely engaged on 25 June 1863, when Colonel Erwin was killed in action,
and again on 1 July 1863. Surrendered
with the Confederate army at Vicksburg,
Leach was paroled and obtained a furlough.
He traveled to Knoxville,
Tennessee, in late July and
apparently did not return to the army.
Leach’s Civil War diary exists in the form of a twenty-three
page typescript apparently prepared for newspaper publication. The typescript was among the personal papers
of Joseph Ney Foster (d. 1975), a co-editor and co-owner of the Hartford (Kentucky) Republican, 1911-1913, and grandfather
of the donor, Joe F. Webb. According to
Mr. Webb, who researched the diary and its provenance in his grandfather’s
papers, John M. Leach lived after the war in Ohio County, Kentucky,
the same county where the Hartford
Republican was published. Marginal
notations and editorial corrections also indicate the typescript’s newspaper
origins. It is not known if the original
diary still exists.
The diary begins on 2 September 1861 at High Blue, Missouri, when Leach was with the Missouri State Guard, and
continues through his Confederate service and capture at Vicksburg, Mississippi. It ends on 29 July 1863, when Leach was in Knoxville, Tennessee,
trying to return to Kentucky
to visit family there. The most detailed
parts of the diary feature operations around Corinth,
Mississippi, in 1862, and Vicksburg, Mississippi,
in 1863.
Included with the typescript is an introduction to the
diary by the donor, Joe F. Webb, containing his research on the provenance of
the diary and its author, John M. Leach.
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