The following article was located in
The
Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, Saturday, September 18, 1909, Page 17, Column
4-5:
Veteran Gets ‘Way Back Pay
Government Remits After Half Century
Captain Shively of Council Bluffs Receives $26.50 He
Earned In Civil War—Led His Company In Charge After His Captain Had Prepared To
Surrender
Omaha
World-Herald: It took the government forty-seven years to pay a debt of $26.50
to Captain William Thomas Shively of 3256 Avenue A, Council Bluffs, valiant
veteran of a Kentucky regiment.
The captain has but recently received this money from Uncle Sam.
Back in ’61, Private Shively was promoted to
second lieutenant for a piece of gallantry. A little later he was made a captain. For the first month that he was made a
captain he was not paid the wages that he was entitled to in that office. He made some complaint at the
time, but never took it up with the department.
He had never received any bounty for his
service, so he wrote to the department last year about it. He received a reply that there were a
good many claims ahead of his, but that as soon as it could be reached it would
be looked into. Recently, however,
he received the money and the itemized statement:
Difference
of pay, second lieutenant and captain,
Nov.
18 to Dec. 13, 1862…………………………$14.00
Subsistence
to Dec. 31, 1861……………………
1.50
Clothing,
Oct. 8 to 27, 1861………………………
2.33
For
pay, Oct. 3 to 27……………………………… 8.67
Total………………………………...$26.50
It was necessary to serve two years as a
private to obtain the bounty, and as he was promoted just before the two years
was up, the letter explained to him that he not entitled to that.
Kentucky Situation.
Captain Shively is a Kentuckian, born and
bred. He was born on a big tobacco
plantation, between Lebanon and Campbellsville, in the central part of that
state. His father had twenty
slaves, his father-in-law more and he himself had five, at the time of the war.
The boom of the cannon at Fort Sumter resounded
through the land, and in those border states, such as Kentucky, there was an
extra somberness to its tone, a deeper dread in the hearts of the people. For there it sent brother against
brother, father against son, neighbor against neighbor. Sometimes they parted with a godspeed
and a choking sensation that almost forbade speech—sometimes there was a bitter
feeling at the heart, and a desire to meet in the midst of the conflict—but
always it meant that they would be thrown constantly against each other, in
some of the most hotly contested battles of the war, where blood, friendship,
meant nothing, only the spirit of kill or be killed.
Six stalwart sons there were in the Shively
family. The call for battle came.
They had been accustomed to slavery all their lives. The negroes were almost essential as laborers on their
plantation, but they loved their country.
The loved the glorious red and white and blue of the nation’s banner,
and everyone of the six sons enlisted in the union army.
Their wives and children came to live at the
home of their father, and they bade farewell to neighbors who went into the
rank of the conferates, and fared forth to battle in the cause of their
country, determined to aid in keeping it one great nation.
William T. Shively enlisted in Company H of the
Tenth Kentucky regiment. He was in
many a hot battle in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. He won his commissioned office by a
singular piece of heroism, though he says of it, “I just happened to do the
right thing at the right time.” He
was under General Thomas at the time, and Companies A and H had been sent to
guard a bridge, down in Alabama. A
force of the confederates five or six times as large as the union companies,
attacked the bridge.
Would Not Be Surrendered.
“Hold the bridge at all hazards, and
reinforcements will be sent,” was the word that General Thomas sent to the
company. The bullets were storming
around them and the enemy was drawing closer all of the time, Captain Shively
tells of the struggle:
“Our capting was a good man, but he was a
little timid. I saw that he was
preparing a white flag, as a signal of surrender. I didn’t want to give up, with those orders from the
general. I stepped out and said, ‘Boys,
did you come down here to fight or to be taken prisoners?” “’To Fight,’ they
shouted. “Let’s do it, then, I said, “Get under the bridge and fight them. You can surrender yourself, but you
can’t surrender me or the boys, cap.”
“The major was sick, so that he wasn’t down at
first, but presently he came down.”
“’Who’s in charge here?’ he asked.
I stepped up and said, ‘I’m doing the best I can, major’”
“’Bully for you,’ was his reply. I looked around then, and saw that the
captain had given up making his flag, and had taken a rifle and was fighting in
the ranks with the rest. The two
lieutenants had run down into the brush, thinking we were going to be captured
and wanting to get away. One of
them was later mustered out for cowardice.”
“Finally, as the odds were so overwhelming, and
relief had not come, the major decided to surrender.”
“After I was exchanged, I was made second
lieutenant of the company, the captain resigning, and later became captain.”
On the second day at Missionary Ridge, in the
charge that won the ridge for the union troops, Captain Chively was wounded,
but he fought right on through.
The order had come to charge, and so rapid was the advance on his part
of the line that the rebels did not get their range at all, but kept firing
over their. Also they got ahead of
the rest of the line and were ordered to lie down.
Place For Real Courage.
That was harder for them than charging around
them, striking down a man here and there, and doing absolutely nothing. To lie there with the bullets whistling
in return—having time to think that any second a bullet might end it all, that
indeed takes courage.
Here it was that a bullet penetrated the
captain’s arm. One of the officers
told Second Lieutenant Funk to place him behind a tree trunk or in a hollow,
but the lieutenant who had been fighting with him all through the war, said
“No, I’ll take him where I go if I have to carry him on my back.” But the
captain went on without any assitance.
“That was one of the most welcome words I ever
heard in my life, ‘charge,’ after we had been lying there,” said the captain.
“We did charge and our division swept up the ridge and over, capturing it.
“One of the most thrilling sights I ever saw
was in that same series of battles, the battle of Lookout mountain, called the
‘battle above the clouds.’ We had
been fighting the day before and building breastworks, so that we were resting.
Some rebels were within gunshot, in breastworks also, that ran up close to the
ridge. From our position we could
see all of the charges and the hotly contested battle.
“But we and the confederates in the breastworks
were not fighting. We were talking
back and forth to each other. The
rebels had been driven back repeatedly, ‘but they can’t get us out of here,’
they shouted.
“They will trick you and have you out of there
all right,” was our reply.
“Meanwhile a brigade had been forming behind
the crest of the mountain, and swept down in the open space between the
breastworks and the ridge, and made a flank attack. There was a yell among the confederates, and unable to withstand
the cross fire, they fled, with our shouts following them.”
United States Supreme Judge Harlan was colonel
of this regiment, and Captain Shively became well acquainted with him, later
visiting him at his home in Kentucky.
“I liked him better than any other officer in
the regiment,” said the captain. “He was brave, conscientious, thoughtful of
the men, and he was popular with them all. But he used to take us into all kinds of places. The colonel would go to headquarters
and ask to take the regiment into engagements. So thinking of the men, I used to be kind of afraid of where
he would take us, sometimes. His
father, who was attorney general of Kentucky, died during the war, and he was
called away from the regiment to that position.”
In one of the battles near the old home, word
came to his father’s house that all of the sons had been either killed or
captured. A pitiful scene
followed, the wives and children in tears, the negroes stricken with grief, the
whole household in mourning.
But none of them had been captured. In this battle one of the six was
wounded and sent home, where he was taken sick with typhoid fever and died.
Following the war, Mrs. W. T. Shively was ill,
and the doctors advised a change in climate. Mr. Shively determined to bring her west. Her folks had been pioneers in
Kentucky, too, as her grandfather, John B. Hayden, journeyed to Kentucky with
Daniel Boone, and her father, James Hayden, was a prominent citizen of that
locality. When he persuaded her to
leave her relatives, he had a wagon built, and they started overland for the
west, in 1867. They made the trip
slowly stopping whenever Mr. Shively desired. Within a few days she was up and about, and her health
rapidly improved.
Victim of Grasshoppers.
They journeyed through Iowa, living near
Council Bluffs for a while, Mr. Shively teaming for the Union Pacific railroad,
which was putting a line through to Omaha at that time. In 1869 he went to LeMars, Iowa, and
took up a homestead there. He
remained until 1881, then his crops were all eaten by grasshoppers, and he sold
out and moved to O’Neill, Neb., where he took a timber claim.
Four years ago, he moved to Council Bluffs and
built the cottage where he now lives, his oldest daughter, Mrs. Anderson, whose
husband was killed in a railroad accident, keeping house for him, as here the
faithful partner of his sirenuous life as veteran of the civil war, and pioneer
of Iowa and Nebraska, departed this earth.
And Captain Shively has sacrificed much for his
country, and is still sacrificing.
Ever since the battle in Hoover’s Gap, where it was expected that the
confederates would make a desperate stand, but where they were driven back, he
has been afflicted at times with rheumatism, which has badly crippled him. That day was a torrid one, and the
battle was fiercely contested, so that he was perspiring freely. Toward night it clouded up, and a heavy
rain fell, soaking them through and through. He was sick that night, and at intervals it comes back to
him with redoubled vigor.
Now Captain Shively is 80 years old. Crippled with the rheumatism, so that
it is difficult for him to leave the house at all, he welcomes a visitor, and
receives him with hearty southern hospitality. He loves to talk of the old experiences, is thoroughly
familiar with the battles in which he fought, remembering a great deal of the
conditions in the war. He is a
warm admirer of General Thomas, who was said to be the only union general who
never lost a battle, and ardently defends all his moves.
Nine of his twelve children are living, and he
has thirty-seven grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The following information was taken from "History Of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, From The Earliest Historic Times to 1907" by S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, copywrite date 1907, pages 743-746:
William Thomas Shively, who is living in honorable retirement in Council Bluffs, Iowa, was born in Taylor county, Kentucky, March 8, 1830. His father, John B. Shively, was likewise a native of that state, born in 1804. His wife bore the maiden name of Sarah Heavrin and was a daughter of Robert Heavrin, of Marion county.
In the district schools of Taylor county, Kentucky, William T. Shively acquired his education, and afterward began flatboating on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, going down to New Orleans in 1850. He was thus engaged for three years and on the 15th of October 1853, he married and settled on a farm on Cloyd's creek in Marion county, Kentucky, where he continued for five years. He then removed to Taylor county, Kentucky, and bought four hundred acres of land, upon which he remained until after the outbreak of the Civil war. Espousing the cause of the Union he entered Company H, of the Tenth Kentucky Infantry, serving under Colonel John M. Harlan, now one of the judges of the supreme court of the United States. He was in that command for nearly four years and was mustered out at Louisville. He joined the army as a private and won promotion of the rank of captain.
When the war was ended Mr. Shively bought a farm in Taylor county, Kentucky, which he sold after a year and then gave his attention to the milling business until he came to Pottawattamie county, Iowa, in the summer of 1866. For several months hs worked in the steam sawmills at Lewins Grove near Avoca, and in the spring of 1867 he began farming, in which he continued until the following winter, when he entered the employ of the Rock Island Railroad Company. He worked at grading until the road was completed to Council Bluffs in the same year. Subsequently he entered the car repairing department of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad and so continued until 1869. In that year he removed to Lemars, Iowa, where he homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of land and turned his attention to farming, cultivating and developing that place until the spring of 1882, when he went to O'Neill, Nebraska. He there pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres of land, which he brought under cultivation, and upon that farm lived for sixteen years, his labors converting it into a rich and productive property. Removing to the city of O'Neill, he there lived for six years, and in 1904 he came to Council Bluffs, where he has since lived retired, enjoying well earned ease. His life has been one of untiring activity and enterprise and thus he acquired a handsome competence, enabling him now to live in honorable retirement.
On the 4th of October 1853, Mr. Shively was married to Miss Terresa Hayden, a daughter of James and Elenor (Hayden) Hayden, who though of the same name were not related. The marriage was celebrated at St. Mary's Church in Calvary, Marion county, Kentucky.
