The 98th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, later the 98th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Mounted Infantry, was an infantry and mounted infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Service After the first year of war and the debacle on the Peninsula caused the Lincoln administration to realize that the war would take longer than first expected and many more men, on July 1, 1862, Lincoln issued a call for 300,000 volunteers for three-year commitments. Illinois’ quota under this call was 26,148. The 98th Illinois Volunteer Infantry was raised in response to this quota. Col. John J. Funkhouser, of Effingham, IL, organized and trained it at Centralia, IL, in southern Illinois, during the summer of 1862. He mustered it into federal service on Wednesday, September 3. By this time of the war, Illinois had imported stocks of rifle-muskets from Europe to make up for the shortfalls in the standard Springfields, and the state issued Austrian Rifle Muskets to the 98th Illinois.
Initial Deployment In the Western campaigns earlier in 1862, U.S. forces had largely driven organized Confederate forces from Kentucky and large parts of Tennessee. The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers were now U.S. Navy avenues for logistics and troop movements. The Tennessee state capital, Nashville, the railroad hub at Corinth, and New Orleans, the Confederacy's largest city at that time, were back in federal hands. Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, was now a target for the Union commands, ergo, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg decided to divert U.S. attention by invading Kentucky, the most southern of the southern border states, which would occur simultaneously Gen. Lee's invasion of Maryland and Maj. Gen.s Earl Van Dorn's and Sterling Price's attack to regain the rail center at Corinth. Kentucky produced cotton (in west Kentucky) and tobacco on large scale plantations similar to Virginia and North Carolina in the central and western portions of the state with slave labor, and was the primary supplier of hemp for rope used in the cotton industry. The state was also a major slave trade center especially out of Louisville.
Bragg had begun his campaign in August, hoping that he could rally secessionist supporters in Kentucky (similar to Lee in Maryland at the same time) and draw Union forces under Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell back to protect the Ohio River. Bragg sent his infantry by rail from Tupelo, MS, to Chattanooga, TN, while his cavalry and artillery moved by road. By moving his army to Chattanooga, he was able to challenge Buell's advance on the city.
On Monday, September 8, Funkhouser received orders to take the 98th Illinois via the Ohio and Mississippi Rail Road to Louisville, KY. At Bridgeport, IL, their train derailed killing eight men and injuring seventy-five. Arriving in Jeffersonville, IN, opposite Louisville the next day, they marched into Camp Jo Holt. Once his forces had assembled in Chattanooga, Bragg then planned to move north into Kentucky in cooperation with Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, who was commanding a separate force operating out of Knoxville, Tennessee. In response to Bragg's advances, the 98th remained north of the Ohio River for ten days as part of the defense of Louisville.
Meanwhile, Bragg, advancing to Glasgow, KY, pursued by Buell, Bragg approached Munfordville, a station on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&IRR), about south of Louisville, and the location of an 1,800 foot long railroad bridge crossing Green River, in mid-September. The 98th Illinois' future commander Col. John T. Wilder, commanded the Union garrison at Munfordville, which consisted of three new, raw regiments behind extensive fortifications. After rebuffing the Rebels on September 14 and unaware that Buell was nearing him, Wilder surrendered to Bragg's army on Tuesday, September 16 and became prisoners of war (POWs) for two months.
In response, on Sunday, September 19, the regiment marched south of Louisville to a blocking position at Shepherdsville. Eleven days later, September 30, they were ordered , via Elizabethtown, to Frankfort to protect the capital. While the 98th Illinois was on the march, Bragg had participated in the inauguration of Richard Hawes as the provisional Confederate governor of Kentucky on Saturday, October 4. The next Wednesday, October 8, the wing of Bragg's army under Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk met Buell's army at Perryville ( southeast of Louisville and southwest of Lexington) on October 8 and won a tactical victory against him. Despite this result, Bragg ordered his army to retreat through the Cumberland Gap to Knoxville, labeling it a withdrawal and the successful culmination of a giant raid. He had reasons for withdrawing in that news had arrived that Van Dorn and Price had failed at the Second Battle of Corinth, just as Lee had failed at Antietam.
This all occurred while the 98th Illinois were on their march to Frankfort, where they arrived on Thursday, October 9. Two days later, the regiment, moved to Versailles taking 200 sick POWs from the Rebel army hospital that they had abandoned. On Monday, the regiment returned to the capital. At this time, the regiment was brigaded in the Col. Abram O. Miller's 40th Brigade, with the 72nd and 75th Indiana, 123rd Illinois, and 13th Indiana Battery in Brig. Gen. Ebenezer Dumont's 12th Division in the Army of the Ohio.
The War Department was disappointed with Buell who although the strategic victor, had lost the battlefield to Bragg at Perryville. As a result of his part in rebuffing the Confederate advamce on Corinth, William S. Rosecrans was given command of XIV Corps (which, because he was also given command of the Department of the Cumberland, would soon be renamed the Army of the Cumberland), on October 24. Rosecrans was promoted to the rank of major general (of volunteers, as opposed to his brigadier rank in the regular army), which was applied retroactively to March 21, 1862, so that he would outrank fellow Maj. Gen. Thomas who had earlier been offered Buell's command, but turned it down out of loyalty to Buell. Rosecrans soon became popular with his men as "Old Rosy and began organizing his army.
Two days after Rosecrans took command, Sunday, October 26, the 450th Brigade marched out of Frankfort for Bowling Green. Their route took them southwest via Bardstown, Mumfordsville, and Glasgow, to Bowling Green. The brigade, averaging per day, completed the roughly on Monday, November 3. A week later, November 10, the 98th Illinois' brigade moved with its division to Scottsville. Roughly two weeks later, Tuesday, November 25, the division moved into Tennessee to Gallatin, and on Friday, November 28, to Castalian Springs. Two weeks and two days later, Sunday, December 14, the regiment moved to Bledsoe Creek. On 22 December 1862 in Gallatin, Col. Wilder, who with his regiment had ended parole mid-November, took command of the 40th Brigade which at that time consisted of the 98th and 123rd Illinois Infantry Regiments, the 17th, 72nd, and 75th Indiana Infantry Regiments, and the 18th Indiana Battery of Light Artillery. Maj. Gen. Reynolds took command of the 12th Division on Tuesday, December 23.
The 98th Illinois was now with its most famous brigade commander. Wilder's initial combat mission was to pursue another of Morgan's raids into Kentucky intended to sever the Army of the Cumberland's primary supply line. Lacking sufficient cavalry to screen his army as he moved south toward what would be the Battle of Stones River as part of the Stones River Campaign, Rosecrans again had to use infantry to chase off Morgan. He tasked Rewynolds to use his infantry brigades for this mission. Trying to speed their movement, these infantry units deployed partially by rail. Wilder also unsuccessfully tried to replicate the use of mule-drawn wagons with the addition of men mounting the mules pulling the wagons. Unfortunately, they still traveled the majority of the pursuit on foot over unpaved roads. Despite the use of rail and wagons to speed up the pursuit, the mission was a failure with Morgan's command escaping at the Rolling Fork River. The difference in speed between cavalry and infantry made the pursuit near impossible. On Boxing Day, December 26, Wilder's brigade had marched northward after Morgan, arriving Wednesday, New Year's Eve, December 31, at Glasgow.
Mounted infantry
On Friday, January 2, 1863, the 989th and its brigade marched to Cave City, and, on Sunday, the regiment's division took the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L7NRR) to Nashville. After detraining, the division with the 98th Illinois, marched the to join the Army of the Cumberland (AoC) in camp by the Stones River battlefield by Murfreesboro which they reached at dusk on Tuesday, January 6. The army was recovering from the battle there and resupplying and drilling. Rosecrans reorganized the army further and 12th Division became the 5th Division of Maj. Gen. Thomas' Center Corps and the 40th Brigade became the 2nd Brigade in that division and once again commanded by Col. Miller. Eight days later, a further reorganization renumbered it as the 1st Division and added the 123rd Illinois to the brigade, again commanded by Wilder. On Saturday, January 24, moved through Bradyville, and, on 25th, returned.
Despite the AoC's victory at Murfreesboro, the war in its area of operations (AOR) was still hanging in the balance. It was still struggling with Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee to control Tennessee and all its valuable resources and strategic rail interchanges. Strategically important, Tennessee had Union loyalists in its east that Lincoln wanted to liberate and bring back under Federal protection. It also was a critical rail link between Virginia and the west of the Confederacy that supplied Rebel forces in Tennessee and throughout the Eastern Theater. The state also produced food and mineral supplies for the war effort.
After Stones River, while he rested and reorganized his AoC, Rosecrans, pushed back against the War Department's pressure to begin a spring offensive against the Rebels. One of his reasons was a deficiency in cavalry as the Rebels had twice as much. Moving further south and east in Tennessee would further lengthen his already lengthy supply lines, which were already being raided by Confederate cavalry. With good reason therefore, he pestered Washington for more cavalry yet the War Department mistakenly saw his requests as an excuse to not move. The failure to capture Morgan and other mounted Confederate raiders had shown Rosecrans had legitimate reasons to ask for more cavalry. After Washington's denial of more cavalry, Rosecrans and his subordinates, with Wilder very involved in the discussion, tried to find a solution. The experiment with wagons from the October events was revisited and analyzed, and it became apparent that the solution to their problems was the early role of dragoons as mounted infantrymen. Rosecrans thought an infantry brigade mounted on horseback and armed with more firepower than an ordinary brigade might be a solution. This was how the 98th Illinois and Wilder's brigade acquired horses and repeating rifles.
Several times, Rosecrans wrote to the Union General-in-Chief Maj. Gen. Halleck stating his desire to convert or establish units of mounted infantry and asking for authorization to purchase or issue enough tack to outfit 5,000 mounted infantry. He also believed, with Wilder in agreement, that he needed to outfit all of his cavalry with repeating weapons. When he felt he was not being heard, he went over Halleck directly to War Secretary Edward M Stanton.