View source for Isaac L. Taylor (nonfiction)

'''Isaac Lyman Taylor''' was a solider in the Union Army, Company E, First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry.

Taylor kept a personal diary of his experiences.

== BIography ==

Isaac "Ike" Lyman Taylor was born January 23, 1837 in Franklin County Massachussetts. The fourth of Jonathan and Alvira Taylor’s thirteen children, he was especially close to his brother Henry who was one year younger. The Taylors lived a short while in New York before moving to Fulton County, Illinois around 1853. Jonathan and Alvira ran a prosperous farm and were active in their community and church. Isaac and Henry attended an academy in Prairie City together before moving on to Burlington University, a Baptist School in Iowa, where Isaac concentrated on the study of science. Both decided on teaching careers.

After leaving Burlington, Isaac returned to Fulton County where he took up teaching. Henry went north to Belle Prairie, Minnesota to teach at a mission school founded by Jonathan’s sister and her husband. However, the brothers kept in close contact through a series of letters.

When the war broke out and Henry joined the Minnesota First in May 1861 – the first of six brothers to enlist – Isaac took his place at the Belle Prairie Mission School. For months, Isaac debated enlisting, and Henry’s letters only made him more restless. On August 21, 1861, he and his cousin Edward traveled to Fort Snelling and enlisted in Minnesota First. Isaac joined Company E, the same unit Henry had joined three months earlier.

On September 12, he and twenty-one other recruits started the four-day journey to Washington. Arriving at the capital, Isaac took the opportunity to see the sights. "The whole country for miles around is white with tents," he wrote home. "I went up on the Capitol this afternoon & had a fine view of Arlington highths & the Federal camps on the other side of the Potomac. I also took a squint at the 'Secesh' through a telescope. I saw distinctly the Rebel pickets on Munson's Hill beyond Arlington Highths I could see horses tied to trees & the Seceshers walking about as crack as though they were not going to be awfully licked one of these days."[1] Ever inquisitive, he would spend much of his free time during the war visiting historic sites and reading about history and geology.

Isaac joined Henry and the rest of the Minnesota first at Camp Stone on the Potomac River on September 19. The brothers tented together and had their picture taken – the only know wartime photo of them – at a “likeness shop” shortly after Henry was promoted to corporal.  Isaac spent much of his time on picket duty, taking shots at Confederates across the river, and his first foray into enemy territory came during a scouting mission on October 18. “I have just returned from an expedition into the country of the Secesh,” he wrote his sister Alvira, “Tonight just at sundown, Cos. E & K, 1st Minn. Reg. crossed the Potomac at Edwards Ferry & set their unhallowed feet upon the ‘sacred soil of Ole Virginny’…The Secesh pickets took to their heels.”[2] As illness spread through the camp that winter, Isaac, attended by Henry, spent Thanksgiving Day “ill with bilious fever.”[3] Winter in camp was harsh, but the troops were better supplied and better sheltered near D.C. than they would be in later campaigns.  Bored with the monotony of camping and marching and anxious to go in to battle, Isaac took up several new hobbies. In his diary, which he began on New Year’s Day, 1862, he recorded betting on wood chopping competitions, his first game of chess, and sightseeing trips including the site of John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. His entry on the devastated city of Harper’s Ferry shows his contempt for secessionists: “The sin of Secession has brought with it a curse almost equal to that which afflicted Babylon…Harper's Ferry is a fair sample of what Secession has done for Va., God help her! for she is past help from any human source.”[4]

On March 29, Isaac boarded the steamer Golden Gate without Henry, who was sick with a fever in Alexandria, and left with the rest of the Minnesota First for the Virginia Peninsula. Marching towards Richmond, Isaac became increasingly anxious during the slow advance, and was arrested “for not being in ranks” when he went off sightseeing.[6] Frustrated with General McClellan’s extremely cautious siege of Yorktown, Isaac described his officers as “worse than useless” and longed for the “racket of war,” having yet to experience his first major battle.[7] Henry rejoined the regiment on May 5, and the two kept each other company on the march towards Richmond as Isaac helped Henry recover from his illness. As McClellan retreated before General Lee, the First formed part of the rear guard over the “Seven Days” battles. Along the retreat, the Minnesotans made a stand at Savage’s Station, where Isaac fought his first major battle. Despite repulsing the rebels, McClellan continued to retreat. The wounded, including Henry, were left behind.

Henry was well enough to carry on, but the brothers chose to stay behind and care for the other wounded, including their cousin Edward. Several months later, Isaac recalled:

<blockquote>Henry and I remained with Edward, and the other wounded of our regiment, giving them water, etc. as long as we dared to, and were about to move on and join the Regt. when the man whom the Dr. had ordered to stay with the wounded ‘turned up’ missing. The boys implored us to stay and not ‘leave them alone.’ We hesitated for we had no orders to stay. But the boys were suffering from thirst; they were lying on the ground in the open air, and it had already commenced to rain. Who would dress their wounds and take care of them on the morrow when the burning sun would pour his rays upon them?</blockquote>

Edward Taylor, Isaac’s “particular friend,” was mortally wounded and called them “to bear witness that he fell with his face to the foe.”[9] Together with 2,500 other Union soldiers, Isaac and Henry became prisoners of war. Isaac buried Edward on July 1, their second day in captivity.

The surviving prisoners were transported to Libby Prison in Richmond, where the sick and wounded were crowded together in terrible conditions. Isaac later recalled:

<blockquote>
Most of them lay upon a hard floor with nothing but a single blanket under them. There, a great many died that might have lived could they have had proper care...I believe that many died not from wounds or sickness, but simply because their spirits drooped...Occasionally a woman with a well filled basket of delicacies would visit our loathsome prison and distrubute them to the most feeble. We also found some very kind friends among the Confederate soldiery, and should they ever fall into our hands, we shall be happy to return their kindness."
</blockquote>

They were transferred to Belle Isle in the James River, where conditions were equally appalling. "We get a little 'bean water' this morning, but no bread. About 2 P.M. we get 1/4 loaf of bread. The boys call this 'Camp Starvation,'" Isaac recorded August 18.[11] As the authorities cracked down on aiding prisoners and rations shrank to starvation levels, disease and disorder spread. When not caring for the wounded, Isaac passed the time playing chess and learning euchre. He took comfort in reading everything from newspapers and Napoleon’s Maxims of War to the Book of Exodus. When the first prisoners were exchanged in September, Isaac jealously wrote:

<blockquote>
You leave this God-forsaken isle
Ruled o’er by robers, traitors vile
To go where Loyalty hold sway
And bask in Union’s peerless ray.
</blockquote>

Henry was paroled on September 12 on the condition that he would never take up arms against the Confederacy, a promise neither he nor Isaac would keep. Isaac joined him at Camp Parole on the 16th, and the two enjoyed more sightseeing in the capitol. They rejoined the First one month after the Battle of Antietam, and enjoyed several months of back pay.

The next two months brought a return to the monotony of camp and life on the march, but Isaac and three others were fortunate to be assigned to guard a Virginia gentleman’s home where he talked and flirted with his daughters. In December, with General Ambrose Burnside now in charge, Union forces foolishly attacked Confederate fortifications at Fredericksburg. Isaac and the rest of the First were spared the massacre at Marye’s Heights. He lamented the terrible loss, but was satisfied to have a commander that was willing to attack. Returning to camp life, Isaac passed the time studying history and geology, playing baseball, and going sightseeing with Henry. On January 1, 1863, the day the Emancipation Proclamation came into effect, Isaac wrote, "A bright clear day. This is almost precisely like the first day of 1862. The cause of the Union seems to have progressed little during the last year ... A decisive victory may restore confidence."

The Battle of Chancellorsville was not the victory he had hoped for. The First was again spared the worst of the fighting, but Isaac was furious with the lack of progress and what he saw as inept leadership by Union officers, now led by General Hooker. Isaac wrote, “I think we have played boy long enough & if we can’t act like men we might as well go home & see ‘ma.”[14] In the following months, Lee would move north with the Union army in pursuit, Isaac recording geological observations along the way. Crossing through Maryland, Isaac went foraging for food, where he admired “the nice bread and nice girls.”[15] Crossing into Pennsylvania, Confederate and Union forces suddenly converged on the town of Gettysburg.

As with most of the First, the Battle of Gettysburg brought Isaac’s finest and most tragic hour. On July 2, the second day of fighting, the First was ordered to the front for what was expected to be “the great battle of the war.”[16] With the Union left flank – and with it, the entire battle – in jeopardy, 262 men of the Minnesota First were ordered to charge advancing Confederates numbering in the thousands. An estimated 82% of the Minnesotans became casualties, yet their desperate charge halted the Confederate advance long enough to save the Union line. Company E was especially hard hit. Henry, left in charge of the company after every officer and sergeant but him was hit, led some fifty survivors as they fell back to the Union lines. Isaac was not among them.

That night, Henry desperately searched the battlefield for his brother. He helped Colonel Colville, the regiment’s commanding officer, and other wounded men to the hospital, but could not find Isaac. “Where is Isaac?” he wrote as he lay down to bed, assuming he had been killed.[17] He and two comrades found Isaac the next morning, killed by a shell that struck his head and exited through his belt. They had no choice but to bury him in the field. Henry later recalled, “As we laid him down, I remarked, Well, Isaac, all I can give you is a soldier’s grave…I then sat down on a stone while the two comrades buried him…I was the only one to weep over his grave.”[18] Henry placed a wooden marker at his head on which he inscribed:

“I. L. Taylor

1st Minn. Vols.

Buried at 10 O’clock A.M. of July 3d, 1863

By his brother

Sergt P.H. Taylor

Co. “E” 1st Min. Vols.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Nor in sheet nor in shroud we bound him,

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,

With his shelter tent around him."[19]

Perhaps overwhelmed by grief, Henry did not write his family of Isaac’s death until three days later. Finishing the last entry in Isaac’s diary, he wrote that Isaac “was killed by a shell about sunset July 2d 1863 – his face was towards the enemy.”[20] According to the National Park Service, Isaac is now buried in grave 12, row B of the Minnesota plot at Gettysburg. The tombstone is marked “Unknown.”

^ https://commons.stcloudstate.edu/civil-war-in-mn-lives/exhibits/show/hall-of-the-dead/isaactaylor

== War Diaries ==

* [[War Diaries (May 13) (nonfiction)]]

== In the News ==

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== Fiction cross-reference ==

* [[Gnomon algorithm]]
* [[Gnomon Chronicles]]

== Nonfiction cross-reference ==

* [[War (nonfiction)]]
* [[War Diaries (nonfiction)]]

== External links ==

* http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/25/v25i04p342-361.pdf (PDF)

[[Category:Nonfiction (nonfiction)]]
[[Category:War Diaries (nonfiction)]]