sword, by Confederate Captain W.T.
Blakemore, an adjutant for Brig. Gen.
Bushrod Johnson. Blakemore asked Lytle
if he needed help; Lytle responded “that
those on the field needed more immediate
attention.” He offered Blakemore his
sword, but the captain told him suavely
that “one who could command such men
should never suffer such indignity.”
Instead, he escorted Lytle to Johnson’s tent,
where the fellow Ohioan took one look at
Lytle’s blood-smeared face and vacant
expression and sent him back to the
brigade surgeon for emergency aid.
The next day, Lytle was taken to Har-
rodsburg and paroled. He returned to
Cincinnati to await formal exchange, and
on December 1 testified at a court of
inquiry looking into Buell’s less than stellar
handling of the army at Perryville. Falling
back on his legal training, Lytle declined to
testify directly about anything he had seen
while in Confederate hands, quoting a pro-
vision in his parole that enjoined him “not
to reveal anything that I might have dis-
covered within the line of the enemy.”
Lytle’s testimony, or lack thereof, did not
help Buell, a fellow Democrat, who was
removed from command by Republican
President Lincoln and replaced by Lytle’s
old commander in western Virginia,
William Rosecrans. Luckily for Lytle, he
was too late to rejoin the army for the
gruesome Battle of Stones River, foughtnear Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on the last
day of December 1862. There, Rosecrans
won a narrow but decisive victory, holding
Nashville for the Union and sending
Bragg’s Confederates stumbling south-
ward into winter camp around Tullahoma.
Among the thousands of Union casualties
during the two-day battle was recently
promoted Brig. Gen. Joshua Sill, who was
killed leading the 1st Brigade, 3rd Divi-
sion, XX Corps of the Army of the Cum-
berland—the new name for the main
Union army in the western theater of the
war. In a bit of irony that probably was
not lost on Lytle, he inherited Sill’s com-
mand under Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan, yet
another Ohioan (from Somerset).
Rejoining the army at Murfreesboro in
February 1863, Lytle took advantage of the
lull in fighting to pay a courtesy call on the
Tennessee branch of his family. He had
made the acquaintance of David Lytle the
previous year while stationed near
Murfreesboro, and he gladly accepted an
invitation to stay with the family until his
army promotion and living quarters were
finalized—the weather, as he told Lily, “has
been detestable and the mud is knee deep.”
David Lytle died that winter, but Will con-
tinued living with the family. He apparently
developed a serious affection for the
widow, Sophia Dashiell Lytle, whom he
described as “brilliantly educated—a fine
Latin & Greek scholar & a very charminglady.” He repeatedly urged his sisters to
send Sophia food, clothing, and other hard
to come by items in Union-occupied Ten-
nessee. At the same time, he reaffirmed his
attachment to his cousin Sed, sending word
through his sisters “that I will never forget
her, and if I survive the wars hope to meet
her again.” Sophia Lytle subsequently
transferred her affections to Captain Carter
Harrison, grandson of President William
Henry Harrison and brother of future pres-
ident Benjamin Harrison.
There was little time, at any rate, for
romance. The hard-charging Sheridan put
Lytle to work marching, picketing, and
overseeing bridge repairs for the division.
Lytle’s brigade consisted entirely of north-
western regiments: the 36th and 88th Illi-
nois, 21st Michigan, and 24th Wisconsin.
They were “said to be full of fight,” Lytle
reported proudly, and they would soon
have the opportunity to prove their repu-
tation. That June, after months of hector-
ing from an increasingly exasperated War
Department, Rosecrans commenced his
long-awaited drive toward Chattanooga,
on the Tennessee-Georgia border, whose
confluence of railroads and rivers gave it a
strategic importance far beyond its ram-
shackle appearance.Library of Congress 77Federal riflemen fire on the enemy at the Battle of Per-
ryville, Kentucky, in October 1862. Once again Lytle was
wounded, struck in the head and face by Confederate
shrapnel and taken captive. He was paroled the next day.CWQ-EW16 William Lytle_Layout 1 10/22/15 2:42 PM Page 77