While the wave of battle swept north-
ward from later-named Lytle Hill and the
remnants of the Union army came to rest a
mile away on another ravine-riddled promi-
nence called Snodgrass Hill, a number of
Confederate officers who had known Lytle
before the war stopped to pay their respects
to the fallen general. First to arrive was
Anderson, who knelt beside his old friend
and carefully removed a ring, several pho-
tographs, and a lock of hair, intending to
send them through the lines to Lytle’s fam-
ily. Anderson posted an honor guard
around the body and ran to catch up to his
brigade. Major William Owen, a friend of
Lytle’s from childhood, arrived next. He
was looking down at Lytle when Brig. Gen.
William Preston rode up and asked, “What
have you here?” “General Lytle of Cincin-
nati,” said Owen. “Ah! General Lytle, theson of my old friend, Bob Lytle,” said Pre-
ston, immediately dismounting to pay his
respects. “I am sorry it is so.”
Confederate surgeon E.W. Thomasson,
who had served with Lytle in the Mexican
War, came onto the scene a few minutes
later. Lytle, he said, was “as good a man
as ever lived, even if he did have on Yan-
kee clothes.” Thomasson commandeered
an ambulance to take Lytle’s body to the
rear. A dying Confederate captain, James
Deas Nott of the 22nd Alabama—thesame regiment that had killed Lytle—was
asked if he minded sharing his ambulance
with the slain Union general. Nott had no
objection. By the time the ambulance
reached a makeshift field hospital behind
the lines, both men were dead. Later that
night they were buried side by side in
hastily dug graves.
A few days later, Lytle’s body was disin-
terred and returned through the lines under
a flag of truce by members of his first reg-
iment, the 10th Ohio. After a brief memo-
rial service in camp, Lytle’s flag-draped cas-
ket was shipped back to Cincinnati by
boat. On October 22, after lying in state
for one day in the city courthouse, where
his former fiancée Sed Doremus kept an all-night vigil beside his casket, Lytle was
reburied at Spring Grove Cemetery. The
largest crowd ever to attend such a local
event watched as the funeral procession
wound its way to the cemetery from Christ
Episcopal Church. Lytle’s old orderly,
Joseph Guthrie, led the general’s riderless
horse, with Lytle’s boots reversed in the stir-
rups. Future president James A. Garfield
was one of the pallbearers. The procession
dispersed at Central and Freeman Avenues,
and a carriage containing Lytle’s immediate
family—sisters Josephine and Lily and their
husbands—said a last goodbye in the early
twilight. It rained on their brother’s newly
turned grave—a symbolic touch the poet-
general would have approved.Keith Rocco, http://www.keithrocco.comNational Park ServiceLEFT: Keith Rocco’s drawing of Lytle’s death at Chicka-
mauga. His last words were, “Brave boys, brave boys.”
BELOW: Lytle’s mortuary monument at Chickamauga
was restored in 2013 after decades of disrepair. (Van-
dals had stolen the original cannonballs.)WILLIAM LYTLE
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