The Military History of the 123d Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry — Context and Discussion

Organization and Recruitment

The first chapter details the regiment's formation under the second call for 600,000 troops in August and September 1862. Companies were recruited from five Ohio counties—Erie, Huron, Seneca, Crawford, and Wyandotte—and rendezvoused at Monroeville, Huron County. The text includes muster rolls for each company, as well as field and staff officers, reflecting the editor's effort to preserve a complete roster. This section grounds the narrative in administrative detail, contrasting with the more vivid battle accounts later.

The Shenandoah Valley Campaigns

The excerpts focus heavily on the 123d's role in the 1864 Shenandoah Valley operations under General Philip Sheridan. Keyes recounts engagements at New Market, Piedmont, Lynchburg, Snicker's Ferry, Winchester, Berryville, Opequan, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek. He notes the regiment's losses: 40 killed, 97 wounded, and 24 missing, with half of its officers casualties. The narrative includes specific details, such as the army being paid on October 28 and receiving Thanksgiving turkeys from Ohio on November 24. Keyes also records the regiment's march of 1,100 miles, often on short rations and under a broiling sun.

Voice and Perspective

Keyes writes in a first-person plural voice, using “we” to include himself and the regiment. His tone shifts between matter-of-fact reporting and emotional reflection. After the Battle of Cedar Creek, he describes the change from “gloom of disaster” to “complete and undisputed victory,” and notes the difficulty of sleeping on cold, damp ground without tents or blankets. He includes an army saying that paperwork after a great defeat is only exceeded by that after a great victory. The dedication's poetic language—“sleeping in unknown graves, on southern battlefields, or by the dark prison pens, where only the sighing pines may chaunt their requiem”—contrasts with the dry details he promises in the preface. This tension between official record and personal memory shapes the entire work.

Readers should approach this history as a primary source shaped by its editor's dual role as participant and chronicler. The catalog subject “Regimental histories” accurately describes the work, but the excerpts show it is not a comprehensive account of the 123d's entire service; it emphasizes the 1864–1865 Shenandoah Valley campaigns. Keyes's dedication to preserving names and events makes the book valuable for genealogical and local history research, though its limited perspective should be weighed against other accounts.

Reading about the 123rd’s hard marches through the Shenandoah, I thought of my grandfather’s quiet way of folding his map before telling any story. Muster rolls feel like names, but the mud feels like memory. I found that same ache in The Campaigns of the 124th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with Roster and Roll of Honor — Story, Setting & Ideas—that slow, patient grief for boys who just wanted to go home.