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CHRISTIAN KESSLER was a German emigrant who was born Nov. 12, 1832 in Kuhrhessen and arrived in New Orleans with a younger sister in October 1855. They had a brother Peter already living here at Blue Mounds. Christian had trained as a tailor in Germany but had difficulty getting enough work in his trade here to support himself. On June 22, 1861, he enlisted for 3 years in the U.S. Army and was a member of Mineral Point's "Miners Guard"/Co. I, 2nd Wis. Vols. Often times, this is about all we can learn about a soldier but thanks to Christian's descendants, we have access to his journals.
His journal records his battle experiences: "to see the ground covered with dead and wounded men"; "It is impossible for me to describe the Battle of Bull Run where over 40,000 or more men were engaged and roaring cannons and musket fire was deafening to our ears"; "four horses hitched to a cannon were dead with the cannon laid up on them", as some things he could never forget.
The journal account of his wound and subsequent Rebel imprisonment: "while in an exposed battle position, I had fired my gun 4 or 5 times, had reloaded by putting the cap on, when I was shot, the ball entering at my left arm near the shoulder stopping under the shoulder blade where it was later found by a surgeon". Following this battle, wounded and weak from loss of blood he was taken prisoner by the rebels and miraculously survived horrifying conditions; "I felt uneasy on account of the wound in my arm and shoulder, as maggots crawled over my breast from the wound". He describes being "put under Chloriform" for the operation of extracting the ball and the Rebel Doctor wouldn't even give it to him for a souvenir. Later he had a foul smelling drainage that even he could barely tolerate and the doctors decided to operate again and remove "a dead portion of bone" from his arm/shoulder. "When they twisted out the bone from the shoulder joint, that hurt me so, that I hollered so loud and one of them said, "you darn fool, what you hollering so loud for?" The foul smelling drainage continued.
In October the Rebels gathered all the Union prisoners who were injured and invalid due to loss of limbs and examined them to see if they could be sent home as no further threat to them. If they were accepted to be paroled they signed a pledge not to fight again. Christian's status was so dire, they rejected him for parole. "This decision was a torture and a killer to me!" He writes that the next morning he persuades one of the Rebel doctors to sign his release and he was able to join his comrades that were released and leaving for home that day. He describes his great joy at getting back to the Union "Fortress Monroe". There the ladies had prepared a special dinner for the released prisoners which Christian declined to go in to the dining room for, due to the foul smelling discharge from his wound that would "spoil the other soldiers appetites". This drew the attention of the Union doctor who examined him and moved him to a room where the doctor "poured some stuff in my wounds and gave me medicine to drink and put me to bed." The next morning the doctor removed "rotten flesh and muscles so that my arm just hung on a little flesh and skin to my body". The doctor exclaimed "young man, thank God we have saved your head, though the use of your arm is gone!"
When Christian returned to Iowa County, he could no longer be a tailor, so he attended school and ran for various local government positions including City Treasurer and County Clerk of Circuit Court. On August 17, 1867, he married Matilda Hoffman and raised four children. Christian was the grandfather Lewis Russell Kessler who was one of the early owners of the Dodgeville Chronicle.
Thanks to Susan Stratman White for donation of the personal journal entries from which this summary has been written. Much more detail and information can be read from it at the Iowa County Historical Society.
To share your story, write it up and drop it off at the Iowa County Historical Society Museum 1-4 p.m. any weekday or E-MAIL it to IowaCountyScrapbook@gmail.com. If you would rather, you can call the Iowa County Historical Society at 935-7694.