Durango author Reid Ross spent 30 years investigating his family ties to the Civil War. His new book, “Lincoln’s Veteran Volunteers Win the War,” chronicles the 200,000 menamong them his grandfather, Dan Ross, and great-uncles Lank and Will Ross — who enlisted for three years when the war began, and then re-enlisted. Among the venues carrying Ross’s book are the Smithsonian and Harvard Coop. Claire Martin
Q: In researching the book, did you visit the same places where your grandfather and great-uncles camped, marched and fought during the war?
A: Yes. I could walk over, and probably did walk over the same exact track that Will and his regiment took to The Wilderness in Virginia, the famous battle that raged and raged all afternoon. I tripped and stumbled over the same vines. And I wasn’t carrying 55 pounds on my back and a rifle!
Q: Are any of those battlefields a Wal-Mart today?
A: There is a big flap in Virgina, where Will was killed, going on now. Wal-Mart wants to build a huge supermarket to take up about a third of that battlefield. Man, the Civil War preservation trust and the county fathers are fighting Wal- Mart tooth and nail on that.
Q: Which year would you identify as the crux of the Civil War for the Union and the Confederacy, and for your ancestors?
A: 1864. That’s when Lincoln made Ulysses S. Grant the commander of the Union armies. That was the worst year of the war for the Ross brothers — my grandfather, Dan Ross, and his brothers Lank, Will and John, and for their parents.
Q: What happened to them in 1864?
A: The first Ross tragedy was in April, when Lank was blinded by a cinder on his way to join the march on Atlanta in April. In May, Will gets killed, shot at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia. In June, Dan Ross gets captured by the Confederate Army and imprisoned at Andersonville. In July and August, a terrible drought and hailstorm wipe out the Ross family farm. In September, John, the youngest brother at 18, goes to join the same regiment and the same company Dan was in before he was captured. He goes into brief training and gets to Atlanta just in time for Sherman’s march to Savannah.
Q: Wow.
A: That’s not all. John marched 350 miles from Atlanta to Savannah, got deafened in the siege of Savannah and then followed Sherman up the coast in January, another 500 miles to where Gen. Johnson surrendered. And John represented the family in the grand review in Washington, D.C.
