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The former colonel, perhaps brigadier, John B. Turchin kicked around Huntsville for six days before he accepted the fact that he had been cashiered. He took off his uniform, donned civilian garb, and on August 12 telegraphed his friends and family in Chicago, telling them that such was the state of affairs. He would catch a train home the next day, Wednesday, the thirteenth. Four days later, newspapers from Louisville to New York published the text of his closing statement, being the best evidence yet that the Russian colonel had in fact been convicted, dismissed, and sent home. A pledge he had made to Gar¤eld, to appeal directly to the American people if cashiered, remained known only to the two men. There had been, and remained, some confusion in the papers about whether he had been acquitted or convicted. Turchin’s own words settled that matter, but a debate continued in the dailies about what effect conviction would have in light of the colonel’s recent promotion.1 More than 550 miles separated Huntsville from Chicago. The very day Turchin announced his travel plans, John Hunt Morgan and his mounted rebels captured the Union garrison at Gallatin, Tennessee, breaking yet again the rail link between Louisville and Nashville. That raid and others, now happening on almost a daily basis, slowed Turchin’s homeward journey to a crawl. They also served Don Carlos Buell with a clear message about the price of stagnancy. Rather than pressing into the rebel heartland, Buell began pulling back toward Nashville and central Tennessee. While the rebels signaled that change was in the air, Don Carlos Buell unwittingly played into their hands. The Confederates had a new commander, Braxton Bragg. His eyes faced north. For six days, Turchin bounced intermittently along on the band of rails 15 The Conquering Hero What I have done is not much, but what I could do, were I allowed, might amount to something. . . . We have been talking about the Union and hurrahing for the Union a great while. Let us now talk and hurrah for conquest. —John B. Turchin, August 19, 1862 that connected his seat of war to his hometown. In the midsummer’s heat, the engine’s plume of smoke, ash, and cinders moved effortlessly through the open windows of the cars. It permeated hair, skin, and clothing alike with the ashen look, smooth feel, and oily smell of soot. For nearly a week, the colonel sat and listened to the steady clack of the wheels, the chug of the pistons, the hissing of the relief valves, the squeal of the brakes. Then, late in the afternoon of August 19, the train stopped in Valparaiso, Indiana. Dressed in high-topped boots and a plain linen coat, his shirt’s collar open and necktie very loosely draped around his neck, without a vest but sporting a light gray fatigue cap, the colonel stepped down onto the station platform to catch a connecting train into Chicago. There he discovered something was up.2 Waiting on the platform to greet him stood some of the most prominent men in Chicago. Murray Nelson, George Steele, J. L. Hancock, C. H. Walker, Stephen Clary, and William Bross of the Tribune, among others, stood at the head of “a vast crowd of citizens” of Valparaiso who had turned out to greet the former colonel. The committee had come as emissaries of the Chicago Board of Trade to welcome General Turchin back to their city. The crowd in Valparaiso had time to give him “three times three cheers” before he and the committee boarded their own special train for the rest of the trip. At every station along the forty-¤ve mile route, at Wheeler and Hobart and the other hamlets and whistle-stops of northwestern Indiana, and ¤nally across the state line and into the outskirts of Chicago, “the same enthusiasm prevailed.” Rather than face the quiet disgrace and sideward glances given a cashiered of¤cer, Turchin was being wildly cheered at every wayside.3 Turchin’s telegram from Huntsville, and its publication, had given rise to two unexpected results. It triggered a huge public outcry to his dismissal, and it gave his powerful allies in Chicago nearly a week to organize his homecoming . It did not hurt that at almost the same moment she received word of her husband’s imminent return, Nadine Turchin had picked up his commission as a brigadier at the War Department in Washington, thereby touching off a...

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