Charles W kittle se7j.— A. Winchell. 261 
The first sounds of war diverted colonel Whittlesey's atten- 
tion toward a different field of activit3\ Having been edu- 
cated a soldier, he felt that he owed his services to his country 
whenever a national emergency arose. He became a member 
of one of the military companies that tendered their services 
to president-elect Lincoln when he was first threatened in Feb- 
ruary, 1861. He became quickly convinced that war was 
inevital)le, and urged the state authorities that Ohio be put 
at once in preparation for it ; and il was partly through his 
influence that Ohio was so very ready for the fray. * * * 
Two days after the proclamation of April 15, 1861, he joined 
the governor's staff as assistant quartermaster general. He 
served in the field in West Virginia with the three months 
men as state military engineer; with the Ohio troops under 
generals McClellan, Cox and Hill. * * * At the expira- 
tion of the three months service he was appointed colonel of 
the twentieth regiment Ohio volunteers ; and was detailed by 
general Mitchell as chief engineer of the department of the 
Ohio. He planned and constructed the defences of Cincin- 
nati." 
In December, 1861, he was ordered to Kentucky with four 
companies of infantry "to suppress the rebel element" in sev- 
eral counties, with headquarters at Warsaw.' 
Colonel Whittlesey was in command of his regiment at the 
taking of Fort Donelson, and was sent north with the prison- 
ers, of whom over ten thousand five hundred were committed 
to him. In April, 1862, on the second day of the battle of 
Shiloh, colonel Whittlesey commanded the third brigade of 
general Wallace's division — the twentieth, forty-sixth, and 
seventy-eighth Ohio regiments. Under the impression that 
this decisive battle was the harbinger of the close of the war, 
he yielded to the requirements of long suffering health, and 
sent in his resignation. 
Colonel Whittlesey soon turned his attention again to 
explorations in the upper Mississippi and lake Superior basins. 
He examined the prairies between the head of St. Louis 
river and Rainy lake, between the Big Fork of Rainy Lake 
river and the Mississippi, and between the waters of Cass lake 
and those of Red lake. The uniformitv of level was found so 
esting 
In the Magazine of Western History for April, 1885, he gives an inter- 
ing account of his experiences there. 
