Civil War soldiers who served their country during the Civil War, survived those years of carnage, and returned home to provide more public service - locally, statewide, or nationally - were not unusual in the years and decades following the conflict. Presidents like Ulysses. S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and more are the most well-known of such public figures, but many others gained smaller, yet still influential, positions in the postwar years.
John Wesley Ratliff was one such soldier-turned-public servant.
Wesley, as he was known, was born in Campbell County, Kentucky, in January of 1844, to parents Jessie and Ann Ratliff, though his father died in 1850 when Wesley was just six years old. In that year the family lived in the southern end of the county, where Jessie had supported his family by farming. John had six siblings, including three who were between the ages of 17 and 23, so the family likely continued to work the land in order to survive.
Eleven years later, in April of 1861, decades of political tension throughout the nation finally reached their breaking
point, and civil war exploded upon the nation.
Just more than six months after this unwanted arrival, Wesley, though not quite 18 years old yet, enlisted as a private in Captain Lewis Wolfley’s Company on October 21, 1861.Wolfley had recruited men for this unit in Newport, and this group soon became company H of the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry, with other recruits helping complete its roster. Wesley joined in Newport, perhaps at Wolfley's recruiting office, for a three-year term, then mustered in on December 13, 1861, in Calhoun, McLean County, Kentucky, in the western part of the Commonwealth.
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| Cincinnati Daily Press, Sep. 20, 1861. Despite plans to join the 1st Ky Cav. this company joined the 3rd. |
The 3rd Kentucky Cavalry remained in the western theater of the war during its service including the bloody fight at Shiloh, one of the first major battles of the war. These men then joined in the pursuit of Braxton Bragg’s Confederates in the late summer and early fall of 1862 and were near Perryville when that battle, the largest of the war in the unit's home state, took place.
It was present
at the bloodbath known as the Battle of Stones River as 1862 turned into 1863 and then, later in that
new year, chased John Morgan and his Confederates throughout most of July in
what became known as Morgan’s “Great Raid.” They continued the pursuit until the Battle of Buffington Island in southeastern Ohio on July 19, when many of Morgan's men were captured by Union forces, though Morgan and some of his men temporarily escaped before being captured a week later.
The regiment spent the rest of 1863 and early 1864 in Tennessee and northern Mississippi before being part of the Atlanta Campaign and the March to the Sea. Wesley had been promoted to corporal on December 10, 1862, during the campaign that ended at Stones River. He survived the war and mustered out in Savannah, Georgia on December 26, 1864, as his three-year term had expired, (though he may have accepted it as a nice Christmas present right as General William T. Sherman presented Savannah to President Lincoln as such a gift), but the regiment, with many of its men (unlike Wesley) choosing to re-enlist for another term, remained on duty until July of 1865.
In his post-Civil
War life, he married Susan Dickson on May 3, 1865. Their marriage bond had
been completed a day earlier, “issued on the
written consent of the girl’s mother” since Susan was only around 15 to 17 years
old at the time. He lived in Covington at that time, but by 1870 had relocated
to Bellevue, back in Campbell County, working as a carpenter and living with Susan and their daughter
Ida.
The following years saw him return to public service, as he worked as Police Chief of Bellevue from 1893 until 1905, though he still listed “house carpenter” as his main job in 1900. He lived in Bellevue for more than three decades by the time of his 1905 death and at one time held the title of City Marshal, probably the same position later called Police Chief. He also was a member of City Council, Chairman of the School Board, and a member of the fraternal organization called the Knights of Honor.
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Wesley suffered
heart failure near the end of September of 1905 and passed away at his home on Bellevue’s Berry Street on
September 30.
One of his obituaries, in the Kentucky Post of September 30, reported that he “was a Civil War veteran and carried a bayonet wound in his right leg, sustained at Vicksburg in 1863,” but his existing military records make no mention of any injuries, and his unit was not in Vicksburg during the war. It is possible that he suffered such a wound, but that his surviving family misremembered where it occurred, especially four decades after the war. Vicksburg was a famous battle and may have been the first one to come to mind at the time of his death.
His death was a painful loss to the local citizenry. City offices were closed and draped in mourning cloth for his funeral, and the Granville Moody Post of the Grand Army of the Republic attended the service.
His son Douglas was out of town on a rafting trip but was able to return in time for the services, conducted by Reverend J.N. Erwin of the Presbyterian Church and Reverend W.H. Smith of the Dayton and Bellevue Christian Church. Among his pallbearers were Civil War veterans Theodore Beyland and James W. Ellis, a former Bellevue Mayor.
Wesley was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in nearby Southgate, where hundreds of other veterans from the Civil War lie at rest.
His successor as Bellevue Police Chief was another local former Union soldier, George Seither, one of four brothers who fought in the war, three for the Union, one for the Confederacy. George had lost his right arm during the war.
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