by Mim E. Rivas
Despite divisions, by day’s end Tennessee became the ninth and last state to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy. East Tennessee remained a Union stronghold while Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee, with some exceptions, stayed true to the Southern cause. Bedford County continued to be split, contributing troops to twenty-three Confederate units, while also sending soldiers into twelve Federal units. The Volunteer State’s war of neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother had begun.
Three days later William Key arrived, one day late, at Camp Trousdale. He found Merit and Alexander, already looking hungry, worn, and somewhat bewildered as to how they had been recruited. Being not far from the Kentucky border, Young Doc Key realized that he was closer to freedom than he had ever been before. He could take the Keys’ horse; he would go with their blessings. But instead he chose to stay and follow John W. Key’s two sons.
Rogers didn’t understand.
Bill Key explained it simply. “I loved my young marsters. I was afraid they would get killed or not have anything to eat, so I went with them.” His choice had as much to do with his stubbornness as with his humanity.
This put a different twist on his partisanship, making the answer to the question a more complicated one. Yes, he had been with the Rebels, Key told Rogers, but he had also helped the Yankees, served as a guide on the Underground Railroad, acted as a medic and surgeon for soldiers and horses from the gray and the blue, operated as a spy, military strategist, architect, diplomat, thief, and hero. To survive and to ensure the survival of the Key boys, he had stubbornly decided he would need to belong to every side, and to none.
Through the summer and into the fall of 1861 the early Confederate victories had kept spirits high in Company F. Then ninety days passed and the war was not finished. Winter set in, bringing storms that overshadowed memories of celebratory parades and political bravado. In January 1862, the rain turned to sleet and snow as Captain Webb and his unit slogged west through mud toward Dover, Tennessee, just below the Kentucky border.
It was here at Fort Donelson that Company F prepared to face its first battle. Bill had been relieved when, thanks to their reading and writing abilities, Merit and Alexander had been selected for communications duty, mainly for protecting important papers and sending dispatches. Bill hoped these responsibilities would keep them off the front lines as much as possible. The way things were shaping up at Fort Donelson, however, that didn’t look likely.
Ulysses S. Grant, now launching his campaign into Tennessee, had easily taken nearby Fort Henry and was now headed for Fort Donelson. Less of a fortress and more of a stockade, Donelson covered fifteen acres that overlooked the one-hundred-foot bluff above the west bank of the Cumberland River. With a garrison of 15,000 troops, a dozen heavy guns arrayed to meet Grant’s gunboats, and three miles of trenches along the river, the strategic advantage appeared to belong to the Confederates, despite their being outnumbered by Grant’s 27,000 troops. But the Young Doc saw two glaring problems. The first had to do with disagreements among the generals—Floyd, Pillow, and Buckner. The second and biggest problem he saw was that their focus was on defending the fort from the boats, without any planning being given to defending against a siege by land. In a worst-case scenario, even if the assault by water was stopped, Grant’s attack by land could still trap and pin the Confederates against the river. Off the front lines or not, the Key boys would be captured.
With the Battle of Fort Donelson ranking as the tenth most costly engagement of the war—resulting in more than 19,000 casualties, 80 percent Confederate—Bill Key’s strategic assessment turned out to be correct. There had been bizarre shifts in the weather—from being so unseasonably warm one day that many of the Northern boys threw off their coats, to a sudden bout of freezing rain and heavy snow the next day, to a wind so bitter later that a dying Yankee crept into the Rebel rifle pits to warm himself by their campfire, where his enemies shared their ration of coffee with him before he died.
Like the weather, the battle’s momentum shifted radically, first favoring the Southerners when the brunt of the assault came from the gunboats. From close range, the cannonballs overarched and missed their targets while the Rebel big guns pummeled and overpowered the boats. But as Bill predicted, when breastworks were being hastily built along the water’s edge, few were erected to stave off the land assault that came after all. Ultimately the victory went to the North, providing the occasion upon which Grant refused any special terms except unconditional surrender.
From this battle, the initials “U. S.” of Grant’s name came to be known henceforth as “Unconditional Surrender.” A year earlier Grant, a washed-up military man, had been a clerk in a harness maker’s shop; now he had given the North its first meaningful victory of the war. The Battle of Fort Donelson would eventually not be ranked as a major battle. In fact, when Albert Rogers described it in the pamphlet, he mistakenly referred to it as Fort “Donaldson.” But many historians would also argue that the loss was catastrophic for the South. With it, the Union had corralled Kentucky and had made the breach into Tennessee—up two of its rivers no less. For those on both sides who had never seen combat before, though there were worse images to come, nothing would ever be as haunting as the sight of the bodies in blood-soaked gray and blue that littered the icy snow, the faces of the dead said to be literally frozen, with eyes and mouths gaping wide.
Fewer historians preserved a fascinating piece of history about the Battle of Fort Donelson, which began before the shooting started as Bill Key, accidental military strategist, set about to assess the gaps in the line of defense while also making mental notes for any possible escape routes. A noncombatant, he then looked for a spot to build some sort of fortification to hide himself.
“Yes, sir,” Key told Rogers, “that became the famous fort that the soldiers called Fort Bill.”
Fort Bill? Albert was dubious until this story was confirmed to him later by Nashville’s Mayor Richard Houston Dudley, Bill’s childhood friend. The lives of many of Bedford County’s sons were saved there.
“It was only a small place dug in the ground and covered with logs to keep the bullets out,” Doc Key told Rogers. He was able to stay out of the line of fire, as did Merit, Alexander, and several of the other Festerville Guards, once he was able to coax them in with him. Initially, when he tried to wave them in to take shelter, the soldiers refused. But the carnage soon changed their minds.
“When Fort Donelson was captured in the night,” Doc Key went on, “I stole out and found a place unguarded and took my young masters out, with important papers, and we escaped.”
As the three forged on foot through ice-encrusted streams and into gullies of waist-deep mud, they made their way south and caught up with Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest. The brash cavalryman had been at Fort Donelson and had been furious when his superiors chose to surrender. Ironically, Nathan Bedford Forrest, a native of Bedford County, from which he took his middle name, had scouted the same gaps in the Union line that Bill Key had found. When Forrest argued for retreat, he was allowed to lead out a column of 700 men, through the same route that the Young Doc had navigated, only an hour or so afterward.
Nathan Bedford Forrest had been one of the richest, most notorious slave traders in Tennessee. Now on his way to becoming a general, he was also earning a reputation as one of the most brilliant cavalry officers of the Confederacy. Forrest was said to be two men: a kind, soft-spoken gentleman away from the battlefield who, at the flip of a switch, could be transformed into war mode and the embodiment of a fighting machine. His own mother described him as having, while a child, a terror-inducing voice when angered. Yet under stress, he had a decision-making ability that was uncannily prophetic, his own form of mother wit. But brilliant as he was, it turned out that Nathan Bedford Forrest was nearly illiterate. Bill Key knew this and didn’t hesitate to inform him that Merit and Alexander were at college level in book learning. When Forrest found out that Alexander had been a
ble to withhold important papers from the enemy at Fort Donelson, he made A. W. Key an officer, assigning both Key sons to jobs as scouts and guides.
Shelbyville historians later boasted that William Key served as caretaker for Forrest’s own horse, while the Young Doc was also allowed to be an unofficial guide along with the Keys. He earned enough favor with General Forrest that he was given a pass to go home. For a man of color to possess such a piece of Confederate paper was highly unusual.
Without being found out, the Young Doc exploited this gift by spending the next period of the war assisting fugitive slaves through the lines, a job that enabled him to go home to Shelbyville and discover why it had come to be called Little Boston.
Like Bill Key, the folks back home were doing what they could to survive and get along, both with their occupiers and one another. John and Martha Key described how feelings that had once been only friendly disputes between neighbors were now growing more acrimonious by the day.
After the defeat at Fort Donelson, Confederate troops were temporarily stationed in Shelbyville under the command of General Hardee, which coincided with widespread foraging of farms and the disappearance of 30,000 head of hogs and many numbers of beeves. John’s tanyard had been heavily looted, and though some merchants were paid for the stocks and goods taken, the Confederate paper money was as yet of little value.
With resentment against the Rebels percolating, Shelbyville got an added shot of antisecessionist venom when Parson Brownlow was brought through as a Confederate prisoner, causing an uproar among the ladies in town. Before he could cause too much trouble, the Confederates pulled out in time for the arrival of incoming Yankees, led by the Fourth Ohio Cavalry. The reception was so warm for the Northerners that Harper’s Weekly soon ran a sketch of “Shelbyville, the only Union town in Tennessee.” The accompanying article proclaimed, “The names of such men as Wisener…and others deserve to be perpetual in history for their unyielding fidelity to the great republic.”
Not everyone shared pride in the new nickname “Little Boston.” Nor did all the citizens of Shelbyville prefer occupation by Yankees any more than by Rebels, especially when food supplies ran short and the Northern boys helped themselves to livestock and grain stores. For his part, the Young Doc got on splendidly with many of the Union officers he met during his sporadic visits home, sometimes helping some of the Yankee boys through the lines. He figured his help would be remembered, and the fact that he was protecting Confederate sons of Shelbyville wouldn’t be held against him. But he was soon to be wrong about that.
At the end of March, when William had been away from the front for almost two months without word from Merit and Alexander, a grave foreboding came over him. Inquiries brought back information that they were with General Forrest heading toward Pittsburgh Landing, in southwest Tennessee, not far from the Mississippi state line. The Young Doc rode there at top speed, not sure what he’d find.
Confederate Tennessean John Gumm crawled to shelter in the waning hours of the battle fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, and scribbled in his diary:
I have learned the name of the Battel ground they call it Shiloah…it was…the greatest Battel in modern history…its duration and Bravery never his bin Surpassed Either in ancient or modern history…it was one Continel Charge…. Bombs and Grape Shot fell as thick as hair and Minnie Balls whising round my Years like Bombel Bees.
In a battle named for the whitewashed, log-built Shiloh (from the Hebrew word for “place of peace”) Church, which stood amid peach trees west of the death pond or “blood pond,” where the water turned red from the bodies piled one on top of the other, the strong advantage began with the 45,000 Confederate troops throughout the first day. The weather had been springlike and gentle, as a breeze rustled the peach blossoms and sent them fluttering down on top of the fallen. But a rainstorm that night and then reinforcements on the second day of fighting (which gave the Union as many as 65,000 troops) saw a momentum shift—enough to force the Rebels to retreat toward Corinth, Mississippi, and to give General Grant the muted victory. Between both sides, 3,000 were dead and another 20,000 wounded, more casualties than in all previous American battles.
In this hell William Key found Alexander and Merit with General Forrest, whose mission it was to protect the retreating Confederate infantry from pursuit by the Union cavalry.
As he had before, the Young Doc tried to convince the two Key boys to follow him to safer ground, but only Merit, with the excuse of guarding papers, was in a position to find cover in a clearing called Fallen Timbers. With a thunderous shaking of the ground came the approach of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry, and Forrest lifted his saber to give the order to take the fight to the enemy, galloping like a cannon shot toward the incoming riders. Alexander Key, as part of the rearguard, readied his rifle and started off on foot. William looked after him miserably, here in the shadow of Shiloh. Certain that John W. Key’s secondborn son would die if he didn’t do anything, Bill pulled out his trusty pistol and aimed it straight for the midcalf of Alexander’s leg.
Just before the Doc pulled the trigger, Officer Alexander Key whirled around and stopped him, cautioning, “I’m keeping a close watch on you, Bill. You were going to shoot me, weren’t you?”
Grumbling, Bill admitted that he was, but only so they wouldn’t have to fight anymore. Alexander hesitated helplessly, then followed the last of Forrest’s men off after their leader. Alexander returned to the camp intact, but General Forrest was badly wounded when, after riding into the midst of Union cavalrymen who surrounded his horse, which began to rear and turn, cries of “shoot him” brought a rifle so close to him that it grazed his jacket as its bullet ripped into his hip and lodged in his lower spine. History marked that shot as the last one fired at the Battle of Shiloh.
William Key swore that nothing he would live to see could ever match the bloody nightmare at Pittsburgh Landing. But eight months later, he found himself yet again on the sidelines of a battle that did. From December 31 of that year until January 2, 1863, at the outskirts of Murfreesboro along Stones River, about thirty miles north of Shelbyville, Doc Key witnessed his third and final large-scale battle that proportionally incurred more casualties on both sides than at Shiloh, leaving almost one-third of the total of 75,000 who fought either killed or wounded. The battle had pitted Confederate general Braxton Bragg against General William Rosecrans and should have been won by the Rebels after Bragg forced the Yankees into considerable retreat. But at the Nashville Pike the theretofore overly cautious Rosecrans rallied his Union troops and held the line, ultimately forcing Bragg into retreat.
Stones River was not viewed as so decisive a battle as others in Tennessee, but in a winter following numerous setbacks for the Union, their victory at Murfreesboro was another important turning point.
The end of the battle coincided with news that on January 1, 1863, Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves. The great, long promised day of jubilee had come at last, except that free status meant little in the seceded states. Yet Bill knew now that the North would win, and that the colored regiments authorized by Emancipation would be the reason why. He was having an increasingly difficult time helping the Confederacy even indirectly, knowing the price to be paid for its victory was to be the loss of freedom. Or as he told the Union soldiers when they captured him and he tried to explain why he had switched affiliations: “I was tired of the Rebels and I wanted to be free.”
Unfortunately, his reputation had preceded him, or someone back in Shelbyville had it in for him. The pro-Union sentiment there had become less pronounced by now, for a variety of reasons. The plight of Union spy James J. Andrews and his Union rangers—who hatched a plot in Shelbyville to commandeer “The General,” a prized Southern steam engine, only to be hung shortly after the plan’s failure—may have had a sobering effect on outward demonstrations by the Little Bostonians. Soon after, Confederate cavalryman John Hunt Morgan came through the area, retaliating against Union sym
pathizers. There were extensive reports of houses and farms being burned, stores looted, horses and Negroes abducted and assaulted.
The Key family matriarch, Margaret Graham Key, died during this period of the war. It may have been of interest to the Young Doc that in a report of this time a Yankee soldier described an eighty-year-old woman named “Mrs. Graham” strangely reminiscent of the Old Missus. This energetic elderly woman climbed up on a pedestal and, with her own bare hands, tore the flag of the Confederacy down from a post in the town square, raving that her husband had fought for the Stars and Stripes and had given his life to his country. The account certainly matched the family myth of Strother Key. She had family members, Mrs. Graham said, who had been dragged from their home and had been shot for favoring the Union.
The reality was that divided alliances had given way to mob rule that operated differently from hill to hill. The county began to breed guerrillas, thieves, and home guards of many persuasions. Boys were leaving their units and coming home shoeless and starving, only to be shot as deserters. Neighbors pointed fingers at other neighbors; family members turned in other family members. Suspicion and fear spread. No one was safe.
Starting at this period more than 22,000 Negroes from Tennessee, a tenth of the total number of African-Americans to be mustered into Union service, began to pour North to take up arms or to join local colored units being organized. One of the few guides able to navigate the routes leading out of Bedford County for them was William Key, and in the beginning of 1863 he was doing so with increasing regularity. That was when he ran into some trouble with his Union contacts.