The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home
Page 1
Books by William C. Davis
THE ORPHAN BRIGADE
BATTLE AT BULL RUN
DUEL BETWEEN THE FIRST IRONCLADS
THE BATTLE OF NEW MARKET
BRECKINRIDGE: STATESMAN, SOLDIER, SYMBOL
eISBN: 978-0-307-81754-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79–7491
Copyright © 1980 by William C. Davis
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Davis, William C. 1946–
The Orphan Brigade: the Kentucky Confederates who couldn’t go home.
Bibliography: this page
1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—
Regimental histories—Kentucky—1st Brigade (C.S.A.)
2. Kentucky Infantry. 1st Brigade (C.S.A.) 1861–
1865—History. I. Title.
E564.5 1st.D38 973.7′469
v3.1
This work is offered in loving dedication to my grandparents, Colonel Joseph and Melissa Shanks, themselves the products of a Kentucky heritage. They always encouraged a young boy’s interest in history.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
ONE “God Save the Commonwealth”
TWO “Men of Kentucky!”
THREE “They Are All Gentlemen”
FOUR “The War Is About Over for Us”
FIVE “Baptized in Fire and Blood”
SIX “Your Gallant Band of Kentuckians”
SEVEN “Breckinridge’s Wild Kentuckians”
EIGHT “My Poor Orphans”
NINE “The Greatest Thing of the War”
TEN “We Will Go with You Anywhere”
ELEVEN “Hell Has Broke Loose in Georgia”
TWELVE “The Blackest Day of Our Lives”
THIRTEEN “A Kind of Title of Nobility”
Documentation by Chapter
A Note on the Sources
Bibliography
Illustrations
FOLLOWING this page
1. General Simon Bolivar Buckner
2. The Kentucky State Guard encampment at Louisville, August 23, 1860
3. Several State Guard companies at the Louisville Fairgrounds in 1860
4. John Hunt Morgan’s Lexington Rifles in 1860
FOLLOWING this page
5. Colonel Joseph H. Lewis’ appeal to the Barren County men to join his 6th Kentucky Infantry
6. Major General John C. Breckinridge
7. Colonel Robert P. Trabue
8. Colonel Thomas H. Hunt
9. Major T. B. Monroe
10. Captain D. E. McKendree
11. Brigadier General William Preston
FOLLOWING this page
12. The brigade bugle
13. Brigadier General Roger W. Hanson
14. Colonel Martin H. Cofer
15. Colonel John W. Caldwell
16. Colonel Joseph P. Nuckols
17. Major Rice E. Graves
18. Brigadier General Benjamin Hardin Helm
FOLLOWING this page
19. Brigadier General Joseph H. Lewis
20. Colonel Philip L. Lee
21. Colonel James W. Moss
22. Colonel Hiram Hawkins
23. Lieutenant Colonel John C. Wickliffe
24. Captain Ed Porter Thompson
25. Captain Fayette Hewitt
26. Captain John H. Weller
27. Governor George W. Johnson
28. Brigadier General Joseph H. Lewis
Acknowledgments
A NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS have contributed of their time and resources to the preparation of this book. Their mention here is a small but happy measure of recompense for the debt owed. No historian is entirely a free agent. The craft naturally accumulates obligations to those who almost always cheerfully assist in the task of giving the past to the present.
Several private individuals have graciously lent of their private family papers, among them Mrs. J. C. Breckinridge of Summit Point, West Virginia; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas D. Winstead of Elizabethtown, Kentucky; Helene Lewis Gildred of San Diego, California; Mrs. Howard Jones of Glasgow, Kentucky; and W. Maury Darst of Galveston, Texas. All gave materials of substantial value to this current work. Also helpful were items gleaned by several kind Kentucky ladies, among them Sadie M. Wade, Grace E. Reed, and Ruby T. Rabey.
Professional archivists, of course, are the mainstay of any historian’s research, and many contributed to this work. Chief among these have been Michael Musick of the Old Army and Navy Branch, National Archives, Washington, D.C. His is a special patience with the questions and posings of the Civil Warrior. Mrs. Thomas Winstead of the Hardin County Historical Society in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, went far beyond hospitality in making Orphan Brigade documents available to the author. And Pat Hodges of the Kentucky Library, Western Kentucky University at Bowling Green, likewise gave service. Robert Kinnaird and James C. Klotter of the Kentucky Historical Society at Frankfort did all they could to be helpful.
Old and good friends lent their aid whenever asked. Robert J. Younger of Dayton, Ohio, gave unsparingly of his collection of rare Confederate histories and journals, as he has on each of my previous books. Here is a special friend to all who search for the past. Charles Cooney of Alexandria, Virginia; Dennis Byrne of Fairfax, Virginia; and John E. Stanchak of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, each contributed of their time as well in the search for sources.
To everyone the author offers all he can, his thanks.
Introduction
CAPTAIN ED PORTER THOMPSON had an idea. Indeed, for some time in this fall of 1864, there was little else to do. After the incessant months of fighting in Georgia that spring and summer, autumn brought a lull. For the better part of September and October, Thompson and his compatriots had only picket duty and an occasional scout south of Atlanta.
And for Thompson there was even less. He took a bullet in the great charge at Stones River twenty months before, the charge that killed so many of his comrades. It left him unfit for front-line duty. Now he spent his time as brigade quartermaster and commissary—less hazardous and demanding to be sure, but still no simple task for a man whose wound continued to discharge fluid, a man frequently on crutches. The work of filing reports and inspecting and requisitioning stores hardly challenged his bookish, inquiring mind.
He found much on which to reflect this autumn. To most mature minds the outcome of the war was self-evident, as predictable as it was immutable. The Confederacy would not survive the next twelvemonth. The Federals controlled the entire length of the Mississippi, splitting the South in two. Sherman and his “bummers” had wrenched the citadel of Atlanta from its defenders. Robert E. Lee and the once invincible Army of Northern Virginia now huddled in trenches around Petersburg, facing the besieging hordes of a man who lost battles, but never a campaign—Grant. Foreign recognition of the Confederate States of America—and concomitant military intervention and assistance—still lay an unrealized dream, now more distant than ever. To face the overwhelming might of the North, the Confederacy on every front could offer only too few with too little. Thus the winter ahead would be for many like Captain Thompson, the worst of the war, a cruel pause in which he and others must pass the time in agonizing anticipation of the inevitable denouement. The New Year would bring more hopeless fighting, more losses. For the slaves in the
South, after two centuries in bonds, it would be the year of “jubilo.” For their masters, it would be the day of judgment.
Thompson had studied history before the war. He knew the exploits of the Roman 10th Legion, of Bonaparte’s Old Guard, of many of the immortal military units of antiquity. And he knew even better the record achieved by his own command in this war. For, though sometimes detached in hospital thanks to his wound, and once held captive in an enemy prison, the captain was always attached in spirit to the 1st Kentucky Brigade. In his kindly eye this brigade’s performance looked every bit as bright as that of the legions of old.
Why not, he thought, prepare a history of the command, a memorial to the men and their service? Should the South through some miracle achieve its independence, then such a history would present to the victorious people an example of the heroic deeds that helped gain their freedom. In the more probable event of defeat, this same book might offer solace, a sense of pride, to the veterans as they faced the dark and uncertain days ahead. And on the most personal level, the work on such a history would help Captain Thompson to pass the lonely hours of the winter. Nothing could dispel the gloomy sense of impending disaster, but at least it would give him something to do.
In his mind he laid the boundaries of his story. Not only would he tell the story of the brigade as a unit, but also that of its component regiments individually. The work must be exhaustive, including even biographies of general and field officers, and of the men in the ranks themselves. He would, he believed, do “more for the private soldier than was ever before the case in military annals.” Fortunately, Thompson knew well all of the officers of the brigade. He prepared an outline or statement of purpose for the contemplated history and circulated it among them. The response was universally affirmative. Thus encouraged, the captain determined to proceed.
By November 1864, as the days grew shorter and the nights more cold, he was ready to commence in earnest. In order to interest the men and officers of the brigade in the project, he put his intent in writing, printed several hundred copies, and distributed it. With the pardonable pride of youth, he declared in the circular, “However this war may terminate, if a man can truthfully claim to have been a worthy member of the Kentucky Brigade he will have a kind of title of nobility.”
Thus launched, the work began, though in a desultory fashion. The brigade staff, chiefly the assistant adjutant general, Fayette Hewitt, offered the use of the organization’s official papers and reports. From the individual companies comprising the several regiments, Thompson gathered muster rolls and a smattering of personal recollections. Slowly the story came together. But of course it was a tale already familiar to the captain. Perhaps because of this, as well as a certain diehard hope that the Confederacy might yet prevail, the Kentuckian did not press the work as he might. Then later in November the brigade resumed active operations. Sherman was moving toward the sea, and the 1st Kentucky Brigade joined in the futile attempt to stop him.
Still, from time to time, Thompson gathered his information. Out of the gleanings came a host of old names, old memories. Men living and dead appeared in the pages of the reports and diaries—names like Hanson, Helm, Trabue, and Breckinridge. Places that once had been only sluggish streams or farmers’ fields, or peaceful churches, came back to him with visions of terrible battle and imperishable glory. Shiloh, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, Stones River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta—all leaped from the stiff, formal script of the handwritten accounts. These men, these places, the memories of both, haunted Captain Ed Porter Thompson. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps these men, this brigade—a unit unique in all the Confederate Army—perhaps they did have “a kind of title of nobility.” If so, they earned it with their blood. In this last war winter, Thompson might well shudder not only from the icy north wind blowing across the South but from the inner chill of recollection as well.1
ONE
“God Save the Commonwealth”
PHILIP LIGHTFOOT LEE of Bullitt County said it best when he declared in 1860 why he supported the Union. Should it be dissolved, then he was for Kentucky. If Kentucky fell apart, he would stand by Bullitt County. Bullitt dissolved, his sympathies lay with his hometown of Shepherdsville. And if the unthinkable should happen, and Shepherdsville be torn asunder, then he was for his side of the street.1
In no other state of the Union in 1860 were the choices so hard, the loyalties so strained and divided, as in the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky. Every act of civil and military strife of that decade played in microcosm on this troubled stage. It traced in large part from the geographical location of the state, but far more from the very nature of its people. Kentuckians were different from other Americans. No one knew so better than they did themselves.
They were born of the Revolution, the stepchild of the Scotch-Irish by their natural mother, Virginia. In infancy they teethed on Indian wars and came to adulthood in the War of 1812 when, left to their own devices by a preoccupied war administration in Washington, they independently managed the defense of the trans-Allegheny West against the British. More anxious to belong to the Union than to Virginia, Kentucky strove for years to achieve statehood. The goal attained, the struggle did not end. Already the eastern states assumed a condescending attitude toward Westerners. For years to come Kentuckians fought for the respect and equality in national counsels that their statehood should have insured. The ascendancy of Jefferson and the performance of Kentucky in the second war against the British finally won them their deserved respect. One proper Bostonian was moved to declare that Kentuckians “are the most patriotic people I have ever seen or heard of,” and a New York editor asserted that “there are no people on the globe who have evinced more national feeling, more disinterested patriotism, or displayed a more noble enthusiasm to defend the honor and rights of their common country.” By 1815 Kentuckians arrived on the national scene as first-class Americans.2
Or almost. For in making that trip these sons of the Bluegrass traveled at different speeds. Some overshot their destination, becoming more ardent Unionists than their compatriots in the East. Others never made the full journey at all, since it came at a price. Those years of being seemingly ignored by the Washington government and looked down upon by the establishment in the seaboard states took a toll. Faced with the fact that they, and only they, had their interests and future in mind, Kentuckians developed in those early years a powerful individuality and an iron self-reliance. This melded naturally with the temperament of the state’s people, since the majority of the population came from the southern states, where local interests and prerogatives generally held greater claim on loyalties than things national. It is hardly surprising that quite a few Kentuckians’ first priority was their “side of the street.”
In the first decades of the nineteenth century the Bluegrass managed to function with this dual personality—intense Unionism and ardent localism—without great difficulty. Indeed, the state made major contributions to both causes. In the Nullification crisis of 1833, Kentucky stood squarely with the Union against John C. Calhoun and South Carolina in their attempt to threaten secession. Kentucky would not consent, said her governor, “that her sister state shall give to our children waters of bitterness to drink.” Yet ironically, one of the cornerstones of Calhoun’s nullification policy was in large part the spawn of Kentucky. In 1798 and 1799 the Frankfort legislature passed the so-called Kentucky Resolutions, a declaration that Congress, as the creation of the compact of individual states, was subject to the judgment and approval of those states in its acts. Should the federal body ignore the will of the states and attempt to impose unjust legislation, then it was their right to nullify such acts and prevent their imposition, even to the point of force. The Kentucky Resolutions, chiefly the product of Jefferson’s pen, also bore the stamp of a Kentuckian, Jefferson’s confidant and the man who presented them to the legislature, John Breckinridge of Lexington. As President, Jefferson would later make Breckinridge
his Attorney General.3
What kept Kentuckians together with this dichotomy in their nature was largely their common heritage of struggle against adversity. They were cemented as well by an intense pride in the progress of the state. Thanks to her position, with vital waterways like the Ohio River, her northern boundary, the Mississippi on the west, and the Cumberland Gap, the nation’s chief gateway to westward movement, at her southeastern corner, Kentucky was a vital link for trade North and South, East and West. Economically, the Bluegrass identified more with the Union as a whole than with any section. Then, too, a remarkable society burgeoned in the rolling grasslands of the state’s central region. Newly wealthy sons of Virginia’s first families built magnificent homes, started universities, bred arguably the best blood horses in the nation, and unquestionably distilled the finest whisky in the hemisphere. Indeed, some regarded Kentucky as a “deluxe edition” of Virginia.4
Above all, however, the force that bound Kentucky and Kentuckians together in the first half of this century was a man, the incomparable Henry Clay. Born of Virginia, like Kentucky herself, he moved early to Lexington, and thereafter made the fortunes of the state his own. Not for nothing did he become known throughout the nation as the “Great Pacificator.” The craft of persuasion and compromise that he exercised so deftly on the national scene was merely an outgrowth of the same diplomacy and tact by which he single-handedly melded the disparate elements within his own state. He kept men of all stripes together, nationalists, state righters, protariff, anti-tariff, Whigs, Democrats. Along with Lincoln, he stands as the most remarkable American of his century. It is no accident that, in her own way, Kentucky produced them both.
As the state approached midcentury, affairs local and national became ever more complex, and so did the strains and pulls on the affection and loyalties of the people of the Bluegrass. Following the nullification controversy, state rights became an increasingly volatile issue. Lurking in its shadow was its motive force, southern nationalism. The chosen battleground in the whole controversy was the issue of slavery, and here Kentucky stood particularly divided. Clay and a substantial portion of the state’s people in principle and practice opposed slavery. Yet with the exception of Virginia, Kentucky held more small slave-owners than any other state. Probably a majority of emancipation movements had their origin in the Bluegrass. Kentuckians like Cassius Clay and James G. Birney stood among the foremost abolitionists in the Union. More moderate solutions to slavery such as gradual emancipation and African colonization enjoyed wide popularity in the state’s ruling families, the Clays, Crittendens, and Breckinridges. Yet every attempt to abolish slavery within Kentucky’s borders met failure. It was an outgrowth of that fierce independence nurtured in infancy. Slavery was a right guaranteed in the federal and state constitutions. No matter that many Kentuckians disapproved of the institution. It was a right, and no one would take that right away, regardless of whether or not they chose to exercise it.