The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home

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by Davis, William C.


  But they were busy that day themselves. Three days before, Johnston decided that Fort Donelson could not hold for long, and that he would have to give up his Kentucky line and abandon Bowling Green. On the evening of February 11 orders went to Breckinridge to be ready to evacuate the next morning. Without actually knowing what was happening, the Kentuckians felt a great uneasiness. Some whispered that Kentucky was to be abandoned. Yet others still held to the hope that they were actually to advance farther into the state. At 9 A.M., February 12, the birthday of another Kentuckian now waging war against them, the men of the brigade lined up on the road awaiting instructions. “The Kentucky Brigade experienced nothing but gloom and apprehension on that morning,” wrote Ed Thompson. Johnny Green found the men “altogether in doubts as to our movements.” The men awaited the order that would tell them to face north and march to liberate their homes and families, or else turn south and abandon all. They were a few miles north of Bowling Green this morning, and “it was with sinking, sickened hearts that their faces were turned toward Bowling Green.” They were going south. Kentucky was left to its fate.

  Breckinridge issued strict rules for the march, and was mortified to see them ignored all the way by his dispirited regiments. In fact, in their gloom many of his officers failed even to read the orders to the men. The column straggled badly on the road into Bowling Green. Here, settled for the night in huts left by Hanson, the men briefly revived hope that they would face north again the next morning. But it was not to be so. The next morning’s marching orders set them on the road south toward Nashville, ordering all the sick of the brigade to precede them on trains. Breckinridge’s command would be the rear guard of the retreating army. He left a company of Trabue’s 4th Kentucky as brigade rear guard, sent Morgan’s cavalry in his front, and marched south, 2,478 strong. Behind him the advancing Federals, knowing the evacuation was afoot, closed in on Bowling Green and shelled the city even before all the Confederates had gone.4

  That night Breckinridge bivouacked a few miles north of Franklin, Kentucky. The weather, mild for the past few days, now turned bitterly cold. On the morning of February 14, St. Valentine’s Day, snow carpeted the ground. The command arose early, but got no farther than Franklin, when they were halted. Standing in the cold, with an icy north wind seemingly trying to push them out of Kentucky, they straggled in large numbers and went into town, stealing food and whisky. The march resumed, only to stop again, with more plundering of private property. Hundreds of yards of rail fence along the road quickly became a string of fires to warm their frostbitten hands and feet. Then came the march again.

  At last they reached the state line. Hodge caught the mood of the moment. “For the Kentuckians all was apparently lost. Behind their retiring regiments were the graves of their fathers, and the hearthstones about which clustered every happy memory of their childhood.… Everything which could contribute to crush the spirits and weaken the nerves of men, seemed to have combined.” In a symbolic act done perhaps unconsciously, or perhaps to give heart to the men, Breckinridge, his staff, and the field officers dismounted in what Hodge termed a “common impulse,” and took their places on foot at the head of the column. “With sad and solemn countenances, but with erect and soldierly bearing,” wrote Hodge, they led the brigade across the line and into Tennessee. Breckinridge was the first to cross. He could not know or suspect that, with the irony so beloved of history, he would be the last of them ever to return to Kentucky.”5

  That night they camped in the rain and sleet, then marched on through the snow the next day. They had stayed the night inside old huts with ventilation so poor that the fires burned for warmth made many of the men ill from inhaling the smoke. Yet this day, February 15, they marched twenty-seven miles, some of it at double time to meet a supposed threat to their route of retreat. The alarm proved false, but the men found that the excitement warmed their blood and girded them to continue the march. The next day they crossed the Cumberland River bridge and entered Nashville, to find much of the city ablaze. Some thought the fires were to honor their arrival. In fact, panicked by the collapse of Johnston’s defense line, many citizens fled their city, and others burned anything that might be valuable to the enemy. Yet the Kentuckians marched on. “Where are we going?” John Marshall of the 4th Kentucky asks. The question courses through the column, but none can answer. Remembering the old lady’s injunction never to turn the backs of his new socks to the enemy, Marshall began to fear “the heels of my socks are like ‘the wicked, who flee when no man pursueth.’ ”6

  They did not stop in Nashville, but marched five miles beyond on the road to Murfreesboro. As they passed through the Tennessee capital, Breckinridge, who had been quiet and reflective since crossing the state line, confided in Captain John Cripps Wickliffe of Hunt’s regiment. “He told me that there was no hope for the Confederacy, unless there was an uprising of the Northern Democrats to stay the coercive arm of the Federal Government, and that, as he had no expectation of that, there was nothing before us but to do our duty to the end, and make any sacrifice for our convictions which honor and manhood demanded.”

  And here it was, perhaps—none can say for sure—that Breckinridge minted a name for his command. To be sure, they were the 1st Kentucky Brigade, a designation they guarded jealously in the months to come. But there was more to them than that. They were Kentucky’s sons, his sons. Yet they were forcibly taken from their mother state, and he, their father, might lose them at any time, as he had already lost Hanson and the 2d Kentucky. Unable, like Tennessee or Mississippi or Alabama soldiers, to see their homeland and, with fortune, visit their firesides, the Kentuckians were now outcasts, fighting for a cause their state denied. They were orphans of the storm, and Breckinridge regarded them as such. He did not call them so in public, it would be too demoralizing, but one day in agony he would give to them a name they bore with fierce pride to death and posterity. Now, perhaps, already he regarded them as the “Orphan Brigade.”7

  Orphans they were, and none more so than Roger W. Hanson and his rowdy regiment. Even as Breckinridge rode through Nashville, “Old Flintlock” and his men marched on their way to a place farther from home than ever they imagined.

  When Hanson reached Clarksville, he met with General Gideon J. Pillow, a Mexican War veteran now directing the marshaling of troops for Fort Donelson. “The redoubtable Gen Pillow,” as Hanson called him, ordered the Kentucky regiment and battery to proceed immediately to Donelson, which they did by steamboat. When he arrived, Hanson found a distressing situation. Fort Donelson consisted of a large earthwork erected on high ground on the south side of the Cumberland River, three quarters of a mile west of Dover, Tennessee. General Floyd, now in overall command, had just fifteen thousand men to defend over two miles of entrenchments that Pillow had begun building after the fall of Fort Henry. Grant, whose numbers were unknown but certain to be larger, was advancing overland while a gunboat fleet steamed up the river to attack Floyd from his rear. When Hanson marched into the entrenchments, Pillow sent him to the extreme right of the line, closest to Fort Donelson itself, with Hanson’s own right resting near the river. On February 11, immediately upon taking his place, Hanson began constructing more trenches and rifle pits in his front. “We had a great deal of work to do,” he wrote his wife, and precious little time to do it. By relays, the Kentuckians worked all through the night and the next day until they relinquished their tools so that other regiments might do the same. Meanwhile, Graves’s battery emplaced itself at the center of the line commanded now by Buckner. The other half of the line belonged to Pillow.

  On Wednesday, February 12, Grant first appeared in their front but showed no great anxiety to attack. He awaited his gunboats. That night Hanson put four of his companies in their intrenchments, expecting an attack the next day, and in the morning sent the remaining six in advance to the rifle pits. Few slept the night of February 12. Indeed, for Hanson at least there was almost no sleep at any time. “I had seen some hard times
as a soldier in the Mexican War,” he wrote a month later, “but the hardest time I have ever experienced was during the siege of Donaldson.” Most of the time his men had no tents, and the rest of their stay they had no blankets. “From the exposed position we had we were unable to sleep for several nights.” Hanson slept not at all, and when he did lie down it was only to awake with both ears frostbitten.8

  The morning of February 13 Grant finally opened fire. Just past light the federal artillery began, and shortly afterward the Kentuckians saw a line of bluecoated soldiers moving toward them through the woods in their front. They advanced in unbroken ranks to within a hundred yards of Hanson’s rifle pits before the Confederates fired. Undeterred, the Federals came another forty yards until Hanson’s fire disrupted their line and forced them back. Twice more this day they charged, and twice were repulsed.

  It unsettled the “Orphans.” For almost all of them these were the first hostile shots ever fired their way, an uncomfortable feeling. The men in reserve in the trenches, unable to fire at the enemy with six companies of their comrades out front in the pits, sat and bore the enemy bullets in silence. They dodged and ducked at every buzzing missile they heard, but Hanson walked among them calmly and told them not to bother. By the time a bullet was heard, he said, it was already past. Then one came dangerously close to “Bench-leg” and, as it whistled past, he involuntarily ducked his head, much to the delight of the men. With his usual good humor, he finally relented. “Boys, you may dodge a little if they come too close.”

  The dodge worked only for a few. Those who did not duck in time were hit, and here for the first time death found the Orphans in a real battle. At the first enemy volley, Sergeant Neil Hendricks of Company B took a bullet in the chest. He recovered, but H. B. Nelson of Company G did not. A federal bullet must have hit an artery for, even though his captain tried to stanch the flow with a handkerchief, Nelson bled to death in a few minutes. That night, the fighting done, several of his friends stole back to Dover and found boards to make a rude coffin. They buried Private Nelson in the Tennessee sod, a long way from home, the first of hundreds to die as Orphans.9

  Reinforcements arrived for Hanson that night, and again the following day. Now the enemy boats started their bombardment, which would be incessant for almost two days. This alone, despite the cold, prevented sleep for the already weary Kentuckians. They stood under arms all day, expecting an attack that did not come, though constant sharpshooting kept them alert. At about 3 A.M., Saturday, February 15, Buckner appeared at Hanson’s bivouack and ordered his men to follow him to Graves’s position, where they were to act as a reserve. Pillow would attack in the morning and the Orphans might be needed.

  Graves opened the attack by firing on a federal battery, which coolly replied for some time, Buckner all the while pacing calmly back and forth in front of Hanson’s men. At 9 A.M. Buckner sent two regiments forward to take the enemy battery. They made a valiant attempt, but fell back and Buckner, after replacing them in their intrenchments, went to Hanson. “The Second Kentucky will have to do that work!” he shouted. At the same moment a mounted man appeared in rear of the regiment, “purporting to be an officer,” said Hanson. Some thought it was Graves himself. Whoever it was, he cried out, “Where is the Second Kentucky? Come to the aid of my battery.” The captains of Companies B and G on Hanson’s left took this as an order and moved out, past Graves’s position, and forward against the battery that was giving him so much trouble. They got within fifty yards of the Federals, and there traded bullets for almost fifteen minutes. Then they started falling back, as the enemy pressed forward.

  Hanson was in a quandary. He sent for Buckner, but he could not be found. “There was no time for delay,” he decided. “I examined the state of the contest.” He saw cavalry led by Colonel Nathan B. Forrest make two unsuccessful charges on his left. “My men were eager for the fight,” he believed. Now “Bench-leg” decided not to await authority, but to advance on his own responsibility, believing he could stop the enemy advance and drive them back. At almost this same instant he received a request from Forrest to assist in another attempt to take the federal battery.

  Hanson marched his regiment forward, across their line of defenses, and down the slope to a ravine where Forrest awaited. Here his two detached companies rejoined him, and here Hanson told the men, “Hold your fire until at close quarters!” He would depend upon the bayonet if possible. Ahead of them lay 200 yards of open ground to cross before they reached the wood in which the enemy battery and its infantry supports sheltered. Forrest would charge the battery, Hanson the infantry.

  Steady, as if on parade, the Kentuckians moved forward. They took casualties. Lieutenant William Hill of Company F saw a cannon ball strike the ground in front of him and “come bounding along like a rabbit.” It hit him in the knee. Though removed to the field hospital, he died that night. Lieutenant Ed Keene took a mortal wound and was sent back. Hanson lost by his count fifty men in crossing that open space, yet not a man fired his rifle until they reached the woods. Then the Orphans poured forth a volley, while Forrest engaged hand-to-hand for the battery. When the Kentuckians got within forty yards of the Federals, the bluecoats abandoned their position and their artillery. Now Hanson saw Graves bring his battery forward to their support. The young artillerist took over the splendid captured cannon, and “Old Flintlock” led his regiment forward again several hundred yards. The enemy had retired completely, opening to them a road that led to the federal flanks and rear, and both Hanson and Forrest saw the worth of what they had taken. While they prepared to hold what they felt might be a pivotal position, orders came from Pillow directing them to return to their trenches on the right of the line. Grant, too, had been busy.10

  While Buckner attacked the federal center, Grant sent part of his own Army against the right of the Confederate line, the very area Hanson had left. Now, as “Bench-leg” and his rowdy Orphans returned to the right, they found the enemy advancing. He sent six companies running for the advance rifle pits, hoping to slow the Federals long enough for him to reoccupy the trenches with his remaining companies. A few of the men actually got into their rifle pits before the enemy, but they were too few. After a brief but hot firefight, the Confederates retreated. The casualties, by now, about 4 P.M., were substantial. Company B lost its captain, Ed Keene, early in the fight. Now it was led by the captain of Company G, Ed Spears, even though he was hit and carrying his arm in a sling. Yet Spears, like the rest of the Kentuckians, abandoned the rifle pits to the enemy.

  Hanson re-formed the regiment somewhat, and then three times assaulted the trenches. Spears, wound and all, “seemed ready, indeed anxious,” as one man of his company put it, “to lead us in a bayonet charge to drive the enemy out of the works which they had taken from us.” The best that the Kentuckians could accomplish was to drive the Federals out of the trenches briefly, but the bluecoats only stopped on the other side of the earth rampart thrown up in front of the trenches, where they turned and used the rampart as a breastwork. Finally Hanson and another regiment, the 18th Tennessee, withdrew in some confusion. They rallied on the rear crest of the hill, though much intermingled, when Buckner arrived and ordered them into line, ignoring company or regimental organization. Indeed, one who was there said Buckner “stood where men were falling around him as calm as on review.” Hanson, too, steadied the men by his example. Despite their situation, darkness approaching, the enemy in possession of his trenches, and the men exhausted, he had time to be pleased with his regiment. “The entire regiment did all I expected of them,” he would tell his wife in a few weeks, “and that you know was a great deal.”

  Hanson himself narrowly escaped injury. The lower left leg of his trousers was shot away without hurt to him. A bullet came close enough to pass through the nightshirt that he kept stuffed in the pocket of his uniform jacket. And when he started to mount his horse during one of the charges, a cannon ball struck and killed the animal. Graves, who brought two pieces from his bat
tery to assist in stabilizing Hanson’s new line atop the hill, also had narrow misses. After the firing died in the fading light, he walked forward over the contested field and found a young federal soldier, severely wounded and in great suffering. Graves brought him behind the lines to a rifle pit occupied by Company B of the 4th Kentucky, the company assigned to Graves. One of the gunners in the company, Oliver Steele of Henderson County, recognized the young federal soldier as his own brother. Here for the first time, though certainly not the last in this war, the Orphans discovered the horror of what was, for Kentucky, truly a “brothers’ war.” How much more an Orphan Ollie Steele felt when his brother died in the pit that night.

  With the safety of nightfall, Buckner pulled Hanson farther up the hill he occupied, and there attempted to build a new defense. “This position was a stronger one than the one lost, and every effort was made that night to construct defenses,” Hanson reported, “but the men were so exhausted from labor and loss of sleep that it was utterly impossible.” Buckner continued moving among the Orphans calming them, but he knew that another battle the next day would certainly be the end of them. That night in a conference with Pillow and Floyd he declared that the 2d Kentucky was “as good a regiment as there was in the service.” Yet in attempting to retake the trenches this afternoon, he had been actually forced to grasp as many as twenty men to turn them to forward against the enemy. Many of the Orphans were so exhausted from loss of sleep and exposure that they could not think, much less fight. “It was not your fault, my brave boys,” Buckner said to them as they futilely worked at new defenses, “it was not your fault.” Those sensible enough to realize what had happened that day felt downcast that in their first battle they lost their position to the enemy. Buckner’s words were a little reassuring. Then he left to discuss the gravity of the situation with the other generals, and the Orphans were alone.

 

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