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

by Davis, William C.

  Trabue seemed to be everywhere steadying his men before the fight. He rode calmly along the line, speaking in low, soothing tones to the men, “apparently as free from excitement as when on review.” Every regiment saw him; most of the men heard him as he casually remarked upon the course of the battle. Here, for the first time, a superior officer appeared on the field, Major General Hardee. Since fighting had taken place here well before Trabue’s arrival, the ground lay littered with dead. Thus he found it difficult to form a perfectly straight line, though he compelled the Kentuckians to stand even astride the dead in the attempt. Hardee smiled, perhaps because of this, and offered his compliments to Trabue.

  “General, I have a Kentucky brigade here,” said the colonel. “What shall I do with it?”

  “Put it in where the fight is the thickest, sir,” Hardee responded, then rode away. Such was the degree of command being exercised even by professional soldiers this day.

  Left to his own discretion, Trabue moved Hunt’s 5th Kentucky farther to extend his own left, completed turning the brigade to face the Federals in their front, and attacked. “In a few minutes we were in the thickest of the fight,” wrote Johnny Green. Several color corporals of Hunt’s regiment fell dead in the first few minutes, and Green himself took a wound. When litter bearers readied to take him from the field, he told them, “There is too much work here for a man to go to the rear as long as he can shoot a gun.” Fortunately, as Johnny put it, the bullet that hit him “glanced off my hard head.”

  Most of the 4th Kentucky carried Enfields now, and used prepared cartridges that allowed relatively rapid fire. “The ground in front of us was heaped up with dead men,” wrote John Weller of the 4th, but their own men fell as well. Captain John B. Rogers saw his own brother killed on the skirmish line and soon after fell himself. John Marshall took a bullet in the breast pocket that only missed snuffing his life thanks to burying itself in a Testament given him by a woman in Kentucky.

  Trabue estimated that he battered the Federals in his front for an hour and a quarter. He put the 4th Kentucky on his left, Lewis’ 6th Kentucky in the center, and Hunt’s 5th on the right, holding the 31st Alabama in reserve. He no longer had Cobb’s battery, it having been ordered to the right shortly before. “The enemy appeared to outnumber us greatly,” he reported. After a time Trabue put the Alabamians on his left to extend it, and then finding portions of two of Bragg’s brigades in his rear, he put them in line, ordered bayonets fixed, and charged. He said it was a “complete success.”

  The regiment immediately fronting the 4th Kentucky was the 46th Ohio. As Nuckols readied his regiment to charge them, giving the order to “change front forward on 8th Company,” the Ohioans, too, changed their front to meet them, maintaining a steady fire as they did so. Finally the two hostile regiments stood little more than fifty yards apart when, at the command, the Kentuckians delivered a volley that threw the Buckeye outfit into utter confusion. When Nuckols charged, the enemy did not stand at all, but withdrew without looking back. Another federal regiment tried to take its place without being able to stop the Orphans’ charge. Lewis and his 6th Kentucky met with lesser resistance in his part of the assault, though an enemy bullet killed his horse under him. As for Hunt, his regiment, only eight companies strong and still under temporary organization, suffered heavy casualties. Captain Caldwell took sixty-four men into the fight in his company and lost 64 per cent of them, himself suffering a broken left arm. They, too, succeeded in their advance. When Trabue’s line passed the first enemy camps in their path, some of Hunt’s men found a beautiful silk banner with the goddess of liberty and the motto “We will die for our country” on one side, and “Victory or death” on the other. Considering that the owners of the banner left it without a fight, Hunt quipped that “the entire command was killed, for they surely could not have thrown away their colors after going in to win or die.” The flag they would give to Breckinridge as a souvenir, while its staff they appropriated to themselves to replace their own banner’s flagstaff, shot in two earlier in the day.4

  So far the men and officers acted superbly for untested volunteer soldiers. Until now, Trabue noted, no part of the brigade faltered or fell back at any time. The 4th Kentucky engaged in assaulting a second encampment, called on Lewis and the 6th for assistance, and the regiment moved smartly to its aid. Hunt, Breckinridge would later say, “conducted himself with the utmost coolness and courage.” At this point even civilians took a hand. Governor George W. Johnson, who had been acting as a volunteer aide, found his services curtailed when his horse fell dead. Without hesitation he took a musket and joined the 4th Kentucky as a foot soldier.

  Byrne and Cobb had been busy too this day. Most of the artillery on the left side of Johnston’s line concentrated against a division of Federals led by Brigadier General Benjamin Prentiss. In all, eleven batteries, including Cobb and Byrne, took part in the bombardment of Prentiss’ position, which continued for hours during the morning and afternoon. Byrne sat on his horse giving orders, while members of Bragg’s staff looked on admiringly. At one point a colonel raised a cheer for Byrne, a shout taken up by his gunners and passed on along the line. Bragg doffed his cap in salute. Furiously the artillerists worked their guns, pouring scores of shots into Prentiss’ besieged position. The enthusiastic colonel, so enraptured with what he saw, dismounted and put his hand to the barrel of one of Byrne’s guns, saying that he just “wanted to feel it.”5

  After his initial success, Trabue found that he had to move forward slowly due to the broken terrain. At the same time a confusion of colors slowed his advance thanks to a Louisiana unit to his left whose blue uniforms gave him pause. He sent an aide to determine their identity, but not before some of the Orphans accidentally gave them a volley. This produced speedy results, the soldiers quickly turning their blue coats inside out and raising their Confederate battle flag well into view.

  Gradually, as the federal resistance in his front continued to pull back, Trabue turned his brigade to the right. The whole Union line steadily withdrew through the day, except for the stubborn Prentiss and his division. By 4 P.M. he was nearly surrounded, but still held his place in his camps, buying time for Grant to establish a better defense in the rear. Hardee shifted most of his corps to the left of the line, and Bragg and Breckinridge’s two brigades faced Prentiss’ front and left flank. Now Trabue found himself on Prentiss’ exposed right flank, almost directly across the path he would have to take should he attempt to escape.

  Just as he reached this position, Trabue saw Federals from Prentiss’ camps attempting to withdraw. Wheeling the brigade slightly, Trabue sent several volleys into them and they fled back into the “hornets’ nest” from which now there could be no escape. Then he advanced and, almost simultaneously, so did the rest of the Confederates encircling the federal position. Soon a man in the 31st Alabama saw a white flag arise over what he presumed to be Prentiss’ headquarters. The fight at the “hornets’ nest” was done, the Federals surrendered after a stand of exceptional heroism. At the same instant Trabue and the Orphans entered Prentiss’ camps from the left, and Breckinridge and his staff approached from the right. “Then and there,” wrote Hodge, who was present, “in the full fruition of success, the Kentucky Brigade and its General met for the first time during that bloody day since their separation in the morning, both covered with glory; both proud of and gratified with each other.”6

  It had been quite a day for Breckinridge, too. After leaving Trabue, he attempted gradually to feel his way toward the Tennessee River on the right, where Johnston wanted him to turn and press Grant’s left. With no maps and no knowledge of the terrain, Breckinridge found the way difficult, and it was almost noon by the time he reached the front. The Federals on Prentiss’ left had just pulled back into line with him, and now the Kentuckian took his two brigades and one lent him into a front over a mile long. Soon Johnston himself joined them as they readied their first assault.

  Breckinridge waited under a larg
e oak, where he made quite a picture in his uniform of dark-blue Kentucky “jeans.” Always before clean-shaven, he was growing a dark, flowing mustache now. Johnston’s adjutant, Thomas Jordan, saw him there and found that “His dark eyes seemed to illuminate his swarthy, regular features, and as he sat in his saddle he seemed to me altogether the most impressive-looking man I had ever seen.” Just then a federal shell struck the oak, exploding within it, and Breckinridge dashed out in a storm of flying splinters.

  His first advance occupied a federal camp without opposition, but then an enemy battery opened on them. “Never mind this, boys,” he told the men, “press on!” By half past noon he had undisputed possession of the camp. Advancing another three quarters of a mile toward a second federal position, he finally met Prentiss. For the next hour he led his brigades in repeated attacks against the “hornets’ nest,” and then decided upon a last desperate charge. But a Tennessee regiment would not rally to take its part, and he requested help from Johnston. He told the army commander that he feared he could not get the men to make another charge. Johnston calmly said, “Oh yes, General, I think you can.” He would help him.

  They rode together along the line encouraging the men, then Breckinridge took a place at the right of the troublesome regiment and Johnston at its left.

  The line moved with a shout. Breckinridge had not proceeded far when he saw his aide, Charlie Ivey. “We were just getting into what was afterwards called the hornets’ nest,” wrote Ivey, “and in my blind enthusiasm and love for Gen. B., fearing he would be struck by the rain of shot and shell, I rode around in front of him, placing myself and horse between him and the enemy.” Breckinridge saw what Ivey was about and “roasted me,” ordering the boy to the rear, “so mortified and completely undone” that he could not face the general for the rest of the day.

  Down a slope Breckinridge led his men full into Prentiss’ line. It broke, with the Confederates racing on and Breckinridge yelling, “Charge them, Tennesseeans! Charge them!” Every single member of his staff took a fall or wound here. Hawkins was hit in the face; Hodge, right next to Breckinridge, had his horse killed under him; Cabell Breckinridge, at his father’s side with “beautiful composure and serene fidelity,” lost two horses. Another staff member saw his own leg torn to pieces by a federal shell. “Breckinridge,” wrote General Johnston’s son, “leading and towering above them all, was the only one who escaped unscathed.” Then, about two-thirty, a special messenger came to the general bringing word from Colonel William Preston that General Johnston was dead. He had bled to death from an otherwise minor wound.7

  It was more than two hours later that Breckinridge led his command into Prentiss’ camps and met with Trabue and the Orphans. It was a happy reunion for both. Hardee was on the scene and he ordered Trabue to send a regiment to escort the federal prisoners to the rear. Trabue sent Crews’s Tennesseeans. Then he gave the Orphans a brief rest and let them rummage through the captured camp, exchanging their old muskets for the Enfield rifles just liberated from Prentiss’ men. In all, some 1,393 rifles were taken, along with 11 swords and 4 cannon, enough to greatly enhance the Orphans’ armory.

  The Kentuckians created a bit of a stir among the wounded enemies lying about the camp. As far back as their stay in Bowling Green, Federals believed many of the Orphans to be Indians. Some members of the brigade took the title of “Buckner’s Indians” as a result, and now one of them shouted to the wounded, “Here comes yer Buckner’s Indians.” Bluecoats timidly peered about looking for painted faces and scalping knives. One poor fellow sat up, put his hand to his hair protectively, and said, “And you have Indians with you sure enough, haven’t you? I heard that you had.” Their fears were soon relieved, however, and those who had hair were allowed to take it to the rear with them.8

  Breckinridge did not allow the men to loot the camps and brought them back into line within a few minutes after they exchanged their rifles. He reunited Trabue with his other two brigades, and led the corps forward again toward the enemy, now withdrawn with its back to Pittsburg Landing. It needed only one more push to drive Grant away from the landing, and isolate him from Buell. They halted overlooking the landing for an hour, undergoing a terrible cannonade from gunboats on the river. Breckinridge readied a charge in the gathering dusk, but just as he was ready to move he received an order from Beauregard, now commanding, that he was to retire to shelter for the night. He thought it a mistake, yet complied, moving Trabue back to the vicinity of the 46th Ohio camps, though not before a last federal shell struck the 4th Kentucky, killing three men and tearing the leg from Irish John Gillen. He refused all attentions, knowing himself dying. “There is many a better man than myself that has died here today,” he told them. He died that night.9

  It had been a tense day, and not just for the Orphans in the battle. In Corinth in the hospitals, Kentuckians like Gervis Grainger heard the boom of the cannon and musketry. “Every one stood aghast,” he found; “scarcely a word was spoken for hours together.” For him they were “hours of anxiety and suspense,” not much relieved late in the day by the arrival of the first wagons bearing the wounded.

  Closer to the fight, Johnny Jackman finally reached the rear hours after the battle began, having to borrow a horse to ride. He first encountered the wounded retiring from the line. “I felt then that I was getting in the vicinity of ‘warfare.’ ” He could hear the wounded in the ambulances groaning and shrieking in their pain as they bounced along the rutted road. Dismounting, he found the strength to head for the front on foot, and soon met a skulker who looked at him sheepishly and asked in a heavy drawl, “Has you’ns been in the fight yet?” Johnny did not entirely understand, and asked in reply just what brigade it was that “General Youens” commanded.

  Finally Jackman found the Orphan Brigade hospital. “There were heaps of wounded lying about.” The doctor in charge asked him to stay and help. Jackman administered chloroform to the men before the surgeon amputated mangled arms and legs, his handkerchief so saturated with the chemical that Johnny frequently swooned himself. By nightfall, when the firing finally stopped, “I was tired, sick, and all covered with blood. But I was in far better fix than many that were there.” He sat on a medicine chest in the surgeon’s tent, nodded his head, and slept the night through.10

  Some distance away Trabue tallied his losses for the day. As the rain opened again, his officers made returns that told the story of the day’s fight. All told, 75 of the Orphans lay dead, and another 350 wounded filled the makeshift hospital. The 4th Kentucky took the worst casualties among the infantry, but it was Cobb’s battery that was hit hardest. In effect, it no longer existed. In the fight against Prentiss it lost all its battery horses killed and 37 of its men wounded. Cobb had to draw his guns away from the field with mules.11

  The men settled for the night, some in the 46th Ohio’s camp, the 5th Kentucky in that vacated by the 6th Iowa. Hunt’s Orphans found an abundance of candles among the spoils and illuminated their bivouac as they surveyed their plunder. They commandeered piles of new blankets and filled their haversacks with “rare delicacies for the palate.” “Here was a chance for a feed, such as we had not had before for months,” recalled Marshall of the 4th Kentucky. They found “all the comforts and luxuries of life,” and Marshall concluded that the sutler of the 46th Ohio “must have catered for the Burnet or St. Charles in days gone by.” There was everything to tempt their appetites, “and as it was a free lunch we stood not upon ceremony.” Men put ten pounds of tea in a single kettle, enough to brew a cistern full. Whole cheeses they hoisted upon their bayonets. Tins of beef and fruits flew from one to another, and into knapsacks already bursting with booty. Beer, wine, and brandy made their appearance as well, and the men of the 4th had a good “wet.” In all “it was a grand feast,” said Marshall. “It was hinted, more than once, that the troops might be, to some extent, demoralized for the next day’s work by reason of the night’s debauch, but there was nothing in it, albeit some may have felt as I
did, just a little thin about the gills.”

  Johnny Green and his comrades in Hunt’s 5th Kentucky “had little doubts that all we would have to do next day would be to bury our dead.” Consequently, they, too, reveled. For dinner they supped on hardtack, bacon, cheese, and all the tea and coffee they could drink. While some boiled water, Green went with a bucket to the Shiloh Branch for water. He stepped on what he took for a log as he bent down, then found that “my log was a dead man.” He could not see that the creek brimmed with the dead, else he would not have taken the water back to camp. Before bedding for the night he told a friend, “Gos” Elston, that he thought he saw him killed earlier that day. “Greenie!” Elston replied, “you can bet your last dollar that Elston will come out safe.”

  Others were not so sure of themselves. Several months before, Major Tom Monroe of the 4th Kentucky confided to John Marshall a presentiment that he, Monroe, would be killed in his first battle. To-night, as the two shared a tent, Marshall reminded him of it in good humor and laughed at him for “entertaining such old-time superstitions.” Monroe did not laugh back. “The enemy will be heavily reinforced to-night,” he said, “and to-morrow’s fight will be more severe than to-day’s by reason of the increased odds against us, and as the two-days’ fight will constitute only one battle it is too early for your congratulations.” Monroe finished his smoke and said, “Now as it is late and we shall need all the rest and sleep we can get, I bid you good night.”12

  As Monroe predicted, the morning found Buell and Grant together, and now the Confederates were outnumbered. The Orphans awoke, many of them with little sleep thanks to thunder during the night and an occasional shell fired from enemy gunboats. There was no surprise to lose this morning, so the brigade buglers sounded reveille and the men gleefully prepared their breakfast. Then came an abrupt order from Trabue. Discharge their muskets and reload afresh, and form. Some felt they noted a lack of that enthusiasm they saw displayed the day before. Either the men were tired or hung over, or more apprehensive when they believed that Grant was still in their front. Marshall told Monroe of his feeling, but the major just laughed and said he probably ate too much the night before. Elsewhere on the line Colonel Hunt ordered the men to discard their booty and prepare for battle. When he saw that Sergeant Henry Cowling still sported a big round of Ohio cheese at the end of his bayonet, Hunt “almost took his head off & made him throw the cheese away.”