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

by Davis, William C.

  On September 30 they finally reached Montgomery, and without a rest boarded a train for Atlanta. Along the way the ladies of the towns they passed thronged at the depots to cheer them. By the time they reached Atlanta the cars bulged with the bouquets thrown to them along the way, but their reception now was much different. They were getting a reputation, these Orphans, and not just in the Army. “In Atlanta all the people were scared,” lamented Johnny Jackman, “having heard that Breckinridge’s wild Kentuckians were coming through.” About all that greeted them at the depot were a number of refugees from Kentucky, “bright eyes” from the “promised land.”

  Breckinridge rode with the Orphans throughout the trip toward Knoxville, and as the train passed Dalton, Georgia, he entered Jackman’s car for the remainder of the journey. Word of his coming spread before him, and at every stop on the route people gathered around the train and asked him to step out and speak to them. Invariably he declined, and finally left the car to join Hunt and others in the caboose. He had given up speaking for a better occupation, he said—fighting. Finally he napped as the train proceeded on its way, and when the crowd called for him at the next stop, the mayor demanding “Gineril Brackanridge,” someone pointed to Dr. John E. Pendleton instead. A good-looking man in his own right, the surgeon of the 5th Kentucky kept quiet, allowed the people to gaze sufficiently at him for several years’ worth of stories of how they saw the great General Breckinridge, and then the train left. The same scene repeated itself at subsequent stops until they reached Knoxville late on October 2.2

  Immediately upon arriving, Breckinridge wired Bragg that he was near. Bragg and his Army already lay deep in Kentucky. The next day, having captured Frankfort, they installed Richard Hawes as Confederate governor of the state, but advancing Federals forced them to retire immediately. The Kentucky campaign had gone sour almost from the beginning, and Bragg was a man psychologically unable to take responsibility for defeat. He must have someone on which to blame the failure of his great endeavor, and that would be the unsympathetic people of Kentucky, their self-important generals in his Army, and particularly the foremost Kentuckian of them all, John C. Breckinridge. Thus Bragg was not receptive to Breckinridge’s statement that “I hope you are satisfied with my energy since I was allowed to leave.” It did not matter that in just two weeks the Kentuckians had traveled over eleven hundred miles on seven different railroads and one water route, hampered all the way by official interference. Indeed, Bragg had already been hard at work for a month building his case against Breckinridge. “I had hoped General Breckinridge would be with me soon, but he is far behind my calculation,” Bragg complained early in September. By September 17 he was blaming the Kentuckian for not being with him, even though he knew that Van Dorn would not allow him to leave at the time. By September 25 Bragg claimed that “the failure of Genl Breckinridge to carry out his part of my program has seriously embarrassed me, and moreover the whole campaign.” Just days before the Kentuckian reached Knoxville, Bragg declared that “Breckinridge has failed.” Within the recesses of his own twisted mind, Braxton Bragg made himself an enemy of the Kentuckians as deadly as any federal bullet. Soon he would strike.3

  Immediately upon reaching Knoxville, Breckinridge organized the troops with him and those found there to take them into Kentucky. True, Bragg was retreating from Frankfort, but fresh troops and the presence of the Orphans in their native state and led by their general might still retrieve the campaign. After two months of constant frustration in his efforts, Breckinridge would not give up yet, though he was tired, angry, and showing signs of an unaccustomed irritability. His frustration eased a little when he found an old friend awaiting him in Knoxville, or rather old friends. “Bench-leg” Hanson and the rowdy 2d Kentucky were back to join the Orphan Brigade.

  5. Colonel Joseph H. Lewis’ appeal to the Barren County men to join his 6th Kentucky Infantry. (From Joseph H. Lewis Scrapbook. Courtesy Helene Lewis Gildred)

  6. The father of the Orphan Brigade, Major General John C. Breckinridge. The love of each for the other became legendary. (From the Author’s Collection)

  7. “Old Trib.” Colonel Robert P. Trabue raised the 4th Kentucky, then led the Brigade at Shiloh. He wasn’t much for tactics, but the men knew he was a leader. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)

  8. “Uncle Tom” Hunt, like Trabue, would have made a good general. Yet he, too, had to abandon his Orphans. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)

  9. Major Thomas B. Monroe died on the field at Shiloh at the head of his 4th Kentucky. They buried him beneath a tree and put his name on the trunk. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)

  10. Captain D. E. McKendree made quite a speech to his company of Orphans before Shiloh. They did not fail him, but they did lose him at Dallas. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)

  11. Brigadier General William Preston commanded part of the Orphans for a time but left them to go where they would not—Kentucky. (Courtesy Massachusetts MOLLUS Collection)

  It had not been an easy time for “Old Flintlock” and his imprisoned Orphans, though it could have been worse. At first the Federals even considered allowing his wife, Virginia, along with Mrs. Buckner and other spouses, to visit their husbands before they reached Fort Warren. This they later denied, but still Hanson could write. He begged Virginia to write to him every day, warning her that “you need not hope to see me while I am a prisoner. The rule here is inflexible.” Meanwhile, he comforted her that “I have nothing to complain of.” As for coming home or rejoining his brigade, he tried to put it from his mind. “When I shall get my liberty again is a question I do not discuss or think about. I shall abide patiently my fate and hope I shall have the heart to meet any emergency that may befall me.” Virginia took his incarceration hard for the first months, and this pained him more than his own situation. “What is the use of being sad?” he asked her. “That does not make my imprisonment of shorter duration or more agreeable.”

  At first Hanson shared a room with Buckner and others, but soon the general was placed in solitary confinement. Those who remained made a comfortable lodging of their cell. “Bench-leg” took particular pleasure in the softness of his straw mattress, reminding Virginia, “You know I like a soft bed.” Indeed, he told her, “We live as well as I have ever lived in my life.” By the beginning of May he began thinking of exchange. “I am expecting every day to hear something about exchange,” he wrote, but what followed was the fiasco with Huger. “Just as the little boy says,” he wrote Virginia, “I want to go home.” Indeed, he never despaired of release even after the bumbled attempt at exchange for Corcoran. “I can not believe that two Governments in this age of the World will be so cruel as to keep ten or fifteen thousand prisoners each in prison when they have the power to release them.” One year hence such naïveté would bring smiles, if not laughter.

  There were other means of passing the time as well. Friends and relatives from Kentucky wrote and sent small packages of delicacies. Poor Captain S. F. Chipley received letters from his father “lecturing him upon the glories of the Union,” but one example of the families of Kentucky that this war divided. Hanson took good-natured barbs from old friends in the Bluegrass who supported the Union. Chief among them was a man personally beloved, yet politically despised, by a host of Kentucky Confederates, George D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal. Shortly after Hanson took residence at Fort Warren, Prentice sent him a demijohn of whisky and the injunction, “I hope, my old friend, that you will take things calmly. I hope you are a philosopher, which is the next best thing to a patriot, which is the next best thing to a Christian. Pray be the first, for I almost despair of your ever being either of the last.” Hoping that “Heaven and the United States Government” would deal kindly with Hanson, Prentice gave his affectionate regards. Hanson responded in kind, gleefully reminding Prentice that his own sons now wore the gray, and rejecting the whisky, “as I do not drink myself.” He did admit that on a couple of occasions the two of them raised a glass together in ha
ppier times, “but upon neither of them do I believe that you were in a condition to tell how much anybody else drank.” Since Prentice liked to refer to Hanson as a drunkard in his editorials, “Old Flintlock” turned the same accusation against him. “I hope you will become a sober man,” he wrote, “which is the next best thing to a truthful man, which is the next best thing to an honest man—pray be the first as I almost despair of your being either of the two last.” Noting Prentice’s wish that God and the Lincoln administration would be kind to him, Hanson closed with his own hope that “hell and your conscience may deal as kindly with you.” He signed the letter “Your old friend.” What remarkable people these Kentuckians.4

  Though Hanson stood his captivity in some comfort, the enlisted men of the 2d Kentucky Infantry met a different lot in Camp Morton, Indiana. There the frills the officers received did not abide. They did have their regimental dog, Frank, captured with them at Donelson, but little else. As a result, escape loomed inviting, and these Orphans never stopped trying. John Crockett of Graves’s command led one attempt to overpower a guard, while Jim Fagan of the 2d, a native of Indiana, actually reached the outside but ran into some patriotic farmers with squirrel rifles and soon rejoined his comrades. At one time the Orphans rose in a mass in their determination to be free. They overran a weak point in the stockade only to meet federal guards outside. A small battle ensued, and the Orphans found themselves overpowered, bloodied, and returned to their barracks. J. F. Collins actually escaped with fifty others and got a mile from the prison before the guard caught him. He surrendered, but from confusion or cruelty, they shot him. Of the few who did escape to Kentucky, most, like Lieutenant H. F. Lester of the 2d Kentucky, rejoined their commands. Others became partisans or guerrillas instead. Jerome Clark of the 4th Kentucky helped serve Graves’s guns at Donelson before capture. When allowed to bathe in a river near the prison, Clark and three others overpowered their guards and fled for Kentucky, intending to find their brigade. Instead, Federals found them, and one of their company was almost murdered. Clark swore revenge. Escaping his captors, he became one of the most dread bushwhackers and guerrillas in the Bluegrass, known as “Sue Mundy.” And, though none of the Orphans might care to remember the fact, there were those Kentuckians unable to escape who could no longer take captivity. They had one alternative—taking the oath of allegiance to the United States. Five of “Benchleg’s” Orphans took the oath, as did one of Graves’s. It was a matter not spoken of by the others.5

  Yet exchange came at last for Hanson’s men, and for him on August 5, 1862. By September he was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, organizing supplies and arms for Bragg’s Kentucky expedition, and hopeful of joining in it himself. He commanded an ersatz brigade for a time, incorporating his own 2d Kentucky, but expected all the while to be reunited with the 1st Kentucky Brigade when Breckinridge brought them by on their route home. On October 3, as “Old Breck” and the Orphans reached Knoxville, Hanson was ready. Anxiously he wired Breckinridge, “Do we go with you?”6

  Yes, Hanson would go with him, if he went at all. For Breckinridge the frustration of the last two months did not lessen upon reaching Knoxville. Rather, it increased; for here he encountered new difficulties, including the governor of Tennessee trying to appropriate his troops for other purposes. Normally a man of unusually pacific temperament, the general felt increasingly the weight of his thwarted efforts to enable his Orphans to campaign for their homes. Amid all the worry and frustration fraying his nerves, he did not need additional aggravation. The 1st Kentucky Brigade could not have chosen a more inopportune moment to mutiny.

  No more independent men served the Confederacy than its Kentuckians. However wild and reckless their conduct, they were men who, like their state, guarded jealously every right, every prerogative. Considering the peculiar relationship they bore with the new nation, they felt entitled to stand on their rights. Unlike any other unit from a genuine Confederate state, they were entirely volunteers. The draft could not apply to Kentuckians. They were here because they wanted to be here. Indeed, they did not even fight for their own state. They fought and died for a nation their native soil refused to countenance. As a result, they resented being treated like soldiers from the seceded states. Not citizens of the Confederate States of America, they did not feel bound by its actions. In particular, they objected to the conscription.

  The roots of the trouble dated from the time Hunt’s 5th Kentucky formally organized. While most regiments for southern service were raised for three years or the duration, Buckner enlisted this regiment for one year on the condition that they provide their own arms. This they did, though soon thereafter Breckinridge tried to get the War Department to pay them for their guns, with something additional to allow for the inflation of Confederate currency. It is unclear whether these Orphans ever got the money, but if they did, it rather effectively negated their part of the enlistment contract. Thus they should have been eligible for three years’ service too.

  The men began to feel uneasy on this score that summer of 1862 when they saw other twelve months’ volunteers automatically being continued in the service for three years or the war, with or without their consent. By early September the rumor coursed through Hunt’s camps that Breckinridge intended they should be held in service after their year expired. Fearful that it might be true, the officers of the 5th Kentucky addressed a letter to their general on September 16, even as the move toward Kentucky finally commenced. They pointed to their “contract” with Buckner and declared that “in view of the fact, that at the time of the enlistment of the men, they were citizens of another nation; and also that our native state has never been under the control of the Confederacy,… They do not consider themselves liable to the provisions of the Conscript Act.” They asked to be discharged when their year expired.

  The thought of being forced to remain in the service created unrest in the 5th Kentucky, and “the existing dissatisfaction would materially impair, if not completely ruin the efficiency of the Regt. and bring disgrace upon our noble state.” If discharged, they believed that most would voluntarily re-enlist or else go into Kentucky and recruit. Whichever, they would not be forced to stay soldiers against their will. Being impelled to do anything forcible simply outraged the honor of Kentuckians.7

  With Hunt still absent healing from his wound, the officers prevailed upon Lieutenant Colonel Caldwell to deliver the letter to Breckinridge. The general took two days to think about it, then replied. “Nothing since I have been in the Army has given me greater pain than your declaration,” he said to them. “Nothing will be wanting in me to remove any just cause of complaint on the part of … a Regiment which for conduct and courage is not surpassed by any in the service of the South.” Yet, he reminded them that a representative assembly of Kentuckians did secede from the Union in the rump convention at Russellville, and that the state sent delegates to the Congress in Richmond. On that basis, the Orphans stood subject to Confederate laws as much as soldiers of any other state. He could only promise to send their application to Richmond for a decision. Meanwhile, he said, “I never will believe the 5th Ky capable of meditating any course that would bring grief to our friends at home and tarnish its well earned renown.” When Breckinridge forwarded the matter to the War Department, he stated more emphatically his belief that Hunt’s men possessed no cause for complaint, and later Richmond would agree.8

  Events prevented any immediate act by the disgruntled Orphans, for they left for Jackson, Mississippi, “going to Kentucky certain this time,” the day after the general replied. But three days later the dissatisfaction erupted in action. On September 22 Companies A and C of the 5th Kentucky stacked their arms at Meridian and declared that their time was up, they would serve no longer. Caldwell appeared on the scene shortly and arrested both companies, detailed Company B to guard them, and on the spot reduced all noncommissioned officers among the mutineers to the ranks. “Both companies had unanimously refused to do duty any longer,” he told Breckinri
dge. “A sincere desire to heal the troubles in the regiment and save from disgrace the men who came into the service with me” prevented Caldwell from taking more harsh measures for the moment. That evening “Uncle Tom” Hunt hobbled before the mutineers on his crutches and persuaded them to take their arms and return to duty. He promised that the officials in Richmond would be consulted on the matter of conscription.9

  The next day they left for Mobile. On the face of it, the matter rested. Yet beneath the surface, tempers continued to inflame. Before the Orphans reached Knoxville, the fever spread to Lewis’ 6th Kentucky as well, they being another twelve months’ regiment. Their enlistments expired on October 2 in the main, some earlier. Lewis did not miss the unrest in his regiment, nor the threat of trouble, yet for several days he remained quiet, listening much, saying little. He consulted with his officers, he took counsel with Hanson, and finally wrote a personal letter to Breckinridge. “I do not fear open resistance to authority,” he told the general, “but I have not the philosophy to meet, with composure, the gradual destruction of a regiment, by a slow poison, that has hitherto conducted itself so gallantly.” He wanted nothing more than to command the 6th Kentucky Infantry, he concluded, “but I wish to be spared the pain of witnessing its defection on account of unjust treatment.”

  Then the Orphans mutinied. On the evening of October 8, even while a desperate Breckinridge feverishly tried to clear their path to Kentucky, a number of Lewis’ men refused to do duty. “We, in a body,” wrote Grainger, “demanded discharge, or to be made ‘mounted infantry.’ ” They did not answer roll call and declined to take orders of any kind. This was the second mutiny in the brigade in two weeks.