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

by Davis, William C.

  For Mary Breckinridge herself, regarded by many of the Orphans as the mother of the brigade, the winter proved hard as she spent most of it separated from the general. Always she urged him to join her. “If I only had you here after all of your dangers and hardships I would be so happy,” she wrote. “I want to hear from you so much.” She passed the time by tending wounded soldiers, sewing shirts for the general, making soap for the Kentuckians’ hospitals, and buying delicacies like white sugar and French gelatine for the soldiers. From her wedding dress she made a beautiful battle flag, which she sent to her husband, instructing him to present it to his best regiment. Fearful of being accused of favoritism, Breckinridge did not give it to one of the Kentucky units but, instead, to the 20th Tennessee of his division. Further, thinking that if her name were mentioned in connection with the flag, the Federals might arrest her, he made no mention of the flag’s maker. Mary did not like that. “I regret very much not having the flag presented in my name,” she wrote him. “I thought the beauty was in coming from your wife.” Furthermore, “by all means it ought to have been given to a Ky regiment.” Of course, she could not stay angry for long. The general obtained a brief leave of absence in late January to spend a few days with her. When he returned to the Army, she begged him—he was never much of a letter writer—to correspond frequently. “If you knew how much pleasure they gave me,” she said of his letters, “I know you would write oftener. I will be willing to take short ones and much space taken up in writing my name and yours and my place of residence &c &c.” Any word at all was better than nothing.20

  Besides, as the winter moved on from January, Breckinridge and the Kentuckians quickly found themselves embroiled in one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the Army of Tennessee. Braxton Bragg, with yet another strategic defeat on his hands, sought scapegoats once more. After the Perryville debacle he naturally looked first to Breckinridge, particularly since the disastrous charge at Stones River. Silently Bragg started to gather his evidence against the Kentuckian. Breckinridge’s aide, Theodore O’Hara, first detected what the commanding general was about. “B.B. is evidently preparing & marshalling all his resources of shallow cunning and foolish chicanery, energized by a ranting hate, to make war upon you & wreak to the utmost his ignoble spite against you,” O’Hara warned the Kentuckian. Breckinridge respected O’Hara and thought he had the “quickest eye” he had ever seen on the battlefield. O’Hara’s eye proved even quicker for intrigue.

  Bragg attacked Breckinridge in his report of the fight at Murfreesboro, and quickly tried to lay all the blame for its loss on him, implying chiefly that the failure of the January 2 assault was directly attributable to Breckinridge. To support his case, he falsified official reports of numbers and losses, virtually ordered a subordinate to submit a perjured report, and received some materially damaging testimony from General Pillow. The latter claimed that Breckinridge entirely mismanaged the assault, though how he would have known it from his hiding place behind a tree is a mystery. Pillow was easily persuaded to offer false witness, since he knew that at any time Breckinridge might press charges against him. Indeed, on January 3, even as he lay in pain awaiting the ambulance that would take him to Chattanooga, Rice Graves prepared charges and specifications against Pillow. “Brig. Gen. Pillow yesterday was guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and soldier,” he wrote. “The said Brigadier General Pillow during the charge yesterday afternoon did screen himself behind a tree” while his brigade advanced. Breckinridge discussed the charges with Hardee, who advised that nothing be done in the matter. “I have accordingly acted as if it was not in existence,” wrote Breckinridge.

  The Kentuckian himself did almost nothing in the controversy, gathering a little testimony in his behalf, but holding it until a hoped-for court of inquiry, which never came. The controversy eventually found its way to the press, but did more harm to Bragg than Breckinridge. When the latter’s friends in Richmond tried to publicize his side of the matter, he restrained them. “I have written to nobody at Richmond about the affairs of the army,” he said. “I have engaged no press, made no statements. In a word, have done nothing in conflict with strict military propriety.… Since I entered the service I have been simply a soldier trying to serve a cause which every true Southern man is willing every day to die for.” If Bragg, a professional soldier, wished to act in this distinctly unprofessional manner, let him. “If anything is said to my discredit,” wrote the Kentuckian, “I hope my friends will be silent unless it touches my honor or that of my command. When a man is right there are no remedies equal to silence and time. It is only when he is wrong that it is necessary to preoccupy the public mind by clamor.” What probably galled Bragg most of all was seeing the restraint with which Breckinridge conducted himself. It showed him to be the better man, which only made Bragg hate him the more.

  As for the Orphans in this controversy, their love for their general only increased as they saw him unjustly persecuted. When they saw Bragg’s condemnatory report of the battle and heard of his underhanded methods, they reportedly asked Breckinridge “to resent the insult” to his honor and theirs. Supposedly they actually asked the general to resign his position and challenge Bragg to personal combat, so enraged did they become. Instead, Breckinridge calmed them by reminding them of a higher duty they all faced, and that they must endure with him this personal wrong for the sake of the greater goal. It is even claimed that the general promised that, should both he and Bragg survive the war, he might then seek a gentleman’s redress. Since Breckinridge abhorred dueling, this last rings false, yet certainly he calmed the Orphans for a time. But Braxton Bragg was not done with the Kentuckians and would strike once more before their paths parted.21

  While the controversy raged, the Kentucky brigade finally got a new commander, but it was not Buckner, and it was not Hunt. And alas, it was not Robert P. Trabue, who perhaps deserved—and certainly wanted—it most. Even General Wright favored Trabue. Just four days after assuming command of the Orphans, he wrote to his brother John in Congress in Richmond regarding the Kentuckians. “It is a fine Brigade,” he said, “and one that any man should be proud to command.” He believed, however, that the man commanding it should be a Kentuckian, and that Kentuckian should be Trabue.

  Trabue himself put the letter in John Wright’s hand, for late in January Trabue went to Richmond in person to argue his case for promotion. He took as well a recommendation from Hardee, a letter from Hunt, his own petition signed by several officers of the brigade, including Hewitt and Lewis, and yet another recommendation by Breckinridge. Once in Richmond he visited Hodge, himself now a congressman, and from him received a letter to the President. Since no more promotions to brigadier could be made for Kentuckians, they even tried to argue that Trabue was really a Louisianian, having spent twelve years there before the war. All of this, with a recapitulation of the year-long history of requests for his promotion, Trabue presented to the Kentucky lobby in the capitol. Then, one week later, he had the misfortune to die. The final impediment to his promotion, a raging fever, called “congestion of the brain” by some, struck unexpectedly and ravaged him almost overnight. He died penniless on February 12, the anniversary of the day that he and his brigade began their exile from Kentucky. The Kentucky delegates in Richmond raised the funds to send the body to Natchez for burial from their own pockets. The news struck his friends like a thunderbolt. “We are all shocked to hear it,” wrote Mary Breckinridge. “In the midst of life we are in death.” Two weeks after his death, the official announcement was made to the Kentucky brigade. “Let us mourn his loss and emulate his valor,” it read. The author was the new commander of the Orphan Brigade, Brigadier General Ben Hardin Helm.22

  The appointment arrived on February 14, and two days later Helm announced his staff. Following his wound at Baton Rouge, he convalesced for some time before taking command of the post at Chattanooga. Since the other Kentucky brigadiers at the moment already had commands, and Buckner was deemed
too important to waste on a brigade, Helm appeared the natural choice to lead the Orphans. He was a gentle man, but if the Kentuckians thought he would treat them easy, they proved much mistaken.23

  Indeed, it seemed as if old “Bench-leg” Hanson had never left them. Still they had to wear their uncomfortable caps on the parade ground. He chastised them for trading their ammunition to farmers for food. When Sergeant William Lawrence of Hunt’s Company A left his guard post, Helm gave him a month at hard labor and reduced him to private. Never mending their loose ways with private property, the Orphans did $150 worth of damage to a house in Manchester, and later a woman signing herself “A Tennessee Mother” accused them of “depredations” even against women, children, and widows. To all Helm meted severe justice. Even the medicos in the brigade found their lessons in the proper manner of sick reports handed them, and the malingerers obtained no more solace than before. The surgeon of the 4th Kentucky, a stout, pompous young fellow, always dealt curtly with the slackers. One Orphan came to him repeatedly. “Had a fever all night,” he said, “took cold, I reckon.” Or “I got pains in my jints—headache fit to bust,” or worse. The surgeon tired of seeing the man, growing naturally skeptical. When he saw the malingerer approach, he usually addressed him, “Well, old pine-knot; tired of drilling, hey?” At every visit he took two placebos from his right vest pocket and sent the man back to duty. One day, however, he extracted the pills from his left pocket. “Hold on, doctor,” said the lazy Orphan, “that’s the wrong pocket.”

  “Don’t make any difference,” said the good surgeon. “Shirking ain’t fatal, but it is incurable.”24

  Yet the Orphans bore life in winter quarters with their usual spirit. Indeed, this was their second winter of the war. They were old hands at it now. Even before they reached Tullahoma the Kentuckians began those camplife adventures that so ably characterized the brigade. Jackman started it by awaking on January 6 to find a goose roosting on his head. “Late that night I waked up with something heavy on my face.” It belonged as a pet to some men of his company. “I presume he saw that I had no feathers under my head, and concluded to put some on top instead of underneath. I thanked him by flinging him against a stump.”

  While Hunt’s 9th Kentucky occupied Manchester for several weeks, they managed somehow to win the affection and respect of the townspeople. “They thought the 9th Ky. was the best regiment in the army,” Jackman discovered. When other regiments came to town they slaughtered hogs, burned fence rails, and the like, but not Hunt’s boys, or so they thought. “If our boys ever did do such things, which is highly probable,” wrote Jackman, “all went to the credit of the other regiments.” As a control over such depredations, Lewis, Nuckols, and Caldwell formed a “Council of Administration” for the brigade, a sort of internal police. Yet they could not prevent the Orphans from drinking. In Tullahoma Squire Bush and several comrades went into town one night and bought whisky. “All got a little funny,” said Bush. “I was drunker than I ever was before in my life.”

  The music of the regimental bands provided considerable diversion as the winter progressed. On St. Patrick’s Day the 4th Kentucky band serenaded Breckinridge, himself of Irish descent. Even more entertainments were to be had in Manchester. Jackman found that his comrades “found enough society to keep up amusement, and all the winter were flirting with the young ladies.” Some cajoled farmers’ wives, hoping to be invited to dinner. Others attended balls and frolics. Manchester was particularly diverting for the 9th Kentucky before the rest of the brigade joined it there, swelling the town with soldiers. The young ladies vied with each other in flattering Hunt’s ragged Orphans. They gave a party at a tavern, replete with ham sandwiches, pies, and cakes. “You were expected to go up to any girl who was there,” found Johnny Green, “tell her your name & be sure of a cordial welcome.” She handed over the food and gushed about the bravery of Confederate soldiers. All had a good time, and Green speculated, “I dont know for how many matches the foundation was laid this evening.”

  The Orphans of the 9th decided to reciprocate. Gus Moore and Phil Vacaro suggested that they stage a theatrical in a nearby paper mill. There would be some cost involved, and the boys agreed to pay it all themselves. There was no playbook at hand, but Moore believed he could write down the lines from Bombasties Furioso from memory. He and Vacaro acted as producers and cast the play from men of the regiment, poor Johnny Green being selected to play the young lady Distifena. While other Orphans sent invitations to the young ladies of the town, craftily removing their mothers’ objections by hinting that there would be an abundance of pure coffee for refreshments, Moore began constructing the stage in the paper mill. And Johnny Green started looking for a dress.

  Of course, every lady in town had a dress, but it did not seem exactly proper just to step forward and ask for one. “I picked out the finest-looking house in the neighborhood to bestow my attentions upon with the hopes of finding among its inmates a young lady whose clothes would fit me.” This done, he began courting the good opinions of the family and its two daughters. He took Johnny Jackman with him on one visit to occupy one girl while he worked his charms on the other, Miss Sukey Hickerson. After a couple of visits she agreed to lend a crinoline. Moore and Vacaro, meanwhile, built scenery and rehearsed the actors. Once his dress was safely in hand, Green also undertook to obtain a barrel of oysters from his cousin in Mobile. They, with cakes and coffee, made a splendid feast after the play. The Orphans staged their theatrical on February 24. It attracted virtually every young woman of the town. “Saw a great variety of the fair sex,” wrote Squire Bush of the event. In all about two hundred local people attended the broad farce, Colonel Hunt himself escorting “the Belle of the county.” “It was a mirthful occasion for every body,” Green decided. After the play and the refreshments, the young women danced with the Orphans while their mothers luxuriated in that free coffee.

  With all the frolicking, the Kentuckians turned more spiritual as well, now that the war entered its third year. Certainly they knew they had enough sinful doings to atone. Elder Joseph D. Pickett preached to them every Sunday, their officers sometimes requiring the men to attend divine services. He spoke to them from the eighth chapter of Acts. “This is life eternal,” Pickett said to them from John. And he preached from Psalms, verse ten of the forty-sixth chapter. “Be still and know that I am God,” he read. “I will be exalted among the heathen. I will be exalted in the earth.” One could not have asked for a more “heathen” lot for the Lord to pass among than the Orphan Brigade, nor for men more exalted and God-fearing. With all their petty sinning, their faith did not waver. Their difficult lot in this war only served to make them better Christians. That is, except for Konshattountzchette. He was a “heathen” and no mistake. Captain Tom Winstead caught the essence of that spiritual feeling. “I am not the same lighthearted man I was at home,” he wrote to his wife. “I cannot lay down at night and drop off to sleep as I have done in other days.… There is not a night but a thousand memories crowds my brain.”25

  The generals, too, provided diversion for the Kentuckians. In addition to the routine practice, Breckinridge and Helm arranged several drill competitions and reviews. Ranking generals like Hardee and Joseph E. Johnston viewed their evolutions, and pronounced them among the best-drilled units in the Army. In mid-May General Daniel W. Adams, commanding a Louisiana brigade in Breckinridge’s division that took pride in its drilling skill, challenged the Orphans to a contest. Helm accepted. Each regiment would compete against another regiment of the other brigade, then the best-drilled regiment within each brigade would meet its opposite number, and finally the brigades as a whole would match for the championship.

  The first competition occurred on May 19. Two colonels acted as judges, and Hardee umpired. It was a festive occasion. “Looked like ‘fair times,’ ” wrote Jackman. Breckinridge, Humphrey Marshall, Adams, Helm, Hardee, and a host of lesser luminaries observed the meet, while carriages brought ladies and gentlemen from miles ar
ound. The Orphans dressed in their best military finery. Officers polished their swords and buttons and strutted for the ladies like gamecocks. The first two regiments to meet were Lewis’ 6th Kentucky and the 16th Louisiana, and the judges decided in favor of the Orphans. The next day, May 20, Adams’ best regiment, the 13th Louisiana, met the rowdy old-timers of Hanson’s 2d Kentucky, led now by good old Bob Johnson. Surprisingly, despite Johnson’s demonstrated ignorance of drill, the Orphans once again bested the Louisianians. “Both regiments drilled splendidly,” wrote Jackman. The next day the 4th Kentucky ran through its evolutions under the eye of its newly commissioned colonel, Joe Nuckols, recovered from his wound. They, too, defeated their rival regiment, the 19th Louisiana. The latter’s colonel was a Prussian whose broken English on the drill field set the boys laughing out loud. It remained only for Hunt’s 9th Kentucky to meet Adams’ 32d Alabama, a contest that would have decided a title not only for the division, but unofficially for the Army as well, since it was widely told that Adams led the best-drilled brigade in Bragg’s command. Unfortunately, active operations commenced once more on the day that the Orphans and Alabamians were to meet. They never finished the drill competition, but the men of Kentucky never doubted who deserved the championship.26

  If Jackman and his mates in the 9th Kentucky had stepped onto the drill field that day, they would have answered the commands of another new colonel, John W. Caldwell. “Uncle Tom” Hunt had resigned.

  Hunt first tried to tender his resignation in January, despite the petition from his officers that he be promoted to brigadier. He did not want promotion. “I have lost my fortune,” he lamented to Eli Bruce. “Worse than this I have entirely neglected my family.” He would have welcomed an unsolicited promotion at one time, but now necessity compelled him to leave the service. Hardee, however, refused to allow it. “Colo. Hunt is one of the most valuable officers in my corps,” he wrote to the War Department, “& his services cannot be spared.” Indeed, Hunt’s reputation for reliability reached the very top command of the Army. In April Bragg asked Hardee to send “Uncle Tom” with his own and Lewis’ regiments toward Murfreesboro on a reconnaissance, with orders “to proceed as far as he possibly could.” Both Jackman and Bush noted in their diaries the hurried preparation of rations for the march, and then the mysterious cancellation of the march after midnight of April 26. What they never knew is that, after following his duty by giving Hunt Bragg’s orders, Hardee went to the commanding general and told him that it simply would not do to give Hunt and his Orphans such an order, “for they wouldn’t stop this side of hell!” Bragg countermanded the order.