Captain David C. Walker of the 6th Kentucky also saw his right arm shot away. Known to his comrades as the “swearing Kentuckian,” he had a good deal to curse this day. Yet others, in the midst of this terrible holocaust, found time to admire pityingly a little kitten caught between the battle lines and crying in its terror. Finally, one of Cobb’s gunners jumped the earthworks and ran forward to grasp the cat and return it safely. Thereafter the tortoise tabby was a familiar sight perched on his friend the gunner’s shoulder or astride a caisson. In honor of the occasion the Orphans named it “Resaca.”
The fight took a heavy draught of Kentucky blood, even among the three regiments on the left of the brigade, for the Federals gave them a shelling during the morning and afternoon. It became so hot that the Kentucky artillery stood much of the fight without its gunners, who hid in the rear, waited for a brief lull, then ran forward to load and fire before the enemy guns caught them in the open. The worst of the shelling took Company A of Caldwell’s 9th Kentucky that evening. One shell severed the leg of Lieutenant Tom McLean. Immediately he called for litter bearers, then turned to his company and urged the men to “be steady.” Before the litter reached him, another shot almost cut him in two, then exploded and killed two others. Johnny Green stood in awe of McLean’s bravery. “In all my experience I dont believe I ever knew an instance of more heroic courage,” he said of the lieutenant’s final words of encouragement to the men. Gervis Grainger saw his cousin killed at his side, downed by the same missile that then struck him in the knee and put him out of the campaign for a month.
Jackman looked toward the left of his regiment as Company A took the federal shelling. “I saw the men tossed about like chaff.” Only nightfall brought respite from the heavy fire, and then it was to renew the digging. After their experience of the day, some of the Orphans acquired a new love for the spade, and used it with a will. They piled several feet of Georgia clay in front of them that night, intending to be ready for the renewal of the fight at dawn. Thankfully, it did not come. While Sherman’s infantry attacked farther on the right of Johnston’s line, the only real action for the Orphans on May 15 was skirmishing and an almost continual bombardment.5
By dawn the next morning Johnston had withdrawn the brigade to Calhoun, seven miles south, and for the next two days the Confederates fell back before the enemy, Bate detaching the 5th Kentucky from the brigade to help in the much-accustomed role of rear guard. By May 19 the Army was around Cassville, over forty miles from Dalton, and here Johnston decided the ground offered his first opportunity to stand and offer serious battle. At noon that day he ordered read to the Army a battle order announcing that this was the time for a fight. The Orphans met the order with loud cheers, Jackman thinking it Napoleonic in composition and spirit. “They seem anxious to fight,” he wrote of his fellow Kentuckians.
That evening the Orphans moved to form a reserve for Cleburne’s division, puffing and panting in the now oppressive spring heat. Yet they still cheered Johnston when he rode past, and gave old “Pat” Cleburne a huzza as well. That night Jackman closed his diary, saying, “I shall now try for some sleep, as there will be no rest for the weary, to-morrow. All looking for a big fight.”
Yet the morrow only brought disappointment. Johnston’s generals, so the rumor spread, did not believe they could hold their positions in the planned battle and, faced with their lack of support, Johnston decided to continue his retreat. For the Kentuckians it was a bitter decision. Every day that they withdrew toward Atlanta put them that much farther from home and from any prospect of returning to the Bluegrass.
For the next week the Orphan Brigade moved with the Army as it slowly retreated toward Dallas, with little other than constant skirmishing to occupy them. The brigade’s “Christian Association” met to make proper eulogy over their dead, and the list mounted. In the campaign thus far, from May 7 to May 20, seven Orphans were killed and fifty-four wounded. Now, near the bivouac of Lewis’ old 6th Kentucky, several of the Orphans, in the manner of Kentuckians of all times, met to honor those of their number now sleeping in Theodore O’Hara’s “bivouac of the dead.”
The night of May 25, 1864, the Orphan Brigade bivouacked less than two miles from Dallas, at the left of a Confederate line that ran from Dallas through New Hope Church and on to Kennesaw Mountain. Jackman and Johnny Green shared their tent “fly” that night, sheltering from the rain. Out in the wasted fields between the armies, the Kentucky sharpshooters kept their posts, occasionally felling one of the enemy. For most of them it was a workmanlike job, but not for all. Taylor McCoy came back from his time in front in a depressed mood, and uncommunicative. When asked the matter, he just said, “I did not want to kill the fellow.” A Federal had been shooting at him and, seeing his chance, McCoy put a bullet into the man. “I struck him, and he screamed. It was the cry of a boy! I don’t like to think of having killed a boy!” At other places between the lines this night, the scene was less hostile. Try as they might to prevent fraternization between the armies, the officers of both sides could not stop the private soldiers from meeting occasionally to exchange newspapers and gossip, or maybe trade tobacco for coffee or whisky. The Orphans were no different. When Hervey McDowell went on the picket line to relieve a detail, he found the Kentucky pickets joined with some Yankee soldiers in a game of cards. The Orphans knew they had trouble, and the Federals were even more apprehensive at being thus discovered. But McDowell, ever-chivalrous, simply took out his pocket watch and gave them two minutes to scamper back to their own lines before he would open fire.6
With the morning of May 26, the Orphans fortified positions along a ridge south of Dallas. By sundown the skirmishing in their front became heavy, and a federal battery unlimbered in their front to shell them. Lewis ordered Caldwell and the 9th Kentucky to take the guns, though the boys were not entirely enthusiastic. “We did not think we stood in any great need of the battery,” wrote Jackman, yet the regiment deployed for the attack, only to have Lewis cancel it at the last minute. Still the brigade took casualties. Lieutenant Horace Watts of the 4th Kentucky was calmly lighting his pipe at a fire in rear of the earthworks when a sharpshooter’s bullet killed him. A corporal in the same regiment never knew what hit him, a bullet finding him in his sleep some distance behind the lines. Jim Cunningham of Company D, 4th Kentucky, felt a bullet almost completely sever the middle finger of his right hand. Despite the pain, he conceived the novel idea of having the surgeon reset the finger backward, with the nail facing the palm instead of away from it. Apparently the digit “took” and healed in that position. He called it his “finger of scorn” and, as comrades noted, “took a savage delight in exhibiting it.”
The next day saw the main fight take place in and around New Hope Church. For the Orphans at Dallas there was relative quiet except for an order from Bate to take a hill in front of their position from the enemy. The Kentuckians expected a tough fight but, instead, the Federals withdrew with little resistance. The brigade captured a few prisoners. Of far more immediate interest was a freshly butched bullock carcass that the fleeing bluecoats abandoned. That night the 9th Kentucky dined on fresh beef for the first time in weeks. Generally now their meat rations came to them green with mold, edible only when boiled and mixed with cornmeal.
May 28 brought tragedy, though it started on a bright enough note. New clothing was issued to many of the Kentuckians, and through the morning and early afternoon they had little to do except sporadic skirmishing. Some of the men found old muskets abandoned by the Federals and vied with each other to see who could fire the largest load out of the old-fashioned guns. “They roared like young cannon,” wrote Jackman, but thankfully none of the Orphans hurt themselves in the foolish contest. Jackman spent his time reading a new novel and listening to a captured Federal who confessed that the Kentucky sharpshooters were excellent, but added that their artillery was “not worth a damn.”
That afternoon, thinking that the Federals in Bate’s front had withdrawn, Johnston
ordered the general to advance his division to feel for the enemy. Bate himself spoke with Lewis and his other brigade commanders expounding upon Johnston’s order, and admonishing them not to assault if they found the enemy still in strength. A brigade on the division’s left would initiate the reconnaissance in force. If it met with success, then a signal would be given for Lewis and the others to advance.
It was Brigadier General Frank C. Armstrong’s brigade that launched the movement. He was initially successful, entering the enemy works only to discover them still there in force. Faced with a heavy counterattack, Armstrong withdrew and Bate sent orders canceling the signal for the other brigades to move. It was too late.
At 4 P.M. Lewis ordered the Kentuckians to their places in line and ready to scale their own works and advance. Soon they heard the din of Armstrong’s fight to the left. Since the noise was too great to distinguish the signal guns from the rest of the firing, Lewis just assumed that the attack was now general and ordered all of the brigade except the 9th Kentucky forward. Caldwell’s regiment was to join shortly but never got the chance. What Lewis found when he emerged from the undergrowth in his front and advanced toward the enemy line was the entire federal XV Corps in position. The brigade on Lewis’ right did not advance at all, and that on his left got the order to return before he did. As a result, the Orphans moved virtually alone against the enemy, both of their flanks exposed to a deadly fire. “As soon as we came in sight of them,” said Weller, “we knew we had met them in vain.” Still, Lewis took the first line of federal works and silenced a battery, aided by good fire from Cobb and Gracey. But then “a literal storm of shot and shell” tore into their ranks with devastating impact. Within fifty yards of the Yankee line the brigade stood its ground, then took cover behind logs and abandoned equipment, and even their own dead.
“Their line was a sheet of flame,” said an Orphan, “and death was feasting in our midst.” James Cleveland of the 5th Kentucky took a bullet in his left arm. He arose and continued to fight, taking another bullet in the chest. Still he fought until another ball passed through his bowels. Then he took a hit that mashed the elbow of his good arm, and another bullet “contused” his face. Only with five bullets in him did he sink to the ground for good. That night he crawled back to his own lines to linger for a week before dying. Lieutenant Colonel William Clarke, just recently relieved of command of the 6th Kentucky by the return of Cofer, felt a minie ball crush his right arm below the elbow. He managed to save it from amputation, but it put him out of the war for good. Poor Captain David McKendree, who made a speech to his men before Shiloh and then recovered from a seemingly mortal wound at Stones River, fell limp when a bullet hit his neck and severed the spinal column. He, too, lingered for a week. “I know that very soon I shall die,” he told his surgeons. He settled his business affairs through them, gave one his Bible, and then asked that they tell his men that “I never had one of them punished in any way without feeling sorry that duty compelled me to do it, and that I love them all.” When men of his company came to visit their dying captain, he told them, “Boys, I want you to fight the Yankees as long as there is one of you left to fire a gun.”
19. “Old Joe.” Brigadier General Joseph H. Lewis, stern, demanding, yet fiercely protective of his Orphans. He, at least, survived. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
20. Philip Lightfoot Lee would stand by “his side of the street” in the last extremity as well as he stood by the 2nd Kentucky. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
21. Colonel Jim Moss left his sickbed to stand beside the Orphans, and die beside them at Jonesboro. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
22. Hiram Hawkins of the 5th Kentucky just would not be “overslaughed.” He got his way and led his Orphans bravely at Atlanta. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
23. “Cripps,” Lieutenant Colonel John C. Wickliffe, always felt imprisoned in his uniform. Unbuttoned, he laughed louder. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
24. Captain Ed Porter Thompson, who conceived the idea that the Orphans had “a kind of title of nobility.” (From Confederate Veteran, July 1898)
25. Captain Fayette Hewitt did as much as any to preserve the Orphans’ story when he saved their records for posterity. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
26. Captain John H. Weller, like many of the Kentuckians, wrote widely after the war, so that the Orphans’ story would not be forgotten. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
27. The governor who became a soldier, George W. Johnson. An exile like the Orphans, he died with them at Shiloh. (From Thompson, Orphan Brigade)
28. Leader in postwar reunions of the Orphan Brigade for nearly forty years, “Old Joe” Lewis wept at their surrender. (Courtesy Tulane University)
Even the little corps of sharpshooters joined in the charge up that hill, leaving one of their number dead on the field and losing the valuable Kerr rifle. Of all the Kentucky regiments, the poor 4th took the worst casualties, being on the exposed left flank. Finally Bate’s order to retire reached the brigade, and the regiments began their retreat, all except for Hiram Hawkins and his 5th Kentucky. They were within twenty yards of the enemy works and did not seem inclined to back out now. Finally Hawkins had to seize the colors himself to turn his men from their assault.
The men in Caldwell’s 9th Kentucky knew something had gone awry when a silence settled over the field, and then the enemy sent a cheer into the air. Soon word of the debacle filtered to them, and it was not long before Jackman and others surveyed the damage done their comrades. “The Brigade is terribly cut up,” he wrote that night. The men in the ranks did not know of Johnston’s order, and believed the fight had been the idea of “Old Grits” Bate. As a result, they spoke harshly of him in the bivouac that night. “ ‘Grits’ ‘catches it’ from all sides and quarters,” said Johnny Jackman. Only some time later did the Orphans learn the truth, and forgive their grievance toward Bate. “This is the game of war,” said Green, “& we had to pay the price in blood.” It was a heavy bill, with 20 killed and 177 wounded. Dallas would always be a bad memory to the Orphans, but in this campaign for Atlanta, it would only be one of many. Already the month of May 1864 put over one sixth of the brigade out of action, and still the Kentuckians had not seen a real battle.7
The next day the armies lay rather quiet in the Orphans’ sector, but that night the Federals several times opened a heavy fire and shelling on the Kentuckians for no apparent reason. Some of the Union skirmishers even became disoriented in the flashing bedlam and approached the Confederate lines mistaking them for their own. In front of the 2d Kentucky one bluecoat topped the works and called into the darkness, “Colonel, the Rebs are making it so hot out yonder, I can’t hold my ‘posish.’ ” His position immediately thereafter was prisoner of war. Jackman had been sleeping until the bombardment began. He sat up rubbing his eyes and asked a comrade what was happening. “Hell has broke loose in Georgia,” came the response. The next morning, after the ground in the Orphans’ front had been fought and skirmished over for several days, they found that “the bullets are lying around on the ground now, thick as hail stones.” Jackman postulated that a few more days of this would make “a good lead mine” in the valley before them.
They did not stay long enough to salt that mine. By June 5, after several days of idleness, the Orphans once again took the road as Johnston moved his lines back yet again. Lewis and his brigade made a miserable march toward Pine Mountain in the night and a heavy rain. The distance was only about four miles, but it took hours, “the muddiest and most disagreeable march” many of the Kentuckians had made. The country seemed to be a continual swamp, and in the dark many made a great splash as they lost their footing and fell in the mire. More fortunate comrades yelled, “Get up out of that mud,” and tried to identify their recently baptized friend by his manner of swearing.
On June 6 they took a final position on the crest of Pine Mountain, a detached eminence two miles west of Kennesaw Mountain. Later they moved to the eastern slope of the
mountain, and here remained for the next several days, watching Sherman’s advancing minions forming their own earthworks in the valley below. Once again the skirmishing began, and on June 10 the Federals sent a line of skirmishers forward against Lewis, but without success. Slowly the bluecoats advanced their works toward the base of the mountain, yet for several days more a relative calm settled over the field as Sherman gathered his breath for the next major assault.
Clouds obscured the sun on the morning of June 14, but soon they dispelled and the Orphans readied themselves for another day. Before long Generals Johnston, Hardee, and Polk rode along the Kentucky lines inspecting their positions. They did so in full view of the Federals, yet seemed oblivious to the danger. Major John B. Pirtle rode with them. Shortly the enemy spotted the cluster of high brass and sent a shell in their direction. The Confederate commanders had been warned by one of the Orphan officers of the danger, and now this enemy missile brought that danger home to them when it killed Pirtle’s horse under him. Fortunately the major arose unhurt, but the generals only shifted their position slightly. Before long another enemy shell rocketed across the intervening ground. It struck Polk full in the chest, passing through him, leaving the bishop general dead on the crest of Pine Mountain with the generals and the Orphans standing over him in shock.
Johnny Jackman did not see Polk’s demise, for he sat beside Caldwell’s morning fire talking with Captain John Gillum of Company A. Since the enemy artillery had been silent for the past two days, Jackman heard with surprise that first shot that killed Pirtle’s horse. He offered the observation that “some general and his staff, no doubt, had ridden up the crest of the hill, and the federal batteries were throwing shells at them.” Gillum agreed. “Yes,” he said in a like vein, “and I hope some of them will get shot. A general can’t ride around the lines without a regiment of staff at his heels.” Just then they heard the second shot fired. From the sound of impact, Jackman thought it harmlessly buried itself in the mountainside. Of course, it hit Polk instead, not one hundred yards from Jackman, yet he and Gillum could not see the general because of trees in their front. Minutes later they learned what had happened, and then an order arrived for a report to be sent to Lewis’ headquarters. Long disabled for active field service due to his frail health, Jackman served as regimental clerk, though from time to time he shouldered his musket when his colonel would allow.
The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home Page 29