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

by Davis, William C.

  Savannah was the most beautiful city in Georgia, but now a frightened, panicked place. Yet Hardee commanded here. “We have seen a great deal of service with him & the men all admire him,” said Johnny Green. No man could save Savannah or the South from Sherman, however, though the citizens of the city were glad to see the Orphans. By December 22 there was nothing more Hardee and his few defenders could do against the advancing host. Already Lewis had sent the Kentuckians’ horses across the Savannah River into South Carolina for safety, and that night the Orphans joined the rest of the little Army in abandoning the city as they, too, crossed over the river. The next day they reached their horses at Hardeeville. And Sherman had reached the sea.

  Two days later came Christmas. “Peace on Earth, Good will to men should prevail,” wrote Green. “We certainly would preserve the peace if they would go home & let us alone.” Glad tidings came that day just the same, for the brigade commissary for the first time in several weeks issued soap to the men. Despite the cold water, the Orphans swam and bathed in the Savannah River, then did what they could for a holiday dinner. It was not much. Rice for everyone, a few sweet potatoes for some, and pork for a few. It rained all evening. And something sad happened, or more to the point, did not happen. For the first time in the war, the phantom scribe of Company C, 4th Kentucky Infantry, failed to make his Christmas entry in the company clothing book. The conclusion is inescapable that somewhere between this holiday and the last he gave his blood and body to the soil of Georgia.8

  Around Christmas Hiram Hawkins and his band finally rejoined Lewis after more than a month of dangerous independent duty. Back on September 22, while the brigade was mounting, Hawkins found romance out of war and married a young Alabama girl. There was precious little honeymoon, though, and now the colonel and his 5th Kentucky had more on their minds than wives and sweethearts. In attempting to rejoin the brigade, Hawkins brought his command within five miles of Savannah, only to find no way through the besieging Federals. Instead, he led his men over forty miles south of the city, through Hinesville, to the Attamaha River. Hawkins spread his few men at several points along the way to intercept and harass enemy foragers. Sherman’s “bummers” were acquiring a terrible reputation for destruction and looting of private property, a reputation more imaginary than true thanks to southern exaggerations, but Hawkins set out to protect the people from the less gentlemanly Federals where possible. Orphan justice could be swift. When the Kentuckians encountered an old man and his two daughters, much distressed after a squad of the enemy reportedly attempted to assault the girls, the Confederates tore down the road after them. The Orphans caught two of the would-be offenders before long and promptly hanged them.

  Sometimes, too, these Kentuckians in their chivalrous bluster challenged Federals to a sort of individual combat. Booker Reed, riding along a rail line, found a bluecoat firing at him from behind a tree. “Finally Booker got tired and mad and challenged him to come out on the railroad track for a square duel.” As they took their positions, about thirty yards apart, the Yankee sent three bullets at Reed before he was ready to start. Up he threw his Enfield and with one shot laid the enemy to rest. He later reported finding five thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds on the dead Federal, proceeds of a raid on a nearby mansion.

  Often as not Hawkins’ men spent their nights in swamps lying in wait for their enemy. The men found it unpleasant duty, hearing the sullen plops of amphibians and reptiles dropping into the water around them, and the owls hooting overhead. “More than once a thrill of terror nearly chilled my blood as a wild, weird scream reached my ears from a perch almost within reach of my gun-barrel,” wrote Tom Owens. He thought the sound of enemy shells and bullets music compared to the noises of these birds of ill omen. One night Owens was ready to panic from the macabre sounds of the night. Then he heard a step at the other end of the bridge he guarded. “The blood stood still in my veins, the hair on my head lifted the little military cap I wore from his resting place.” Then he heard the step again and fought back the urge to turn and run. He pointed his rifle and shouted, “Who comes there?” Out of the darkness “in the familiar lingo of the southern darkey” came the reply, “Nigger Jim, sir, nigger Jim.” Owens had to laugh at himself over his fears and “the midnight phantoms my imagination had conjured.” Thereafter he rather enjoyed the hooting of the owls.

  These Georgians loved Hawkins and the other Orphans for their services. Some tried to protect them. When the Kentuckians passed through a little town and a mysterious man came shortly afterward, wearing a suspicious blue coat, the civilians eyed him warily. He asked one old son of Ireland if the Kentucky brigade had passed. The elder puffed his pipe, looked at the blue coat, and finally his wife spoke. “Yis, sir,” came her brogue, “they have jist been afther marching through, and there was twinty thousand o’ them if there was a single mon!” The man in blue thanked her and tipped his hat before continuing on his way. Then the old Irishman, thinking the deception incomplete, yelled after him, “Yis, sir, that’s ivery word the truth, it is. And they were domned big min at that!” As for some of the more genteel ladies of the area, “the coming of Colonel Hawkins,” wrote one, “was like that of an angel of mercy and peace.” Two months later friends would recommend Hawkins for promotion to brigadier but, like most of the Kentucky colonels, he did not win the coveted rank.9

  Late in December Wheeler ordered Lewis to recross the Savannah River and report to Iverson once more. Inevitably Sherman would start to move north from Savannah into the Carolinas, and it would be their task to badger his rear as he marched. Another army was already ahead of him, the remnant of Hood’s command, now once more led by Joseph E. Johnston. Somehow they must stop Sherman from linking with Grant, now besieging Lee in Petersburg. To that end, the cavalrymen under Iverson needed a little time to refit and reorganize.

  Lewis still had only about two thirds of his Orphans mounted. It took from September 1864 until late January 1865 to get horses for most of the 9th Kentucky, and even at that about 200 Kentuckians still constituted the “dismounted” detachment. In cases where officers or men owned their own mounts, they were not issued a government animal, and of course those who could not ride horses were not given them. Iverson did what he could to find additional mounts, and at the same time temporarily combined Lewis’ brigade with the Kentucky cavalry command of Colonel W. C. P. Breckinridge. These were men who had ridden with Morgan in the glory days, and Breckinridge’s brigade distinguished itself in the Atlanta campaign. But now it, too, like Lewis, was so depleted that it could hardly be called an effective fighting force. Lewis commanded the new organization, aggregating 1,066 men ready for duty on February 10, but the Orphans never really considered Breckinridge’s cavalrymen truly a part of the 1st Kentucky Brigade. It was simply too rarefied a fraternity for easy admission.

  Discipline among the Kentuckians now was perhaps the worst in its history. Lewis, despite his stern start when he replaced Helm, could not or would not enforce it as in the old days. After Chickamauga he never wrote a battle report as he should have, and even showed an indifference in his personal dress that would have been uncharacteristic in earlier days. Only when prominent officers or pretty ladies visited did he wear his uniform coat, and on at least one occasion he entertained some Georgia belles for two hours before realizing he had forgotten to put it on. Much more serious was the state of the brigade. When the War Department sent an inspector to examine the cavalry in Georgia, he was appalled at what he found. “The Kentucky troops,” he reported, “have been neglected since mounted.” Almost all of the staff departments worked indifferently, or not at all. Proper reports and descriptive lists of the brigade animals did not exist. General orders from Army headquarters were frequently not promulgated among the regiments. “Their appearance, mounted and dismounted, is indifferent. Discipline is lax.” The men looked military in bearing but paid little attention at parade, and needed much practice at cavalry tactics. The once-champion drill regiments of the Army o
f Tennessee now showed no enthusiasm and little skill at their evolutions. The war had taken the glitter from their buttons, the glory from the march, and almost worn them out. Yet the inspector could still report an unusually high élan for this late twilight of the war. “It is gratifying to report that there are but few absentees without leave from this brigade,” he said. However the Orphans might let their deportment relax, their spirit never seemed to falter. On February 11, 1865, they gathered to form and approve resolutions condemning all who spoke of submission and defeat, all who withheld from the Confederacy any scrap of aid or comfort. They sent their resolutions to the local and Virginia papers for publication. “Our services, our sacrifices,” they said, “give us the right to speak; we accept no excuse for relaxing effort to conquer a peace and establish independence; we are exiles from our homes and those who are nearest and dearest to us, but we are not willing to return upon terms now proposed; we believe the minie-rifle is our best peace commissioner; we suggest that disloyal editors be placed beside true men in the ranks, where they can be taught, with Enfields in their hands, how a Government should be supported; we reassert our devotion.”10

  They also never faltered in the hope of redeeming Kentucky. Now that most of the Orphans were mounted, Lewis began sending them singly and in pairs along the long road through Augusta, into western North Carolina, and through Cumberland Gap to recruit in their homeland. These were the first Orphans to return home since they left Bowling Green so many years before. Few of them returned to the brigade. Several were captured, the end of the war caught more before they could return, and some the Federals and Home Guard murdered. Lieutenant Jerry Smith of Hawkins’ 5th Kentucky ran into some bluecoats, took a wound, and recuperated at a home in Kentucky only to have a party of Home Guards find him out and shoot him in his sickbed. Captain William Lashbrook of Company I, 4th Kentucky, was within a day’s ride of his home when Unionists ambushed him on the road. A gallant captain who had survived every battle of his brigade, he fell to the guns of his own fellow Kentuckians.11

  Yet the Orphans could still refer to themselves, as Virginius Hutchen now did, as the “Cheerful Brigade.” Some thought it was because they were mostly young men. Some said it was because they were unmarried. But Ed Thompson knew it was simply because “they were Kentuckians.” They still sang their songs, played their games and pranks, bedeviled the Georgia Militia and those commands who seemed to lose heart, told tall stories, and generally “made gawkish youth and credulous old men believe that nothing else in earth or atmosphere or sea was like things up in Kentucky.” They read everything in sight. Pat Fitzgerald of the 2d Kentucky carried a small library in his knapsack, as did Johnny Jackman. On picket duty, the former was often seen putting his astronomical reading to the test by setting sticks in the ground to measure time by the sun’s shadow, since he had no watch. Still they made joke of death. A soldier always took off his good shirt and replaced it with a tattered one before going to the front. “I’m not going to let the Yankees shoot my new shirt!” he declared.

  Lieutenant Colonel Andy Hynes kept an old black named Jacob as his cook and barber, and the slave cut hair for all the men of the 4th Kentucky. Talkative in the manner of barbers in all times, he always finished his tonsorial performance by relating the bad fortune that invariably befell those who did not pay for their haircuts promptly. Almost without exception they died in their very next battle, but his cash customers always survived. Good old Jacob encountered very little difficulty with bad debts. And while he cut hair, the glee club commenced once more its tuneful ministrations to the brigade. They found more receptive civilian audiences here than ever before. “How we dined and supped with the good people,” exclaimed second bass John Weller. The merry wags of the 4th Kentucky, “Wild Bill” and “Devil Dick” and “Nondescript” and all of the others by real name or sobriquet, kept their spirit intact.

  It helped that while Lewis and the Orphans camped for refitting near Mill Haven, Georgia, many old friends returned to their ranks. Indomitable John Mahon, wounded in every battle, came back to finish the war with his brigade. He could not know it yet, but happily he had bled his last for the cause. Here, too, Lewis brought in the dismounted detachment. Just as the sun set on February 1, 1865, they came into camp, a recovered Johnny Jackman among them. “Was glad to see the boys,” he wrote in his diary. It had been 7½ months since his wound at Pine Mountain. “They like the cavalry very much,” he discovered. That night, in honor of the prodigals’ return, the Orphans made another attack on the poor Georgia Militia. Throwing blazing pine cones before them, they drove the “milish” out of their camps and sacked their belongings. “The battle lasted for some time, and presented a beautiful sight. At times the air would be full of the blazing missiles.”

  Camp life was a specialty of the Kentucky brigade; they always made the best of it. When their commissary issued molasses, the Orphan organized taffy-pulling parties, as if at home with their children and sweethearts. The concerts continued, and so did the parties given the Orphans by the neighboring civilians. The more loquacious of the brigade made speeches around the campfires. Booker Reed sang “Kitty Wells” and “The Vacant Chair” after supper of an evening. The men acted the tourist, seeing local landmarks, and often places like county courthouses visited by Sherman before them. Jackman read. Green foraged and cooked with his usual flair. And Ed Porter Thompson began the collection of sources for his history of these nobles of the Orphan Brigade.12

  The war interrupted Thompson’s work. Following Sherman’s move up the coast through South Carolina, Wheeler ordered General P. M. B. Young to take command of Iverson’s division and follow the advancing Union Army. Sherman had taken and sacked Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17, and four days later Young ordered Lewis to ride toward the ruined city. The movement began in tragedy when Conrad Bills of the 2d Kentucky fell from his horse while crossing the Savannah and drowned. T. H. Ellis of the 9th Kentucky led a detail of his regiment in advance of the brigade some days before. After several days’ ride they finally came within a few miles of Columbia, and could see the columns of smoke still rising from the burned city. When they crossed the Congaree River and entered the ruined streets, Ellis and his little band of Orphans saw for the first time the sort of desolation that this war could inflict. Ellis looked about and gathered what information he could about Sherman and his movements, then recrossed the river to look for food. He had heard that some of the blacks were hiding beans under their bedding. One of the men with him happened to be Flying Cloud, “who was eyed and shunned by the negroes.” He told the sachem to approach a black in his fiercest aspect, give several war whoops, and yell “Beans!” The women and children scattered in fear, and the men rolled over their beds and brought forth the bags of beans. “Here, here, boss,” they said. Flying Cloud, or “Cloud,” as the Orphans called him, reassured the slaves. “Me no hurt you,” he said. “Cook beans quick.”13

  That worked fine for Ellis’ little band, but Young found the area too devastated to support forage for his horses and men. Shortly the Kentucky brigade retraced its steps, crossed the Savannah yet again, and made camp a few miles north of Augusta. Here the main body of the brigade remained for several weeks, anticipating an enemy raid that never came. While here some of the Kentuckians went into Augusta for the little society that remained, and Jackman at least found a lady friend, though he maintained a proper discretion in telling his diary just how the romance progressed. Indeed, here on March 19 he finally filled the last page of his old journal made of damaged quartermaster blanks, and then his diary ceased.

  While most of the Orphans remained in their camps, and while Fayette Hewitt’s friends teased him that he might be serving on some general’s staff rather than serving with this ragged cavalry, to which he replied, “I would rather be a captain among these men, sir, than to be general of any other brigade in the army,” Caldwell’s turn for an expedition arose. General Young wanted Lewis to send a regiment to Sumter, South
Carolina, one hundred miles east, to determine if Sherman’s hordes were moving inland toward the valuable rail stock there. “Old Joe” sent Caldwell and the 9th Kentucky on March 29. The colonel, knowing he would find nothing to sustain men and horses, carried all the regiment’s edible necessities with him. The whole sortie was a great trial. The ferry boats at the Santee had been sunk by the enemy, and it took Caldwell two days to raise and repair them. Once across he found intelligence that federal Brigadier General Edward Potter was even then en route to Sumter to destroy the rolling stock that Caldwell was to protect. Caldwell force-marched his regiment forty miles in order to reach the objective first.

  What he found in Sumter were two hundred militia and two old iron cannon. Caldwell placed the militia in front of the city and behind a flooded bottom land, while he sent the 9th Kentucky to ride around Potter’s flank with the intent of destroying the enemy’s baggage train. Hopefully this would cause Potter to divide his force. At about 3 P.M. on April 8, Potter appeared in the Confederate front and three times attempted to advance on the flooded bottom-land road. Each time Caldwell repulsed him. Then the bluecoats opened with their artillery, soon silencing the two Confederate guns and driving the untrained militia into near panic. This left Caldwell no choice but to withdraw into the city, send off all the rolling stock he could save, and then take his regiment north on the road to Camden to try to slow Potter’s advance toward that place.