The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (10 page)

It was not without mishap. Thanks to Major Thomas B. Monroe, the 4th Kentucky was perhaps the best drilled at the time. He started a school for officers, gave them daily lessons, with recitations, and then drilled them in the field, with mixed results. Lieutenant Nat Clayton of Company A had more than a bit of difficulty with military terminology. When Monroe asked him in class what maneuver he would perform if an enemy appeared on his right front, Nat replied with some hesitation, “I would move the reegi
ment
stauchendiciler to the front.” Another captain of the 4th Kentucky proved equally inept in the argot of close-order drill, but made his point. Monroe asked him what he would do to meet an approaching enemy, and Captain John Trice replied, “Well, Major, I can’t answer that according to the books, but I would risk myself with the Trigg County boys, and go in on main strength and awkwardness.”

The language of an Army proved baffling to the mountain boys in the ranks. One private of the 6th Kentucky returned from the commissary with a pot full of potatoes not listed on his requisition. “I went to the conersary to draw some visions,” was his explanation, “and seein’ these taters I consecated them.”

Guard duty at night was a particularly onerous task for these citizen soldiers, especially as they had to prevent their campmates from passing out of the lines and into Bowling Green for liquor and women. “It makes a man feel very serious to Stand way of[f] in the dark by him-Self
when exspecting the enemy,” complained Ferguson, “and when bed time seems near I miss my soft bed on the frozen ground.” A password was assigned each night, without which no one could leave camp, and generally it was chosen from military history or jargon. The night Corporal Leander Washington Applegate of Company H, 9th Kentucky, stood guard, the word was “Borodino.” His beat brought him near the sentinel at the back of some tents of one company. To prevent would-be revelers from hearing the password, he cupped his hand to his mouth and whispered the sign.

“What is it?” said the sentinel rather loudly.

“Borodino,” whispered Applegate again.

“What is it?” the sentinel said again, in a lower tone.

“Borodino,” said Applegate, a little louder.

The scene repeated several times, the sentinel growing ever more quiet, and Applegate ever louder. Finally, exasperated, the corporal fairly shouted into the other man’s ear.

“B-o-r-o-d-i-n-o, by God! Now do you understand it?”

Yes, the sentinel did understand it now, and so did most of the men in the nearby tents. “Thus armed with the mystic word,” wrote one of them, they “passed the lines that night and had a ‘huge’ time in town.”
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Besides drilling the men, Breckinridge and his officers had to impose discipline, no easy task with these independent Kentuckians. Some of the backwoods boys simply did not understand rules. One, chided for leaving his guard post to light his pipe, thought he adequately excused himself when he explained that it was only “a little cob pipe.” Breckinridge repeatedly issued orders prohibiting firing guns in camp. To the men this simply seemed the most logical way of changing loads. There were the little matters of pilfering and petty thievery always attendant to a volunteer army. One man caught filling his haversack from a hogshead at the supply depot was turned over to Colonel Hunt, who read the charge against him. “I did get the sugar,” replied the soldier, “and was caught in the act; but I do not think you ought to punish me, Colonel, as I always give you part of every thing I
find.
” Hunt tumbled to the joke and dropped the charges. Indeed, some officers tacitly approved the pilfering. One captain of the 4th Kentucky lectured his men on not breaking ranks on the march to raid orchards and barns. The men seemed to listen, but the next time they passed a field of apple trees they dispersed without a word to fill their
pockets. “Boys,” the captain called after them, “if you
will
go, bring your captain a few.”
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One of the best watchdogs on camp discipline was Hanson. “Old Flintlock,” the men called him or, in reference to his stiff limb, “Bench-leg.” His methods were, to say the least, unorthodox. Believing that there were too many malingerers on the sick list trying to avoid duty, he published an order that henceforward there would be only two sick men at a time in each company. Just how well he was able to enforce the order is conjecture, but he tried in his way. Almost every day he visited the 2d Kentucky’s hospital. “His insight into character was extraordinary,” wrote a Kentuckian at Bowling Green. Hanson despised dissimulation and sham. It aroused in him an ire that had bizarre consquences upon his features. The individual parts of his face seemed to work without concert, his head moving in quick, jerking contrast to his otherwise heavy, “inactive manner.” He had, said a friend, “a German face with all the Irish expressions.”

“Sick! sick!” he exploded to a malingerer. “Why, I was twelve months with the Army in Mexico, and wasn’t sick a day.” He used the same tactic on those begging furloughs. “What, sir! Furlough? Now, I was twelve months in Mexico, and never had a furlough.” And so it went. Perhaps the men took him seriously on these issues. For sure, it did not work when it came to drinking.

A Kentuckian was, almost by definition, a man with a powerful interest in Bourbon, the more so in the boring routine of camp life at Bowling Green. With the ingenuity of soldiers, many of them found liquor where their superiors thought there was none. Finally, Basil Duke of Morgan’s company confiscated the entire stock of the “article” from a nearby store that had been selling it to the men. He put it under guard inside the camp, but of course could not keep its presence long a secret. Soon one of the guards exhibited signs of having had commerce with the prisoner, and before long others were drunk as well. Duke reluctantly took the whisky back to the store owner, feeling it was safer there, but of course the merchant immediately began selling it again, and Duke narrowly escaped arrest for the unauthorized confiscation.

“Bench-leg” Hanson’s remedy proved no more effective. His own fondness for whisky was well known. Consequently, when one day he found a drunken soldier in camp, a number of men gathered round for
the inevitable reminiscence of the days in Mexico. Sure enough it came.

“Drunk here, eh? Drunk!” said Hanson. “I was twelve months in Mexico, and in all that time …” He paused for a moment, reflecting, and then the men laughed. Without another word he turned abruptly and walked away.
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Not all breaches of discipline by these Kentuckians could be laughed away, and there were many. “Give them officers that they love, respect, and rely on,” Duke said of Kentucky soldiers, “and any thing can be accomplished with them.” But they were “almost irrepressibly fond of whisky,” incorrigible about straggling and escaping camp when not on active campaign, and “always behaving badly” when there was time to fill. Many of their transgressions were in the name of good fun, like the time that men of the 4th Kentucky stole a valuable piece of camp cookery from the 9th, and the latter retaliated by purloining every camp utensil belonging to the other regiment in one masterful night raid.

Other pranks were not so easily overlooked. Men of Morgan’s command broke into a church, apparently seeking shelter, and Breckinridge ordered them arrested and punished. To protect the citizens of Bowling Green—whose feelings toward all these soldiers in their midst were mixed—Breckinridge canceled all leaves on December 1 and restricted the entire command to the camps. Yet there were still a few, men who learned the magical passwords, who got into the town. There they drank and whored. Not a few of them, like poor George Allen of Hanson’s Company G, came back to camp with gonorrhea.

On November 8 alone, thirty-eight men of the brigade sat under arrest. For that month there was a daily average of nineteen men in the guardhouse, and it went higher in December. Interestingly, the 2d Kentucky, eldest of the regiments, acted the part of unruly older child by providing the majority of offenders. Indeed, on some days the guardhouse was in fact little more than a bivouac for the 2d Kentucky. In the last two months of 1861, 75 per cent of the men arrested came from Hanson’s command. It is small wonder that “Old Flintlock” made a habit of visiting the guardhouse every day to lecture its inmates on their sins. The Kentucky men took their punishment cheerfully, so long as they did not feel it degrading.

There were those, of course, who would not stay long enough to be punished. The number reported as absent without leave took a sharp
jump in early December, many of them, too, from the 2d Kentucky. Fortunately, most returned, but not all. There were desertions, two in December from the ranks of “Bench-leg,” and another just after the New Year. The 5th Kentucky lost six at least from Bowling Green. Guards apprehended many, but fortunately the war was too young yet to warrant making them examples by execution. The time would come, however.
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The officers, too, had much to learn, including discipline. Some just could not count, or did not think to. Hodge had to be instructed by Colonel Hunt to keep better track of the details he ordered for police and camp duty, having ordered more in details than the 5th Regiment had in men. Officers lagged in forwarding their reports to brigade headquarters, often embarrassing Breckinridge with his superiors.

“I think I am under one of the Best Captains in the world,” said a recruit in Lewis’ regiment of his company officer. Yet occasionally they abused the men, and here lay real danger when dealing with Ken-tuckians. Major John R. Throckmorton, cantankerous at any time, gave one man a terrible time when the offender merely remarked on the size of his horse’s lower lip. “What in the hades is that to you?” shouted Throckmorton. “What have you got to do with it? Am I responsible for his lip? Did I make it? Every blamed fool I meet has something to say about this horse’s lip. I believe there are more blamed fools in this army around Bowling Green—especially among the Kentucky troops—than anywhere else in the world.” In response to apologies Throckmorton added, “You’ve got too much lip yourself.” A few minutes later he turned and shouted, “See here, I’ve thought this thing over, and have come to the conclusion that I ought to shoot the next man who alludes to this horse’s lip.”

Jealous of the dignity of his Kentuckians, Breckinridge would not allow officers to degrade them. When Lieutenant Thomas Steele of Company E, 4th Kentucky, did “wantonly maltreat abuse and oppress” Private Ed Bishop of the 6th Infantry, Breckinridge ordered the officer publicly reprimanded in a general order, and furthermore directed him to apologize to Bishop’s colonel. Even more pointed was the episode of an officer who told a private to sweep his tent for him. The private promptly responded that the captain might “go to hell.”

The officer arrested the soldier immediately and sent him to the guardhouse, thinking nothing more of it. Breckinridge learned of the
incident, mounted at once, and rode to the captain’s tent, whipping his horse with his hat in his haste.

“Sir,” said the breathless general, “I understand you have ordered a private to sweep about your tent, and he has refused, and you sent him to the guardhouse.”

“I did, sir.”

“I want you to understand that when a private refuses to voluntarily sweep out my tent I will do it myself. They are not menials in [this] brigade. They are all gentlemen, and you have no right to command one of them to do a menial service. Now you go to the guardhouse and apologize to the soldier you have insulted and sweep about your own tent, or you will take his place.”

It is small wonder that the men of the 1st Kentucky Brigade came to form such an unusual attachment for this general. Not only would he protect them from harm without, but also from bullying within.
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The advancing winter only added to the boredom of garrison life in and around Bowling Green. “The severity of the winter,” wrote a Mississippian, “exceeded anything I had ever known.” The snow lay on the ground for weeks, freezing everything. Icy winds raged through the camps. Orders from brigade headquarters prohibited using farmers’ fence rails for firewood but, as Johnny Green said, “we were actually freezing & had no axes to cut fire wood.” Colonel Hunt, realizing the plight of his men, gave them a way around the prohibition by telling them they must only refrain from burning “whole rails.” Soon there were roaring fires made from pieces of rails. “The truth is,” wrote Green, “it was but little time before every rail in that fence had been converted into pieces.”

The men built rude fireplaces of sod in their tents, used more “pieces” of rails and other lumber to floor them, and found straw to soften their beds. “It is wonderful how comfortable we made ourselves,” Green recalled. There were a few camp entertainments. The 4th Kentucky had the beginnings of a regimental band, and in the 2d, Private Bob Chapman, a Pennsylvanian by birth, entertained the men with his violin. “Shoot-the-cat,” they called him. There were political diversions here, as well. The Provisional Government of Kentucky having formed at Russellville on November 20, the camps at Bowling Green swarmed with minor politicians. Many of them enlisted in the brigade immediately after signing their so-called ordinance of secession. Their new “governor,” Breckinridge’s cousin by marriage,
George W. Johnson, established himself in the town both to conduct state affairs with Richmond and to help look after the interests of the 1st Kentucky Brigade. Here and there a wife, like Mrs. Phil Lee, made her way to Bowling Green to look after a husband. Company B of the 2d Kentucky did not have wives to entertain them, but they did have a mascot dog, Frank. And there was always discussion of events in the North, particularly federal debate on raising Negro soldiers. Should that happen, decided men of the 6th Kentucky, then they were “in favor of the South hoisting the black flag,” neither asking nor giving quarter, and shooting anyone found advocating the use of black troops.

On celebratory occasions a little whisky was permitted, though it was always more plentiful in the camps of regiments from other states. Reuben Davis of Mississippi kept a full barrel of “Kentucky shuck,” obtained chiefly as a medicinal for his men with measles. Yet every few days Breckinridge himself stopped by Davis’ tent for a taste. “He was a goodly sight,” wrote Davis, “sitting on stool or table, with a glass of old shuck in his hand, and that grand voice of his vibrating through the tent like a deep-toned bell.” The Kentuckian asked how Davis came by such a luxury, and Davis said it was because General Johnston, commanding the Army, favored his Mississippians and relied on their antiquated shotguns to save his Army when danger came. Breckinridge laughed and said Johnston surely was right. “Men armed with those guns
ought
to have everything possible to support their spirits, even genuine old Kentucky shuck.” Whenever Breckinridge left Davis he usually produced a small demijohn “artfully concealed somewhere,” and as the Kentuckian put it, “loaded up for emergencies.” Davis always remembered those good days. “I fancy I can see him laughing and merry,” he wrote of the Kentuckian. “He was not only a most elegant gentleman, but genial and full of spirit, and ready to meet the worst of days with a sort of gay courage that sat well upon his stalwart manhood.”
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