The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (14 page)

Even before his elevation, the Kentuckian readied his Orphans for the coming battle. When he evacuated Bowling Green, the brigade wounded had been sent by rail to Atlanta. A number of others straggled or deserted, and some infantrymen had been held there under orders to act as nurses in the hospitals. Breckinridge sent Colonel Hunt
to Atlanta, and Lieutenant Tom Winstead of the 4th Kentucky to Chattanooga and Atlanta, with orders to bring back all men able enough for duty. Winstead was told even to arrest those who would not come freely. As for Hunt, he was chiefly to look for deserters. Once in Atlanta he ordered all convalescents from the brigade aboard cars for Corinth, Gervis Grainger among them. Hunt found one healthy Orphan, however, who had been detailed as a nurse in a military hospital, and the doctors would not release him. Breckinridge immediately ordered a dispatch sent to Atlanta that was unusually blunt. “The Kentucky boys didnt ship for orderlies to ‘Pill rollers,’ ” he said. Indeed, some of the Orphans even returned under lock and key. A group of thirty convalescents from Chattanooga were locked inside a boxcar by Winstead. A still-ailing Johnny Jackman sat among them. It took twenty-four hours for them to reach Corinth. “We got off the train,” he wrote in his diary, “and I never again saw the Lt. He was such a ‘goober’ I don’t believe he knew which road to take.” But then, Johnny was a bit resentful at being locked up.
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However they came to Burnsville, whether in confinement or like the two men of the 6th Kentucky whose wives accompanied them on the train with baskets of goodies, Breckinridge rushed to prepare them. The old question of inadequate arms arose again. He found that eleven hundred of the brigade guns needed repair, and that boxes of ammunition and kegs of powder were damaged. He sent it all to Corinth for repair or replacement. Hunt requisitioned six hundred new rifles for his 5th Kentucky. Somehow their wants were satisfied for a change so that Breckinridge might look forward to a command well prepared for the coming battle. To the men he gave explicit instructions on conduct under fire. They must shoot “with deliberation at the feet of the enemy,” he said, thus avoiding the tendency to overshoot. Officers were to prevent the men from firing uselessly when not actually engaged. He advised to attempt to wound enemy soldiers rather than kill them. In part this was because a wounded man took one and sometimes two of his comrades from the battle line to help him to the rear, whereas the dead were left where they fell. It may date as well from the sensitivity of Breckinridge’s nature. A man of very tender sensibilities, as a lawyer he could never bring himself to act as a prosecutor. Now, even in battle, he hoped to spare life.

“It was the deliberate Sharp Shooting of our forefathers in the Revolution of 1776 and at New Orleans in 1815 which made him so formidable
against the odds with which they engaged,” he told the brigade. Now they must do the same. They must stay in ranks, and not leave the line to assist wounded. Let the enemy do that. “To quit the standard on the field of battle under fire under pretense of removing or aiding the wounded will not be permitted.” Violators would be shot on the spot.
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Now that Breckinridge commanded a corps, leadership of the Kentucky brigade devolved upon the senior colonel, Robert P. Trabue. For the first time Breckinridge was separated from his Kentuckians, making all the more apropos his sobriquet for them. How many more commanders would leave them orphans before this war was done?

As March became April, an undercurrent of excitement flowed through the otherwise peaceful camps at Burnsville. On Sunday, March 30, the Orphans “rubbed up” their brass for the usual inspection, but that evening they heard the ominous sound of cannon fire in the distance to the north. It lasted for some time, and Jackman found that it “made one feel ‘devilish.’ ” As the thunder of the guns rolled over the hills to Burnsville, curiosity coursed through the men. Hunt ordered three of his companies to leave before dawn the next day to determine the cause of the firing. They returned on April 1, to report that Breckinridge’s scouts had fired on a federal gunboat on the Tennessee, and the cannonade they heard was its deck guns answering.

The men were mostly idle on April 2. Johnny Jackman had time to observe the progress of the new season, finding that nature was “tardy in robing old earth in a mantle of green.” Still, the forests looked more verdant than before, and flowers bloomed. “These remind me of happier days,” he wrote in his diary.

The next day it came. That afternoon Breckinridge received the order to be ready to march at first light on April 4, expecting to give battle within twenty-four hours. This same day several hundred of the long-requested Enfield rifles reached Burnsville and found eager hands awaiting. Through the day the Orphans received and cooked three days’ rations. Forty rounds of ammunition per man issued forth from the quartermaster. Johnny Green found “the whole command greatly rejoiced at the prospect of battle.” That evening Hunt called his regiment to assemble in front of his tent, and he read to them General Johnston’s battle order. “I have put you in motion to offer battle to the invaders of your country,” it read. “You can but march to a decisive victory … remember the fair, broad, abounding land, the happy
homes, and the ties that would be desolated by your defeat.” He hardly need remind the Orphans of what they fought for. Even in defeat most of the other Confederate soldiers in this army would still have homes safely behind their own lines. But a victory by Grant in this contest would only drive the Kentuckians farther from their home fires.

1.
General Simon Bolivar Buckner who gave birth to the Kentucky State Guard and, thereby, the First Kentucky Brigade. (
Courtesy Massachusetts MOLLUS Collection
)

2.
The Kentucky State Guard encampment at Louisville, August 23, 1860. In less than a year these men will flock to the South. (
Courtesy Kentucky Historical Society
)

3.
Orphans to be. Several State Guard companies at the Louisville Fairgrounds in 1860. (
Courtesy Kentucky Military History Museum, Kentucky Historical Society
)

4.
John Hunt Morgan’s Lexington Rifles in 1860. Gay now, they faced hard years to come in the Orphan Brigade. (
Courtesy Kentucky Military History Museum, Kentucky Historical Society
)

Reveille interrupted the Orphans’ fitful sleep at 4
A.M
. that morning. They arose in a pelting rain and packed the brigade baggage into wagons that would take it to Corinth. Their tents went with it. Poor John Jackman, still not fully recovered from his Bowling Green illness, felt weak and in need of a stimulant. In the rush of packing he found an unattended bottle and thinking it was whisky, decided to “wet up” for the march. It turned out to be alcohol mixed with camphor, a back-rubbing potion for rheumatism. “I thought the stuff would burn me up,” he told his diary. “That taught me a lesson.”

By daylight the twenty-four hundred Orphans stood in the road, ready to march to the battle they expected on the morrow. Their measured step took them through a swamp where, in places, the mud sat knee deep, and the rain continued through the morning. Already the weaker men, or those not yet recovered from their illness, fell out of line or lagged back. Jackman had to take advantage of the brigade’s occasional halts in order to regain his place in line. It meant that he had no rest. Finally the sun appeared at noon, warming the day but not easing the march. When Jackman stopped at a spring to drink, he rested his Enfield against a tree. He returned to find that another Orphan had traded with him, leaving in its place a rusted old flintlock. Finally, like many others, he gave up walking and climbed onto an ordnance wagon.

The bivouac that night had no tents, and the rain fell again until dawn, dampening men and spirits, and making the roads even more difficult. Already the artillery and wagon train ran several hours late. By now the Army should have been ready to attack Grant at Pittsburg Landing on the morning. Instead it lay still a day’s march from the enemy, and Johnston found no alternative but to postpone the attack until April 6.
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The next day’s march was little better, though in the warmth of the sun, spirits renewed. The rain soaked the Orphans’ rations of bread. “Notwithstanding wet bread is not very appetizing,” found Johnny Green, “we ate up the three days ration in half that time & consequently
we are all very hungry.” When Hunt bivouacked his regiment at 5
P.M
. that afternoon, his starving Orphans immediately raided a turnip patch, flushing a rabbit in the offing. For some time the creature darted about as one avenue of escape after another closed in its path. Finally it ran toward Green, who followed the rabbit, and shortly he fell headlong into a ditch filled with water. “But Brer Rabit was there too,” found Johnny, “& was a poor swimmer.” That night Green’s mess dined on barbecued rabbit and boiled turnips and “ash cake,” corn meal and water baked in ashes between cabbage leaves. “Our mess lived high that night.”

Not far away, Breckinridge lay on a blanket by the roadside discussing the situation with Johnston and the other generals. Beauregard and Bragg wanted to turn back, certain that their delays and a few brushes with federal outposts had cost them the surprise they hoped to achieve. Johnston and Polk still wanted to attack. Breckinridge, feeling terrible from fever or tension, still sat upright to add his counsel that they should go ahead. Finally Johnston decided to attack and laid forth his battle plan. While Bragg and Hardee assaulted, Polk and Breckinridge would be held in reserve. Johnston said he wanted to keep the Kentuckians in reserve because, used as they were to hard marches and fast ones, they could move speedily to any threatened point in the line. It may have been, too, that Breckinridge had never before been in a battle.

That night the Orphans slept with their arms at their sides. “The night was clear, calm, and beautiful as such nights always are in the spring-time,” wrote Ed Thompson. Tired as they were from the hard march, the Kentuckians slept well except for the occasional firing of scouts in their front. The morrow was the Sabbath. In their front, behind Grant’s unsuspecting lines, lay Shiloh Church. With the coming of dawn these slumbering Orphans would attend the devil’s service.
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