The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (23 page)

There were other means of passing the time as well. Friends and relatives from Kentucky wrote and sent small packages of delicacies. Poor Captain S. F. Chipley received letters from his father “lecturing him
upon the
glories
of the
Union
,” but one example of the families of Kentucky that this war divided. Hanson took good-natured barbs from old friends in the Bluegrass who supported the Union. Chief among them was a man personally beloved, yet politically despised, by a host of Kentucky Confederates, George D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville
Journal
. Shortly after Hanson took residence at Fort Warren, Prentice sent him a demijohn of whisky and the injunction, “I hope, my old friend, that you will take things calmly. I hope you are a philosopher, which is the next best thing to a patriot, which is the next best thing to a Christian. Pray be the first, for I almost despair of your ever being either of the last.” Hoping that “Heaven and the United States Government” would deal kindly with Hanson, Prentice gave his affectionate regards. Hanson responded in kind, gleefully reminding Prentice that his own sons now wore the gray, and rejecting the whisky, “as I do not drink myself.” He did admit that on a couple of occasions the two of them raised a glass together in happier times, “but upon neither of them do I believe that you were in a condition to tell how much anybody else drank.” Since Prentice liked to refer to Hanson as a drunkard in his editorials, “Old Flintlock” turned the same accusation against him. “I hope you will become a sober man,” he wrote, “which is the next best thing to a truthful man, which is the next best thing to an honest man—pray be the first as I almost despair of your being either of the two last.” Noting Prentice’s wish that God and the Lincoln administration would be kind to him, Hanson closed with his own hope that “hell and your conscience may deal as kindly with you.” He signed the letter “Your old friend.” What remarkable people these Kentuckians.
⁴

Though Hanson stood his captivity in some comfort, the enlisted men of the 2d Kentucky Infantry met a different lot in Camp Morton, Indiana. There the frills the officers received did not abide. They did have their regimental dog, Frank, captured with them at Donelson, but little else. As a result, escape loomed inviting, and these Orphans never stopped trying. John Crockett of Graves’s command led one attempt to overpower a guard, while Jim Fagan of the 2d, a native of Indiana, actually reached the outside but ran into some patriotic farmers with squirrel rifles and soon rejoined his comrades. At one time the Orphans rose in a mass in their determination to be free. They overran a weak point in the stockade only to meet federal guards outside. A small battle ensued, and the Orphans found themselves
overpowered, bloodied, and returned to their barracks. J. F. Collins actually escaped with fifty others and got a mile from the prison before the guard caught him. He surrendered, but from confusion or cruelty, they shot him. Of the few who did escape to Kentucky, most, like Lieutenant H. F. Lester of the 2d Kentucky, rejoined their commands. Others became partisans or guerrillas instead. Jerome Clark of the 4th Kentucky helped serve Graves’s guns at Donelson before capture. When allowed to bathe in a river near the prison, Clark and three others overpowered their guards and fled for Kentucky, intending to find their brigade. Instead, Federals found them, and one of their company was almost murdered. Clark swore revenge. Escaping his captors, he became one of the most dread bushwhackers and guerrillas in the Bluegrass, known as “Sue Mundy.” And, though none of the Orphans might care to remember the fact, there were those Kentuckians unable to escape who could no longer take captivity. They had one alternative—taking the oath of allegiance to the United States. Five of “Benchleg’s” Orphans took the oath, as did one of Graves’s. It was a matter not spoken of by the others.
⁵

Yet exchange came at last for Hanson’s men, and for him on August 5, 1862. By September he was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, organizing supplies and arms for Bragg’s Kentucky expedition, and hopeful of joining in it himself. He commanded an ersatz brigade for a time, incorporating his own 2d Kentucky, but expected all the while to be reunited with the 1st Kentucky Brigade when Breckinridge brought them by on their route home. On October 3, as “Old Breck” and the Orphans reached Knoxville, Hanson was ready. Anxiously he wired Breckinridge, “Do we go with you?”
⁶

Yes, Hanson would go with him, if he went at all. For Breckinridge the frustration of the last two months did not lessen upon reaching Knoxville. Rather, it increased; for here he encountered new difficulties, including the governor of Tennessee trying to appropriate his troops for other purposes. Normally a man of unusually pacific temperament, the general felt increasingly the weight of his thwarted efforts to enable his Orphans to campaign for their homes. Amid all the worry and frustration fraying his nerves, he did not need additional aggravation. The 1st Kentucky Brigade could not have chosen a more inopportune moment to mutiny.

No more independent men served the Confederacy than its Kentuckians. However wild and reckless their conduct, they were men
who, like their state, guarded jealously every right, every prerogative. Considering the peculiar relationship they bore with the new nation, they felt entitled to stand on their rights. Unlike any other unit from a genuine Confederate state, they were entirely volunteers. The draft could not apply to Kentuckians. They were here because they wanted to be here. Indeed, they did not even fight for their own state. They fought and died for a nation their native soil refused to countenance. As a result, they resented being treated like soldiers from the seceded states. Not citizens of the Confederate States of America, they did not feel bound by its actions. In particular, they objected to the conscription.

The roots of the trouble dated from the time Hunt’s 5th Kentucky formally organized. While most regiments for southern service were raised for three years or the duration, Buckner enlisted this regiment for one year on the condition that they provide their own arms. This they did, though soon thereafter Breckinridge tried to get the War Department to pay them for their guns, with something additional to allow for the inflation of Confederate currency. It is unclear whether these Orphans ever got the money, but if they did, it rather effectively negated their part of the enlistment contract. Thus they should have been eligible for three years’ service too.

The men began to feel uneasy on this score that summer of 1862 when they saw other twelve months’ volunteers automatically being continued in the service for three years or the war, with or without their consent. By early September the rumor coursed through Hunt’s camps that Breckinridge intended they should be held in service after their year expired. Fearful that it might be true, the officers of the 5th Kentucky addressed a letter to their general on September 16, even as the move toward Kentucky finally commenced. They pointed to their “contract” with Buckner and declared that “in view of the fact, that at the time of the enlistment of the men, they were citizens of another nation; and also that our native state has never been under the control of the Confederacy,… They do not consider themselves liable to the provisions of the Conscript Act.” They asked to be discharged when their year expired.

The thought of being forced to remain in the service created unrest in the 5th Kentucky, and “the existing dissatisfaction would materially impair, if not completely ruin the efficiency of the Regt. and bring disgrace upon our noble state.” If discharged, they believed that most
would voluntarily re-enlist or else go into Kentucky and recruit. Whichever, they would not be
forced
to stay soldiers against their will. Being impelled to do anything forcible simply outraged the honor of Kentuckians.
⁷

With Hunt still absent healing from his wound, the officers prevailed upon Lieutenant Colonel Caldwell to deliver the letter to Breckinridge. The general took two days to think about it, then replied. “Nothing since I have been in the Army has given me greater pain than your declaration,” he said to them. “Nothing will be wanting in me to remove any just cause of complaint on the part of … a Regiment which for conduct and courage is not surpassed by any in the service of the South.” Yet, he reminded them that a representative assembly of Kentuckians did secede from the Union in the rump convention at Russellville, and that the state sent delegates to the Congress in Richmond. On that basis, the Orphans stood subject to Confederate laws as much as soldiers of any other state. He could only promise to send their application to Richmond for a decision. Meanwhile, he said, “I never will believe the 5th Ky capable of meditating any course that would bring grief to our friends at home and tarnish its well earned renown.” When Breckinridge forwarded the matter to the War Department, he stated more emphatically his belief that Hunt’s men possessed no cause for complaint, and later Richmond would agree.
⁸

Events prevented any immediate act by the disgruntled Orphans, for they left for Jackson, Mississippi, “going to Kentucky certain this time,” the day after the general replied. But three days later the dissatisfaction erupted in action. On September 22 Companies A and C of the 5th Kentucky stacked their arms at Meridian and declared that their time was up, they would serve no longer. Caldwell appeared on the scene shortly and arrested both companies, detailed Company B to guard them, and on the spot reduced all noncommissioned officers among the mutineers to the ranks. “Both companies had unanimously refused to do duty any longer,” he told Breckinridge. “A sincere desire to heal the troubles in the regiment and save from disgrace the men who came into the service with me” prevented Caldwell from taking more harsh measures for the moment. That evening “Uncle Tom” Hunt hobbled before the mutineers on his crutches and persuaded them to take their arms and return to duty. He promised that the
officials in Richmond would be consulted on the matter of conscription.
⁹

The next day they left for Mobile. On the face of it, the matter rested. Yet beneath the surface, tempers continued to inflame. Before the Orphans reached Knoxville, the fever spread to Lewis’ 6th Kentucky as well, they being another twelve months’ regiment. Their enlistments expired on October 2 in the main, some earlier. Lewis did not miss the unrest in his regiment, nor the threat of trouble, yet for several days he remained quiet, listening much, saying little. He consulted with his officers, he took counsel with Hanson, and finally wrote a personal letter to Breckinridge. “I do not fear open resistance to authority,” he told the general, “but I have not the philosophy to meet, with composure, the gradual destruction of a regiment, by a slow poison, that has hitherto conducted itself so gallantly.” He wanted nothing more than to command the 6th Kentucky Infantry, he concluded, “but I wish to be spared the pain of witnessing its defection on account of unjust treatment.”

Then the Orphans mutinied. On the evening of October 8, even while a desperate Breckinridge feverishly tried to clear their path to Kentucky, a number of Lewis’ men refused to do duty. “We, in a body,” wrote Grainger, “demanded discharge, or to be made ‘mounted infantry.’ ” They did not answer roll call and declined to take orders of any kind. This was the second mutiny in the brigade in two weeks.

The news reached Breckinridge that night or early on October 9. It came within hours of receipt of the word that Bragg’s Army had suffered a major defeat at Perryville the day before, and would be retreating toward Nashville. The Kentucky campaign might end before he and the Orphans could join it, this after all the worry and effort. Now another of his regiments rising in mutiny proved finally too much. In the closest thing to rage that he would know, he went to the camp of the Kentucky regiments and ordered them drawn up on three sides of a square. Then he took a place at the open side where everyone of them could see and hear him, took his hat from his head and held it at his side, and began to speak. “I spoke,” he wrote the next day, “under a degree of mortification and excitement produced by the occurrences of the previous evening which are quite unusual with me.”

Even in his ire, Breckinridge proved the master orator, knowing instinctively how to capture and mold his audience. He did it on the stump a hundred times as a politician. It was no different now. He
began by giving them “a little raking over” for their wildness and vandalism during the trip from Mississippi. The Orphans would never change their ways in that regard, but he never stopped trying. Then he turned to the matter of the Meridian mutiny, addressing the men of the 5th Kentucky. “He told them he was surprised at their having acted so,” Jackman wrote in his diary. The fact that they did it to call attention to their situation mitigated only a little. He knew his own duty, he said, and “would perform it at all hazards.” Had he been present at Meridian, he would have sacrificed his own life “and the life of every man under arrest in this Regt for mutiny” before he would have released them without their promise to return to duty unconditionally. There would have been “either unconditional surrender, or unconditional mutiny.” It was passed now, and there was nothing to be served by arresting them again. Since both he and Hunt promised an investigation, he reiterated his guarantee that they would receive an answer from Richmond.

Then he turned to the mutineers from Lewis’ regiment, and his tone changed, or so they would claim. Johnny Green later said that the general explained the needs of the service and that the Army and the cause could not spare them. Gervis Grainger recalled that he delivered “a most touching and eloquent appeal,” concluding by asking those willing to follow him through weal and woe “and to die if necessary in the last ditch” to re-enlist. There were cheers for Breckinridge and shouts of “Let’s re-enlist for thirty years or during the war.” Adjutants prepared papers for three years, “but thirty years would have been signed for by the boys, such was their earnest devotion to the cause.” Perhaps. But Green and Grainger wrote their recollections in after years with forgiving memories. Johnny Jackman put in his diary that same day that “Old Breck,” after saying what he would have done to the bolters of the 5th Kentucky, even to death, “wound up by giving the mutineers, in the 6th, fifteen minutes to return to duty, and they all did so before the time expired.” There rings a note of truth.
¹⁰