The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (28 page)

As Hanson bled, his Orphans continued their trial under the rain of fire from the federal artillery. They continued to follow the fleeing bluecoats right to the river’s edge, and a number of the Orphans, particularly in Lewis’ 6th Kentucky, went across after them. Gervis Grainger waded the stream and waited for the rest of the brigade to come over, not realizing—as none of the Orphans did—that they were not supposed to go beyond the crest of the hill they had taken. The artillery fire, said Grainger, “shook the earth under my feet.” He could barely see through the cloud of thick white smoke that wafted down the bluff from the mass of artillery. Then looking to his right, he could see that the federal infantry had re-formed and now readied itself to counterattack. He discovered that most of his comrades who crossed with him were on their way back to the hill, and Grainger himself jumped into the river up to his armpits and flailed his way across under a patter of enemy bullets. On the other side he found a riderless horse and tried to mount it just as a cannon ball decapitated the animal. He ran toward four men carrying a fifth on a litter, in time to see another shot pass through one bearer, the wounded man on the litter, and another bearer at the other end. He joined the remaining two men and raced to the safety of their own lines.

All order and discipline disappeared in the rush to pursue the enemy off the hill, which accounts for the inability of the Kentucky officers to hold the men from crossing the river. Then the second line of the division moved too quickly and collided with the first. Add to this the fall of Hanson, and pandemonium reigned for fifteen minutes on that terrible hill. A. G. Montgomery, the man who took a prominent part in two surrenders, was killed here by a confused wretch in his own company. Captain McKendree took a bad wound in the thigh, and thought he was doomed, yet insisted on staying with his command. Captain John Rogers, who lost a brother at Shiloh, now saw his brother George fall forward with a fatal bullet in his side. Yet there was presence of mind. As Trabue rallied the Orphans on the crest of the hill, he sat calmly on his horse. Nearby he saw on the ground an enemy bugle. “There, pick that up,” he told a man nearby. “We’ll need that.” No true Orphan could pass over booty, even in battle. Soon thereafter Trabue saw a man running for dear life from the misadventure at the river. “Halt, sir! Don’t
run
. You’re in just as
much danger running as you would be in a walk.” The Orphan stopped briefly, thought, and replied, “Oh yes, Colonel, I know
that;
but then, you see,
we get away so much quicker!”
Off he ran.
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Lewis tried to rally the 2d and 6th Kentucky after the disaster at the river, calling on an officer to gather the men around a regimental flag just in the rear. But in the space of a few minutes four color bearers fell dead before the men could rally to the banner. Nearby Joe Nuckols, who never learned to ride and always entered engagements on foot, brought away safely the colors of the 4th Kentucky, but only after three bearers fell before him. As the Orphans withdrew, the 2d Kentucky’s dog, Frank, flushed a rabbit in the midst of the hell around him and, oblivious to the battle, chased it straight toward the advancing enemy line. Some of the men cheered Frank but then the rabbit changed course, and raced back through the Kentucky line, Frank in hot pursuit. “Run, cotton-tail, run!” shouted Tom Wilson of the 6th Kentucky. “Had I no more reputation to sustain than you, I would run too.” An enterprising corporal of Lewis’ regiment heard a bullet pass through his canteen. Filled as it was with hard cider, the Orphan quickly weighed the priorities before him, dropped his rifle, and drained the container dry before it ran out on the ground. And young Blanchard, the coward, stood in the forefront of the 4th Kentucky, headmost in the advance, and among the last to withdraw.
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It had been, Squire Bush wrote in his diary that night, “the most desperate charge that was ever made!” It was also the most senseless. Trabue stormed furiously at Nuckols. “I saw from the first that there was no use going there! I was afraid, too, that all our boys would be needlessly killed.” As he said this, he finally received word of Hanson’s wounding, the command of the brigade now devolving upon him. “Old Trib” at once set about re-forming the men and pulling them out of the artillery fire to the line they occupied at the beginning of the charge. Nothing remained to gain from holding that terrible hill.
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The Orphan Brigade began that charge with no more than 2,247 men, 395 of them in the 9th Kentucky, which took no part in the fight, though Hunt stormed about trying to get his men sent in. That left just 1,852, of whom 1,197 were Kentuckians. The charge itself lasted barely an hour, the hardest fighting and most damage requiring barely 20 minutes. When Trabue re-formed the brigade and took a hasty field report, he found something more than half the men present. When a final tally came in, Trabue reported that 431 of the brigade
lay dead, wounded, or missing and probably killed, on the field. That was nearly one fourth of the command, and of the Kentuckians engaged, over 27 per cent fell. It was the highest loss of any brigade in the assault. Hanson was dying, Nuckols badly wounded, Bramlette and several other officers killed. In the 4th Kentucky 13 of its 23 officers lay dead or wounded. Hanson’s rowdy old 2d Kentucky lost 108 out of 422 engaged.
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Shortly after Trabue re-formed the brigade, Breckinridge rode the length of his now much shorter line, surveying the damage done. His anger mounted as he saw the wreck left by Bragg’s insane order. Finally he came to the Kentucky brigade. “I never, at any time, saw him more visibly moved,” said Joe Nuckols. “He was raging like a wounded lion, as he passed the different commands from right to left; but tears broke from his eyes when he beheld the little remnant of his own old brigade.” The loss of Hanson, Rice Graves now severely wounded after supporting Pillow’s advance, the gaps in the lines of his old Kentuckians, proved too much for the general. “My poor Orphans! My poor Orphans!” he cried as he passed them. “My poor Orphan Brigade! They have cut it to pieces!”
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That night the Kentuckians rested, dazed from the fury of the afternoon. They wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled around their pitiful fires for warmth in the bitter cold. Those on picket had no fires, and some of them found their socks and trousers—thoroughly wetted from the crossing of Stones River—frozen on their feet. “This night of sleet & discouragement was trying,” wrote Green, “but never a man faltered.” The most miserable were the wounded who still lay on the field where comrades could not retrieve them. Bragg’s generals met in war council sometime after 10
P.M.
, when they determined to stay in position the next day, Bragg still hoping that Rosecrans would retire first.

The meeting done, Breckinridge went to see Hanson. He found the general dying. “Old Flintlock” could not restrain his emotion when he saw his commander. “General,” he said, “Dr. Yandell does not think I will live, nor do I; but I have this satisfaction, I shall die in a just cause, having done my duty.” Virginia Hanson’s own agony seemed frantic. Mary Breckinridge had cut the boot from the injured leg and torn strips of her own clothing for bandages. After a time, at Breckinridge’s request, Mary left to attend to Rice Graves, while her husband took on the midnight vigil. “Old Bench-leg’s” constitution
was strong, and it took him a long time to die. Slowly the face that smiled so often set still in pain, the old humor, the irascibility, the nature that tried so hard to change the Kentuckians yet was so much like them, faded away. By morning, January 4, he was gone. The Kentucky Brigade was orphaned yet again.
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By the time Hanson breathed his last, his Kentuckians were already gone themselves. During the night of January 3–4, Bragg finally decided that his Army could not remain in Murfreesboro. The Federals were too powerful. That night he issued orders for the retreat and, in what by now seemed custom, the Kentucky brigade acted as rear guard. Breckinridge assigned Hunt’s 9th Kentucky and the 41st Alabama to join Cobb in covering the withdrawal. He expected it to be a perilous duty and issued double the normal ammunition, but in fact the movement took place virtually unopposed. Bragg’s Army itself marched forty miles south to Tullahoma, while Hunt’s command remained ten miles in the advance at Manchester. Behind them on the battlefield at Stones River, they left all too many of their comrades. Among them, wounded severely and a prisoner of the Federals, was Ed Porter Thompson.
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Now the season demanded that the Army go into winter quarters, and meanwhile the high command needed to replace Hanson. Temporarily Hunt took charge of the 1st Kentucky Brigade, and this suited the Orphans very well. On January 14 twenty-five officers of the brigade, chiefly from the 6th and 9th regiments, sent a petition to President Davis requesting that “Uncle Tom” be promoted to brigadier general and given permanent command of them. “During the recent series of engagements in front of Murfreesboro he displayed the same judgment, coolness, & gallantry which has characterized him upon every battle field, and endeared him to the officers, and men of the brigade,” they wrote. Hunt himself did not know about the petition, but when the Kentucky lobby in Congress learned of it, they quickly lent their voices.

While awaiting a permanent commander for the brigade, Bragg assigned Brigadier General Marcus J. Wright of Tennessee to take charge of the Orphans. He assumed the responsibility on January 17, 1863, surely realizing that he would not have it for long. Trabue was known to be continuing his quest for a promotion. Some thought of Helm, now fully recovered from his Baton Rouge operation. The Hunt petition did not long remain a secret, and now another Kentuckian
entered the lists, one with the best claim of all. Simon Buckner wanted his brigade once more.
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While the 6th and 9th Kentuckys petitioned for Hunt, the officers of Hanson’s old 2d Regiment wrote to Buckner as soon as they reached Tullahoma. They wanted to serve with him, not that they were at all dissatisfied with Breckinridge, but because so many of them had served with Buckner even before the war in the State Guard. “I know the men have formed for me no common attachment,” he wrote. He also knew of their problems. “A restlessness originating in various causes, which have been the subject of several conversations between Gen. Breckinridge and myself pervades the entire Kentucky organization.” He believed he could cure the problem, or at least contain it. “The fortune of war has placed them beyond my command, and I have forfeited any claim I formerly have had to command them,” he noted, but it hardly lessened his fatherly concern. He believed they would yet be important to the Confederacy. “They have already shown themselves amongst the best of her soldiers.” Even though he now commanded a military department in the South, he offered to take an inferior position as a mere brigade commander if they would give him the Orphans. Once he commanded Breckinridge; now he would be delighted to be commanded by him. “I would now serve under Gen. Breckinridge with the same alacrity, and with the same confidence in his abilities, that he has heretofore manifested towards me.” He feared that his superiors might regard his request as “quixotic,” but promised this was not the case. “Though I may appear to court a degradation of military rank, I seek only to gratify the natural feelings of a man by associating myself again … with those who love me as their friend and confide in me as a leader.” To President Davis, Buckner spoke more strongly. “They are my children,” he said, “take me from my department—put me at the … Brigade’s head … I want no higher honor.”
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The matter remained unresolved for a time. Meanwhile, the Orphans settled into their winter quarters, and one of their number made an arduous journey toward recuperation from his Stones River wound. Mary Breckinridge heeded her husband’s request and had Major Rice Graves loaded into a wagon, assisted by her son Cliff and two lieutenants. The trip to Chattanooga, where she would care for him, proved long and tiresome. “I had not the remotest idea what was before me,” she wrote the general. Twice she hired mules to assist the
horses, and the men in the party had to whip the animals to make them pull, while another pulled the horses, and one man pushed at the wheels and chocked them every few feet as they ascended the Cumberland Mountains. “Sometimes they would not pull at all and those two gentlemen just had to whip and lead and work every way with them to get along at all.” Once arrived in Chattanooga, Mary met General Helm, commanding the post there, and he found rooms for her and Graves. She also met the charming Major Throckmorton of the large-lipped horse. With his customary chivalry he refused her suggestion that he take the mules with the horses when he returned the ambulance over the mountains. She hoped he would have just as rotten a trip as she did. “I shall never laugh at his remarks again.”

As for Graves, he shortly wrote to Breckinridge’s adjutant that “the trip across the mountains has inflamed my wound very much and I am proportionately suffering.” Yet he recovered quickly, though saddened when Mary Breckinridge left for Alabama to winter. “Mrs Breckinridge is very much missed,” he wrote the general; “the establishment is not near so pleasant since her departure.” Not long thereafter, Breckinridge recommended that the War Department promote Graves and give him command of a North Carolina unit in need of a colonel. “He is an excellent officer,” wrote the Kentuckian, betraying a little of the fatherly feeling he had for the young artillerist.
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For Mary Breckinridge herself, regarded by many of the Orphans as the mother of the brigade, the winter proved hard as she spent most of it separated from the general. Always she urged him to join her. “If I only had you here after all of your dangers and hardships I would be so happy,” she wrote. “I want to hear from you so much.” She passed the time by tending wounded soldiers, sewing shirts for the general, making soap for the Kentuckians’ hospitals, and buying delicacies like white sugar and French gelatine for the soldiers. From her wedding dress she made a beautiful battle flag, which she sent to her husband, instructing him to present it to his best regiment. Fearful of being accused of favoritism, Breckinridge did not give it to one of the Kentucky units but, instead, to the 20th Tennessee of his division. Further, thinking that if her name were mentioned in connection with the flag, the Federals might arrest her, he made no mention of the flag’s maker. Mary did not like that. “I regret very much not having the flag presented in my name,” she wrote him. “I thought the beauty was in coming from your wife.” Furthermore, “by all means it ought to have
been given to a Ky regiment.” Of course, she could not stay angry for long. The general obtained a brief leave of absence in late January to spend a few days with her. When he returned to the Army, she begged him—he was never much of a letter writer—to correspond frequently. “If you knew how much pleasure they gave me,” she said of his letters, “I know you would write oftener. I will be willing to take short ones and much space taken up in writing my name and yours and my place of residence &c &c.” Any word at all was better than nothing.
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