The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (30 page)

The first competition occurred on May 19. Two colonels acted as judges, and Hardee umpired. It was a festive occasion. “Looked like ‘fair times,’ ” wrote Jackman. Breckinridge, Humphrey Marshall, Adams, Helm, Hardee, and a host of lesser luminaries observed the meet, while carriages brought ladies and gentlemen from miles around. The Orphans dressed in their best military finery. Officers polished their swords and buttons and strutted for the ladies like gamecocks. The first two regiments to meet were Lewis’ 6th Kentucky and the 16th Louisiana, and the judges decided in favor of the Orphans. The next day, May 20, Adams’ best regiment, the 13th Louisiana, met the rowdy old-timers of Hanson’s 2d Kentucky, led now by good old Bob Johnson. Surprisingly, despite Johnson’s demonstrated ignorance of drill, the Orphans once again bested the Louisianians. “Both regiments drilled splendidly,” wrote Jackman. The next day the 4th Kentucky ran through its evolutions under the eye of its newly commissioned colonel, Joe Nuckols, recovered from his wound. They, too, defeated their rival regiment, the 19th Louisiana. The latter’s colonel was a Prussian whose broken English on the drill field set the boys laughing out loud. It remained only for Hunt’s 9th Kentucky to meet Adams’ 32d Alabama, a contest that would have decided a title not only for the division, but unofficially for the Army as well, since it was widely told that Adams led the best-drilled brigade in Bragg’s command. Unfortunately, active operations commenced once more on the day that the Orphans and Alabamians were to meet. They never finished the drill competition, but the men of Kentucky never doubted who deserved the championship.
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If Jackman and his mates in the 9th Kentucky had stepped onto the drill field that day, they would have answered the commands of another new colonel, John W. Caldwell. “Uncle Tom” Hunt had resigned.

Hunt first tried to tender his resignation in January, despite the petition from his officers that he be promoted to brigadier. He did not
want promotion. “I have lost my fortune,” he lamented to Eli Bruce. “Worse than this I have entirely neglected my family.” He would have welcomed an unsolicited promotion at one time, but now necessity compelled him to leave the service. Hardee, however, refused to allow it. “Colo. Hunt is one of the most valuable officers in my corps,” he wrote to the War Department, “& his services cannot be spared.” Indeed, Hunt’s reputation for reliability reached the very top command of the Army. In April Bragg asked Hardee to send “Uncle Tom” with his own and Lewis’ regiments toward Murfreesboro on a reconnaissance, with orders “to proceed as far as he possibly could.” Both Jackman and Bush noted in their diaries the hurried preparation of rations for the march, and then the mysterious cancellation of the march after midnight of April 26. What they never knew is that, after following his duty by giving Hunt Bragg’s orders, Hardee went to the commanding general and told him that it simply would not do to give Hunt and his Orphans such an order, “for they wouldn’t stop this side of hell!” Bragg countermanded the order.

Hunt did oversee Wickliffe and a small detachment from the brigade saving some valuable stores in government warehouses at McMinnville a few days earlier and won compliments for the way “the troops from this Brigade did valuable service.” But still Hunt wanted out of the Army. Finally on April 22 the President accepted his resignation, and on May 1 Hunt—temporarily commanding the 1st Kentucky Brigade in Helm’s absence—formally turned the Orphans over to Lewis. The sadness of Hunt’s leave-taking brought tears from many in his old regiment. Some of them dated back to State Guard days with kindly “Uncle Tom.” “Few among them could take his hand in parting, without tears,” wrote one, “and all were sad and depressed.” Hunt repaired to Augusta, Georgia, to join his refugee family, and there entered business. For the rest of the war he lent aid to the Orphans when he could. After his departure from Tennessee, Helm sent to Hardee a testimonial to Hunt’s “conduct, true courage, and unusual judgment as an officer.” He grieved to lose him, as did the 9th Kentucky. “The resignation of so gallant a soldier and devoted a patriot is painful,” yet all understood the motives that compelled Hunt’s action. Fortunately they did not have long to mourn his absence. By the middle of May the Orphans were needed again.
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The summons came from a familiar quarter, Vicksburg. Though Williams failed in his attempt to take the fortress city the year before, another man in blue with more men and more determination laid
siege to the city just the day before the drill competitions began in Breckinridge’s division. U. S. Grant did not discourage like other men, and now he had the Confederate Army in Vicksburg surrounded. Its only hope lay in support from the outside. General Joseph E. Johnston was organizing a small army to provide that support, and he called on Bragg for assistance. This gave Bragg a much-wanted opportunity to rid his Army of its troublemakers. He ordered Breckinridge’s division to march to Johnston’s aid, and Vicksburg’s.

The general received the order late on May 23, and that same night set the Orphans to work cooking rations for the trip ahead. Early the next morning the 1st Kentucky Brigade formed, just 2,048 strong, and marched 12 miles to Wartrace, arriving about noon. Along the way the men speculated among themselves about where they were going. “All the boys suspected that the brigade was ordered to Mississippi and were grumbling a great deal,” said Jackman, “not liking to make another summer campaign in the state.” Breckinridge soon dispelled any mystery. Shortly after the Kentuckians stacked their arms, he sent orders for them to form at headquarters. He wished to speak to them, he said. On their way to brigade headquarters a number of the men complained that if they could vote on their probable destination, they would choose to remain in Tennessee rather than spend another miserable summer in Mississippi. When the brigade assembled, the general stood on a stump so they all could see him, and announced that he had orders to bring all except his Tennessee troops here to board a train for Atlanta. Further orders would meet them there, but he had a good idea of his ultimate destination, and supposed they did too. Knowing how the Orphans felt about that, he had asked Bragg if he might not leave them in Tennessee and take a Mississippi brigade with him instead, men who would be glad to go home. Bragg left the matter to Breckinridge, however, and now he asked the Orphans their preference: going with him to Johnston, or staying with Bragg.

“The boys felt that if they did not vote to follow their Maj. Gen’l. outsiders would think they also condemned him as well as Bragg,” wrote Johnny Jackman. “To stay with Bragg while others were sent with Breckinridge,” said Johnny Green, “would be taking part against their beloved Breckinridge.” Men who a few minutes before spoke of voting for Tennessee if they had the chance, now cast unanimously to follow their general, their father. “Whither thou goest,” said Green, “there we will go also.” They raised their right hands to a man, then followed the balloting with a round of cheering for Breckinridge. He
thanked them in a brief speech—“He is the most eloquent speaker I ever heard,” Jackman decided—then left to bid farewell to his Tennessee regiments. Already moved by the Orphans’ gesture, he broke down when saying good-bye to the 20th Tennessee, to whom he had given Mary’s wedding-dress flag. He uttered only a few words before tears overwhelmed him. Abruptly he wheeled his mount and galloped out of sight. A month later the men of the 20th sent him a new horse “as a simple expression of the feelings cherished by soldiers for their favorite chieftain.”
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The trip from Wartrace to Atlanta, then Montgomery, and on to Jackson, repeated in reverse their journey of the previous September, and with no fewer adventures. Once having decided to go to Mississippi, the Orphans assumed their usual demeanor. When their train left Montgomery, a bystander saw that “all seemed in the highest spirits, cheering and yelling like demons.” In part they cheered in thanks for being alive, for on the very day they left Wartrace by train the 6th and 9th Kentuckys very nearly ceased to be. Their rickety engine and broken-down cars ran out of control coming down a 7-mile grade. By Jackman’s timing, they covered the 7 miles in 4½; minutes. He watched the moon as it appeared from moment to moment between the crags overhead, and thought of saying good-bye to it. “We thought every moment the car would be dashed in pieces against the rocks or be pitched off some of the cliffs and be ground into dust.” How much worse it must have been for those men who “bivouacked” on top of the crowded cars. The rearmost car actually flew to pieces and disappeared from the end of the train, yet not a man was killed. One poor Orphan riding atop it when it disintegrated found himself flying over the telegraph wires and into a briar bramble. Miraculously he survived, “receiving no other injury than being ‘powerfully’ scratched.” The men from the wrecked car and from another damaged car had to bivouac beside the track and wait for the next train. The rest of the Orphans “spent the remainder of the night roaring and clattering over the rails to Chattanooga.”
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By the evening of May 31, 1863, Breckinridge and the Kentuckians reached the end of their travels, just six miles short of Jackson. The trip that had taken two weeks in 1862 he now accomplished in one. In Jackson, however, the brigade lay idle for nearly a month while Johnston frantically tried to increase his army. For the Orphans it was a month of monotonous camp life, relieved by fishing, swimming, and bathing, and listening to the distant sound of Grant’s artillery shelling
Vicksburg. The men caught fish by the hundreds using their blankets, though Squire Bush complained that “after dividing by long division there remained a very small share for each man.” Johnny Green sampled eel for the first time. Late in June several of the men captured in earlier days arrived, having been exchanged. Tom Moss told the boys how, denied exchange, he and twenty-two other prisoners overpowered their guards on the exchange boat and took command, steaming it into Confederate shores. And this month came Lewis’ turn for the petition ritual. Whenever the Orphans had time on their hands, they seemed always to use it recommending their officers for promotion. On June 18 Nuckols, Caldwell, and the other ranking officers of the brigade petitioned the War Department to make “Old Joe” Lewis a brigadier. Helm agreed, and Breckinridge endorsed the petition by saying, “He is surpassed by none [in the] service for courage and conduct on the field.”
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Only on the first of July did Breckinridge receive orders to move at last toward Vicksburg. It was a hot, miserable march, some men falling dead with sunstroke. More than half of Caldwell’s 9th Kentucky fell by the roadside with heat prostration. Dr. Walter Byrne, surgeon of that regiment, went on a “bender,” as Jackman put it, with a barrel of whisky the two had brought from Atlanta. He kept poor Johnny awake all night “by pulling my blankets, and bothering me generally.” During the march on July 2 the Orphans “foraged” as usual in the fields they passed, today making free with corn and blackberries from Briarfield plantation, which just happened to belong to President Jefferson Davis. At least they were ecumenical. The Orphans would plunder from anyone.

Here they remained for two days, making further requisitions upon President Davis’ fields. On July 5 they marched toward Vicksburg again in the afternoon, noticing now that the incessant cannonade of the past several days had stopped. When they formed for the march in the road the next morning, expecting to attack Grant’s rear, their orders turned them instead toward Jackson. Vicksburg had fallen two days before, and now Johnston had to get his army in its earthworks at Jackson before the victorious Federals reached them first. The Orphans marched as rapidly as possible in the heat and dust. Because of the cloud raised by thousands of tramping feet, they could not see ahead to know how far they were from their bivouac. Sergeant Jim Lee of the 6th Kentucky asked a passing farmer how far it was to Clinton. “Four miles.” Some distance farther he asked another native.
“Six miles.” That was too much for the poker-playing Sergeant Lee. “By me sowl, Pathrick,” he said, imitating an Irish friend, “by me sowl, Pathrick, why didn’t ye stand? He’s raised you two!”
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12.
The battered bugle of the First Kentucky Brigade, like the Orphans it called to battle, vanquished, but unbeatable. (
From Thompson
, Orphan Brigade)