The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (34 page)

After detailing guards, nurses, and such, the brigade actually took into battle 1,404, excluding Cobb. Of that number 1,007 were Kentuckians. The 2d Kentucky went into the battle with just 282 effectives, and lost 146, more than half the regiment. The 9th started the fight with 230 and finished with 102 killed, wounded, or missing. Testimony
of the fury of the fight they waged against Thomas’ breastworks is the fact that the losses in these two regiments totaled 53 per cent of the entire brigade loss, though they accounted for only one third of the brigade strength. The two regiments with Lewis on the right suffered far less, only 58 killed and wounded in Nuckols’ regiment, including himself, and the losses in Lewis’ own regiment were inconsequential. Yet in all, one third of the Orphans who went into battle that morning did not survive it unscathed.

The scene in the field hospital that night was bedlam, yet some, like Caldwell, managed to sleep. Around midnight he dreamed a feverish nightmare in his pain when he felt “the tender touch of a sympathetic hand” upon his forehead. It was Buckner, who had come from his own command to look after the wounded among his children of Camp Boone. Some of the most severely wounded were carried to a house near Reed’s Bridge. Captain Weller took a bullet in the morning’s fight, and his litter bearers set him down in the same room occupied by Helm and Graves and one other soldier of the 9th. The yard outside filled with groaning soldiers, and even the hallway of the house congested with them. Mrs. Reed passed back and forth ministering to the wounded as best she could, and frequently officers and men came to visit their friends. Breckinridge himself came late in the evening. For Helm, unconscious, he could do nothing. After he was carried from the field, Helm asked his doctor, “Is there hope?” The reply came. “My dear General, there is no hope!” For the rest of the day and into the evening Helm lay and suffered. As the sounds of battle died away, he found the strength to ask its outcome, and learned for the first time of the triumph. The last word heard to escape his lips was a whispered “victory!” Then he lay silent until midnight, when he, like Hanson and Trabue before him, left his Orphans fatherless once more. Two weeks later the officers of the brigade met to form resolutions expressing their sorrow at Helm’s death, and affirming their sympathy to his widow. Breckinridge wrote to Emily Helm in October and told her, “My solicitude for the welfare of the Kentuckians is in proportion to the pride and affection I entertain for them; and no one need be told that I hold them not inferior (to say the least), in general good conduct, discipline, and valor to any troops in the service of the South. Your husband commanded them like a thorough soldier. He loved them, they loved him, and he died at their head, a patriot and hero.” And far from Chickamauga, in the capital of the United
States, another Kentuckian grieved at the news of Helm’s death. His brother-in-law, Abraham Lincoln, sorrowed deeply. “I feel as David of old did,” he lamented, “when he was told of the death of Absalom.”

After a brief look upon the still face of Helm, Breckinridge turned to his young friend Graves. “Major Graves was mortally wounded, and suffering the most intense agony,” said Weller, lying nearby. Breckinridge spoke to him in tones “as tender as if he were talking to his own son.” Weller received a sedative, and when he awoke the next morning, Graves, too, was dead.
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“The Lord has given us a great victory in this fight,” wrote Private Randolph, “and we cannot be to thankful to him for it.” Yet as they gave thanks, the Orphans also gave their dead to the soil. They buried them in twos and threes in shallow graves marked only by crude wooden headboards with names or even initials scratched in pencil. All that passersby would see in years to come as a remembrance of the valor and pain of these Orphan dead were a few low mounds of earth, and above them the hasty inscriptions. Some poor boys could not even be identified. Atop one mound sat an oak board with the simple words,

That night in the exultation of victory, the Orphan Brigade camped along the Chickamauga. Indians said the stream’s name meant “River of Death.” Certainly it did for these Kentuckians far from home.

“W
E HAD GAINED
a complete & glorious victory,” boasted Johnny Green. They expected the morning after the battle that Bragg would send them after Rosecrans to finish the job so nobly begun. But in fact Bragg proved just as dilatory in pursuit as Rosecrans had been in his advance to the battle. Bragg spent the day in collecting wounded, and not until late in the afternoon of September 21 did he send the main body of his Army after the Federals. On September 23 the Orphans, with the rest of Breckinridge’s division, reached the crest of Missionary Ridge and saw, spread like a map before them, the city of Chattanooga, and the Federals vigorously erecting their defenses.

Still the Kentuckians expected that they would be ordered forward to attack the enemy before he completed his earthworks. “We thought an assault was going to be made,” Jackman scribbled in his diary, “and seeing the forts bristling with cannon, and the line of works blue with Federals, we had long faces.” Yet the order did not come, and that night Jackman and Green gathered a pile of dry grass and lay down together, covered only by their overcoats.
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Thus began two months of almost constant inactivity during which, as Jackman put it, “Both armies seem to be taking a ‘blowing spell.’ ” The Orphans remained in and around Missionary Ridge until October 21, when they moved seven or eight miles to the rear, to Tyner’s Station. Here they remained for the next month.

There was little to break the monotony of waiting for something to
happen at Chattanooga. President Davis visited the Army once more, and he and Bragg rode along the lines being cheered by every command until they reached the Kentuckians. “Our boys stood very respectfully,” said Jackman, “but not a man opened his mouth.” Their animosity for Bragg had not cooled in the aftermath of victory. Occasionally the Confederates shelled the enemy down in the city, and the Kentucky boys liked to take seats and watch the grand incendiary display. The rest of the time they foraged for food, and here they found meager prospects. Most of the men ate only corn “dodgers” and “blue beef,” some of them even picking in the stable areas for uneaten or undigested kernels of corn. Accustomed by now to changes in command, they hardly noticed when Lewis formally received command of the brigade on October 4 and announced his staff. Nor was there any comment five days later when Lewis learned of his promotion to brigadier general. Along with his wreath, he received Helm’s horse in the settlement of the dead general’s estate, only to have it stolen a few weeks later. Helm’s widow, Emily, received a trunk “
now empty
, valuable from
associations
,” and the government paid her $200.67 in back salary for the general. Lincoln himself later gave her a pass that allowed her to return to Kentucky to mourn.
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Other changes caught more attention. Old Bob Johnson, after suffering for more than a year with dysentery, offered his resignation on September 30, 1863. Seeing “no prospect of relief” from his malady, he chose to resign “to make way for the promotion of Gallant officers now on duty.” As a result, Jim Moss took command of the old 2d Kentucky permanently, winning with it his colonelcy.
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But one change that every Orphan met with gladness occurred on November 3, for on that day the 41st Alabama was transferred out of the brigade and into another. In its place Bragg assigned Hiram Hawkins’ 5th Kentucky. After nearly two years of separation the “sang diggers” rejoined their comrades of Camp Boone. “Our brigade is now composed entirely of Kentuckians,” wrote a well-pleased Johnny Jackman. Hawkins and his Orphans had seen a much different sort of war than their fellow Kentuckians. Following organization in Tennessee, it went to the eastern part of Kentucky and joined in General Humphrey Marshall’s operations there and in eastern Tennessee. It was inglorious duty, with only little battles at places like Middle Creek, Kentucky, and Princeton, Virginia. At the latter place the 5th Kentucky did play the major role in the Confederate victory, but larger events in the
East so overshadowed the affair that it was quickly forgotten. Worse so far as Hawkins was concerned was what happened when “Cerro Gordo” Williams won promotion to brigadier. Instead of moving up a grade to lieutenant colonel, Hiram Hawkins, as next in line, saw some obscure captain named Caldwell given the rank instead. That hurt. “I was among the first to raise the standard of rebellion in eastern Ky,” Hawkins complained to the War Department, and he had never taken a leave. Yet now the position he should rightfully assume went to a man not even a member of the 5th Kentucky nor of the brigade to which it belonged. Indeed, no one had ever heard of him. Hawkins hoped there had been a mistake made. “But for these convictions I should have retired in disgust at the gross and unheard of injustice.” He advised Richmond to take care of the situation, or it would have to do without the services of Hiram Hawkins. “I cannot and will not remain in the service under conditions so dishonorable to myself.” It was, he said, simply too much to be thus “overslaughed.” The War Department did err, and corrected the mistake. Lieutenant Colonel Hiram Hawkins stayed with the regiment.

The 5th Kentucky reorganized in November 1862, the twelve months’ men mustering out or re-enlisting for three years or the war. Now, when they elected their officers, Hawkins was made colonel, ambition rewarded once more. Still there was no glory duty for these Orphans until July 1863, when Richmond transferred them to Knoxville and into a brigade commanded by that father figure who so often appeared momentarily to look after his Orphans, Simon Buckner. With Buckner the 5th Kentucky joined Bragg for the Battle of Chickamauga and its first reunion with the other Kentucky regiments, and now, in a move that seemed only natural, it took its place in the 1st Kentucky Brigade. Hereafter for the remainder of the war, the brigade organization would remain as it now stood at Tyner’s Station: the 2d, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th Kentucky infantries, and Cobb’s battery.
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A few other minor internal changes took place, and familiar faces of men once captured or wounded reappeared. One of the most welcome was that of Ed Porter Thompson. Taken prisoner after his wounding at Stones River, he spent several months in prison before being taken to City Point, Virginia, for exchange the following spring. Then, on May 23, 1863, he and thirty-five other prisoners were forced to draw lots to select eighteen who would be shot in retaliation for Confederate
execution of a like number of federal prisoners. Thompson selected a fortunate straw, and joined those who went ahead with their exchange. Now, though disabled for field duty, he voluntarily rejoined his old comrades in the 6th Kentucky and took a position as captain in the Quartermaster’s Department.

Of course, the Orphans resumed their sinful ways. The day after moving to Tyner’s Station Lewis felt the mortification of seeing several of his men walking under guard after arrest for theft and pillaging in the neighborhood. He had to send a survey party into the country to estimate the damage done by the Orphans and find people who could identify the guilty men. To the entire brigade he declared, “The fair name of this brigade won by so much fortitude under privation, hardship and suffering, and so much bravery on the battlefield shall not be sacrificed by vandalism.” That did not sit very well with a number of the boys. “He is a brave, kind man,” Green wrote of Lewis, “but we feel that no one can fill our Ben Hardin Helm’s place.” That would change.

Indeed, some of the Orphans even unknowingly stole from themselves. Part of their duty at Tyner’s Station was to act as guard over quartermaster and commissary supplies stored there. Since rations formed a large part of the material they were to oversee, the Orphans made no objection to the otherwise ignoble guard duty. What did aggravate them, however, was seeing a large number of packages arrive for some Alabama troops who shared the guard duty with them. As a result, quite a few boxes that came under the eye of a Kentuckian before it reached its intended recipient, never went any farther. One evening a man of the 41st Alabama—this prior to its removal from the brigade—approached some friends in the 4th Kentucky and told them he had found an unclaimed box and removed its address label in the dark. If they would help him carry it away, they could share in the contents. Off they went and carried the treasure chest into the woods for the division of booty. It proved rich—hams, pickles, preserves, peanuts, socks, shoes, underwear, and a complete suit of “butternut” gray. Eagerly the men grabbed their spoils, then melted into the night.

After breakfast the next morning the Alabama “Yellowhammer” looked rather down at the jowls and called together his partners in the night’s foray. It seems there were letters in the box and, since it came from Alabama, he took them as part of his share, hoping for news from his home state. Not until light that morning could he read them.
Imagine his surprise to discover them addressed to him. He had led an expedition to steal his own box of goodies, and now begged the Orphans to return their gains. They politely declined, leaving one sad Yellowhammer to ponder the tricks of fortune. The story went the rounds of the brigade that that very next night the Alabamian led another raid on the station to recoup his loss, and found an even bigger box but, upon getting it to safety and opening it, found that it contained the body of a soldier being sent home for burial. The whole episode so appealed to the Orphans that in later years several versions of the midnight theft appeared, with men of the 2d and 9th Kentucky claiming it was
their
box that was looted, not the Alabamian’s.
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