The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (36 page)

Some of the Orphans organized cock fights against the Louisiana troops, often betting a considerable amount of money. Taylor McCoy of the 4th Kentucky ran the largest stable of cocks. Whenever his mates found him eating chicken soup for dinner, they knew another of his fighting birds had lost. The more cultivated Kentuckians continued their glee-club enterprise, expanding it to include both serenades in the country and an occasional musicale in camp. “We were petted by the ladies and flattered by our comrades,” wrote a tenor, and their officers frequently helped carry their instruments for them in hope of sharing in the edibles that rewarded a good concert. Colonel Thompson himself lugged John Weller’s violin case. “He could neither play nor sing,” said Weller, “but he had a wonderful ‘ear’ for a square meal.” The only real problem was finding the most likely homes to serenade, so far as edible reward. The Orphans knew no one around Dalton, and so one night just selected the first man they found to be their guide. He led them to an imposing mansion which, “from its surroundings of taste and elegance gave promise of any number of appreciative fair ones within.” The singers chose their most classical and intricate number, feeling it appropriate to the setting, and commenced. Prelude led to baritone solo, as onlookers from the neighborhood gathered on the grounds to listen. Tydings, first tenor, reveled “as the full-voiced chorus burst out upon the tremulous air.” Stanza after stanza flowed forth until the climax approached, when a window of the mansion’s second floor flew open and a gaunt nightcapped head thrust out. In a shrill, nasal twang, it sang out, “Say, mister; kin you’uns sing ‘Root Hog ’n’ Die’?” There was no further song that night and, alas, no feasting reward.

Others were more receptive, thankfully. Winstead accompanied the glee club one evening in January. Often they never really saw their hearers, cloistered within their homes in their nightclothes. Now and then a nightcap appeared at a window. Yet the young ladies frequently threw cards of thanks or invitation to the singers. “I wish I could show you some cards thrown out to the ‘Ky. Glee Club’ by the fair hands of the unseen beauties,” Winstead wrote home. Many of
the men formed romantic attachments thanks to their service with the glee, Weller among them. “For hospitality, patriotism, virtue, and jollity,” he said, “I would exchange the Georgia girls for none.” Weller wrote love letters for two others in his company to one girl, then fell for her himself.
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The rowdy was never far below the surface, despite elevated pastimes like reading and music. By now the Orphan Brigade enjoyed a reputation throughout the Army at Dalton. Caldwell later said, “They were recognized by their fellow soldiers as the mad wags of the Army of Tennessee, and when off duty spared in their rough but good natured jests neither their own officers nor those of other commands, even up to the generals of the army.” Angered that Breckinridge no longer commanded their division, and that his replacement, Bate, was not a Kentuckian, the Orphans for a time expressed their dissatisfaction. Bate complained of this to Lewis, but the Kentuckian only tactlessly replied, “General, I think I wouldn’t pay any attention to that if I were you. My boys are always pestering some d—–d fool!” When “Devil Dick” was bored one day, he threw his own lieutenant in a wheelbarrow and took him on a hair-raising—and dignity-destroying—ride along the color line. Dick did two weeks in the guardhouse for his prank.

While the camp rang with the strains of “Old Kentucky Home” and the glee club’s repertoire, other voices shouted “Keno” and “Four Jacks here!” The gambling could never be stopped no matter how the officers tried. “It was dangerous for a stray pig or a wandering lamb to visit their vicinity,” said Caldwell, and cornfields after their “calling” looked like cyclone-struck wasteland. And should the Orphans find a suppressed distillery, they came by night and put it into operation once more. How often the smell of sour mash led the provost to the Kentuckians at a still!

Indeed, here at Dalton the Orphans and their whisky-drinking ways caused more problems than anywhere else in the war. Poor Lewis, always a bit “straight” though the boys loved him for it, actually issued general orders in attempting to stem the tide of John Barleycorn. He called on all the regimental commanders to stop the evil of drunkenness “lest the cantonment of this Brigade shall ere long, assume the character of a Pot House.” He should have known it was useless to try. Cofer had won promotion to provost marshal general of the Army, leaving William Clarke in command of the 6th Kentucky, and thus it
was one of their own that the Orphans had to deceive in getting whisky into their camps. Cofer tried manfully to enforce the edict against liquor in the bivouacs, but without success. When he posted guards to search all entering camp and confiscate whisky, some of the boys dressed as guards themselves, confiscated the “article,” and then smuggled it into camp in hollowed pumpkins. Johnny Green found one such ingenious Orphan whose “entire mess were mellow for several days after that.”

Worse yet, since all whisky was reserved for medical uses under Cofer’s care, some of the Orphans actually arranged for shipment of the beverage to them, yet marked to Cofer’s attention. Gladly he guarded their boxes until called for, entirely unaware of his integral role in the “jug trade.” And when not outwitting Cofer in the matter of drink, the Orphans did their best to rob his storehouses of food. Two men of the 4th Kentucky obtained a pass to go into Dalton and take in the sights “and any thing else which was not too hot or too heavy to be carried off by them.” They wandered to the railroad depot hoping to do as they had at Tyner’s Station, a little business in the “box-from-home line.” There they found nothing purloinable, however, but did see a sleeping guard beside some recently arrived Army beef. They determined to step up boldly and relieve him, saying that they were his replacements. While one Orphan hid, the other performed the ruse successfully, dutifully listening as the relieved sentinel gave him his instructions. Once the dupe was out of sight, Alex Leatherwood ran from hiding and seized the largest quarter of beef he could carry and raced away. His friend waited a moment, then ran after him, leveling his gun, and pretended to arrest him. Thus they marched off, presumably to Cofer’s office, in full sight of scores of soldiers. In fact, the prized beef made a two-day feast for Company I.
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Not because of the Orphans’ errant ways, but rather in spite of them, the brigade experienced a phenomenon that swept the Army of Tennessee here in Dalton, a religious revival. The spiritual movement itself remains not entirely explicable, but that it seized the Kentuckians in large numbers there is no doubt. A bevy of eminent divines inhabited the Army’s camps during the winter. Jackman heard a different one every week, it seemed. There were three Protestant churches in Dalton and one Catholic. “Of Sundays these churches are generally full to overflowing with soldiers,” he wrote. Their motives were not entirely spiritual. “Many soldiers go to church just to get sight of a lady,”
he said, and even though Jackman himself attended several times a week, he admitted to himself that in part it was because there was no place else to go. Yet the movement was genuine. Hundreds took baptism in nearby Mill Creek. Men who ran poker games turned to prayer meetings. Wickliffe told his regiment that he wanted to take credit for having the most men of any regiment attending church, and the Orphans of the 9th Kentucky went in large numbers. What they heard varied considerably. Some preachers mixed a good deal of politics with gospel. On February 7, 1864, several Orphans met to form a “Christian and Fraternal Association” for the brigade without distinction of creed. It lasted the remainder of the war, Hiram Hawkins its president. When elected, he said, “I esteem this indorsement of my moral character and Christian deportment, quite as much, if not more honor than my military rank and title.” Jackman, however, remained ever the skeptic. When one parson asserted from the pulpit that “wisdom is better than weapons of war,” Jackman looked around him at the Army in Dalton and decided that “From the way things look about here, there is but little
wisdom
in this locality.”
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Christmas that year came cold and windy, a drizzling rain dampening spirits in Dalton. Some officers of the 9th Kentucky celebrated after a fashion the night before with “pine top” whisky, a noxious liquor distilled from the tips of pine boughs. So tipsy did they become that they forgot themselves and sang a vigorous rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before being silenced. The next morning, “a cold, cloudy, disagreeable day,” many of the Orphans went to church both at noon and in the evening. They wrote letters home, and ate their meager holiday dinner, for Jackman bean soup and bread. “The boys are not seeing a great deal of fun,” he lamented. Several were drunk. But not the phantom scribe of Company C, 4th Kentucky. Once more he took out the company’s clothing account book and with pen in hand, wrote again below his entries for the two Christmases past. “Dec. 25
^th
1863. Yes, old Brick, and
another
Christmas has come and gone, and we are still combatting with the Vandal horde; Are likely to be doing that same this time next Christmas. What a pity.”
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Equally pitiful was the supply situation in the brigade, as well as in the Army at large. So many Orphans were barefooted that overnight guard duty was discontinued to spare their feet from the freezing cold. Constant requisitions for shoes and uniforms, mess pans, axes, drums,
and even for ink and paper flowed from the brigade quartermasters. Only a few were filled. Indeed, even the brigade’s record book for quartermaster stores came, in fact, from the office of the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad depot in Dalton, where it had been a ticket book. Brigade livestock numbered just sixty-five horses and ninety-four mules, very small for the needs of over a thousand men. The whole 6th Kentucky baggage train consisted of three wagons and one ambulance.
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Friends of the Kentuckians, both at home and in exile in the South, did what they could to alleviate the shortage. Eli M. Bruce donated one thousand dollars to the Kentucky Relief Society for the Orphan Brigade, and donations from other prominent men of the state enhanced the fund. The Kentucky Relief Society bought shoes for the soldiers this winter, along with blankets and socks. In January and February alone it provided enough shoes for more than a regiment. The Orphans themselves added to the fund. The glee club provided occasional vocal and instrumental concerts to benefit the Society.

The Reverend Pickett founded the Kentucky Relief Society and served as its president through the war. His efforts went beyond creature comforts, however. He and other prominent men of the Bluegrass with the Army tried to consolidate all natives of Kentucky, whatever their present units, into the 1st Kentucky Brigade. Further, to make sure that the Orphans’ interests received proper attention in Richmond, he addressed the brigade on January 18, 1864, and proposed that they elect their own representative to Congress. There was some division in the ranks on this issue. “As Kentucky has never seceded,” said Jackman, “electing Congressmen to represent the state in the Confederate Congress is all a humbug.” Nevertheless, two days later the Kentuckians formed in an old field near camp. Lewis did not require attendance, yet most of the Orphans were there to hear aspirants for their votes speak. “The old politicians,” said Jackman, “have not forgotten how to ‘work the wires.’ ” The speakers gave a regular old-time stump debate. An Army surgeon named Johnson spoke as a candidate, as did the Orphans’ old brigade quartermaster, Major George W. Triplett. A current member of Congress, Judge James W. Moore, made a campaign address, and even Cofer and a couple of men from the 4th and 9th Kentuckys spoke in their own behalf. Phil Lee of the 2d Kentucky gave one of his humorous presentations, and “The ‘State’ of Kentucky being present en masse, the
speakers ‘spread’ themselves and ‘the state’ cheered.” Someone tried to nominate the Reverend Pickett as well, but he declined. When the balloting was done, the Orphans returned Moore to his seat, and sent Major Triplett with him, probably the only military unit in either Army to have its own representatives in Congress.
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In fact, Cofer and others feared that many of the Orphans would not vote in the election, not that they did not like the candidates, but rather because “they are determined to do nothing that can be in any way construed into a recognition of their liability to be again conscripted by the Confederate Congress.” The men were tired of the infantry service. For some time talk of serving as mounted troops instead gained popularity in the brigade, and Cofer thought they would not vote unless mounted. “It is deeply to be regretted yet it is nevertheless true in my opinion that not 200 of the Brigade will ever consent in any contingency to become infantry soldiers after the expiration of their present enlistment.” Of course, the whole Army was tired, and a bit disillusioned, Cofer found, yet “our Ky boys, while they have more life & hope & are more like the Confederate soldier of two years ago than any in the army, are far below what they have been in their morale and discipline.” The Orphans complained that even soldiers whose homes were still safely behind the lines would not fight. They could cite Missionary Ridge as evidence of that, complaining that if such men would not battle for their firesides, what point remained in Kentuckians doing it for them? “They intend now to fight for Ky on Ky soil,” said Cofer, “and if not mounted my opinion is that they will desert en masse.” He believed he could not even prevent his own regiment from disintegrating.

Fortunately, Cofer figured without the deep sense of southern patriotism that underlied all the grumbling in the brigade. True, they wanted to be mounted. Their old comrade Morgan and his cavalry had been able to ride into Kentucky several times on brief raids, and if the Orphans had horses they could do likewise. Yet, cavalry or infantry, they were not deserters. Indeed, this winter in Dalton the brigade suffered less from desertions than in previous times, and in fact the command’s strength improved slightly. Cofer calculated without something else, too. He did not fully appreciate the influence and hold on the Orphans of John C. Breckinridge.