The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (38 page)

By late April Lewis could tell that active operations were imminent. The training and equipping of the men increased, and now he formed a new adjunct to the brigade, a corps of sharpshooters. Sometime before, an English admirer gave Breckinridge a dozen Kerr rifles, a prized muzzle-loader reputedly capable of deadly accuracy at nearly a
mile. Breckinridge, in turn, donated the rifles to the brigade, and on April 24 Lewis formed a company comprising the two best marksmen from each regiment, under command of Lieutenant George H. Burton of Company F, 4th Kentucky. “I believe this officer took more pleasure in a fight than any other man I ever saw,” wrote one of Burton’s sharpshooters. In the campaign to come, when one of the company fell and a new man took his place, Burton personally tested the recruit’s grit by conducting him to a heavy artillery fire and standing in it with him. Lewis instructed the company never to approach within four hundred yards of the enemy, but rather to keep their distance and use their superior rifles to bring down federal artillerists and officers. They were to work their way close to the enemy at night, spot his artillery positions, and then silence the batteries after dawn if possible. Probably no more elite band of marksmen served anywhere else in the Confederate Army. So prized did membership in this band become that when one of Burton’s men was killed—as many were—there were numbers anxious to take his place.
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Finally came May. Johnston reviewed his Army once more before the anticipated commencement of the campaign. Lewis being absent, Caldwell commanded the brigade for the day. He led the Orphans with their polished bayonets and tattered flags past the reviewing stand, and heard a hum of comment among the officers around Johnston. Johnston’s face supposedly lit with enthusiasm as he watched the Orphans pass. Turning to General Thomas Hindman, he said, “There goes the finest brigade I ever saw.” Hindman, too, noticed their distinctive bearing and in a congratulatory order to the Army, mentioned “the Kentucky Brigade as especially entitled to commendation for soldierly appearance, steadiness of marching, and an almost perfect accuracy in every detail.” Johnston would reiterate his sentiments several times in the years ahead. “Yes,” he would say, “the Kentucky Brigade was the finest body of soldiers I ever saw.”

Certainly the Orphans were exceptional soldiers, all 1,512 of them. And as May 1864 dawned, they faced exceptional times ahead. “We are again on the ‘war-path,’ ” Jackman wrote on May 7. “I think I shall now have something more stirring to put in my Journal than church goings.”
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The campaign for Atlanta about to begin would last for 117 days. Johnston, outnumbered three to two by his opponent, Sherman, would consistently find his left flank turned by the Federals. Time after time
Johnston would have to fall back, ever closer to the prize he sought to protect, Atlanta. It would be the most grueling overland campaign of the war. It would carve the Confederacy in twain. It would lay waste to Georgia. And it would destroy the Orphan Brigade as an effective body of infantry.

The same day that Jackman wrote both in hope and dread that “something more stirring” seemed in the offing, Sherman advanced against the Confederates. For the next five days Johnston kept the Kentuckians hopping about from one hilltop to another skirmishing and sharpshooting, but the enemy did not yet seem disposed to assault them. Indeed, at night the federal bands played serenades for the men in blue, and when some of the Orphans yelled out for “Dixie,” the Union musicians obliged, though always ending with a refrain of “Yankee Doodle.” Only on the evening of May 12 did Johnston withdraw the brigade to the vicinity of Resaca, Georgia, sixty miles northwest of Atlanta. Here the general chose his first defensive position of any strength, hoping to stall the federal tide. The Orphans marched all through the night until they reached their position about dawn. After only a brief halt, they fell back farther, and immediately began digging earthworks. There was literally no rest for them all day.

Morning of May 14 found the brigade on its way to the left of the Confederate line, where the men occupied works of logs and fence rails thrown together by some Tennesseeans during the night. That morning, too, expecting a fight, Lewis issued a small ration of whisky to the men, though some apparently received more than others, for Jackman saw Orphans so “top-heavy” they could not walk without help. Yet by 10
A.M.
they finished their breastworks, and not before time. At once skirmishing commenced the whole length of the Confederate line, and in front of Lewis’ brigade two seemingly endless lines of enemy soldiers emerged from the woods that covered them.

The Kentuckians held an angle in the line which faced the 5th, 6th, and 9th regiments to the west, and the 4th and 2d north. The first three regiments, forming the left part of the angle, received only one major charge, and held their fire until the enemy came within a few yards of their works. Then they gave them a volley that sent the bluecoats back to cover without much fight. On the right of the brigade, however, the 2d and 4th Kentucky regiments saw quite a time. The Federals attacked repeatedly. “Column after column came down in full view, and moved right toward us,” wrote an Orphan. Some of
the enemy got within seventy-five yards of their line before the 2d and 4th opened on them. “It was harvest time with the Orphan Brigade,” said one, “and every available contrivance was used for reaping the field before us.” The fighting became so intense that, when John Gordon of Company D, 4th Kentucky, fell dead, his comrades spent the rest of the day stepping over him in the melee. Only with nightfall could someone find time to take him from his place in the line.

While the 4th Kentucky held its own on the extreme right of the brigade, the 2d Regiment sat on its left, and the new corps of sharpshooters operated between the two and somewhat in advance. “Their terrible rifles soon attracted the fury of the Federal artillerymen,” wrote an Orphan of the 4th. Before the day was out, half of the elite marksmen lay dead or wounded. Jim Guilliam only abandoned his place with his fellow sharpshooters when a fragment of enemy shell left his right arm dangling from his shoulder only by a thin bit of skin and flesh. He walked unaided to the surgeon and underwent the remainder of the amputation without benefit of anesthetic.

Captain David C. Walker of the 6th Kentucky also saw his right arm shot away. Known to his comrades as the “swearing Kentuckian,” he had a good deal to curse this day. Yet others, in the midst of this terrible holocaust, found time to admire pityingly a little kitten caught between the battle lines and crying in its terror. Finally, one of Cobb’s gunners jumped the earthworks and ran forward to grasp the cat and return it safely. Thereafter the tortoise tabby was a familiar sight perched on his friend the gunner’s shoulder or astride a caisson. In honor of the occasion the Orphans named it “Resaca.”

The fight took a heavy draught of Kentucky blood, even among the three regiments on the left of the brigade, for the Federals gave them a shelling during the morning and afternoon. It became so hot that the Kentucky artillery stood much of the fight without its gunners, who hid in the rear, waited for a brief lull, then ran forward to load and fire before the enemy guns caught them in the open. The worst of the shelling took Company A of Caldwell’s 9th Kentucky that evening. One shell severed the leg of Lieutenant Tom McLean. Immediately he called for litter bearers, then turned to his company and urged the men to “be steady.” Before the litter reached him, another shot almost cut him in two, then exploded and killed two others. Johnny Green stood in awe of McLean’s bravery. “In all my experience I dont believe I ever knew an instance of more heroic courage,” he said of the
lieutenant’s final words of encouragement to the men. Gervis Grainger saw his cousin killed at his side, downed by the same missile that then struck him in the knee and put him out of the campaign for a month.

Jackman looked toward the left of his regiment as Company A took the federal shelling. “I saw the men tossed about like chaff.” Only nightfall brought respite from the heavy fire, and then it was to renew the digging. After their experience of the day, some of the Orphans acquired a new love for the spade, and used it with a will. They piled several feet of Georgia clay in front of them that night, intending to be ready for the renewal of the fight at dawn. Thankfully, it did not come. While Sherman’s infantry attacked farther on the right of Johnston’s line, the only real action for the Orphans on May 15 was skirmishing and an almost continual bombardment.
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By dawn the next morning Johnston had withdrawn the brigade to Calhoun, seven miles south, and for the next two days the Confederates fell back before the enemy, Bate detaching the 5th Kentucky from the brigade to help in the much-accustomed role of rear guard. By May 19 the Army was around Cassville, over forty miles from Dalton, and here Johnston decided the ground offered his first opportunity to stand and offer serious battle. At noon that day he ordered read to the Army a battle order announcing that this was the time for a fight. The Orphans met the order with loud cheers, Jackman thinking it Napoleonic in composition and spirit. “They seem anxious to fight,” he wrote of his fellow Kentuckians.

That evening the Orphans moved to form a reserve for Cleburne’s division, puffing and panting in the now oppressive spring heat. Yet they still cheered Johnston when he rode past, and gave old “Pat” Cleburne a huzza as well. That night Jackman closed his diary, saying, “I shall now try for some sleep, as there will be no rest for the weary, to-morrow. All looking for a big fight.”

Yet the morrow only brought disappointment. Johnston’s generals, so the rumor spread, did not believe they could hold their positions in the planned battle and, faced with their lack of support, Johnston decided to continue his retreat. For the Kentuckians it was a bitter decision. Every day that they withdrew toward Atlanta put them that much farther from home and from any prospect of returning to the Bluegrass.

For the next week the Orphan Brigade moved with the Army as it slowly retreated toward Dallas, with little other than constant skirmishing
to occupy them. The brigade’s “Christian Association” met to make proper eulogy over their dead, and the list mounted. In the campaign thus far, from May 7 to May 20, seven Orphans were killed and fifty-four wounded. Now, near the bivouac of Lewis’ old 6th Kentucky, several of the Orphans, in the manner of Kentuckians of all times, met to honor those of their number now sleeping in Theodore O’Hara’s “bivouac of the dead.”

The night of May 25, 1864, the Orphan Brigade bivouacked less than two miles from Dallas, at the left of a Confederate line that ran from Dallas through New Hope Church and on to Kennesaw Mountain. Jackman and Johnny Green shared their tent “fly” that night, sheltering from the rain. Out in the wasted fields between the armies, the Kentucky sharpshooters kept their posts, occasionally felling one of the enemy. For most of them it was a workmanlike job, but not for all. Taylor McCoy came back from his time in front in a depressed mood, and uncommunicative. When asked the matter, he just said, “I did not want to kill the fellow.” A Federal had been shooting at him and, seeing his chance, McCoy put a bullet into the man. “I struck him, and he screamed. It was the cry of a boy! I don’t like to think of having killed a boy!” At other places between the lines this night, the scene was less hostile. Try as they might to prevent fraternization between the armies, the officers of both sides could not stop the private soldiers from meeting occasionally to exchange newspapers and gossip, or maybe trade tobacco for coffee or whisky. The Orphans were no different. When Hervey McDowell went on the picket line to relieve a detail, he found the Kentucky pickets joined with some Yankee soldiers in a game of cards. The Orphans knew they had trouble, and the Federals were even more apprehensive at being thus discovered. But McDowell, ever-chivalrous, simply took out his pocket watch and gave them two minutes to scamper back to their own lines before he would open fire.
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With the morning of May 26, the Orphans fortified positions along a ridge south of Dallas. By sundown the skirmishing in their front became heavy, and a federal battery unlimbered in their front to shell them. Lewis ordered Caldwell and the 9th Kentucky to take the guns, though the boys were not entirely enthusiastic. “We did not think we stood in any great need of the battery,” wrote Jackman, yet the regiment deployed for the attack, only to have Lewis cancel it at the last minute. Still the brigade took casualties. Lieutenant Horace Watts of
the 4th Kentucky was calmly lighting his pipe at a fire in rear of the earthworks when a sharpshooter’s bullet killed him. A corporal in the same regiment never knew what hit him, a bullet finding him in his sleep some distance behind the lines. Jim Cunningham of Company D, 4th Kentucky, felt a bullet almost completely sever the middle finger of his right hand. Despite the pain, he conceived the novel idea of having the surgeon reset the finger backward, with the nail facing the palm instead of away from it. Apparently the digit “took” and healed in that position. He called it his “finger of scorn” and, as comrades noted, “took a savage delight in exhibiting it.”

The next day saw the main fight take place in and around New Hope Church. For the Orphans at Dallas there was relative quiet except for an order from Bate to take a hill in front of their position from the enemy. The Kentuckians expected a tough fight but, instead, the Federals withdrew with little resistance. The brigade captured a few prisoners. Of far more immediate interest was a freshly butched bullock carcass that the fleeing bluecoats abandoned. That night the 9th Kentucky dined on fresh beef for the first time in weeks. Generally now their meat rations came to them green with mold, edible only when boiled and mixed with cornmeal.

May 28 brought tragedy, though it started on a bright enough note. New clothing was issued to many of the Kentuckians, and through the morning and early afternoon they had little to do except sporadic skirmishing. Some of the men found old muskets abandoned by the Federals and vied with each other to see who could fire the largest load out of the old-fashioned guns. “They roared like young cannon,” wrote Jackman, but thankfully none of the Orphans hurt themselves in the foolish contest. Jackman spent his time reading a new novel and listening to a captured Federal who confessed that the Kentucky sharpshooters were excellent, but added that their artillery was “not worth a damn.”