The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (4 page)

T
HREE
K
ENTUCKIANS
selected a lovely spot in Montgomery County, Tennessee. It was just seven miles from the county seat, Clarksville, two miles west of the Louisville & Nashville tracks, and James Hewitt, Robert Johnson, and William T. “Temp” Withers liked what they saw. Here was a place with wide, flat fields suitable for drilling military companies. An abundance of water flowed nearby, and ample forests promised firewood. Best of all, it sat just a few miles south of the Kentucky border, within easy reach of Kentuckians who wanted to join the Confederacy without violating the state’s neutrality. The gentlemen already held authorization from the Confederate authorities to establish a recruiting and training camp to raise companies for the Confederacy. As well, prominent citizens within the Bluegrass gave them pledges of financial support for arming and equipping and transporting the expected volunteers. Now, in early July 1861, they had the ideal spot for their enterprise. Ever mindful of their past as Kentuckians, the gentlemen named the place Camp Boone.
¹

At once commenced the task of clearing the underbrush from the parade grounds. They plotted a camp large enough to handle several hundred men, and not before time. Within days the young hotbloods of Kentucky began pouring into Camp Boone, intent upon joining the Confederacy even if their native state would not. Withers, nominally in command with the temporary rank of general, was overwhelmed. The Confederate Secretary of War authorized him only to raise one
regiment, to be designated the 2d Kentucky Infantry. Yet Withers found that “our movements have thoroughly aroused a military spirit in Kentucky.” Several applications arrived each day from men wishing to form companies. By July 12 he already had twenty of the twenty-six companies his orders allowed. He suggested that now a third regiment should be formed as well. “I would advise by all means to receive all Kentucky troops that offer,” he wrote the War Office, “as we not only get good men, but ultimately secure Kentucky to the South.” By July 25, fifty companies had applied for the service, and Withers believed that within forty to sixty days he could have ten thousand men enlisted. “It seems to me,” he advised, “that it would be good policy to take the Kentuckians while we can get them.”
²

Indeed, anxious Kentuckians flocked to Camp Boone in July and August. Philip Lightfoot Lee brought 106 men from Shepherdsville, having decided that he could best protect his side of the street by defending the South. James W. Moss brought 90 men from Columbus. Lloyd Tilghman arrived with some followers. On July 4 Tilghman, Moss, Lee, and young Captain Robert J. Breckinridge, cousin of the unsuccessful presidential candidate, helped Withers and the others lay out the camp, and Moss and his company claimed the honor of being the first to pitch their tents. These unofficial captains paid from their own pockets the costs of transporting their men to Tennessee, promptly filing expense vouchers to be reimbursed by the Confederate Government.
³

Soon the exodus to Camp Boone caused concern to both northern and southern sympathizers in Kentucky. Union men complained that “so many of our giddy young men have gone into the Southern army, that almost every man who goes into our army, knows that he has to fight a neighbor, a relative, a brother, son or father.” The Frankfort press lamented that “thousands … have been ruined by the fatal delusion” of “going South.” Meanwhile, those of the opposite persuasion were equally curious about the large number of men leaving the state for Camp Boone, and just what was taking place there in Montgomery County. They wanted to know how many young Confederates were training there, how they were armed and fed, and what they intended to do once organized.

“The general concensus of opinion was to the effect that it was an army several thousand strong of veteran soldiers,” wrote one Kentuckian, though “how they had become veterans no one stopped to
consider.” They were believed to be well armed, and the talk was that “in due time [they] would over-run Kentucky, capture Cincinnati and then make a ‘flank movement’ on Washington.” In the face of this, clearly someone from the state had to visit Camp Boone and see for himself what was happening there, particularly if southern sympathizers in the state hoped to be of assistance in any attempt to occupy Kentucky. The people of Hopkinsville held a meeting and elected a man named Scott to visit Camp Boone. He was intelligent, though quite ignorant of the practices of the military. His sole experience with armed men was witnessing the Clarksville Guards, sixty-five strong, parading on the Fourth of July.

Scott went to Camp Boone and met with Tilghman, nominally in charge. The colonel received him cordially, showed him all about the camp, and allowed him to watch the recruits in training. By this time there were about 700 of them in camp, and Scott was impressed. “Scott thought that the beneficent heavens had been fairly raining Confederate soldiers,” recalled a friend, “and the fact that nearly three-fourths of them were unarmed was a little matter which he totally overlooked.” Impressed beyond words, Scott could hardly contain his desire to tell the folks in Hopkinsville of the grand military spectacle at Camp Boone. But then Tilghman told him that “More wars have been lost, Mr. Scott, by loose and indiscreet talk than by all other causes combined.” How Scott’s heart sank when the colonel enjoined, “I must request you to disclose nothing that you learn here to any one.”

Scott promised to keep confidence and went home to Hopkinsville to face the eager townsfolk. Even with tears they begged him to tell about his trip. Many had sons and fathers at Camp Boone from whom they heard nothing. But Scott remained silent. “No, gentlemen,” he said, “I can’t tell you. Colonel Tighlman [
sic
] and I agreed that it wouldn’t be safe to let any one else know what he and I know.” In exasperation, Scott’s frustrated would-be hearers sent for his longtime friend and former business partner John Fisher. If anyone could make Scott talk, surely Fisher was the man. A telegram found him in Louisville and he rushed to Hopkinsville to start his work. But Scott would not talk. After Fisher’s repeated pleadings, Scott agreed that if Fisher would meet him at 6
P.M.
at a specified place a mile from town on the Cadiz road, he might tell him “something.”

Fisher got there an hour ahead of time. When Scott arrived, full-blown
with the self-importance of a man who knows something that everyone else wants to learn, he took his friend one hundred yards off the road into the woods, away from all possible auditors. Backing Fisher against a tree, the great Scott finally spoke with proper solemnity.

“John J. Fisher,” he said, “I’ve known you for more than forty years, and I’d tell you things that I wouldn’t tell any other livin’ man; but there are some things I can’t even tell you. But I’ll say this much to you: If old Abe Lincoln had seen what I saw down at Camp Boone he’d ‘a’ thought he had a mighty heavy contract on his hands.”
⁴

It is doubtful that Mr. Fisher was much satisfied with the “something” he finally learned, but certainly Mr. Scott was delighted. The episode symbolized considerably more than Scott’s brief moment in the limelight. It showed that, even to an untrained eye, something unusual, something impressive, characterized this ill-armed band of Kentuckians at Camp Boone, something to inspire pride. And as well, the plight of the people of Hopkinsville proved a harbinger of the years ahead for all of Kentucky. Almost from the day those young men left the state for Camp Boone they were cut off from home, and home from them. They were children orphaned from their mother, and for four long years news of them was as sparse in the Bluegrass as Scott’s confidence to Fisher.

Within days the regiments began organizing officially. Since the Kentuckians who went to Virginia late that spring had been designated the 1st Kentucky Infantry, the first regiment to be formed here at Camp Boone was the 2d Kentucky. The regiment organized on July 13 and Withers mustered it into the Confederate service three days later. Its colonel took his commission three weeks earlier in anticipation of forming the regiment. James M. Hawes, a thirty-seven-year-old native of Lexington, a West Pointer and a combat veteran of the war with Mexico, seemed a man who knew how to form raw volunteers into an effective unit. He worked with good material. His lieutenant colonel, Robert A. Johnson of Louisville, showed a peculiar intelligence and a ready ability to learn the military way of things. Among the captains of the various companies—there were ten of them—Hawes had good men with experience, some of them from the State Guard. James Moss, a stern, exacting man, gruff and taciturn, captained Company A. Yet behind his blunt façade lurked a warm and
generous heart. Relieving those in distress, said a friend of Moss’s, “was the greatest pleasure of his life.”

Company B went to Captain Breckinridge who, like most of that family, had political ambitions. An eighteen-year-old private in his company was the tall, handsome son of John C. Breckinridge, Joseph C. He left home and entered the Confederacy against the wishes of his father, who was trying mightily to remain loyal to the Union. The ever-cheerful Captain Philip Lightfoot Lee took Company C. He regarded neutrality as a “foolish and impractical thing,” and was entirely delighted to be here in rebellion. Among other things, the maintenance of company morale afforded him ample opportunity for impromptu stump speaking. He loved repeating his philosophy about his side of the street. In Company G there was young Charles C. Ivey, now a drillmaster, but the year before secretary to then Vice President of the United States, John C. Breckinridge. And so it went.
⁵

A few days later another regiment formed, this the 3d Kentucky Infantry. Lloyd Tilghman would be its colonel. A striking, erect, thoroughly soldierly figure, his connection with his regiment would end in a few months. He would not survive the coming war, like so many here at Camp Boone in this last summer of American innocence.
⁶

With these two regiments organized, a problem arose. There were still a number of men in camp, but not quite enough for another regiment. Indeed, many of the bodies of men who came across the line did not number enough to organize companies. Thomas W. Thompson brought several men from his old State Guard command South with him. Yet his, like other groups, did not make up a whole company, even though it had a full complement of officers. Unable to organize officially, they could only drill and parade and bide their time until some solution to their problem appeared.

Robert P. Trabue worked on just such a solution. With regiments starting to form at Camp Boone, he and an associate went to Louisville in August, where Trabue arranged with Ben Monroe to recruit quietly in and around Frankfort. Trabue oversaw transporting the enlistees to Tennessee. After making arrangements to funnel recruits by way of Louisville, Trabue and his staff repaired to Camp Boone to await the fruits of Monroe’s labors. They were not long in coming, but their journeys hardly passed without incident.
⁷

There is the case of John L. Marshall of northeastern Kentucky. The Union men so controlled his area that a virtual blockade existed
on pistols and knives, and a man of southern leanings caught so armed could expect detention at least. He had to take a midnight coach for Lexington, his little Navy boarding pistol secreted in his valise. In Louisville he nervously passed the blockade, thanks in part to the concealment provided by the other contents of his bag. In it were several pairs of woolen socks, lovingly knitted by an old woman who was dying of tuberculosis. In her pain, she still double-knitted the heels and toes of every sock and then, in giving them to Marshall, enjoined: “Never let me hear of the heels of those socks being turned to the faces of your country’s enemies.”

Better yet is the peculiar story of Joseph P. Nuckols. He managed to hold together his State Guard company, even enhancing its ranks until it numbered eighty-three young men, not one of them married. All were anxious to leave for Camp Boone that July, but there was a political contest in the offing in Barren County, and Nuckols and his band of celibates stayed long enough to cast their votes for the southern rights candidate. The irony of their act apparently escaped them, delaying their departure for the Confederacy in order to cast a vote when, by joining in the rebellion, they were in effect abandoning the democratic process. And this was not the only irony. Nuckols, a stickler for law and order, had armed his State Guard company with weapons furnished by the state of Kentucky. Since the state still remained officially neutral, and since the guns belonged to the state, he boxed them and turned them over to the county judge, knowing full well that they would soon be in the hands of the Home Guard, his enemies. It did not matter that most other members of the State Guard took their weapons with them to the Confederacy. Nuckols would take nothing that did not belong to him. These Kentuckians were a contradictory lot. Even their hopes and ambitions of southern independence could not make them compromise their principles. If they had forgotten what Henry Clay taught them about compromise, still they would not forget his code of honor. He had said he would rather be “right” than be President. When given a choice, these sons of the Bluegrass, too, would always prefer to be “right.”

Nuckols and his company reached Camp Boone on August 9, even as other companies arrived, one of them armed with bowie knives and following a banner declaring “Southern rights, or Northern blood.” Trabue awaited them. Recognizing that the organization of a regiment from these several companies and demicompanies would be more
difficult than the task faced by Hawes and Tilghman, he arranged a separate training place two miles from Camp Boone. Here, called Camp Burnett, he directed the recruits who arrived through July and August. His main problem was too many officers. Every group that came South, even if only half a company in size, had enough elected officers for a full company. The men naturally wished to serve under their own chosen leaders, yet to form companies some of these groups would have to combine. That meant that many officers would have to relinquish their posts. Most of them led their men out of Kentucky at no little expense to themselves, both for recruiting and transportation, and at some danger. Many made promises to families at home that they would look after the men entrusted to their care. Obviously, few of these men relished relinquishing their position in the cause of proper organization. They talked among themselves, both rank and file, of going to Virginia instead, or of joining with new cavalry companies, or even of returning to Kentucky rather than be consolidated with other companies. They reckoned without Robert P. Trabue.