The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (41 page)

Hood shortly pulled his Army into the defenses encircling Atlanta, and Bate’s division he soon ordered to move west of the city a few miles toward Decatur, hoping to strike the federal left flank. Bate reached his position in the early dark hours of July 22, and placed Lewis and the Orphan Brigade nearby a little stream called Intrenchment Creek. The Kentuckians numbered 1,002 now, many of their wounded having returned to duty, as they almost always did on this campaign. Some confusion occurred in the orders for other commands to support Bate, however, so that when he ordered Lewis to advance the attack was not yet fully organized, and no reconnaissance of the ground had been conducted. Yet forward marched the Orphans. Bate’s orders from Hardee were to move without letup, regardless of obstacles, yet the ground the Kentuckians crossed was so congested with brush and woods, and even a mill pond, their alignment became seriously disrupted. Then the enemy artillery opened on them. Bate and Lewis charged on, believing that the bluecoats were not covered by defenses.

When finally the Orphans caught sight of the enemy, however, they found them behind good breastworks on the crest of a hill protected as well by several batteries. Still the brigade pushed onward, though many bogged in the mill pond, caught in its mud while the federal sharpshooters shot them down. Now the lack of those supports on Lewis’ left flank allowed the enemy to hit the brigade there as well. Before long the heavy underbrush on the right of the Orphans’ line forced them to bunch toward the left, giving the bluecoats a tightly packed mass of Kentucky flesh to take their fire. Only the timely arrival of Fayette Hewitt, who rode through the entire length of the brigade front to reach the left, got the Orphans realigned somewhat for the final push toward the enemy works.

Johnny Green managed to get his canteen caught in crossing a fence, with the unhappy result that the strap held him pinned to the front of the fence, a perfect target for the enemy. He did his best to dodge the bullets that splintered the rails all about him until a merciful
ball cut the canteen strap itself and freed him to continue the charge. Another man of the 9th Kentucky, Sol Wiel, a Dutch Jew believed to be from Amsterdam, coolly calmed his mates in the advance. When they tried to dodge the bullets whizzing past, he sang out, “Hey, Dock! Vats te use to todge tem pulletts? Tey’ll hit you shust as vell vere you is as vere you ain’t.”

Shortly Hewitt’s horse fell dead beneath him, and the men passing by thought they saw the adjutant trying to save his saddle, a peculiar bit of parsimony under the heavy fire. In fact, thriftier yet, Hewitt was attempting to dislodge a blanket he had seen an Orphan discard that morning. He knew the man would need it again that night.

Finally the brigade reached the enemy works and began driving the Federals from them. Soon the bluecoats sent forward reinforcements, however, and the Orphans were too few to hold what they had gained at such cost. Bate ordered Lewis to fall back. The whole attack had been a bungled affair by Bate and Hardee, and the other brigades who were to have supported the Kentuckians. Better now to end it. The trouble was, though, that falling back under the federal fire was even more dangerous than the advance. Many fell before they re-entered their own lines. And somewhere out there in that embattled landscape, Frank the soldier dog of the 2d Kentucky disappeared for good.

The cost had been terrible. A total of 135 Orphans lay dead or wounded, among them John and Dan Hays of the 5th Kentucky, devoted brothers, both now joined in death. The brigade lost at least 25 killed, and at the July 27 muster numbered only 809 fit for duty. Ten days before they had been over 1,000. That night Hewitt overheard two men of the 9th Kentucky talking about the day’s fight, one saying he wished he could act with courage “like that man Hewitt.” To himself Fayette Hewitt thought, “My friend, if you only knew how badly Hewitt was scared you
wouldn’t
like it!” Yet Hewitt had done his duty. Bullets might destroy the Orphan Brigade, but never fear.
¹²

There remained but one act more in the tragedy that this fight for Atlanta visited upon the 1st Kentucky Brigade, and it waited forty days after Intrenchment Creek for the curtain. They were forty days of siege life, nothing new to these veterans of Corinth, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. The day after the disaster of July 22, Hardee’s corps, including Bate and the Orphans, withdrew into the defensive works surrounding Atlanta. “The boys enjoyed a freedom, rest and relief from the severe tension,” said Gervis Grainger, “such as they had not experienced
since May.” There was light duty for them in Atlanta, the occasional skirmish, and only one real minor engagement, in which the Orphans helped repulse a halfhearted federal attack on their front. Still, any victory, no matter how small, was important now, and their corps commander published a complimentary order lauding Lewis and his men. The day before that little fight came the best news of all, though. Lewis received an order from Army headquarters to ready his men to go to Griffin, Georgia. There they would prepare to become mounted infantry. After almost two years, the dream at last was to be realized. Once on horseback, the Orphans might somehow yet find Kentucky within their reach.
¹³

But they must fight one more battle as infantry first. As part of his gradual encirclement of Atlanta, Sherman sent the bulk of his Army around Hood’s left toward Jonesboro, about ten miles south of Atlanta. There the Federals might cut the Macon Railroad, Hood’s last line of communication with the outside. Hood at once sent Bate’s division south, placing the Orphans themselves at Jonesboro, while the rest of Hardee’s corps followed. An Arkansas brigade joined the Kentuckians, Lewis taking the overall command while Caldwell assumed temporary charge of the Orphan Brigade. On August 29 they began building hasty earthworks, and late the next day the forward elements of the enemy drove the Confederate outposts into the little town. That night Hardee finally arrived along with another corps. There could be no doubt that a major battle would be fought with the coming dawn. Johnny Green wrote, “We certainly have cause for anxiety.”

Lewis did not like his position, but there was no time to alter it now. Hardee, despite being outnumbered, determined that a bold attack would be his only hope of stopping the enemy from cutting the railroad. Not until 3
P.M.
did he order the charge, however, and then it proved entirely an unwise move. The enemy had found time to fortify their positions with breastworks and emplace their artillery. Further, the Confederates had to advance over an open field devoid of cover to reach the enemy, and then just in front of the Yankee works they would encounter rough ground to stall them under the heaviest fire. Still Hardee ordered them forward.

The Orphans numbered about 833 that afternoon, several recently returned wounded having added to their strength. One man with them today was Colonel Jim Moss. The entire month of August he sat abed on sick leave, severely fevered. The Reverend Pickett seems to have
despaired of the colonel’s recovery, but not Moss. Upon learning of the impending movement to Jonesboro, Moss announced, “I am going up to the front.” Pickett tried to persuade him otherwise, but to no avail. “Yes, yes; I must go up,” said Moss. Hardly a well man, still he now stood at the head of his gallant old 2d Kentucky. John Mahon was with the regiment again, recovered from his Chickamauga wound, ready to offer more of his blood, if need be, in defense of the South.

Forward went the brigade. “We started at full run,” said Grainger. “Their batteries opened on us by the dozen, with grape and canister shot and shell. The face of the earth was literally torn to pieces, and how any of us escaped is yet a mystery.” Still the Kentuckians fired a volley and then started their final rush toward the enemy works when they discovered for the first time a gully perhaps ten feet wide and as many feet deep. Under the terrible fire, many of the men jumped into it for cover. “Jump into the ditch,” someone shouted, and for those in it all thought of continuing the assault died. They would remain here until they could somehow return to their own lines.

Others meanwhile avoided the ditch and continued the charge, at least one of them under a considerable embarrassment. Poor Bill Robb of Hawkins’ 5th Kentucky, a careless sort, had only one button at his trouser top to hold them up, and in the advance a contrary bullet shot the button away. Down went his pants. He picked them up again and tried to continue the advance, but could not do much holding his rifle in one hand and his last link with modesty in the other. Faced with a choice amid all that shot and shell, he finally let go the trousers and finished his part of the battle with more than his steel bare.

The heathen old 4th Kentucky, who discouraged so many parsons in this war, had another one with them in their advance. He joined recently, and was known only as Father Blemill. This man of God the Orphans respected, for he went into the fight with them, and though a Catholic, he made no distinction in his ministrations with the largely Protestant Kentuckians. He took his place just in the rear of the advancing 4th during this charge.

Finally those not stopped by the gully or the enemy bullets reached the federal line, and there for a few brief seconds the Orphans battled with the bluecoats of Brigadier General Charles Walcutt’s brigade. Walcutt himself was a graduate of Kentucky Military Institute, alma mater to more than one of the Orphan officers now facing him. Lewis could not stand the fire and found the attempt hopeless. After only
brief fighting, he ordered his now disorganized brigade to retire. As the Kentucky regiments fell back, they left many of their own behind. Walcutt captured three officers and twenty-five men almost at once, and in addition to them he took a mortally wounded Colonel Moss. Now, for the fifth time, the 2d Kentucky was orphaned once more. And, almost as predictable as the dawn, John Mahon was hit again. “As good a soldier as ever shouldered a musket,” his captain said of him. “Was hit with a bullet in every battle.”

As Lewis rode to the rear observing his broken lines, he saw Father Blemill bending over a wounded man. He lifted his hands in prayer for the dying soldier, and at once an enemy cannon ball carried away the priest’s head. The poor 4th Kentucky just could not keep a preacher. “He was with us such a short time,” said Captain John Weller, “that I never knew his name.”

By the time the bulk of the brigade reached the relative safety of their own lines, many Orphans remained in that gully some distance in advance. The color bearer of the 6th Kentucky buried the regimental flag in the dirt for the remainder of the day, only resurrecting it after dark when he and Grainger and others silently groped their way to their comrades in the rear. Green, too, returned in safety to his regiment, carrying a wounded man of his regiment with him. All that afternoon and evening after the charge the Federals kept up their shelling of the Confederate line. In the ground between the opposing forces lay all too many wounded and dying Kentuckians, many of them screaming for help in their agony. Finally the sound became too much for some of the Orphans. Johnny Green, John Slusser of the 6th Kentucky, and Tom Young of the 9th leaped over their own works and rushed unarmed onto the field, each running to a wounded man. “The minnie balls were singing in our ears,” said Green, “& raising a cloud of dust about our feet.” Each reached his man and, picking him up, started back for their breastworks. As soon as the Federals saw what the Orphans were about, they stopped firing and raised a cheer, followed by a volley in the air as a salute. The three men made several trips more until all the wounded they could find were in the hospital, the chivalrous bluecoats withholding their fire all the time, and substituting for it their applause.

That night those who could visited the hospitals to look for wounded friends. Among the dying lay Robert Lindsay, color bearer of Thompson’s 4th Kentucky, a great hole shot in his right chest. In his
delirium he whispered to a friend, “We are to be mounted and Captain John [Weller] has promised to get me a horse. If he forgets, won’t you attend to it?” His friend listened in sadness. “I would have promised him a continent.” This night, too, the faithful members of Father Blemill’s little congregation laid him to rest in a shallow grave.
¹⁴

The next morning Hardee realized that he could not prevent the enemy from taking the railroad, and began pulling his corps out of Jonesboro while sending the other corps with him back to Atlanta to aid Hood in the evacuation. Hardee ordered Lewis to put the Kentucky brigade aboard cars at the Macon depot, but the Orphans waited there most of the day without further instructions. Then in the afternoon, Bate sent them to the extreme right of the now thin Confederate line and ordered them to dig in and prepare to receive an attack. They must hold on for one more day to give Hood the time he needed for a successful evacuation of Atlanta. Lewis found so much ground to guard that he was forced to place his men in a single line, with each soldier three feet from his neighbor. Not since Missionary Ridge had Confederates been spread so thin. It was a weak position, as Hewitt and others soon discovered and revealed to Hardee. Yet when the general asked if the Orphans could hold their position, Hewitt said they could, though the place was perilous. Hardee gave him two field pieces for support, and some Orphans began intrenching as best they could with a broken ax, an old shovel, and several frying pans.

They barely started the work when the federal artillery sent its first shells toward them. As the Orphans scurried into their rifle pits, occasional shells rolled in after them. William Steenberger took a bad wound at Dallas and could not use his arms to load a gun, so two comrades loaded for him. And when a shell hopped into his pit, he still managed to pick it up and calmly shove it out again. Another shell, its fuse sputtering as it approached the charge inside, fell beside Johnny Green in his rifle pit. Walker Nash of his regiment had just joined him after filling his canteen, and now coolly poured the water over the fuse until it smothered.