The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (44 page)

The war interrupted Thompson’s work. Following Sherman’s move up the coast through South Carolina, Wheeler ordered General P. M. B. Young to take command of Iverson’s division and follow the advancing Union Army. Sherman had taken and sacked Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17, and four days later Young ordered Lewis to ride toward the ruined city. The movement began in tragedy when Conrad Bills of the 2d Kentucky fell from his horse while crossing the Savannah and drowned. T. H. Ellis of the 9th Kentucky led a detail of his regiment in advance of the brigade some days before. After several days’ ride they finally came within a few miles of Columbia, and could see the columns of smoke still rising from the burned city. When they crossed the Congaree River and entered the ruined streets, Ellis and his little band of Orphans saw for the first time the sort of desolation that this war could inflict. Ellis looked about and gathered what information he could about Sherman and his movements, then recrossed the river to look for food. He had heard that some of the blacks were hiding beans under their bedding. One of the men with him happened to be Flying Cloud, “who was eyed and shunned by the negroes.” He told the sachem to approach a black in his fiercest aspect, give several war whoops, and yell “Beans!” The women and children scattered in fear, and the men rolled over their beds and brought forth the bags of beans. “Here, here, boss,” they said. Flying Cloud, or “Cloud,” as the Orphans called him, reassured the slaves. “Me no hurt you,” he said. “Cook beans quick.”
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That worked fine for Ellis’ little band, but Young found the area too devastated to support forage for his horses and men. Shortly the Kentucky brigade retraced its steps, crossed the Savannah yet again, and made camp a few miles north of Augusta. Here the main body of the brigade remained for several weeks, anticipating an enemy raid that never came. While here some of the Kentuckians went into Augusta for the little society that remained, and Jackman at least found a lady
friend, though he maintained a proper discretion in telling his diary just how the romance progressed. Indeed, here on March 19 he finally filled the last page of his old journal made of damaged quartermaster blanks, and then his diary ceased.

While most of the Orphans remained in their camps, and while Fayette Hewitt’s friends teased him that he might be serving on some general’s staff rather than serving with this ragged cavalry, to which he replied, “I would rather be a captain among these men, sir, than to be general of any other brigade in the army,” Caldwell’s turn for an expedition arose. General Young wanted Lewis to send a regiment to Sumter, South Carolina, one hundred miles east, to determine if Sherman’s hordes were moving inland toward the valuable rail stock there. “Old Joe” sent Caldwell and the 9th Kentucky on March 29. The colonel, knowing he would find nothing to sustain men and horses, carried all the regiment’s edible necessities with him. The whole sortie was a great trial. The ferry boats at the Santee had been sunk by the enemy, and it took Caldwell two days to raise and repair them. Once across he found intelligence that federal Brigadier General Edward Potter was even then en route to Sumter to destroy the rolling stock that Caldwell was to protect. Caldwell force-marched his regiment forty miles in order to reach the objective first.

What he found in Sumter were two hundred militia and two old iron cannon. Caldwell placed the militia in front of the city and behind a flooded bottom land, while he sent the 9th Kentucky to ride around Potter’s flank with the intent of destroying the enemy’s baggage train. Hopefully this would cause Potter to divide his force. At about 3
P.M.
on April 8, Potter appeared in the Confederate front and three times attempted to advance on the flooded bottom-land road. Each time Caldwell repulsed him. Then the bluecoats opened with their artillery, soon silencing the two Confederate guns and driving the untrained militia into near panic. This left Caldwell no choice but to withdraw into the city, send off all the rolling stock he could save, and then take his regiment north on the road to Camden to try to slow Potter’s advance toward that place.

Caldwell continued to skirmish with Potter for several days, meanwhile dispatching word of the Federals’ presence to Lewis. The intrepid colonel faced perhaps 4,000 Federals with less than 200 Kentuckians, but still slowed his advance sufficiently for Lewis to reach Camden first. He brought the brigade by way of Columbia, and
shortly afterward the dismounted contingent followed. “Did the mounted Kentuckians pass through here?” asked a horseless Orphan. “Yes,” said a citizen, and another added, “They were the only
gentlemen
who have passed through here since the war began.” The citizens showed a high regard for the Kentucky brigade and its general, asserting to passersby that at Camden it was Lewis and his men “who are doing the fighting, and they’ll stick to it as long as they can find a foe to shoot at!”
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Lewis found about 300 militia manning works a few miles south of Camden, and at once assumed command, putting his Kentuckians into line with them. It was April 14, 1865. Scouts reported that Potter was retiring in their front, and so Lewis took his mounted men forward. That afternoon he met the federal rear guard and skirmished with it until nightfall. That evening Caldwell finally rejoined the brigade. There had been few casualties that day, the worst probably being poor Eli Lonaker of the 6th Kentucky, who accidentally killed himself with his own rifle. The Orphans could not know that another Kentuckian was dying that night hundreds of miles north of them. Abraham Lincoln had been to the theater. He never saw the end of the play.

The next morning Potter turned and advanced against Lewis. The Confederates were too few, their line too short, and steadily the enemy pushed them back toward Camden. Lewis sent Phil Lee and the 2d Kentucky on a raid to stop a flank march by some enemy cavalry, and in this the ever-ebullient Lee proved successful. He set a perfect ambush for the bluecoated horsemen, killing several and driving back the remainder. It put him in a good humor for the return to the brigade. On the way back, he passed through a hamlet and saw an old black man whom he asked, “Say, uncle, are there any Huguenots about here?”

“Well, I declare, where be you ones from?” asked the black.

“From way up in old Kentucky.”

“Well, I thought so,” said the old slave. “Why, in Tennessee they call ’em peanuts, in Georgia they goes by the name of goobers, in Alabama they is penders, here in South Carolina we call ’em ground peas, now you fellows way off dar in Kentucky call ’em hugonuts. Well I do declare.”

Lewis did his best to fortify Camden and protect the railroad cars stored there, as well as locomotives and some considerable government supplies. He sent the militia to do the work while he tried
to retard Potter’s progress, but by April 18 “Old Joe” and his Orphans were driven into the town’s defenses. And when he saw that Potter intended to envelop his flanks instead of attacking, Lewis knew he had no alternative but to destroy whatever he could not take with him and abandon the city. The skirmishing continued while the work of arson commenced, and here in South Carolina, so far from home, the last Orphan died in battle. A scout of ten men felt Potter’s movements and rode accidentally into a squad or more of Federals. Pius Pulliam of the 2d Kentucky was in the lead, and almost at once he took a severe wound. A. T. Pullen of the same regiment felt thirteen bullets tear at his clothes, but not one touched him. He wheeled his horse and raced for the rear, but at once saw John Miller of his regiment standing on the ground beside his horse. Asked if he was hurt, Miller said not, but seemed disoriented. Pullen helped him to mount, put the reins in his hand, and then turned to continue the retreat. When he looked back, however, he saw Miller riding straight toward the enemy. Upon later reflection, Pullen believed that Miller had already taken a death wound and, almost unconscious, had no idea what he was about. Yet perhaps, just perhaps, Miller, in his delirium, knew what he was doing. Nothing could be more appropriate than that John Miller of the 2d Kentucky Infantry, the last Orphan to die in battle, should do so facing the enemy.

Lewis, too, faced the enemy for the next two days, joined now by Young. On April 21 Young formed Lewis and another brigade for an attack on Potter. Behind the line as they formed, the Orphans saw grave diggers at their work preparing a hole for a recently fallen South Carolinian. Ahead of them they heard Potter’s axes felling trees for breastworks. Young rode along the line ordering out the skirmishers, and promising, “Boys, bring in the prisoners, and I will give you the furloughs.” They cheered him, but Emory Speer of Hawkins’ Company K saw that “the veterans around me seemed hopeless.” The men in the ranks realized, he thought, that by now the Confederacy had lost everything, and that their continuing resistance was only a charade. Yet, when Young gave the order to advance, forward they went with all the old verve. It was the last charge of the Orphan Brigade.

After a few yards the enemy artillery sent solid shot toward the Kentucky line. Speer saw one cannon ball bounce along the ground like a child’s toy straight toward his company. It struck a man on his right, but not killing him. Soon thereafter the brigade skirmishers accidentally
fired on another of Young’s brigades, and there was “much angry and some profane expostulation on their part.” This last advance was not well managed. The Orphans and other Confederates knew how heavily the enemy outnumbered them. Already there were rumors of the collapse of other southern armies. Everyone seemed confused.

Yet on the Orphans moved. Suddenly there came an order to halt. Johnny Green believed that a bugle sounded retreat. Some said they saw a white truce flag pass from Potter’s lines to Young. Whatever happened, General Young soon rode to Lewis and handed him a dispatch from Joseph E. Johnston. In it “Old Joe” read that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to the Orphans’ old foe, U. S. Grant, at Appomattox on April 9. Further, on April 18 another old enemy, Sherman, finally compelled Johnston to sign an armistice. All troops under Johnston’s command, including Young’s division, were to be surrendered. The war was over. Lewis’ eyes filled with tears as he finished reading the order. In a voice quavering with emotion, he cried,
“All is lost!”
Then he turned to order his brigade to retire. They had fought their last.
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“The saddest hours that ever fell on human hearts were the first few of that evening,” said John Weller. Some could not believe it. Many who did wanted to get drunk. “I would like to go out in the woods & die drunk,” said Bill Fox of the 9th, “& bury all my sorrows.” For Johnny Green “This was the blackest day of our lives.” He saw gloom on every face. “All was lost & there seemed to be no hope for the future.”

Young informed Potter of the armistice—for the Federals did not know of it—and then withdrew his command to Augusta once more. There, on May 2, he issued a final address to the men and officers of the 1st Kentucky Brigade. Johnston had surrendered them, he said, “the last hope of success has vanished.” He advised them to accept the result, to take Sherman’s generous terms of parole, to go home and accept the laws of the United States once more and abide by them. “Let me thank you, my brave men,” he concluded, “for your suffering and your fortitude in the camp and your gallantry on the field of battle.”

Orders called for the Orphans to proceed to Washington, Georgia, to surrender their arms and take their paroles. It was not far, just fifty miles northwest of Augusta, and Lewis sent notification that he would have the brigade there by May 6 to Major General James Wilson, commanding Sherman’s cavalry. Lewis asked that Wilson have an
officer there on that date to receive his arms and parole the men. By doing so, Lewis almost unwittingly betrayed the Orphan Brigade’s oldest and dearest friend.
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There were a number of Kentuckians in Washington already, men of the unmounted detachment. When Young ordered the men without horses to join him in South Carolina in April, Johnny Jackman and another man of the 9th Kentucky were too unwell to make the march. Instead, Fayette Hewitt detailed the two to take charge of all the brigade archives, over twenty volumes of record books, morning reports, letter-copy books, and the like, as well as thousands of individual orders and reports. They were to conduct the archives to Washington and there await further orders. Jackman and his friend carefully boxed the mass of documents and on April 17 boarded a train to make the circuitous journey to Washington. Along the way they traveled briefly with General Hood. “He must have known of Lee’s surrender,” thought Jackman, “for he looked very ‘blue.’ ”

On the afternoon of April 19 they reached their destination, and went at once to the building where Captain Bosche and his detail were still making saddles for the brigade. There they stored their precious cargo, and Jackman, perhaps sensing the importance now of historic documents, took time to revise and recopy his old journal. Shortly Lee’s paroled men started passing through the town on their way home, and Jackman knew that the worst had happened. Then came word of Johnston’s surrender. “We knew then,” he told his diary, “that we had ‘gone up.’ ” Soon Johnston’s men, too, marched through, many of them rampaging and looting the quartermaster supplies stored in Washington’s warehouses.

On May 3 Jackman saw President Jefferson Davis pass through Washington, escorted by some old friends, Basil Duke, and part of the 2d Kentucky Cavalry. Davis and his Cabinet, following the fall of Richmond the month before, fled South, taking the government with them. Now, with his two major armies surrendered, Davis hoped to reach the Trans-Mississippi Department and the last small Confederate armies under E. Kirby Smith and Richard Taylor. He wore a broad-brimmed felt hat, black crepe encircling the crown, and a plain gray military-style coat. He looked to Jackman a sad figure, symbolic of the collapse of the South. In a week Jefferson Davis would be a federal prisoner.

The next day another familiar face appeared, this one a visage that
any Orphan associated with ill omen and bad news. Braxton Bragg arrived in the morning to join the President, and together they rode out of town. Here Davis separated from his Cabinet, leaving them to go their separate ways. The government had dissolved, most of his ministers losing heart, realizing as Davis could not that all was truly lost.