The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (9 page)

Now for the cause, Breckinridge spoke to raise recruits for the Kentucky regiments, went into Virginia, then to Knoxville, Tennessee, and on to Bowling Green to meet with Buckner. Approaching Buckner’s camps, the senator met with an Alabama regiment sent to escort him into town. One soldier, obviously drunk, referred to the Kentuckian’s flight from the Union and quipped, “As they wouldn’t give you what you wanted over there, you can come now to us.” Breckinridge only smiled. He had come back to Kentucky, to the Kentuckians forming under Buckner. Now, if he could, he would join them. On October 8 he issued his last public address, resigning his position in the United States Senate. He had committed no crimes, he said, yet he would be arrested. He had tried only to represent Kentucky’s neutrality by resisting Lincoln’s war measures. “I resign,” he said, “because there is no place left where a Southern Senator may sit in council with the Senators of the North.” The Federals daily violated the Constitution and the laws. Indeed, suspected secessionists languished in prison indefinitely without habeas corpus. Otherwise he would have allowed himself to be taken so that he might have his day in court. But now he urged Kentucky not to stand for it any longer. He wanted peace, but had to defend his birthright. He had no other choice but imprisonment or exile. “I intend to resist,” he declared. He would defend his birthright,
and to that end he now exchanged “with proud satisfaction, a term of six years in the Senate of the United States for the musket of a soldier.”
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Of course, no one supposed that Breckinridge would be allowed to enter the lists as a private soldier. After meeting with him, Buckner wrote to Richmond on his behalf. “He will enter the army, if necessary, as a private soldier,” said Buckner. However, Breckinridge “will accept any position that may be tendered him.” The writer took it a step further by suggesting that Breckinridge be made a brigadier and be given command of the 1st Kentucky Brigade—since Buckner could not have it—or a similar command. No one need to be reminded that, as the best-known and -loved Kentuckian of his time, Breckinridge might be instrumental in rallying the men of the state to southern arms, and hopefully of bringing Kentucky into the Confederacy. The Richmond press expressed this view to the public later in October, even as Breckinridge arrived in the capital, having left Bowling Green to confer with President Jefferson Davis. “Kentucky cannot be rallied by Confederate generals or anything else. It can only be rallied by its own native citizens to whom they have a habit of looking up,” they said. “Breckinridge … and others can bring Kentucky into line with the South.”

There were actually some in Richmond who distrusted Breckinridge because he took so long to “go South.” Had they known his views of the futility of the Confederate effort for independence, they would have been even less enchanted with him. But Davis was no fool. A Kentuckian himself, he wanted Kentucky. If anyone could give it to him, Breckinridge was the man. Despite apparently considering the former Vice President for the post of Secretary of War in the Cabinet, Davis chose the immediately wiser course of appointing him a general. On November 2, 1861, Breckinridge received the appointment and accepted it the next day. “No one doubts that he is now with us,” wrote a clerk in his diary, “and will do good service.” The Kentuckian left three days later to take command of the 1st Kentucky Brigade at Bowling Green.
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Ordered to assume command of the brigade on November 16, Breckinridge arrived in Bowling Green a few days early, and spent the interim speaking there and in surrounding communities, advocating secession. He helped organize a rump convention that was to meet in Russellville on November 18 to take Kentucky out of the Union. Yet, until Kentucky actually seceded, he could not bring his legalistic mind
to countenance flying the Confederate flag in the state. He might do nothing about it at Bowling Green in Buckner’s camps, but out on the hustings he could. After a speech at Hopkinsville, he rode in a buggy to Fairview for another talk. Before getting in the buggy, however, Breckinridge walked to the horse’s head and removed a small Confederate flag from its headstall. “First I will take this flag down,” he told the fifteen-year-old driver. “Wait, my boy, ’til Kentucky adopts that flag and then we’ll do our best to keep it flying.” For thirty miles the general and the teen-ager talked. Finally the boy, in wonder, said he thought it “took smart men to be Vice President’s and Senators.” Breckinridge winked to the others in the buggy and replied, “It does.”
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It also took smart men to command an ill-supplied, undertrained, inexperienced brigade composed almost entirely of Kentuckians, perhaps the most independent Americans of them all. Certainly they tested his capacity in ways that politics never did though, as well, it required something of the politician to keep them in hand. Hanson temporarily held command until Breckinridge formally took over on November 16. He found an organization that on paper should have numbered 5,000 but that, in fact, totaled 3,400 infantry, 120 artillerymen in Byrne’s battery, and 160 cavalrymen under Morgan. Even this was deceptive, for at any time at least 500 men lay ill, under arrest, or absent. Of the remainder, many still had no arms. For a man like Breckinridge, with no real military experience, such a command might have been a nightmare. Yet he brought to it advantages that no other could. Most of the men in the brigade voted for him in 1856 and 1860. Scattered throughout the regiments were relatives, from his son in the 2d Kentucky to cousins in the others. The colonels of the regiments were old friends, even those like Hanson who had been political foes. Indeed, in appointing his own staff, the general more often than not chose men who had opposed him on the stump, but their personal loyalty to him was unquestioned. And these Kentuckians were mostly young men. Breckinridge always felt a special fondness for youth, perhaps because of his own achievements when so young himself. Young men gravitated to him as well, and strong bonds of friendship grew with men like the youthful Rice E. Graves. In time he came to be their father, and they his 4,000 sons. The loss of each one of them was to him a pain, and for both separation from one another was unthinkable. Their story would be his, and the ever-increasing attachment and
affection between them would stand unexcelled in the Confederate service.
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Now he must care for his children and ready them for battle. There must be a commissary to feed them. That would be Major Alfred Boyd. There must be a quartermaster to clothe them. That would be Major Clint McClarty, who had done his best to aid Breckinridge in 1860. Thomas T. Hawkins would be his aide-de-camp, a general assistant and errand runner, and George B. Hodge became Breckinridge’s adjutant. Hodge graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and had enlisted as a private in the summer. Now he ran Breckinridge’s headquarters.

The men needed clothing. Winter approached. The men of the 2d Kentucky, 940 of them, shivered without overcoats. Even before Breckinridge effected something for them, their own Lieutenant Colonel James Hewitt provided coats for them from his own purse at an estimated cost of over $10,000. Items obtained from the government came more slowly. Requisitioning enough clothing for an entire company, the quartermaster might only receive complete uniforms for a half dozen. Ed Porter Thompson, first sergeant for Company E of the 6th Kentucky, received in one shipment 38 military jackets, but only 16 shirts, 7 caps, and 12 pairs of trousers. Worse yet, the government sent only four pairs of “draws,” underwear. When Trabue ordered 250 pairs of shoes for the 4th Kentucky, what he received were all too large. He returned them for a smaller size. It took so long that, in the dead of winter, many of his men went barefooted. And much was too small. There were a number of large men in the brigade, above average height and weight. Hunt had several in his regiment. When specially ordered clothing for them finally arrived, it did not fit. Hunt returned it and requested a proper size, but feared that “with the same kind of delay about it the Winter will have entirely passed by.” The poor Kentuckians even had to guard what they did obtain. Lloyd Tilghman, perhaps feeling that his early connection with the Kentuckians gave him the right, adopted the unfortunate habit of seizing materials from the Kentuckians’ quartermaster stores. In one foray alone he liberated 1,722¼ yards of “jeans” that belonged to the 5th Kentucky. Only earnest protests from Hodge and Breckinridge put an end to Tilghman’s depredations.
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The situation with the brigade’s arms, even after the efforts of the previous summer, was equally unsatisfactory. The story of the 2d Kentucky
alone told the tale. On October 29 Bob Johnson reported that, of 832 men in the ranks on that date, 131 had no guns at all, 63 had unreliable weapons, 94 others carried flintlocks, 270 men had guns that were “totally useless,” and a few even carried shotguns made of scrap iron. Only 250 men had good muskets. Many of the guns in the regiment had no locks, or firing mechanisms. Others had split barrels, their hardware falling off for want of screws, and some with springs so weak they would not drive the hammers with force sufficient to fire the gun. “Most of them were manufactured between 1803 & 1815,” Johnson complained. Others believed some of the weapons dated back at least to Miles Standish. “The men are afraid to discharge many of the guns,” lamented Johnson, “and have no confidence in their use.”

“There were squirrel rifles of every age, style, and bore,” Ed Thompson said, “shot-guns, single-barreled, double-barreled, old and new, flintlock, percussion, or no lock at all; carbines of every character, pistols of every patent, and huge knives that were looked upon as too little to be useful if they weighed less than two pounds avoirdupois.”
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Even before Breckinridge arrived, Johnson got 250 good rifles for the 2d Kentucky. When the new brigade commander took over, he worked immediately on lack of arms. From his old political friend, Governor John Letcher of Virginia, he got 1,000 percussion muskets less than two weeks after assuming command. He apportioned them among the five regiments according to need, meanwhile thanking Letcher for the gift “to my ill-armed brigade.” This still left a variety of weapons—Harpers Ferry rifles, Belgian rifles, Allen rifles, smoothbore muskets, Mississippi rifles, and a few shotguns–that required a seemingly exasperating variety of ammunition. Yet, by mid-December Breckinridge had nearly 100,000 rounds of varying kinds of cartridges in hand for the brigade. The New Year found Hunt’s 5th Kentucky–soon to be the 9th Kentucky—the only regiment still not well armed. Hunt had only 246 rifled muskets, and no proper ammunition. “The Regiment may be said to be now in almost an unarmed condition,” he complained. To keep as many able men armed as possible, he redistributed the guns from the sick to the healthy. Still, if he could not be better armed, he felt he was useless. Breckinridge complained as well that if the government could not provide guns for the 5th, then he might as well send the men home. Eventually Hunt, too, would have sufficient weapons, but only after months of struggle.
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Unfortunately, there were plenty of sick men whose guns were available for redistribution. “Thare is a good many of hour Rigement Sick with the mezals,” H. E. Ferguson wrote from the 6th Kentucky. They seemed to fill the “horse pittle,” he said. At any day in November the surgeons in Bowling Green reported between 300 and 500 Kentuckians in their hospitals. In December it escalated to as high as 840 on a single day. “The most common and alarming sickness,” wrote Ed Thompson, “was a singular type of measles, that, in many instances, baffled the skill of the medical department, and carried off scores of men.” Doctors established excellent hospital facilities in and around Bowling Green, but they could not combat the spread of infectious disease with much success. On some days nearly 15 per cent of the brigade was in the hospital. On December 5, one fourth of the 1st Kentucky Brigade reported sick. In the 4th Kentucky one half the regiment was down at one time. Many died, and when one did, his fellow soldiers lamented, “He has gone before getting a fire at the Yanks.”

Breckinridge did what he could to combat disease. He placed guards at the head of the stream providing the camp to keep men and animals from polluting the water. When smallpox or fevers appeared in the private homes near camp, he placed guards around the houses to keep the men from coming in contact with their occupants. In mid-December 1861, the crisis passed abruptly, immunities built up, and the sick list stabilized. The men learned a little of sanitation and proper preparation of food, and became accustomed to camp life. After a time the surgeons reported more cases of “nostalgia” than measles. This nostalgia could kill, though. When asked what it was, one of the brigade’s surgeons replied, “Home-sickness, that’s the plain English of it.” Yet some men would die. All the surgeons could do for nostalgia, “malaise,” and similar psychological “diseases” was to prescribe placebos, which became standard practice.

As for the ever-present malingerer who did anything to escape duty, the Kentucky surgeons proved more than a match. One morning at sick call, a Kentuckian claimed he was ill, marched to the surgeon’s tent, and stuck out his tongue. Alas, it seemed in perfect order. Undaunted, he next determined to starve himself in hopes of appearing deathly ill and obtaining a discharge. He was too sick to eat, he would say. But starve though he did, the hard-hearted surgeons would not give in. Faced with sure death from hunger, he finally opted instead for the less certain lottery of the battlefield. In later years he delighted
in telling around the campfire the tale of his defeat at the hands of the doctors.
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Of course, the would-be malingerer wanted to escape the grinding routine of drill and fatigue duty. Almost from the first, Breckinridge set his men digging trenches, performing engineering chores, carpentry, even bricklaying in the Bowling Green camps. And the drill seemed incessant. Breckinridge detailed his old clerk from the vice-presidential days, Charlie Ivey, to brigade headquarters in spite of Hanson’s loud protests at losing his drillmaster. But before leaving, Ivey sat several nights with Hanson in his tent and instructed him in the latest company and regimental drill, using grains of corn to represent the men as he acted out the procedure on a tabletop. Breckinridge ordered battalion drill every day, and skirmish drill as well. Regiments were to report daily before noon to headquarters, and Sundays before divine services. Men who knew bayonet drill were assigned to instruct officers so they could in turn teach the men.
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