The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home

by Davis, William C.

  As the regiments went into line, Governor George W. Johnson looked toward a distant hill and saw it swarming with the enemy. He asked Captain Ben Monroe of the 4th Kentucky to formally swear him in as a private in his company. Monroe raised his military cap, unsheathed his sword, and asked the governor to raise his right hand. Johnson took the oath then, seeing Breckinridge on his horse nearby, spoke briefly with him, and asked that he look after his effects in case of his death.13

  Breckinridge first heard firing on his right, as did Trabue, and shortly Beauregard ordered the Kentucky brigade sent forward, past Shiloh Church, to join Bragg. Trabue placed Byrne’s battery on a rise beside the principal road from the church to the landing, and here the artillerist opened a fire that did not abate for nearly four hours. Grant’s right wing lay in their front, but they held his advance, though at heavy cost. Several enemy field pieces concentrated fire on Byrne during the morning, eventually putting nearly a third of his gunners out of the action. The rest soon exhausted themselves, thanks to the recoil of their guns rolling them down a slope up which the men then had to manhandle them for each succeeding fire. “Old Joe” Lewis sat watching the action nearby when Byrne came to him and asked for a detail to relieve his gunners and assist in the barrage. John Slusser of the 6th Kentucky yelled almost indignantly, “No detail! Call for volunteers, and we are there!” Byrne made the call and the volunteers flocked to the guns. Slusser soon fell with a severe wound, but another took his place, and Byrne’s fire continued. Nearly one thousand rounds he sent into the federal positions, Trabue noting that he “served his guns with skill and gallantry.” He silenced one enemy battery and severely damaged another. Several times the bluecoats charged Trabue’s line, but Byrne’s fire and that of the infantry defeated their intent. Morgan’s squadron, now on Trabue’s left, formed and counterattacked, but had to turn back. Then Hunt led his 5th Kentucky in a charge. Before they could reach the federal battery they sought, the enemy pulled back.14

  As Byrne’s battle waned, Trabue heard the fire increasing over on the center and right of the Confederate line. A strengthened foe was advancing to regain the ground lost the day before, and shortly Trabue received orders to move the Orphans to the right to support the new threat. He did not get far before becoming engaged with bluecoats, and had to stop to face them. Here, without Trabue’s knowledge, Bragg removed the 4th Kentucky and the 4th Alabama from the brigade and ordered them to assault the Union positions on the north side of a broad field.

  Until this time, the day’s only casualty for the 4th Kentucky had been a pet dog hit during Byrne’s duel with the federal batteries. Now, however, as the Orphans moved forward they once again met a storm of enemy fire. They advanced within a hundred paces of the Union line when they took a withering fire in front and on both flanks. Yet here they stayed for nearly twenty minutes trading blows with the enemy until the Yankees fell back to their reserves. The Kentuckians prepared to charge with the bayonet, when a counterattack drove them back. For an hour more the two lines jostled forward and backward indecisively. They were fighting fellow Kentuckians in General William Nelson’s division. Nelson himself was an old friend of Breckinridge, and many of the men on one side of that field had friends and even relatives on the other. Yet, as one Confederate artilleryman noted, “Wherever Kentucky met Kentucky, it was horrible.”

  The losses mounted. Nuckols took a bullet in the ankle that lodged between two bones, causing the most excruciating pain. A surgeon extracted it on the field. Then, as Nuckols was carried to the rear, someone started singing. It was the “Kentucky Battle Song,” a tune often sung at Camp Boone, though that seemed a long time ago now. “Cheer, boys, cheer, we’ll march away to battle,” it went. Well, they had done that now. “Cheer, boys, cheer, we’ll nobly do our duty.” The Orphans were doing that, and more. “And give to Kentucky our hearts, our arms, our lives!”

  Giving their lives they were. The 4th Kentucky began the battle on April 6 with 431 men of all ranks. By the end of this fight they lost half of their number killed or wounded. After one repulse, Monroe brought the regiment back to the south side of the field and ordered the men to stop firing. Excited to recklessness, they ignored him, and he had to ride in front of the left wing of the regiment to enforce the order. Just then the men saw him fall back on the crupper of his horse, shot through the shoulder. They rushed forward and lifted him tenderly from his horse to carry him to the field hospital, but they could not help. He lived for two hours. His brother Ben, himself wounded, rode to the hospital to see him. “Ah! old fellow,” said the dying major. “I knew you would come.” He told his brother he was ready to die, gave messages of love and reassurance for his family, and then “expired quietly, consciously, and with more perfect calmness and serenity than I ever witnessed in any one before.” They buried him beneath a tree and carved his name into the trunk, his prophecy fulfilled.

  Another man took a mortal wound in that field. Governor George W. Johnson would never govern in Kentucky. Two bullets found him, one in the right thigh and the other in the abdomen. Thanks to the strength of his constitution, he stayed alive on the field for over twenty-four hours. The Federals found him on April 8, one of them recognizing a Masonic distress sign that he raised. His enemies treated him kindly, but he could not be saved. He died aboard a hospital ship on April 9. Some mistook him for Breckinridge and were disappointed when they discovered it was a mere rump governor. Others showed more respect. Johnson’s body was entrusted to the care of one of his former political foes and received every attention.15

  While the 4th Kentucky fought and bled, the other Orphans did not stand idle. Trabue fought them constantly for over an hour on the left side of the same field. He watched the performance of the men with pride, Lewis and his men winning his special admiration. “Old Joe” lost his second horse here and spent the rest of the battle on foot. His officers showed every heroism. Captain McKendree, so worried the day before that his company behave well, took a bad wound but refused to be carried from the field. “No, I do not wish to be carried away yet,” he protested, “the boys will fight better if they know that I am near them.” Generally they stood steady in the line, though John Philpot of Company F had his troubles. Calm as anyone as he fired at the enemy, he suddenly felt a bullet crease his scalp, and it momentarily drove him from his wits. Throwing down his gun, he furiously beat and scratched his head like a man being stung by bees. He regained his composure after a time and saw the grins on the faces of his companions. He put his hat on again, picked up his gun, and sheepishly went back to firing.

  Elsewhere on Lewis’ line Nat Crain of the same company, and the son of a Methodist minister, heard a mate who prayed so loudly as he fired into the enemy that others heard him over the din of battle. Moving to him, Crain told him, “Get up here, Will! what’s the use in praying when the devil’s done come?” The devil was there indeed. Two Thompsons of Company F, Elliott and Nat, engaged in a sort of duel with two bluecoats who fired from a vantage point aloft in a tree. They traded shots repeatedly without effect, when Nat told Elliott, “Let’s stand out; then we can fetch ’em.” They jumped to their feet, abandoned their cover, took aim, and fired in unison. At the same instant orders came to pull back. Elliott could not tell if their shots found their marks in the trees, but he did get a glance of Nat Thompson lying dead on the ground, a bullet through his forehead.16

  Even the enemy admired the work of “Old Joe” and his 6th Kentucky. The regiment immediately facing them as the Orphans fought and then pulled back was the federal 9th Kentucky. It had organized in Adair County, just a few miles from Glasgow, where Lewis and his regiment had their homes. There were a number of Adair County men among his Orphans, and the Kentucky bluecoats earned a healthy respect for them. “They retired slowly and sullenly,” said the 9th Kentucky’s colonel of Lewis’ withdrawal, “fighting over and disputing well every inch of ground, taking advantage of every tree, thicket, log, or other protection.”

  Hunt, too,
won his share of admiration as Trabue strove to hold the left flank of Beauregard’s hard-pressed line. He took his 5th Kentucky to the right and encountered General Beauregard, asking where he should go into the fight. “Put them in right here,” said the general, pointing in his front, and Hunt ordered the charge. Here “Gos” Elston fell with a mortal wound. Hunt drove the Federals before him for a distance and through one of their camps. Johnny Green saw one Yankee hide behind a tent and take a shot at Captain Price Newman. Newman pitched headlong forward, and Green was certain he lay dead, not knowing that at the instant the Federal fired, the captain caught his foot on a tent rope and stumbled. When he arose again he shot the Federal with his pistol.

  Poor Johnny thought himself gone a few moments later. He ran to a clump of bushes to reload in cover. Just as he raised his rifle to fire again he was hit in the chest, just over the heart. “I felt sure it had gone clear through me.” The only thought in his mind was that he had time for one more shot before he died. He rose and fired. Then he felt his breast for the wound. What he found was a part of the bullet inside his clothes resting against his chest without breaking the skin. “I was surprised to find that I was still alive.” The bullet coursed through the stock of his rifle, splitting it in two when it hit the ramrod. One piece lay next to his chest, and the other tore through his jacket and buried itself in the seemingly ever-present Testament that tended to stop bullets. More than one pierced Bible made its owner a true believer.

  Hunt pressed on a bit more but then got Trabue’s order to retire. The Orphans ran back at full speed under fire of an enemy battery, and just at this point Breckinridge galloped up to them and thought they were routed. He ordered them to halt, which they did in spite of the fire. “Can it be that Kentuckians are running off the field of battle?” he exclaimed. Quickly the nature of their orders was explained to the general, whereupon he allowed them to continue their retreat.17

  Breckinridge himself twice felt the sting of spent balls striking him, while bullets tore several holes in his clothes. He had been fighting most of the day with the other brigades of the reserve in the more hotly contested center of the line. Indeed, Trabue held the Confederate left almost unassisted, and the manner in which he did it won the praise of his superiors. Bragg was frequently on the scene, particularly during Byrne’s marathon shelling, often waving his hat in salute to their bravery. “For this gallant and obstinate defense of our left flank,” Bragg wrote a few days later, “we are indebted to Colonel Trabue’s small brigade.”

  By about 2 P.M. Beauregard realized that any chance for victory died when Buell reinforced Grant. With his army disorganized and exhausted, Beauregard saw no alternative now but to withdraw. The Federals were slowly extending their right in the attempt to turn Trabue’s flank when Breckinridge received a message from the commanding general informing him of the planned retreat. Breckinridge and his reserve were to cover the movement and act as rear guard.

  The Orphans held a position not far from Shiloh Church when the news reached Trabue. By this time both armies lay near exhaustion from the most fierce contest that had yet taken place on the continent. Still, the Kentuckians stood in line for another two hours against tired enemy attacks, while Hardee, Polk, and Bragg withdrew toward Corinth. Breckinridge brought one of his other brigades to assist Trabue. “This was a hard duty, exposed as the command had been and wasted as they were by the loss of more than half their numbers,” Trabue reported, “but the general was equal to the great undertaking, and his officers and men shared his devotion to duty.” Indeed, even with all his energies taxed in holding his line, Trabue could still take note of “the resolution, ability, and endurance of General Breckinridge.” The Orphans were glad to have their general with them again.18

  They bivouacked that night a mile and a half from the battlefield. “We were greatly exhausted & suffering for water,” wrote Johnny Green. They slept on their arms again, in another pelting rain, the disappointment widespread that they had not won the expected victory. “My own feelings were too bruised and crushed to be talked of,” said John Marshall. And this night there were no Yankee stores to plunder, no wheels of cheese and kegs of beer or sides of beef. “We were hungry, mad, tired, and in that subdued condition of mind and body when hardtack and sow-belly better suited our fallen fortunes.” All through the night the wounded came into camp, and the ambulances carried those who could not walk along the slushy road toward Corinth. John Jackman spent the day at the brigade hospital and as darkness came assisted in removing the casualties. The wagons hardly moved in the dark and mud, but he and others kept them going, often by browbeating the drivers. Jackman’s own wagon contained William Bell, adjutant of the 5th Kentucky, a bullet through his chest. Bell had refused to leave the line when Hunt ordered him to the rear, saying, “Col I shall follow you as long as there is breath in my body.” Now he lay mortally wounded on the wagonbed and, after a few miles, an exhausted Jackman climbed inside, propped his feet up on the injured adjutant, and managed a little sleep.19

  The next morning the command slowly retired about three miles toward Corinth, and here Breckinridge and the Orphans stayed for the next three days removing wounded, burying the dead, and sending captured property south to Beauregard. The commanding general told the Kentuckian to cover the retreat, and Breckinridge’s reply had been, “Your orders shall be carried out to the letter, sir.” So they were. He kept Forrest’s cavalry posted in his front to discourage enemy skirmishers and scouts, while his main line sat ready for an attack should it come. The men ate damaged rations of bread and raw pork. They continued for days to straggle into the camp, the 3d Kentucky only now rejoining the brigade after being separated since the morning of the first day’s fight. Even Breckinridge shared in the privation. The morning of April 8 he had only two biscuits for his breakfast. Then he saw two weary privates and gave one to them, while he shared the other with an aide.

  Breckinridge feared at first that his troops were so worn that they would not stand after the first volley, but they surprised him. Finally, on April 10 Beauregard sent the order that the rear-guard action could be terminated. Breckinridge and the Orphans were to come to Corinth.20

  The Kentuckians regained their usual jollity as they marched south. Soon began the boasting and jibing. John Slusser of the 4th, called “Devil Dick” so much that many knew him only by that name, bragged that he would tell his grandchildren one day, “I was in the great battle of Shiloh, and what I saw and what I did. They’ll think of course that grand-pap was a hero, because the little things can never know how bad the old man wanted to get away from there!”

  Some of the men who before were convinced that one Orphan could “whip five Yankees apiece,” were forced to admit, “Over yonder last week, now—we didn’t do it, did we?” Someone suggested that Grant’s Army was not really “Yankee,” since most of its men came from Kentucky and Ohio and Illinois. “Oh they were not Yankees; they were western men—men like we are!” That explained everything, though some found it sobering to note that from Canada to Florida, the woods were full of such western men. The Orphans’ encounter with them forced some to amend their boasts. The preacher’s boy Nat Crain used to yell that he was a “roaring tiger, with double rows of teeth—one for vegetation and one for Yankees.” When he began the same brag now, he caught himself midway. He was still a roaring tiger with two rows of teeth, one for vegetation, “but none for Yankees!”

  Some turned contemplative, finding irony in their designation as reserve corps. Before the battle, said an Orphan, he did not know what a reserve was. He knew now. “Yes; it means the best body of men that can be found to go in early, stay all the time, and afterward hold back the enemy for two or three days till the rest can get away with themselves and their impedimenta. It’s a funny term, though—reserve.”21

  They were never modest, these Kentuckians, but they had just claim to pride in their performance at Shiloh. In their first battle of the war they held on two successive days a vital
point on the left flank of the Confederate line, often beating back vigorous enemy assaults, and themselves taking considerable ground. They cut off Prentiss’ route of escape, making sure of the surrender of the “hornets’ nest,” and the next day stood their ground near Shiloh Church to ensure the escape of their own army. The ferocity of their fighting told in the losses. Of a total of 2,400 ready for duty on April 5, 844 now lay dead or wounded, more than one third of the brigade. Trabue’s own 4th Regiment lost half its effective number, and Cobb’s battery was temporarily wiped out as a fighting force. Many good men lay in the sod around Shiloh. Johnson, Monroe, and other familiar names would not be heard again at the roll calls. The wounded included Lieutenant Colonel Bob Johnson, Cofer, McKendree, Nuckols, Ben Monroe, and Tom Thompson. On the morning of April 8, only 1,600 formed for the roll. “Breckinridges brigade suffered heavily,” wrote a Kentucky officer in his diary, “but won imperishable glory.” Their general, too, covered himself with plaudits. He made a lot of mistakes in the battle, but then so did all of the generals. He provided an example of undisputed calm and bravery, and in this war that counted almost as much as tactical skill. It was a learning time for him as well as for his Orphans, and he never again made the same mistakes. Hodge declared, “He had won for himself, throughout that entire army, the reputation of a skillful General, a brave and courageous captain.” “I long to grasp your hand and tell you how you looked and fought at Shiloh,” wrote a friend of the general’s. “You have won golden opinions with the people as well as the army.”22