“We went into it raw recruits,” John Marshall wrote of Shiloh, “and came out of it stern and daring veterans.… We were literally baptized in fire and blood.” Looking at his worn and dirty socks, he changed them for his fresh pair, thinking of their maker’s warning not to turn their heels to the enemy. After what they had passed through, surely, he thought, she could be nothing but proud of them.
Looking back to their baptism that Sunday, an Orphan declared, “Yes, boys, it was the largest meeting that was ever held at Shiloh Church. And wasn’t the music grand that day? Talk to me about pianos and organs; I never heard such a big organ as was played last Sunday.”
An Irishman met Ed Thompson in Corinth a few days later, and quipped, “We went to church last Sunday week, didn’t we?”
“Yes, to Shiloh Church.”
“Well, I’m not going anymore,” said Irish. “I don’t like the sermons they preach there.”23
SIX
“Your Gallant Band of Kentuckians”
GERVIS GRAINGER saw what “seemed to me an army of dead and wounded” coming into Corinth after the battle. They arrived for days after the action. Fortunately, the fight tired Grant’s Federals as much as the Confederates, and he displayed no great anxiety to pursue. For the rest of the month the Orphan Brigade rested awhile. Johnny Jackman went fishing several days in a row. Johnny Green and his mates reveled in finally donning some new clothes they “liberated” in the enemy’s camps at Shiloh. Only after wearing them did he discover that he captured more than clothing—the garments teemed with lice, and had to be boiled before they were inhabitable.
Breckinridge’s first priority was to look after the comfort and health of his Kentuckians. He immediately made heavy demands on the Army’s commissary, providing the Orphans rations of pork and bacon, fresh and salt beef, flour, cornmeal, peas, beans, rice, sugar, coffee, molasses, vinegar, even soap and candles. Riding through his camps he discovered that some Orphan regiments did not have “sinks,” and that the “atmosphere was becoming tainted.” He quickly gave them a lesson in camp sanitation, at the same time prohibiting them from stripping bark from trees for quick fires, thus ruining the forests. If they thought the aftermath of battle would provide a relaxation in discipline, they were much mistaken. There was detail work to do as well, nursing the wounded, guarding supply trains, carpentry at the hospitals, cattle droving, and protecting civilian property from soldier depredations. Yet life seemed easier by comparison. Officers of the 4th Kentucky enjoyed the luxury of hiring nine black cooks to serve their mess at a cost of only twenty dollars a month. Company C of that regiment received a “Company Fund” of sixty dollars sent from Union County, Kentucky, for the purchase of a few precious delicacies.1
The Army reorganized while it rested, and the Orphans could hardly remain untouched. Barely did Breckinridge reach Corinth when he notified Beauregard, “I am engaged in reorganizing my corps.” “The reserve corps, was much engaged in the thickest of the fight, and did much to add fresh renown to the lustre of Kentucky arms,” reported the Richmond press, but if it was to continue that renown there was much to do. The wounded were still being tallied, among them Irishman John Mahon of the 2d Kentucky, hit at Donelson and now again at Shiloh. It seemed to be a habit. There were also desertions to report and investigate, among them Sim G. Rucker of the 4th Kentucky. Courts-martial had to be formed to try those found derelict in their duty. On June 4 alone seven men faced a court. Even officers were not immune, as Lieutenant J. T. Shackleford of the 5th Kentucky would have discovered had he not resigned before his court met. And there were changes in the makeup of some of the companies. The Reverend E. P. Walton of the 4th Kentucky left on April 15 to go to Virginia and serve with another Confederate unit known by a sobriquet, the Stonewall Brigade. Lieutenant James Wilson, captured with Hanson at Donelson, escaped his northern prison and now appeared at Breckinridge’s headquarters for duty. He became ordnance officer, and a personal favorite with the general. And an altogether unique character stepped forward to enlist on June 8. The Confederacy would never agree on how to spell his name. He presented himself as Kenshatten-tyeth or Konshattountzchette. Understandably, his fellow Orphans preferred to call him Flying Cloud. Here was a Mohawk sachem to outdo any of Buckner’s Indians. A handsome man, he apparently led the life of a soldier of fortune and did rather as he pleased. He lived the white man’s way most of the time, but when the mood struck him he stalked about camp with his blanket around him in Indian fashion, occasionally wearing a headband and feather. Obviously the southern people wherever the Orphans camped quickly took an interest in the red man, and Flying Cloud, for his part a bit vain, delighted in parading for the ladies especially.2
To re-form a brigade from the ruins of Shiloh, and the new material now in hand, Breckinridge and Trabue first faced an overabundance of officers. They consolidated companies to bring them up to strength, and the general asked permission to discharge bad officers in the process. Where there were casualties in the officer corps, he violated the rule of seniority and appointed the most efficient men, not necessarily those next in line. He even consolidated Crews’s little Tennessee command with the understrength 5th Kentucky, all of Crews’s officers agreeing to resign and serve under Kentuckians. Company K of the 6th Kentucky, never fully organized, now broke up and replaced the men and officers elsewhere in the regiment. Other companies elected their officers, and Lewis and Hunt’s regiments, being only twelve months’ volunteers, here began to reorganize for a period of three years or the war to match the enlistment of the other Kentucky regiments.3
Higher promotions occupied Breckinridge as well. Notified that he could nominate two of his colonels for general’s stars, he easily settled on Robert P. Trabue as one of them. For his “gallant and meritorious conduct” at Shiloh Breckinridge wrote a letter that Beauregard endorsed recommending Trabue as a brigadier general. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, there being perhaps too many Kentucky generals on the rolls already. This did not stop Breckinridge. Ten days later he suggested Colonel Hunt for a promotion as well. “He is in all respects an admirable officer with a marked aptitude for command,” the general wrote. This suggestion, too, came to naught, but when the general recommended Hodge for a brigadiership he got it. Some, however, declined promotion. To Captain Tom Thompson, Breckinridge offered a colonelcy and the command of an Alabama regiment in another of his brigades. Thompson turned it down, telling the general he felt he was too young, but in fact he simply did not want to leave his Kentuckians.4
For Breckinridge, promotion certainly loomed immediate. Less than two weeks after the battle, President Davis nominated him for a major generalcy, and the Senate confirmed it to date from April 14. When Bragg received the commission, he forwarded it to the Kentuckian with his own warm endorsement, “Nobly won upon the field, with … hearty congratulations.” Beauregard himself declared that the Kentuckian “displayed great aptitude and sagacity, and handled his brigade with skill and judgement.” Beauregard also noticed the gallantry of Breckinridge’s son Cabell, and promoted him first lieutenant and aide on his father’s staff.5
The makeup of Breckinridge’s corps changed too, and it materially affected the Orphans in a way neither they nor their general ever suspected. Beauregard ordered now Brigadier General William Preston to report to Breckinridge, and soon thereafter two other new Kentucky generals, Hawes and the freshly commissioned Ben Helm, arrived as well. Here Beauregard did something inexplicable: He divided the Orphan Brigade. Perhaps it was because he wanted to portion them among more than one Kentucky brigadier. No one explained it then or later, but the result was that Trabue’s 4th and Hunt’s 5th Kentucky combined with the 31st Alabama, Byrne’s battery, and another Alabama battalion to form a brigade for General Hawes. The 3d Kentucky and “Old Joe” Lewis’ 6th joined a revitalized Cobb’s battery, an Alabama unit, and the 7th Kentucky in making Preston’s brigade. Helm received no Kentucky units at all in his command.
The Orphans were furious.
An “ill-advised arrangement,” Ed Thompson called it. It created a problem of nomenclature if nothing else. The Orphans took pride in their designation as 1st Kentucky Brigade. “It was founded upon some special fitness of things,” he said. “To Kentuckians, the designation that they bore from the first … was as dear as that of ‘Stonewall’ to the brigade of Jackson.” Consequently, there was widespread dissatisfaction among the Orphans. Hawes’s command, officially the 1st Brigade of Breckinridge’s corps, contained the 4th and 5th regiments, and they continued to call themselves the 1st Kentucky Brigade. But Preston’s outfit, with three Kentucky regiments and Cobb, regarded themselves as the 1st Kentucky Brigade. On one occasion a Kentuckian from each of the two brigades passed each other, one hailing, “Hey, John!—what brigade do you belong to now?”
“First Kentucky Brigade,” John replied, drawing out the words like a drillmaster.
“Ah-ha! you do!” shouted the other. “There,” he said pointing to his own camps, “there’s the First Kentucky Brigade!” And so the confusion, and discontent, prevailed for several months to come.6
Just how Trabue reacted, not only to being replaced as brigade commander, but also to seeing his Kentucky regiments separated, he did not say. But late in April he felt so unwell that he asked to be excused from duty. It is a certainty that another Kentuckian, Ben Helm, had other reasons for seeking leave. On May 4 he informed Breckinridge that he suffered from an “inability to perform the duties of a soldier.” A statement by the Army’s medical director was only slightly less delicate in saying that Helm underwent an operation on the lower bowels. But an examining surgeon called to look into Helm’s application for leave, disspelled all the mystery. “I have carefully examined this officer,” said Surgeon J. C. Cummings, “and find that he has Hemorrhoids, and fissure of the anus.” Alas, how fleeting the glory of war.7
While one Kentucky general lay in his bed hors de combat, so to speak, his comrades tried their best to bring another one back to the fold. After his capture at Donelson, Roger Hanson went first to the prison at Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, and then to Fort Warren near Boston. Almost from the time of his capture, his friends and family worked for his release by exchange, whereby he would be freed in return for Confederates freeing a captured Union officer of equal rank. Foremost in the effort stood Eli M. Bruce, a Kentuckian who closed his extensive packinghouse operation in the North to go South to Chattanooga and supply the Confederacy. Many times during this war he took the interests of the Orphans as his own, and in May he inaugurated an attempt to free Hanson that nearly worked. His first step produced a letter written by Breckinridge, Preston, and others. In this, Bruce actually acted under the advice of a captured bluecoat officer who wanted to be exchanged for Hanson. Bruce told Breckinridge the case would require “your advice and influence,” and the general did what he could. “I regard Colonel Hanson a most valuable officer and his exchange most desirable,” Breckinridge wrote. Not content with that, Bruce represented “Bench-leg” to the Secretary of War as “the best colonel in our service.”
Problems arose, however. For one thing, the Union men in Kentucky did not want Hanson, Buckner, or any others exchanged. “They should not be exchanged or paroled while the war lasts,” wrote a Kentucky congressman. Another said it was the state’s “right” that these men remain prisoners. Yet the federal War Department relented and on May 23 authorized Hanson’s exchange, though on condition that it be for Colonel Michael Corcoran. That same day “Old Flintlock” left Fort Warren for Fort Monroe, Virginia, the exchange point. There he hit real trouble, the bureaucratic mind. The man in charge of prisoner exchange at this point for the Confederates, Major General Benjamin Huger, wanted not just Hanson but a group of captured privateers as well. They were sent as agreed, but somehow Huger did not feel he had been properly notified of the fact. He stalled and obfuscated for two months, Hanson all the while waiting without knowing what was happening. By July 20, having spent a good deal of time with relative freedom in Baltimore on parole, “Old Bench-leg” returned once more to Fort Warren, a victim of one of war’s most deadly weapons, red tape.8
The Orphans could not wait for Hanson. They must wait, instead, for Henry W. Halleck, Grant’s replacement in command of the federal army before them. He moved slowly toward Corinth, but move he did, and that meant a return to active campaigning. By the end of April Breckinridge again cautioned the Kentuckians to “fire with deliberation at the feet of the enemy.” At Shiloh, he said, there had been “a lamentable waste of ammunition.” It was mid-May when Halleck came close enough for skirmishing to begin, and finally on May 22 Johnny Green believed “a fight to the finish was at hand.” There stood just under sixteen hundred Orphans ready for duty when the drums sounded the long roll that morning. The Kentuckians fell into line, two days’ rations in their haversacks. A train of ambulances followed as they moved toward the battle line, hardly a comforting sign. Breckinridge, dressed in civilian clothes and wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat, rode along the regiments, Hunt’s 5th Kentucky first. The men cheered him as he passed, and he stopped. “Boys,” he said, “I shall try and be with you more to-day, than before.” He said he felt he had not needed to be with them at Shiloh, knowing they would do well. Johnny Jackman considered this “quite a compliment,” and joined in the huzza as Breckinridge rode on to be cheered by each regiment in turn. After a march of three miles the Orphans formed a line of battle and waited for the expected fight to begin, but it never did. Instead, they lounged about, then returned to camp, disappointed at not “hearing the bear growl.”9
By the end of the month the Confederates determined that they could not meet Halleck on even terms at Corinth. Nearly besieged, they must evacuate. On May 28 Beauregard set his plan in motion, hoping to move his Army out of the fortifications without Halleck knowing it. To do so successfully he needed a reliable rear guard, and once again he turned to Breckinridge. To serve as rear guard for his own corps, “Old Breck” selected “Uncle Tom” Hunt and his 5th Kentucky, with Cobb’s battery and a Mississippi regiment.
On the morning of May 28 Hunt broke his tents, sent his wagons to the rear, and marched the men into the trenches. There they sat all day, sometimes with heavy skirmishing. In the evening the Federals advanced close enough to lob a couple of artillery shells into the fortifications, but Halleck still did not appreciate what was happening. The Orphans in the trenches were not sure either. “Cannot tell whether we are going to wait for an attack, or retreat,” Jackman scribbled in his diary. There they stayed the next day as well, the enemy not pressing them much. About dusk signal guns roared in the town, calling all but the rear guard to the trains that took them south toward Tupelo.
This left Hunt and the Orphans, with all the federal army before them. The next several hours passed quietly, many of the men dozing until midnight, when the whispered order to fall in passed from man to man. In absolute silence the Kentuckians padded back from the trenches. “It was so dark we could not see our file leaders.” During the day the men speculated what would happen, not knowing about the evacuation. Now they would either attack or retreat. “We were in suspense—all were silent and anxious.” Then, just as the column moved, someone accidentally set a tent ablaze. “The light dazzled only a moment on the aslanted guns of the gray column, as it wended through the colonnade of old oaks, then died away leaving inky darkness.” They found now that the rest of the Army had gone, and when they turned left, south, they knew that they, too, were on the retreat. Still they bantered cheerfully when Hunt lifted the order for silence. “The ‘orphans’ are always cheerful,” thought Jackman, “whether sharing the glories of victory, or in the midst of disaster.”
They found Cobb and his guns and the whole of them moved south, the darkness so impenetrable that the artillery and even the men often bumped into trees lining the road. Crossing a bridge over a swamp, several Orphans fell into the mud below. By the coming of the first gray hints of dawn, the command saw Corinth to their rear, and rising f
rom it the long black pillars of smoke that told of tons of stores set on fire to prevent capture. “All was quiet as death,” Jackman noted. Nothing moved but a few broken-down horses gnawing at the grass. They were all the spoils that the Confederates left behind. That afternoon Hunt camped the Orphans at the crossing of the Tuscumbia River after burning the bridge, effectively eliminating the best federal avenue of pursuit. For the first time in thirty-six hours the Orphans lay down to a good sleep, though Johnny Green wished he had not. When he awoke the next morning, he saw a rattlesnake coiled atop the blanket he shared with a mate. Green rolled out quick enough, and then warned his comrade, “Rattlesnake in bed with us!” The friend made speedy his exit, “but mr Rattler after poking out his tongue once or twice crawled quietly away beside a log near by & coiled up again.” Jim Burba grasped the snake and waved it in the faces of several in camp before Captain John Wickliffe ordered him to kill the reptile.
Hunt marched all day and night June 1, and the next day halted at noon when he received word that federal cavalry had somehow ridden around him and now held a junction at Booneville that cut off his route to the main Army. While he allowed the men to rest and eat, Hunt consulted with the Mississippi officers and Cobb about what they should do. The Orphans could tell something was amiss. “We saw the field officers riding about looking ‘blue,’ ” Jackman entered in his diary. Then a report came that the enemy was closing on them, and Hunt ordered the men into line.
The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home Page 14
