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

by Davis, William C.

  “It was a rather dark starlit night,” wrote Major John B. Pirtle. The men knew they marched to battle, yet some like Grainger so gave in to fatigue that they actually slept while they walked. When the column halted, they awoke only by bumping into the men in their front. Helm’s brigade marched in the advance, and when he reached the vicinity of Baton Rouge halted shortly before dawn. Prior to this, some partisan rangers from the rear of the column slipped through the infantry and rode ahead of Helm. In the gathering dawn they stumbled into Williams’ advance pickets, and firing ensued. Grainger heard “the ringing crack of a dozen rifles about four o’clock A.M., followed by another volley in a few seconds.” He heard the evidence of a terrible accident. The partisans, surprised by the Federals they encountered, turned and raced back toward their column. But Helm did not know that the rangers were in his front. “Suddenly there came galloping down on us at full speed what, from the noise made by the horses’ hoofs, seemed to be a regiment of cavalry,” wrote Pirtle. At this moment Helm was sitting his horse at the front of the column. His aide, Captain Alexander Todd, brother of Helm’s wife and of Mary Todd Lincoln, was just then talking with Lieutenant L. E. Payne, giving him messages to be sent home should he fall in the coming battle. Already one Todd son had died in the war.

  Taking the horsemen thundering toward them for enemies, Helm’s Kentuckians scattered to either side of the road and delivered the second volley heard by Grainger. “A scene of the wildest confusion ensued.” Frightened artillery horses trampled men about them, two of Cobb’s field pieces overturned, their caissons mangled as the teams bashed them blindly into trees. Horses fell, crushing men beneath them, and men and animals dropped on the spot from the wild bullets flying in the predawn light.

  Helm soon realized what had happened and calmly rode among the troops calling on them to stop firing. Before he could succeed entirely, a bullet killed his horse beneath him, and the animal fell on Helm’s thigh, so badly crushing it that he would be out of action for some time. Several enlisted men were killed, and Lieutenant Colonel John Caldwell of Hunt’s 5th Kentucky narrowly averted death. One of the first bullets fired wounded his horse, and the animal bolted, running blindly toward the rear. As it approached his own regiment, Caldwell’s men mistook him for a Federal and opened fire. His clothes took several balls, and his horse fell dead, in the act throwing Caldwell against the wheel of one of Cobb’s caissons. Miraculously he survived and, with Helm now out of action, Hunt would take command of the brigade, and Caldwell of the 5th Kentucky. Alex Todd was not so fortunate. A stray bullet killed him instantly, his last letter to his mother still on his body.21

  Once the Kentuckians restored order, Breckinridge arranged his battle line. The 1st Division, with Hunt and the 4th and 5th Kentucky, he placed on the right, and the 2d Division with Thompson and the 3d, 6th, and 7th Kentucky on the left. It was this latter command that first encountered the enemy as the Confederates advanced around 5 A.M. Colonel Thompson put the 3d Kentucky on his right, the 7th in his center, and the 6th Kentucky on his left. “Old Joe” Lewis was himself ill now, and Martin Cofer led the 6th. The Orphans advanced nearly a mile before they met Williams’ skirmishers. The going was tough, the ground broken and covered with briars that some of the boys without shoes thought a bit “luxuriant.” Then came the order to double-quick, the Orphans raised the Rebel yell, and on they charged into the edge of the federal camps and into a cemetery. Here the first Orphans fell, appropriately, some of them never to be found again. The other brigade of their division gave way on their right, leaving them isolated for a time, and the order was passed to lie down. “We promptly obeyed,” said Grainger, “stretching ourselves like lizards.” Some were in a pea patch, others like Grainger in a sweet-potato field. The bullets sounded like bees as they buzzed over their heads. Then they rose and advanced again. “The Third, Sixth, and Seventh Kentucky regiments were going ahead like a hurricane,” wrote another newspaperman who witnessed the fight. “Nothing could stop their fearful and determined progress. The more obstinate the resistance the fiercer their onset. Overwhelming as were the odds against them, they pressed forward, mostly at the ‘charge bayonet,’ yelling like madmen.” They halted briefly at a fence for cover, the men of the 6th Kentucky taking several casualties from a Yankee hiding inside a tent until Grainger and a half-dozen comrades sent a volley into it.

  To their left they saw a battery that the Orphans nearly silenced by their fire. Cofer believed he could have taken it, but just then he received orders to retire a few hundred yards. For the next hour Thompson’s Kentuckians remained in position, firing almost constantly at the enemy, who made only feeble attempts to counterattack.22

  Meanwhile, Hunt and the other brigade of the 1st Division also enjoyed an initial success. They drove the Federals out of one of their camps and back into the environs of Baton Rouge, but almost at the first, “Uncle Tom” Hunt took a bad wound and had to leave the field. In order to save time, Breckinridge gave command of the brigade to Captain John A. Buckner of his staff rather than to the next senior colonel, Buckner being immediately available. In the continuing advance a number of officers fell killed or wounded, and Buckner’s brigade was considerably disorganized when it was ordered to retire so the division’s other brigade could continue the attack. Buckner brought the men to the cover of a ravine, where he and Breckinridge re-formed the brigade. The general drew his sword before the 4th and 5th Kentucky and gave them a look of inspiring appeal. “Come, my brave boys, and follow me—I will lead you on to victory!” he cried. Another witness gave his words as somewhat more terse. “My men, charge!” Whichever it was, the Orphans rallied and followed their general into the fight. They rushed without particular order, but drove the Federals relentlessly from their camps and back to the river under cover of a few gunboats. “During the whole engagement the Fourth and Fifth Kentucky displayed the utmost gallantry,” wrote a witness. “Better men never followed a flag or faced an enemy than these two regiments.” Poor Caldwell, still hurting from his accident earlier that day, had to leave the field from exhaustion, while thanks to injury and illness, Trabue’s old 4th Kentucky had no field officers and fought under its senior captain, Joseph Millett. Yet “it proved a host, bearing through the heat of the fray its tattered and bullet-riddled banner.” Millett took pride in the performance of the 4th, boasting that it “did not abuse the confidence the commanding general has in his ‘ragged Kentuckians.’ ”23

  Now with Buckner leading his brigade forward, Breckinridge ordered Thompson to charge as well. Thompson himself took a wound that put him out of action, and Colonel Ed Crossland of the 7th Kentucky assumed command. This final advance drove all of the Federals into the town and under cover of their gunboats. For an hour they battled the enemy, all the time now coming under fire from the boats on the river. The much-anticipated Arkansas did not show. She had been stopped by Union ironclads, disabled, and destroyed to prevent capture. Breckinridge could not know this. Now it was 10 A.M. Looking about him, he saw not more than a thousand men, all thirsty, all exhausted. He had done all he could with them, and would not expose them further to the heavy artillery fire. If the Arkansas should finally appear, he would renew his attack. He ordered the enemy’s camps and stores set afire and, that done, retired his divisions from the field, taking them first to a creek a mile from the line. It proved dry, and so he advanced again to some cisterns in the suburbs of Baton Rouge, and here the Army remained for the rest of the day. Late that afternoon word of the Arkansas’ fate finally reached him. Now there was nothing more that the Confederates could do with those enemy gunboats safely in the river and still bombarding them. Breckinridge gave the order to withdraw, and that night they camped once more on the Comite River.24

  It had been, for its size, quite a battle, and the Orphans, though divided between two brigades, accounted for the bulk of the fighting. Indeed, one of the newspaper correspondents present wrote, “I speak of the Kentucky regiments more in detail … for the reason
that they bore the brunt of the fight. But this was only in accordance with the promise of Gen. Breckinridge, who, in a brief address a few days before, told his ‘brave, noble and ragged Kentuckians’ that he would lead them wherever there was danger.” So he had, and it showed in their losses. All told the Kentucky regiments lost 24 killed or mortally wounded, 82 wounded, and 4 missing and presumed dead. Poor John Mahon took another bullet, his third wound in three battles. Helm, of course, lay disabled and even now recuperating in a home nearby where he would suffer considerably until September. The Orphans had seen the last of him for a while. The cost in animals had been great, too. The good-looking, six-foot, one-inch John Wickliffe of the 5th Kentucky lost a horse valued at $350, his gray eyes teared at the death of a good friend.

  The day after the battle Breckinridge issued a congratulatory address to the men. The sickness, forgotten for the moment with the battle, returned again, and Breckinridge was warned that his little Army might soon be destroyed by malaria and dysentery. Despite this he put Helm’s brigade on the march toward Baton Rouge once more, then turned them to the right and occupied Port Hudson on the Mississippi, a commanding place that would become a bastion of the Confederacy’s river defense for almost a year to come. Trabue was well again now and rejoined the command, taking Helm’s post. The weather remained hot, water scarce, and the Orphans naturally reverted to their errant ways. Men of the 6th Kentucky, angry because the gander they cooked before the battle had been thrown away by its owner—“blamed if I could afford to be killed with a stolen goose swung around my neck”—cornered a farmer’s cow and forced her to “stand and deliver.” Cognac appeared miraculously, probably lifted from a drawing room in Baton Rouge, and it made the rounds, only serving to increase their appetites. Still, the foraging proved to be good, and the Orphans looked forward to a period of rest at Port Hudson. Then came more orders.25

  Breckinridge’s performance at Baton Rouge aroused the interest and admiration of the Confederate people. Congress in Richmond voted him and his Army its thanks, and Van Dorn even complimented the “skill and intrepidity” shown at Baton Rouge. Others were interested as well. Ever since the Confederates had been forced out of Kentucky early in the year, they dreamed of going back. It was a dream that lasted as long as the war. Beauregard was gone now, and Braxton Bragg commanded the principal army in Tennessee. He conceived of an invasion of Kentucky for the fall of 1862, expecting that the appearance of a southern army in the Bluegrass would act as the catalyst needed to persuade Kentuckians to flock to his banners with their arms and their supplies. And the state, once safely Confederate, would be a key to successful defense of the entire South.

  Obviously, Bragg would enjoy a great advantage in his campaign if the more prominent Kentucky generals and their troops marched with him. Breckinridge and his Orphans were first choice. Indeed, on the very day of the fight at Baton Rouge, Kentuckians in Richmond urged the President to send Breckinridge to Bragg. “I should regard it as a very serious misfortune to our cause in Kenty if the army were to reach the state and you absent,” wrote a friend. The general was not unaware of the planned movement, and had made it known that he wished to be a part of it, but only if he could take the Orphans with him. His friend J. Stoddard Johnston reached his camps on August 14 and brought with him a letter from Bragg in which the latter claimed that his Army had promised to make him military governor of Ohio. “As they cannot do that without passing your home,” Bragg wrote with a rare touch of humor, “I have thought you would like to have an escort to visit your family.” Speaking seriously, Bragg went on. “Your influence in Kentucky would be equal to an extra division in my army.” But he wanted the general to leave his Kentuckians and come by himself, and that Breckinridge would not do. “I would make any sacrifice to join you,” he wrote Bragg on August 10, “except leaving the remnant of my command.” All he could send, he said, was his heart.26

  Bragg wanted Breckinridge badly enough that the problem was quickly solved, or so it seemed. On August 18 an order reached camp, the content of which soon spread throughout the Orphans’ bivouac. At once the smoldering embers of the cooking pits blazed with bonfires. Regiment after regiment raised the cheer. The men began cooking their rations for what they hoped would be a speedy trip to join Bragg. “No body could sleep,” an Orphan wrote in his diary. They sat awake all night at their fires, talking of other hearths at home that they would soon see again. Once during the excitement, all the regimental bands joined together in song. They played a Stephen Foster tune, “My Old Kentucky Home.”27

  SEVEN

  “Breckinridge’s Wild Kentuckians”

  “I HAVE ENCOUNTERED EVERY DIFFICULTY a man could meet,” complained General John C. Breckinridge. Despite Bragg’s order for the Kentuckians to join him, Van Dorn did not wish to let them go. He had a campaign of his own in mind. For several weeks the situation remained fluid, Breckinridge still subject to Van Dorn’s orders all the while. “I groan and obey,” he lamented. Finally Bragg gave Van Dorn a peremptory directive to release the Kentuckians, but it was only an order from the Secretary of War himself that finally brought action. As a result, a full month passed after leaving Port Hudson before the Orphans finally started on their way to Knoxville and Bragg.

  It was for Breckinridge perhaps the most frustrating month of the war, and the Orphans felt the tension too. On August 19 they marched gaily out of Port Hudson, the general at their head. “We moved off with a light and bouyant step,” wrote John Jackman, now back with his regiment. The bands played “Get Out of the Wilderness,” and the Kentuckians did their best to do just that. Even the rains did not dampen their spirits. Hunt’s men felt hardy enough to raid a watermelon patch along the way. Their clothes hung from them in tatters, their feet blistered from the burning sand, and to passersby they looked altogether like something from a fantasy. Naturally, this perverse notoriety appealed to the Orphans. When civilians stopped to marvel at their thoroughly ventilated clothes, the boys often as not asked them how they liked the style of their pants, commenting that they themselves found them wondrously “light and cool,” by far the latest in military dress. With pride they pointed to their banners, on which Breckinridge allowed them to inscribe “Shiloh, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge” in honor of their performance. They looked fondly to marching past their homes under those banners, but when they reached Jackson and went into camp, the mood changed. “This regular camp does not look much like going to Kentucky soon,” lamented Jackman, and he was right.1

  It was on September 19 that the Orphans finally boarded the train that took them away from Van Dorn for good, and toward home. “Going to Kentucky certain this time,” Jackman told his diary. Johnny Green was back, too, and he shared the elation. “When once started our hearts beat high with the hope of once again treading our mother soil.” The train took them to Jackson again, then on to Meridian. The roadbed was not of the best on this last leg, and at one point a car jumped the track. Convinced that the whole train would soon crash, “Uncle Tom” Hunt, still wounded but recovering, jumped from his car. His staff, “not questioning rank,” followed. When the train stopped, Jackman looked back to see the track lined for several hundred yards with Orphans lying down, sitting up, feeling their bodies for broken bones, and generally laughing. The car was righted back on the tracks, and the train finally reached its destination. Here another train boarded them and took them back through Meridian and south to Mobile, where everyone disembarked to await a steamer that would carry them up the Alabama River to Montgomery.

  With a night on their hands, the Kentuckians, officers and men alike, went into Mobile to “have a time.”

  “Old Trib” tried to keep the Orphans at the railroad depot, but despite his best efforts they escaped him, some by melting into the darkness, and others by claiming that they had to go into town to find their missing friends. What they all really wanted to find were some of Mobile’s famous oysters. “Soon the whole brigade was scattered over the city,” wrote Jackman, �
�all bent on having a spree.” Johnny Green and some boys from the 5th Kentucky marched straight for the Battle House and gaily entered its supper room. Imagine their surprise when the first face they saw belonged to Colonel Robert P. Trabue. Not as dense as they thought he was, “Old Trib” knew just where the Orphans would go and beat them there.

  “What in -H- are you doing here?” he shouted.

  When told they were looking for stragglers, he retorted, “Yes, you are looking for straggling oysters. I know what you are up to. Now get your suppers quick & get back to the regiment or I’ll put forty b[a]yonets through you.” Green noticed that the colonel had already eaten a bit himself, and done “a little more than his share of drinking.”

  On September 27 the Orphans embarked aboard two steamers, the 5th Kentucky on an old cotton boat, the Waverly, and the 4th and 6th Kentucky on a fine passenger packet, the R. B. Taney. Once they cast off, it seemed that a race between the two boats was inevitable, given the competitive spirit of the Kentuckians. The Waverly’s steam was down at the start and the other boat easily passed her, the men on the Taney cheering, their band playing, and the boat’s caliope screaming in victory. But Company H of Hunt’s regiment were almost all steam-boatmen, and they would not be outdone. They took control of the Waverly and soon had her plowing the waves “like a thing of life.” Every man in the regiment turned fireman for the race, throwing anything combustible into her fireboxes. Before long they overtook the Taney and passed her, despite the other boat’s turning sideways in the river to try to block passage. During the excitement Sergeant Bartholomew Sullivan of Company H, 4th Kentucky, got a bit too excited, or else he was still a bit “wet” from the spree in Mobile. He was careless, fell overboard from the Taney, and drowned without a trace.