The news reached Breckinridge that night or early on October 9. It came within hours of receipt of the word that Bragg’s Army had suffered a major defeat at Perryville the day before, and would be retreating toward Nashville. The Kentucky campaign might end before he and the Orphans could join it, this after all the worry and effort. Now another of his regiments rising in mutiny proved finally too much. In the closest thing to rage that he would know, he went to the camp of the Kentucky regiments and ordered them drawn up on three sides of a square. Then he took a place at the open side where everyone of them could see and hear him, took his hat from his head and held it at his side, and began to speak. “I spoke,” he wrote the next day, “under a degree of mortification and excitement produced by the occurrences of the previous evening which are quite unusual with me.”
Even in his ire, Breckinridge proved the master orator, knowing instinctively how to capture and mold his audience. He did it on the stump a hundred times as a politician. It was no different now. He began by giving them “a little raking over” for their wildness and vandalism during the trip from Mississippi. The Orphans would never change their ways in that regard, but he never stopped trying. Then he turned to the matter of the Meridian mutiny, addressing the men of the 5th Kentucky. “He told them he was surprised at their having acted so,” Jackman wrote in his diary. The fact that they did it to call attention to their situation mitigated only a little. He knew his own duty, he said, and “would perform it at all hazards.” Had he been present at Meridian, he would have sacrificed his own life “and the life of every man under arrest in this Regt for mutiny” before he would have released them without their promise to return to duty unconditionally. There would have been “either unconditional surrender, or unconditional mutiny.” It was passed now, and there was nothing to be served by arresting them again. Since both he and Hunt promised an investigation, he reiterated his guarantee that they would receive an answer from Richmond.
Then he turned to the mutineers from Lewis’ regiment, and his tone changed, or so they would claim. Johnny Green later said that the general explained the needs of the service and that the Army and the cause could not spare them. Gervis Grainger recalled that he delivered “a most touching and eloquent appeal,” concluding by asking those willing to follow him through weal and woe “and to die if necessary in the last ditch” to re-enlist. There were cheers for Breckinridge and shouts of “Let’s re-enlist for thirty years or during the war.” Adjutants prepared papers for three years, “but thirty years would have been signed for by the boys, such was their earnest devotion to the cause.” Perhaps. But Green and Grainger wrote their recollections in after years with forgiving memories. Johnny Jackman put in his diary that same day that “Old Breck,” after saying what he would have done to the bolters of the 5th Kentucky, even to death, “wound up by giving the mutineers, in the 6th, fifteen minutes to return to duty, and they all did so before the time expired.” There rings a note of truth.10
Both regiments re-enlisted for three years or the war, ending any further attempts at mutiny, but the anger did not die in many. Indeed, word of the Orphans’ discontent spread even to the enemy. One federal prisoner briefly held in “Old Breck’s” camp reported to his superiors that “the Kentucky regiments are in a state of mutiny,” and added that many were “skedaddling.” Not long afterward two men of Hunt’s regiment deserted to the enemy and gave information on Confederate movements. “They were twelve-months’ men, whose time was out in September,” a bluecoat reported, “and this is the first chance they have had to get away.” It would take a long time for the echoes of the mutinies to die away. The same day of Breckinridge’s speech, Caldwell wrote indignantly to the general complaining of an imagined criticism of his own conduct in handling the Meridian insurrection. Breckinridge calmed him and apologized, saying that no condemnation was intended. It was a measure of the man who led these Kentuckians that Breckinridge ordered his letter of apology read before Caldwell’s regiment at dress parade, and then put it into the brigade’s official records. There must be no injustice to any Kentuckian.11
While quelling mutiny within the ranks, Breckinridge struggled to get his Orphans into Kentucky. He found no cooking utensils for them in Knoxville, and had to order Hanson to bring them with him and his regiment from Chattanooga. When “Old Flintlock” asked if he would accompany the march into Kentucky, Breckinridge said yes and told him to hurry forward, bringing any convalescent Kentucky troops with him. Every kind of supply problem bedeviled them both. Hanson could not get tents from the quartermaster for his men. Despite an abundance of them sitting idle in warehouses, he could only obtain one tent that would sleep sixteen men. With winter coming, fully a third of his Orphans slept on the open ground. Then the doctors refused to let him take the convalescents with him, and made the matter a test of authority. Hanson, recalling perhaps his order at Bowling Green that not more than two men per day were allowed to be ill, complained that “several of my men without my knowledge got into the Hospital.” They wanted release to join him, and it finally took an order from Breckinridge to get them out.
Meanwhile, Breckinridge drilled the Orphans to ready them for the hard march ahead. Three hours a day they practiced, while the general sent Joe Nuckols, Hanson’s cellmate Stephen Chipley, and several others into Kentucky ahead of them to begin recruiting. Visitors from home appeared to encourage the Kentuckians. James B. Clay stopped with his old enemy and older friend, Hanson, who proudly gave him a tour of his regiment. By October 12 Hanson led his men into the camp at Knoxville, reuniting the Kentucky regiments for the first time since February. That same day Breckinridge finally cleared the remaining impediments to his advance and sent the first contingent of his division forward. The Orphans, fifteen hundred strong, he would start on October 14. They were going home at last. Just three days’ march away lay Kentucky.12
Yet another delay followed, but finally on the morning of October 15 the Orphans broke camp and started their tramp toward Cumberland Gap. “All marched with a buoyant step,” wrote Johnny Jackman. The usual stragglers stayed with the column as “our hearts beat high with hope.” The weather turned seasonable; everything looked encouraging. They covered twelve miles or more that day and camped before sundown. “We are going to Kentucky in grand style,” boasted Jackman.
The next day they did even better, marching fifteen miles, all the while the mountains surrounding Cumberland Gap looming before them darkly like a blue cloud. The autumn day turned beautiful. “Indian summer,” an Orphan called it. They passed Maynardville and camped three miles beyond in a field of clover. Cumberland Gap, and Kentucky, lay barely twenty miles away. They could make it tomorrow if the weather held. There was no question that their spirits felt equal to the challenge.
Reveille sounded early on October 17 and the men sped through their morning meal, anxious to be on the road for home. They formed line of march in the clover field and the head of the column, Hanson and Breckinridge in the lead, stepped into the road. A little cloud of dust ahead gave the first warning that a courier approached, and before the entire brigade was yet in the road, Breckinridge ordered the column to halt. The courier handed the general a dispatch, which he opened hastily. It came from Bragg’s adjutant. “The general commanding directs me to say that you will halt … and return to Knoxville.” He was to go to middle Tennessee, as Bragg expected the Federals to move there any day. “The general commanding is now en route to follow you.”
If ever the Kentuckian felt real despair during the long struggle to take his men home, surely it was now. Here, when they could see the mountains of their native state on the horizon, they must stop and go no farther. And the last sentence that Bragg would be joining him removed all lingering hope that the march might be resumed. The Confederate Army was leaving Kentucky, the great and glorious campaign ended in defeat.
The men stood in the road and the field for a time, then their officers returned them to their bivouac. For hours the rumors flew
through the regiments. Some believed that they simply had to delay while Bragg sent a large train of captured supplies through Cumberland Gap. When it passed they would move again. Others said he must have been defeated. “Thus the day wore on,” wrote Ed Thompson, “and a painful day it was, too.” That afternoon the brigade formed on dress parade as usual, but already the real truth seemed to have taken hold of the men. The 2d Kentucky formed on the east side of the road, and the other regiments on the west. “The silence that prevailed in the ranks then was not the silence of restraint,” said Thompson; “it was the silence of stern manhood bowed down by bitter disappointment.” No one even whispered. Gone was the gaiety, the shoving and shambling and guying of the usual parade. They performed their manual of arms with stern efficiency, then returned in quiet to their tents. The regimental bands that night played sentimental songs, such as “My Old Kentucky Home” and “Home, Sweet Home.” Thompson saw tears on many faces.
They rested in camp a day while Breckinridge awaited further orders, and now the official announcement came to the Orphans that their dream had died at Perryville. Then on October 19 they struck their tents and with “heads all lowly bending,” turned their eyes toward Knoxville once more. As the march began, a spontaneous shout went up from fifteen hundred Kentucky voices. Thompson could never tell if it came from desperation or defiance, but it was their only outward expression of feeling. “With sad hearts we turned from our cheerished hope,” wrote Johnny Green, and on they marched “with stern determination to manfully do our duty.” The straggling that day was substantial. To his diary that night, Jackman woefully confided, “Going to Kentucky ‘played out.’ ” It was as close as they would ever get to their mother state in this war. Orphans they had been, and Orphans they would remain.13
Once back in Knoxville their old spirit returned, and on the trip thence to Chattanooga, down to Bridgeport, Alabama, and then back into Tennessee to Murfreesboro, the Kentuckians regained the light-hearted air that characterized them on the march. No doubt reverting to their customary depredations on farmers’ property along the way helped restore their élan. In Bridgeport, what’s more, the siblings were reunited after several months’ official separation. Breckinridge reorganized them into one brigade again.
Many changes had taken place since Baton Rouge and Shiloh. Byrne and his battery left the service shortly after Shiloh as a result of a dispute over promotion. Morgan and Helm’s 1st Kentucky Cavalry went to other service before the Orphans appeared at Vicksburg. And of the other Kentucky regiments with them when the Orphans split between two brigades, the 3d and 7th Kentucky remained with Van Dorn and never joined the Orphans again. Indeed, though Kentuckians, they never really enjoyed a full brotherhood with Breckinridge’s men.
Now on October 26, 1862, the general re-created the brigade with the 2d, 4th, and 6th regiments, and with Hunt’s old 5th Kentucky finally designated by its new title as 9th Kentucky Infantry. Graves and his battery took the place of the lost Byrne, and Cobb’s guns filled the artillery complement. Several new companies finally brought Hunt’s 9th Kentucky up to strength. The men of Nuckols’ old 4th who went to man Graves’s guns returned to the infantry, as the young gunner enlisted enough men of his own. A few weeks later Breckinridge would add the 41st Alabama Infantry to augment the Orphans’ strength. This done, the brigade for a time was complete.14
The brigade once again belonged to “Old Bench-leg.” It was a command sadly depleted by the ravages of the last year. As he took them into camp at Murfreesboro they numbered just 2,563, but that included the Alabama regiment, which mustered nearly double the strength of Lewis’ 6th Kentucky. Of actual sons of the Bluegrass in the brigade, 1,847 stood present for duty. In fact, more Orphans were on the rolls as sick or absent—2,418—than were present. Their number would increase slightly during the remainder of the year, but only a little. Unlike other regiments in the Confederate Army, these Kentucky units could not recruit men to replace those killed, disabled, or deserted. One had to go home for that, and they could not. And so as the war labored onward, the Orphans’ numbers grew ever fewer as they were adopted by maiming bullets, the cold sod, or simply ran away from home.15
All of November and December the brigade remained at Murfreesboro, shortly to be joined by Bragg’s retreating Army. Now for a change the Orphans rested and reveled in nearly two whole months of inactivity. Murfreesboro proved to be a beautiful little place. “There we lived like lords,” recalled Gervis Grainger. Messages, letters, even clothing and edible delicacies ran the federal blockade from Kentucky to reach them here. Visitors from home came, and even many of the officers’ wives joined them. Mary Breckinridge and Virginia Hanson began housekeeping in Murfreesboro, and “Old Breck’s” wife later recalled the days in the quiet Tennessee town as among the happiest of her life. Theirs was a joyful reunion. “I had been separated so long,” she later wrote him, “that when I did see you I was in a transport of joy.”
For those whose wives remained in Kentucky, however, there were only dreams. Captain Tom Winstead of the 4th Kentucky, Company B, wrote frequently to his wife, Mollie, but seldom did her letters reach him. “You do not know what I would give to get a letter from you,” he wrote that November; “it would almost make me wild with joy.” The Confederacy’s mail service could not operate in Kentucky, so written communication depended almost entirely upon letters reaching Washington in the federal mail, being transferred by flag of truce to Richmond, and then finding their way to wherever the Orphans happened to be. Small wonder that, instead, most people relied on sending their letters with friends who crossed the line. Either method was uncertain, and most letters disappeared, just as the Kentucky men who wrote them seemed lost to their families. “There is not a night I do not dream of home,” Winstead wrote his wife, not knowing if she would ever read the words.16
There was gaiety for a change. Morgan, now a dashing general with a brigade of cavalry, married in Murfreesboro, with General Polk performing the service and Kentuckians like Breckinridge his ushers. The men pranked, the officers like Hanson and Trabue vied with each other for having the finest and most valuable horse in the brigade, and the 4th Kentucky band and all “field music” of the brigade reported to a new bandmaster and chief musician, J. E. Beatty. The discontent in the 6th and 9th regiments diminished considerably, but alas poor Trabue’s only increased. The recommendations of Breckinridge and Beauregard after Shiloh came to nothing, and he was still a colonel. Worse, after being replaced prior to Baton Rouge in command of the brigade, now he found Hanson superseding him. It hurt after leading the brigade in battle and on the march. On the day Hanson assumed command, he wrote to a friend on President Davis’ staff and asked that his promotion to brigadier be pushed if possible. If it could not, then he requested that he be transferred to a different command with the Army in Louisiana. “To leave a regiment I have so highly disciplined, one so devoted to me, and with which I am identified by every tie which a soldier prizes,” he wrote of leaving the 4th Kentucky, “would be to me most painful, but my own interests and probably the interests of the service would be promoted” by such a transfer. Ambition thwarted always galled Kentuckians.17
Hanson busied the men with drilling, and once again the Orphans encountered his almost forgotten mania for discipline. “He was the best disciplinarian we ever had,” Jackman recalled. “He brought down upon the ‘boys’ the strictest kind of discipline while here encamped.” Since leaving Mississippi, the brigade’s commanders alternated from Trabue to Hunt to one or two lieutenant colonels, and consequently guard, drill, and police duties looked rather lax by the time they reached Murfreesboro. “Old Flintlock” changed that soon enough.
His very first night in camp someone heard a mighty growl shortly before dawn, and the word spread in the brigade that “Bench-leg” had passed where a guard line should have been, but was not. That evening at dress parade he gave notice of how things would be henceforth. Every officer must report in full uniform, and with his coat
buttoned. Poor Major Cripps Wickliffe of Hunt’s regiment would not like that. He despised brass buttons constraining him. But it must be. Thereafter Hanson inspected the officers first even before the strains of reveille died each morning. “He went every-where,” wrote Ed Thompson, himself now a disciplined lieutenant, “saw every thing, knew every body upon whom any responsibility rested.” He tested the officers constantly, though the result often seemed underwhelming for they, like the men, had too much of the prankster in them. When Hanson asked Lieutenant Phil Murphy of his old 2d Kentucky, “What constitutes a good soldier?” the response was, “One who can sleep on a fence-rail and cover with a shoe-string.” Not exactly what the colonel had in mind.
Once again he attacked the morning sick report, finding too many officers thereon. So far as he was concerned, they were just evading duty. “Officers are called on not to report themselves sick when they can help it,” read his order. Headaches and the like would not suffice. Before going on sick report henceforth, “The illness must be such as to endanger life.” Yet one lieutenant in the 2d Regiment chose not to heed the stricture, and several days running his name appeared on the sick list. Suspicious, Hanson inquired and discovered that the young officer had been drinking and gambling late into the night repeatedly. Walking one morning to the man’s tent, Hanson looked in and found the culprit wrapped in his blankets. He demanded to know why the lieutenant did not report at roll call. The officer suspected he had been found out and determined to try a diversion. Feigning agony he groaned, “I’m sick this morning—really too unwell to attend roll call.”
The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home Page 18
