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

by Davis, William C.

  Some of the other Orphans found less pretentious ways to amuse themselves. They established a brigade market near a spring, just to the right of the 9th Kentucky’s bivouac. Breckinridge authorized the place for soldiers to “speculate” in fruits and vegetables, but he also established fixed prices on all goods the men could buy from the local farmers. Peaches and apples must go for no more than fifty cents per dozen, or six dollars the bushel. Fresh pork and mutton went for fifty cents a pound, but a single watermelon might bring as much as three dollars if large enough. Jackman and Green both claimed to have paid as much as forty dollars for one! The Orphans were to buy only from citizens. Any soldier caught selling goods to another soldier would be punished. That mattered little. They had no need to profiteer on vegetables, when right next to the market the Orphans established a primitive casino. They ran poker and keno games “& a few were raking in the money of many,” said Green, until Breckinridge sent his provost to visit the “sporting gentlemen” and end their enterprise.

  Some were contemplative. Johnny Jackman read Dickens’ Great Expectations in August and was “well pleased with the book.” Helm obtained a leave of absence to visit his wife, who had herself recently invited Mary Breckinridge to visit her sisters with her. “That would be amusing,” wrote Mrs. Breckinridge, “for me to go on a visit to Mrs. Lincolns sisters.”

  President Jefferson Davis declared August 21, 1863, a national day of fasting and prayer. The Orphans built a large arbor specially for the divine services that day. The occasion sobered many of them, particularly after the defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. “We must have been a little too puffed up with pride & confidence in our own powers,” Green decided. Yet, he said, “The boys are all of one mind. Fight on until death.”35

  In less than a month Braxton Bragg would give them a chance to do just that.

  NINE

  “The Greatest Thing of the War”

  POOR BRECKINRIDGE applied for a leave to visit Mary on August 23. His timing was terrible. Two days later orders arrived for him to pack his division and once again make the long trip from Mississippi to Tennessee. Rosecrans had maneuvered Bragg almost out of the state, forcing him into the vicinity of Chattanooga. Now, as September approached, the federal Army threatened to attack, and Bragg needed all the troops he could muster. With Breckinridge sitting idle at Camp Hurricane, Bragg shelved his animosity for the moment and called the Kentuckian to him.

  Once again the Orphans made the trip in a week. For them this was the third time in a year for this thousand-mile journey. On August 26 they set ablaze their arbors and marched to Morton to board trains. Seven days later they made camp near Tyner’s Station, just under a dozen miles from Chattanooga, and the general reported to Bragg, then in the city.

  During the next two weeks the Orphans largely rested and did light picket duty while Bragg awaited Rosecrans’ advance. As usual the boys foraged from the local farmers, and at one point Helm had to send an officer around at breakfast to check for those eating fresh pork. He found quite a bit, requisitioned by night from civilian pens, but pronounced it “beef” and left the offenders unmolested. As usual, too, nearby fences stood in great peril with the Orphans around. A farmer, no doubt aware of the Kentuckians’ reputation with unattended rails, asked Breckinridge to protect his fences, and the general issued the suitable order. But then he gave the men an order to cook two days’ rations, and they considered the last order so imperative that it superseded the first. Farewell fences. When Mr. Farmer complained, Breckinridge rode to the Orphans’ camps in a rage and gave them a hearty scolding, calling them, so they thought, “a lot of vagabonds and thieves.” That hurt. For the next week they nursed their anger at the outrage of their general so abusing them.1

  Once in the vicinity of Bragg’s Army, the Orphans saw again for the first time a regiment of old friends, the real 5th Kentucky Infantry, Williams’ regiment now led by Hiram Hawkins. It belonged to another brigade, and the Orphans guyed and bullied the men of the 5th, whose battlefield experience seemed minimal compared to theirs. They warned them not to hurt themselves with their own rifles. Since most of the men in the 5th Kentucky came from the mountain counties of the state, where ginseng root was dug and sometimes used in barter, the Orphans now dubbed their fellow Kentuckians as “sang diggers.” Before the month was out they would change their attitude toward these fellow alumni of Camp Boone. And that the service of all Kentuckians in the Confederate Army might be recognized, Governor Hawes detailed Lieutenant W. D. Chipley of the 9th Regiment to collect, arrange, and perpetuate the names, rank, services, and casualties of all native-born Kentuckians then in the field. These men of the Bluegrass always had a sense of history, and more particularly of their own place in it.2

  Their place now would be in line of battle. Rosecrans finally met Bragg’s advance elements on September 18, near the meandering stream called Chickamauga Creek, ten miles south of Chattanooga and across the state line in Georgia. Breckinridge’s division now formed part of a corps led by Lieutenant General D. H. Hill, and held the extreme left of Bragg’s line. The 1st Kentucky Brigade itself spent the afternoon of September 18 in relative idleness at its station near Glass’s Mill on the east bank of the creek. Nothing more occurred than a little skirmishing with elements of a federal corps led by Major General Thomas Crittenden, another Kentuckian well known to the Orphans, and a childhood playmate of Breckinridge.

  The first real action came about 9 A.M. the next morning, when Helm took the brigade, now only 1,682 strong, across the creek. Cobb’s battery supported them and sent a shot into a house several hundred yards off, which sparked an artillery duel. The Confederate field pieces silenced the enemy before long, but at a loss of 14 Orphans killed and wounded. The carnage thus begun would not end for two days.

  In the afternoon Breckinridge pulled the brigade back across Chickamauga Creek and marched them north the entire length of the Confederate line, six miles to Reed’s Bridge. The rest of Bragg’s Army fought inconclusively that day, but as evening approached he was readying a far greater battle for the morrow. Now he ordered Breckinridge and his command to the extreme right of his line. Tomorrow, in company with the division of General Patrick Cleburne, Breckinridge would deliver the main attack on the Federals’ left flank.

  The Orphans bivouacked in an old field and built huge bonfires to drive away the cold. Their baggage being behind the lines, many of the men did not have their blankets with them. Johnny Jackman huddled in his overcoat all night but did not sleep. Occasionally they heard the moans and screams of the wounded lying on the day’s battlefield, and throughout the night came the rumble of wheels as Bragg moved his artillery into place for the coming contest. Here for the first and only time in the war Johnny Green entertained a premonition of personal disaster. “I could not shake off the conviction that I would meet my death in the next days battle.” He prayed silently and begged that he would die doing his duty, and that his death might serve a purpose.3

  Breckinridge awoke the men well before daylight and moved them toward the launching place for the attack. Due to delays in the Army’s high command, however, it was nine-thirty before he started the assault, and it did not begin well. His division and Cleburne’s were to attack four enemy divisions under General George H. Thomas. Yet when the attack began, Cleburne still was not in position, which meant that Breckinridge moved alone against more than four times his numbers. Worse for the Orphans, their brigade held the left of the assaulting force, and with Cleburne late, that meant Helm’s own left flank would be exposed in the attack. Yet forward they went.

  Before advancing, the Orphans sat or stood in line calmly. Jackman heard them “cracking jokes as usual.” Ben Hardin Helm sat against a tree in the rear of the line talking with Caldwell. Two hundred yards in front of the brigade, the skirmishers under command of Wickliffe kept up a peppery fire against the enemy. They became so hotly engaged that Helm sent Nuckols and the 4th Kentucky forward to their support. He led his men to the
skirmish line under a hot fire and then rode along the command steadying the men and telling them they must hold here until the main attack came. When he reached the center of his regiment he dismounted to take his own place, when a bullet hit his left arm below the elbow and shattered the bones. The wound was at once intensely painful. Combined with his already frail health during the past year, it was sufficient to put him out of active service for the rest of the war. He had come so far since Camp Boone. He had seen first Monroe and then Trabue die. Now he was out of the war, too. The 4th Kentucky continued the fight under its lieutenant colonel, Thomas Thompson.

  It was between nine-thirty and ten that morning that Major James Wilson galloped to the tree where Helm sat and gave him verbally the order to attack. Johnny Jackman looked on and saw that “The General got up and mounted his horse, laughing and talking as though he were going on parade.” He rode along the line, as did Breckinridge, steadying the men. The brigade formed with Lewis and the 6th Kentucky on the right, Hewitt and the rowdy 2d on the left, Caldwell’s 9th Kentucky next to Hewitt, and 41st Alabama on their right, and Thompson and the 4th between it and Lewis. With a yell the Orphan Brigade surged forward to meet the enemy.4

  Soon the main line passed the skirmishers, who now took their place with their comrades in the charge. Then they came in range of the enemy’s rifles, and already began suffering casualties from the fire of artillery. Yet on they went. Helm posted himself at the left of the line with Hanson’s old 2d Kentucky. Lewis, next senior, advanced on the right in company with his own 6th Regiment. “Our men all went into the fight with a determination to conquor,” wrote Randolph of the 6th Kentucky. Dr. J. M. Tydings of the 9th Kentucky watched the assault, perhaps even participating in it himself. A few days later he composed a poem he called The Charge of the First Kentucky Brigade at the Battle of Chickamauga.

  See, up yon hillside a dark line is sweeping,

  Breasting the thick storm of grapeshot and shell,

  Shouting like demons o’er abattis leaping,

  Sons of Kentucky, ye charge them right well!

  Breckinridge’s division advanced against the extreme left wing of the federal Army. In fact, the Confederate brigades to the right of Helm actually overlapped and passed beyond the enemy flank, attacking the Union in side and rear. As for the Orphan Brigade, they encountered the actual end of the blueclad line and it split the brigade in two. Helm, with the 2d and 9th Kentucky, and three companies of the Alabamians, fought the Federals in direct frontal assaults, while Lewis with his two Kentucky regiments and the remainder of the 41st Alabama passed beyond the end of the enemy line and joined in the attack on Thomas’ flank and rear. Thus the Orphans fought two separate battles this day.5

  For Lewis the fight went well. Having passed beyond the end of the enemy breastworks, he did not have to contend with heavy defenses, “consequently fighting the foe on something like equal terms.” In a single charge they drove Thomas’ men before them about one hundred yards without hesitation, almost to the road leading to Chattanooga. At this point Lewis saw a section of two enemy field pieces about fifty yards the other side of the road and believed he could take them. In the same instant, however, he looked back and discovered for the first time that the left half of the brigade was no longer with him, being engaged in battling the enemy breastworks. Faced with a dilemma, Lewis decided he could neither halt and wait for Helm, nor withdraw to rejoin him. Breckinridge rode with this part of the line during the assault, but Lewis decided on his own to take the enemy artillery and continue the charge.

  Forward they went. The enemy guns came straight in the line of advance of the 4th Kentucky. As usual, the irrepressible 4th’s Orphans were already amid a series of seriocomic adventures, even in deadly battle. Frank Chapman of Company D, known as the “silent man” because he seldom spoke, never fired his rifle in the entire battle because he could not see an enemy clearly—his eyes were sore—and did not want to waste his ammunition. So he just walked into and out of the battle with his mates. A somewhat obese lieutenant of the same regiment, presumably an excellent target, enjoyed a reputation for enduring battle after battle without being scratched, as he did in this charge. “Devil Dick” Slusser decided that it was because before each fight the officer chalked the outline of a normal-sized man on himself, and if hit anywhere outside the line, he simply did not count it.

  There were serious moments as well. John Marshall still watched his once-cowardly young friend John Blanchard. As at Stones River, Blanchard, now a changed man, ran to the forefront of his company in the assault. There a federal rifle gave him his “red badge of courage” and he was borne to the rear, taking with him the respect of his company. Not so, however, the young man in Company E of the 6th Regiment who took cover behind a tree while his regiment pressed forward. If he fired at all, he stood a good chance of hitting one of his own men as they advanced. When his sergeant remonstrated with him and dragged him from his refuge, the Orphan pointed to a passing missile and cried, “Say! Didn’t you see that cannon ball? Suppose it had hit me—it would have killed me!”

  “Oh suppose!” said the good sergeant as he hauled the boy to his place in line. “Suppose you were a pig, rooting in a potato patch; but you’re not!”6

  On Lewis pressed toward the enemy field pieces. “The charge of our Division is the greatest thing of the war,” boasted young Randolph a few days later. One of Forrest’s cavalry watching from some distance on the right saw that “the Kentuckians gave up their lives in reckless fashion.” And so thought Dr. Tydings.

  Up to the cannon’s mouth, on to the rampart,

  Shoulder to shoulder they gallantly press;

  Steel into steel flashing fierce in the sunlight,

  Pulsing out life-drops like wine from the press.

  With a last rush the Orphans crossed the road, and the men of the 4th Kentucky swarmed over the two federal cannon. At once they turned the guns and began preparations to fire them at the retreating foe. Breckinridge rode to the Orphans to congratulate the captors on their prizes, when Ephraim Smith jumped atop one of the guns, waved his cap, and shouted exultantly, “Gen. Breckinridge, see what your thieves and vagabonds have stolen!” He, at least, had not forgotten that scolding over the fence rails several days before. Now, amid one of the most fiercely contested battles of the war, the general took time to explain to Smith and his comrades that they misunderstood his reference. “I didn’t say it,” he protested. “I said that people would consider you thieves and vagabonds!” Then, the momentous clarification out of the way, the Orphans returned to their battle of life and death.7

  While Lewis and one half of the brigade enjoyed marked success, Helm and the remainder of the Orphans found hard going in their course. “A perfect shower of grape shot tore through our ranks,” said Johnny Green. The rifle fire came not only from their front, but into their unprotected left flank as well, and it brought men down in fearful numbers. A bullet hit Captain John Weller just under the eye and passed out behind his ear. He thought himself killed, refused aid, and urged the men forward. Then a burst of canister from an enemy gun flew into Green’s company, and Johnny went down. Hit in the groin, he spun about and fell on his back. At first he thought his leg had been severed, but soon found it in place. He could detect no blood anywhere, but did find a shot in his pocket, where it had torn through his clothes and struck the metal clasp on a pocket purse. In a few minutes he could walk again and soon rejoined his regiment battling right in front of Thomas’ breastworks.

  The fire was hot enough to clutch Otho Haydon’s hat from his head as he bent down to help a wounded friend from the field. Tom Strother of Caldwell’s Company G was seen to shake his left foot at every step, blood dropping from it as he did. A comrade asked him the problem, and he said, “O, nothing; only a minie in my shoe.” When an opportunity presented, Strother took off his shoe and pulled the minie bullet from his big toe, then put the shoe on again and continued the fight. Hervey McDowell of the 2d Kentucky li
kened the musketry fire to the sound of a woodman’s ax, and commented to an officer, “This is the biggest wood-chopping you were ever at, ain’t it?” Certainly it was for John Mahon. Wounded at Donelson, Shiloh, and Baton Rouge, he took another bullet now. He might well have paraphrased the words of a much-wounded Union officer who quipped that he was not of the blood of the South—it was of his.

  Here, too, poor Flying Cloud had his beauty spoiled. A bullet hit him in the face, removing much of his upper jaw. When the painful wound healed, it left him with a contorted and “rather hideous” expression. He swore vengeance on all Yankees.8

  Helm advanced his line about four hundred yards and then charged toward the enemy defenses. When Green rejoined his regiment the Confederates were only thirty yards from the Federals, “giving & taking death blows which could last but a few minutes without utter annihilation.” In all, Helm led three separate assaults against Thomas’ breastworks, each one repulsed. Lieutenant Colonel James W. Hewitt fell dead in front of his regiment. The poor 2d Kentucky. First they lost Hanson, and now they were orphaned again. With Colonel Bob Johnson incapacitated with dysentery, Major Jim Moss took command of the regiment.