The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home
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Now Jackman armed himself with a pen and made out the report. Several federal batteries sent shells into Pine Mountain, but Jackman and Gillum, joined by Johnny Green, Caldwell, and one or two other Orphans, felt safe where they sat. The report done, Jackman raised his head to ask Caldwell if he should sign his name for him. The colonel assented, and Jackman bent over again to affix the signature.
“We were sitting around with shells bursting over us,” said Johnny Green, “when it was evident from the sound that one piece of a shell was coming close to us.” Some held their breath; others, immune to the sound of the guns, ignored the eerie music of the whining shell fragment. Then it struck. “Suddenly every thing got dark, and I became unconscious.” The fragment hit John Jackman on the top of the head, cracked the skull and depressed it somewhat, then bounded onward, struck a rock, and finally plummeted against Caldwell’s leg. The men sitting around scattered immediately but quickly came back to the prostrate Jackman, Caldwell being only bruised. The impact had turned the clerk in a complete somersault, and Green said, “We thought he was killed.” But in a few moments Jackman awoke to find Gillum and Dr. B. L. Hester lifting him from the ground. Jackman stood of his own accord. There was no pain and for a moment he could not imagine what had happened. The first thought in his mind was that his head was gone, and he put his hand up to feel if there was still anything above his shoulders. Hester bandaged the wound after Green poured some water on it, and then Jackman declared that he felt so little pain that he saw no point in going to the hospital. “Jack was so bright by this time,” said Green, “that we had a hearty laugh at the way he had flopped over, just like a chicken when his head is cut off.” Hester insisted that he go to the field hospital nevertheless, and predicted that the wound would be more serious than Jackman supposed. That night it began hurting severely, and a week later it became inflamed and gangrene set in. The surgeons sent Jackman to the hospital in Atlanta on the same train that bore the remains of General Leonidas Polk.8
For the Orphans left behind on Pine Mountain, the long campaign wore on. By June 20 they were on Kennesaw Mountain, with a large detail from several regiments acting as skirmishers. That evening Sherman sent three light assaults against the Kentucky line, which each time repulsed the enemy. But a fourth attempt dislodged the Confederates, and Lewis had to send Major John B. Rogers of the 4th Kentucky to regain the lost ground. The skirmishing had been hard that day, and as men died on the line, others often volunteered to take their places. Sergeant Tom Cox, though not on the duty list, asked to take a comrade’s place as a replacement, only to fall to a sharpshooter’s bullet. When an orderly arrived to ask another man to come to the skirmish line, Virginius Hutchen—the same man who so cursed his officers two years before that he was arrested for inciting mutiny—stepped forward calmly. “My time has nearly come,” he said with resignation, then went to the line. He saw several of his fellow Orphans, each with a bullet hole in the center of the forehead, testament to the deadly skill of the enemy sharpshooters. He asked where the dead men had been in the line, and was shown a pile of stones beside a tree. He decided to shift things a bit and took his ground several feet away from the barricade. Shortly he crawled to the rocks, put his hat atop a stick, and held it above the breastwork. Instantly a bullet perforated his headgear. Three more times he repeated the charade until he spotted a tuft of smoke that betrayed the enemy marksman’s position. At that moment Taylor McCoy of the brigade sharpshooters approached, and Hutchen borrowed his Kerr rifle. One shot brought down the enemy picket and Hutchen felt well satisfied in having, however slightly, evened the score for his departed comrades.
Now Rogers formed his detail to retake the rifle pits. Some of the Orphans who had lost the works to the enemy urged them, saying, “Go in, Kaintuck! We’ll yell!” Go in Rogers did, and he regained much of the lost ground, but now it turned dark, and in the gloom Rogers himself mistook an enemy position for one of his own. Just what happened is unknown. Federal prisoners told of a Confederate officer approaching them and mistaking their identity, saying they must hold their position to the last man. Others believed Rogers killed. In any case, the gallant major was never heard from again. Dead or captured, he simply disappeared in the night. His men held their place until midnight, when Lewis ordered them to retire. Some did not receive the order, and only much later did they creep through the darkness to safety, though not before Bill Hill had cocked his rifle and was about to shoot into a dark shape approaching, only to discover it was his friend Henry Harned.9
Johnston kept his Army along the Kennesaw line until July 2, 1864, a time of constant skirmishing for the Orphans. Late that night he ordered the brigade to retire to the Chattahoochee River, and there they took a new position on the Fourth of July. The Orphans had seen two months of campaigning in Georgia so far, and the toll showed in their ever-thinning ranks. On May 7, a total of 1,512 Kentuckians answered the roll. Three days after reaching the Chattahoochee, the morning report found 974 fit for duty. More than one third of the brigade lay dead on the road to Dalton, or else wounded in the hospitals of Atlanta. That the grueling, depressing nature of this endless campaign told on the Kentuckians who escaped the bullets is undeniable. In this last month, 30 men went on the rolls as deserters, 19 of them from Hanson’s always troublesome 2d Kentucky.
Yet the spirit of most of the Kentuckians stood the test as it always did. Good “Old Joe” Lewis finally forgave Cripps Wickliffe his disrespect—or else could not bring him to court-martial—and returned the popular officer to the 9th Kentucky, his buttons presumably fastened. Mike Whalen of the 4th Kentucky always kept his good cheer, and amazed his officers by somehow producing a cross-cut saw, a maul, and two wedges from his kit whenever needed. He also had a four-gallon jug of water on the march, and the regimental adjutant believed Mike could probably find a hammer and anvil if he looked deep enough into his knapsack. Even some of the wounded kept their good humor. Tom Strother, who took a bullet in the toe at Chickamauga, saw a three-inch shell nearly sever his left forearm. He used his right hand to help carry wounded on a litter, and thereafter walked several miles carrying his left hand in his right until the surgeons could tend to him. He refused chloroform, and said instead, “Give me a glass of whisky.” Tom never took his eyes from the medicos at their work, then arose from the table and walked to a nearby poker game and sat in, experimenting to see if he could shuffle the cards with one hand. Thereafter he remained with his mess, though unfit for fighting, to chop their firewood. Samuel Mains of the 5th Kentucky had been crippled by “white swelling” early in life, yet joined the command in 1861 and stayed with it in every march. He could not perform the manual of arms so badly was one arm deformed, and marching was painful and difficult for his misshapen legs, yet he stayed with his regiment throughout this long, hard campaign until finally he could march no more. Instead of leaving the brigade, however, he stayed on as a cook for his messmates. And poor Konshattountzchette, his beauty spoiled forever, remained ever active once he returned to duty. He seemed particularly to desire being entrusted with captured Federals, though for what purpose his fellow Orphans could only speculate. Some hinted darkly that the Mohawk wanted to wreak a terrible tribal revenge on all Yankees for the loss of his good looks. Finally Caldwell deemed it wise not to leave the Indian alone with prisoners. As for the wounded like Captain Winstead, they too kept their spirit for the most part, and the old dream of regaining their homeland never died. “Our army is in the finest plight you ever saw,” he wrote his wife, “and determined yet to come to Kentucky.”10
By July 17 Sherman had crossed the Chattahoochee and forced Johnston to withdraw toward Peach Tree Creek, barely four miles north of Atlanta. Davis and the War Office in Richmond were by now exasperated with Johnston’s constant retreats. Davis despised Johnston personally as well, and on this day relieved the general by his personal emissary, the ever-accommodating Braxton Bragg. The Orphans, by now convinced that every evil visited upon the Confederacy was in so
me way the work of their old enemy Bragg, were first furious, then moody. It helped only a little that the man Bragg put in Johnston’s place, General John B. Hood, was a Kentuckian, for they felt little confidence in his generalship, a hesitation Davis and Bragg might wisely have shared. “The removal,” said Johnny Green, “has cast a gloom over the army.”11
Hood shortly pulled his Army into the defenses encircling Atlanta, and Bate’s division he soon ordered to move west of the city a few miles toward Decatur, hoping to strike the federal left flank. Bate reached his position in the early dark hours of July 22, and placed Lewis and the Orphan Brigade nearby a little stream called Intrenchment Creek. The Kentuckians numbered 1,002 now, many of their wounded having returned to duty, as they almost always did on this campaign. Some confusion occurred in the orders for other commands to support Bate, however, so that when he ordered Lewis to advance the attack was not yet fully organized, and no reconnaissance of the ground had been conducted. Yet forward marched the Orphans. Bate’s orders from Hardee were to move without letup, regardless of obstacles, yet the ground the Kentuckians crossed was so congested with brush and woods, and even a mill pond, their alignment became seriously disrupted. Then the enemy artillery opened on them. Bate and Lewis charged on, believing that the bluecoats were not covered by defenses.
When finally the Orphans caught sight of the enemy, however, they found them behind good breastworks on the crest of a hill protected as well by several batteries. Still the brigade pushed onward, though many bogged in the mill pond, caught in its mud while the federal sharpshooters shot them down. Now the lack of those supports on Lewis’ left flank allowed the enemy to hit the brigade there as well. Before long the heavy underbrush on the right of the Orphans’ line forced them to bunch toward the left, giving the bluecoats a tightly packed mass of Kentucky flesh to take their fire. Only the timely arrival of Fayette Hewitt, who rode through the entire length of the brigade front to reach the left, got the Orphans realigned somewhat for the final push toward the enemy works.
Johnny Green managed to get his canteen caught in crossing a fence, with the unhappy result that the strap held him pinned to the front of the fence, a perfect target for the enemy. He did his best to dodge the bullets that splintered the rails all about him until a merciful ball cut the canteen strap itself and freed him to continue the charge. Another man of the 9th Kentucky, Sol Wiel, a Dutch Jew believed to be from Amsterdam, coolly calmed his mates in the advance. When they tried to dodge the bullets whizzing past, he sang out, “Hey, Dock! Vats te use to todge tem pulletts? Tey’ll hit you shust as vell vere you is as vere you ain’t.”
Shortly Hewitt’s horse fell dead beneath him, and the men passing by thought they saw the adjutant trying to save his saddle, a peculiar bit of parsimony under the heavy fire. In fact, thriftier yet, Hewitt was attempting to dislodge a blanket he had seen an Orphan discard that morning. He knew the man would need it again that night.
Finally the brigade reached the enemy works and began driving the Federals from them. Soon the bluecoats sent forward reinforcements, however, and the Orphans were too few to hold what they had gained at such cost. Bate ordered Lewis to fall back. The whole attack had been a bungled affair by Bate and Hardee, and the other brigades who were to have supported the Kentuckians. Better now to end it. The trouble was, though, that falling back under the federal fire was even more dangerous than the advance. Many fell before they re-entered their own lines. And somewhere out there in that embattled landscape, Frank the soldier dog of the 2d Kentucky disappeared for good.
The cost had been terrible. A total of 135 Orphans lay dead or wounded, among them John and Dan Hays of the 5th Kentucky, devoted brothers, both now joined in death. The brigade lost at least 25 killed, and at the July 27 muster numbered only 809 fit for duty. Ten days before they had been over 1,000. That night Hewitt overheard two men of the 9th Kentucky talking about the day’s fight, one saying he wished he could act with courage “like that man Hewitt.” To himself Fayette Hewitt thought, “My friend, if you only knew how badly Hewitt was scared you wouldn’t like it!” Yet Hewitt had done his duty. Bullets might destroy the Orphan Brigade, but never fear.12
There remained but one act more in the tragedy that this fight for Atlanta visited upon the 1st Kentucky Brigade, and it waited forty days after Intrenchment Creek for the curtain. They were forty days of siege life, nothing new to these veterans of Corinth, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. The day after the disaster of July 22, Hardee’s corps, including Bate and the Orphans, withdrew into the defensive works surrounding Atlanta. “The boys enjoyed a freedom, rest and relief from the severe tension,” said Gervis Grainger, “such as they had not experienced since May.” There was light duty for them in Atlanta, the occasional skirmish, and only one real minor engagement, in which the Orphans helped repulse a halfhearted federal attack on their front. Still, any victory, no matter how small, was important now, and their corps commander published a complimentary order lauding Lewis and his men. The day before that little fight came the best news of all, though. Lewis received an order from Army headquarters to ready his men to go to Griffin, Georgia. There they would prepare to become mounted infantry. After almost two years, the dream at last was to be realized. Once on horseback, the Orphans might somehow yet find Kentucky within their reach.13
But they must fight one more battle as infantry first. As part of his gradual encirclement of Atlanta, Sherman sent the bulk of his Army around Hood’s left toward Jonesboro, about ten miles south of Atlanta. There the Federals might cut the Macon Railroad, Hood’s last line of communication with the outside. Hood at once sent Bate’s division south, placing the Orphans themselves at Jonesboro, while the rest of Hardee’s corps followed. An Arkansas brigade joined the Kentuckians, Lewis taking the overall command while Caldwell assumed temporary charge of the Orphan Brigade. On August 29 they began building hasty earthworks, and late the next day the forward elements of the enemy drove the Confederate outposts into the little town. That night Hardee finally arrived along with another corps. There could be no doubt that a major battle would be fought with the coming dawn. Johnny Green wrote, “We certainly have cause for anxiety.”
Lewis did not like his position, but there was no time to alter it now. Hardee, despite being outnumbered, determined that a bold attack would be his only hope of stopping the enemy from cutting the railroad. Not until 3 P.M. did he order the charge, however, and then it proved entirely an unwise move. The enemy had found time to fortify their positions with breastworks and emplace their artillery. Further, the Confederates had to advance over an open field devoid of cover to reach the enemy, and then just in front of the Yankee works they would encounter rough ground to stall them under the heaviest fire. Still Hardee ordered them forward.
The Orphans numbered about 833 that afternoon, several recently returned wounded having added to their strength. One man with them today was Colonel Jim Moss. The entire month of August he sat abed on sick leave, severely fevered. The Reverend Pickett seems to have despaired of the colonel’s recovery, but not Moss. Upon learning of the impending movement to Jonesboro, Moss announced, “I am going up to the front.” Pickett tried to persuade him otherwise, but to no avail. “Yes, yes; I must go up,” said Moss. Hardly a well man, still he now stood at the head of his gallant old 2d Kentucky. John Mahon was with the regiment again, recovered from his Chickamauga wound, ready to offer more of his blood, if need be, in defense of the South.
Forward went the brigade. “We started at full run,” said Grainger. “Their batteries opened on us by the dozen, with grape and canister shot and shell. The face of the earth was literally torn to pieces, and how any of us escaped is yet a mystery.” Still the Kentuckians fired a volley and then started their final rush toward the enemy works when they discovered for the first time a gully perhaps ten feet wide and as many feet deep. Under the terrible fire, many of the men jumped into it for cover. “Jump into the ditch,” someone shouted, and for those in it all thought
of continuing the assault died. They would remain here until they could somehow return to their own lines.
Others meanwhile avoided the ditch and continued the charge, at least one of them under a considerable embarrassment. Poor Bill Robb of Hawkins’ 5th Kentucky, a careless sort, had only one button at his trouser top to hold them up, and in the advance a contrary bullet shot the button away. Down went his pants. He picked them up again and tried to continue the advance, but could not do much holding his rifle in one hand and his last link with modesty in the other. Faced with a choice amid all that shot and shell, he finally let go the trousers and finished his part of the battle with more than his steel bare.
The heathen old 4th Kentucky, who discouraged so many parsons in this war, had another one with them in their advance. He joined recently, and was known only as Father Blemill. This man of God the Orphans respected, for he went into the fight with them, and though a Catholic, he made no distinction in his ministrations with the largely Protestant Kentuckians. He took his place just in the rear of the advancing 4th during this charge.